In light of: https://www.cathinfo.com/sspx-resistance-news/sspx-infested-with-modernist-heresy/msg850181/#msg850181

I think it would be nice if well-meaning Catholics were confronted with the truth when looking into this modernist garbage so I invite everyone who read the book or knows anything about the topics to write a review.


I haven't read the book. Here's what I wrote on Goodreads.



Standard modernist drivel.

The book purports to be Catholic while promoting the following positions:

1. The Earth is orbiting the sun at 66,600 mph, rotating at an angle of 66,6° around its axis, moving at a total velocity of around 520,000 mph and has a curvature of 8 inches per square mile or 0.666 feet per square mile.

2. A singularity of near-infinite mass and consequently near-infinite gravity exploded and over billions of years of chance and pointless death and destruction life and ultimately men were formed.

3. The Great flood was local in scope. It did not cover the whole Earth.


All of these are easily refuted, however, proposition 1 is explicitly condemned as heretical by the Church while the other two are heretical insofar as they contradict the express meaning of Sacred Scripture.


Refutation of:

1. Heliocentrism
From the 1633 Condemnation and Abjuration of Galileo:

The Sacred Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and
mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Sacred Faith, by
command of His Highness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and
universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the
Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:

The proposition that the Sun is the centre of the world and does not move from
its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is
expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.

The proposition that the Earth is not the centre of the world and immovable but
that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically
and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith.

The Michelson-Morley experiment also soundly proves a stationary Earth.

2. Evolution
An effect cannot be greater than its cause.

It blasphemes God as it denies him wisdom by ascribing to him a method of creation no sane engineer would consider.

The is zero.

3. A local flood

If the flood was local why did God warn Noah a hundred years in advance and Noah spend his whole life building a huge ark to preserve all the animals? Why didn't God just tell him to move a fifty miles north? This view makes God look ridiculous.

A local Flood would make God a liar. God promised Noah never to send another Flood upon the Earth (Genesis 9:11). If the Flood was a local flood, then God lied to Noah, as there have been countless local floods during the four and a half millennia since the Flood of Noah.


Of course, there are a million ways to prove scientifically the veracity of the biblical account as well.

Oh! how low the SSPX has fallen.

For further reading on the topic of geocentrism I suggest J. S. Daly's study on the theological status of helicoentrism and Dr. Robert Sungenis' work. With regard to evolution, there are many great resources online but a good Catholic source is the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.

The main problems I have with Abbe Robinson's book are these:

1) While masquerading as a "realists guide," it has more an aire of acting as a "rationalists guide," insofar as

2) His being "realistic" (actually rationalistic) tends to destroy belief in miracles, and from this, inerrancy

3) All the while declaring there to be no contradiction between faith and science

4) So long as the former remains subject to the latter.

That this is being done becomes evident once we observe a consistent theme: We need to modify our naive beliefs in order to harmonize them with the latest findings of "science."

It seems not to occur to him that "science" is constantly disproven (e.g., look at the covid scam, and what was done to combat it in the name of "science"), and rather than holding firm in his beliefs in the historoicity of the bible, and concluding there must be some error in the alleged science, he takes the opposite course, accepting the conclusions of atheists and rationalist "scientists" and modifying his beliefs accordingly.

But this subjugation of religion was denounced in Pascendi by St. Pius X:

"17. Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose that, given these theories, one is authorised to believe that faith and science are independent of one another. On the side of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite different with regard to faith, which is subject to science not on one but on three grounds. For in the first place it must be observed that in every religious fact, when you take away the divine reality and the experience of it which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially the religious formulas of it, belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under the control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will, but so long as he remains in it he must continue, whether he like it or not, to be subject to the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of history. Further, when it is said that God is the object of faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine reality not to the idea of God. The latter also is subject to science which while it philosophises in what is called the logical order soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore the right of philosophy and of science to form conclusions concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to purify it of any extraneous elements which may become confused with it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in him, and the believer therefore feels within him an impelling need so to harmonise faith with science, that it may never oppose the general conception which science sets forth concerning the universe.

The Modernists completely invert the parts, and to them may be applied the words of another Predecessor of Ours, Gregory IX., addressed to some theologians of his time: Some among you, inflated like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the sense of the heavenly pages . . .to the philosophical teaching of the rationals, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science . . . these, seduced by strange and eccentric doctrines, make the head of the tail and force the queen to serve the servant."

https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/docuмents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html

In light of: https://www.cathinfo.com/sspx-resistance-news/sspx-infested-with-modernist-heresy/msg850181/#msg850181

I think it would be nice if well-meaning Catholics were confronted with the truth when looking into this modernist garbage so I invite everyone who read the book or knows anything about the topics to write a review.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50705764-scientific-heresies-and-their-effect-on-the-church

Scientific Heresies and their Effect on the Church: A Critique of 'The Realist Guide to Religion and Science'

by
Robert A. Sungenis


This book was written for two purposes: First, to educate the public at large by a critical examination of science and history, especially in the areas of cosmogony and cosmology. Although modern science purports to know the origin and operation of the universe, in reality it comprehends very little and actually spreads more falsehood today than it does truth. On its face, modern science is the last formidable bastion of secular society. It is touted as impregnable and invincible. Indeed, today’s scientists have the education, the grants, the sophisticated equipment, the iconic image, the universities, the newspapers and the general media on their side. Opposing voices can barely form a whisper of contention. It is truly a Goliath if there ever was one in our modern age and it is as big as the universe itself.
Second, this book contends with Catholics, and anyone else, who have accepted the major teachings of modern science and thereby have rejected either biblical revelation, the traditional ecclesiastical consensus, or the official magisterial statements that disagree with modern science’s theories or conclusions. As one can see by the title, I have chosen to focus on the recent book by Fr. Paul Robinson, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science. He is a priest of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a very conservative but embattled branch of Roman Catholicism. The reason he was chosen is normally we don’t see many examples of staunchly conservative Catholic groups being unduly influenced by the theories of modern science to the point they either reject or neutralize the biblical, traditional and magisterial teachings. If there is any group of Catholics from whom we could expect a rigid traditional Catholic view of either the Bible or its interpretation, it is the SSPX, at least in its beginnings under its founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But like many conservative groups today, the inevitable tendency is to judge scientific issues according to the world’s “status quo” and to avoid being dubbed “Fundamentalist.” Fr.
Robinson’s book, insofar as he represents the SSPX, has proven to be no exception.
Paperback, 574 pages
Published 2018 by Catholic Apologetics International
ISBN13

9781939856234

Also, see: https://www.cathinfo.com/the-library/scientific-heresies-and-their-effect-on-the-church/


Also: https://www.kolbecenter.org/the-realist-guide-to-religion-and-science/

The Realist Guide to Religion and Science
May 11, 2018
0 8 minutes read


The Realist Guide to Religion and Science
 Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
Gracewing Publishing, 2018
556 pages

This book was written by a priest, Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX, who has a Master’s Degree in Engineering Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Louisville, Kentucky.  He has been teaching Thomistic philosophy and theology since his ordination into the SSPX in 2006.  So you would think that a priest with a background in science, philosophy, and theology would be able to come up with a good treatment of the very controversial topic of origins.

Fr. Robinson’s way of determining the reasonableness of a position is to apply his Epistedometer to it.  Epistemology is the study of knowledge.  True knowledge comes from knowing what is real, what is in accord with reality.  The left-most position of the epistedometer is the intellect-only position; the position that denies the senses/body.  The right-most position is the senses-only position; the position that denies the intellect/soul.  The middle position is the realist position; the position that recognizes intellect/soul and senses/body.

If you want to know Fr. Robinson’s world view, all you need to do is look at the bibliography in the back of the book.  The most entries from one author, by far, are books and articles by Fr. Stanley Jaki (1924-2009).  He was a Benedictine priest who had doctorates in theology and physics.  So it is clear that Fr. Robinson held Fr. Jaki in high regard.

One problem with people who spend their lives in academia is that they have an abundance of theoretical knowledge, but a comparative lack of practical knowledge.  There are only so many hours in the day.  There is also a tendency for academians to defend each other from non- academians.  Otherwise, the institutions of higher learning look bad.  So academians are predisposed to give credit to their fellows, especially on subjects outside their own field.

This book has three sections: Reason, Religion, and Science.  Fr. Robinson spends many words on describing how you can know anything and what we take for granted.  If there were no reality or no way to know it, any discussion of it would be a waste of time.  Further, if there were no cause-effect relationship, you would not know what to expect and so you could not predict anything or develop rules of behavior.  So scientific studies assume effects have a cause.  You also do not have time to investigate everything by yourself, and your brain is limited.  So you have to trust other people, especially those in positions of authority.

Up until the modern scientific era, starting in the 1600’s, the focus of knowledge beyond basic survival was religion.  Fr. Robinson explains how most pagans are pantheists and believe everything runs in cycles, like the natural seasons.  Aristotle was the pinnacle of pagan philosophy, but his ideas about nature were mostly wrong in the details.  Muslims started off badly but did learn quite a few things from the Greeks during the decline of the Roman Empire.  Unfortunately, their god is not a god of reason.

The height of Catholic thought was reached by St. Thomas Aquinas.  He purified the ideas of Aristotle, and even though he had little interest in physical sciences, he contributed greatly to the advancement of science after his time.  He found the balance between reason and authority.  Protestants gave up the religious authority of the Catholic Church when they adopted a Bible-alone belief system.

Fr. Robinson shows that modern, atheistic scientists err when they think that there is nothing beyond nature.  It is clear that nature had an origin outside of itself, especially when you consider the odds of a living cell coming from non-life.  Atheistic scientists tend to make a god out of nature or evolution, and despise any authority other than their own.

So Fr. Robinson recognizes that life could not come from non-life naturally, and that evolution has limits in its ability to change an organism.  However, he also realizes that a literal interpretation of Genesis flies in the face of the teachings of modern science.  So what is a religious with a background in science to do?  Put God in your science!  Fr. Robinson takes the position of progressive creation, which is a form of theistic evolution.

Unfortunately, he grants too much credibility in fallible human hypotheses in natural science and not enough trust in the Word of God as understood in His Church from the beginning.  Aquinas and other churchmen have recognized that the truth of religion and the truth of science cannot be in conflict since they come from the same ultimate source.  If natural science were able to conclusively prove a fact that did not square with a given interpretation of the Bible, then the interpretation would have to be questioned.  St. Robert Bellarmine said so when he was prosecuting the Galileo case, although he did not think the movement of the earth was proven.

One concept that Fr. Robinson accepts without question is uniformitarianism, the idea that things happen now at about the same rate as they have been happening in the past.  That idea is agreeable to scientists, but contrary to the idea of a global Flood.  However, St. Peter warns that: “in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts, saying: Where is his promise or his coming?  For since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.  For this they are willfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” (2 Peter 3:3-6) So St. Peter prophesied 2,000 years ago that people like Fr. Robinson would come along, scoffing at the Word of God, thinking everything has been the same as it ever was, and denying the Flood.
Fr. Robinson also discredits the Biblical teaching of waters above the firmament, even though it is stated three times (Gen. 1:7, Psalms 148:4, and Daniel 3:60) and scientists have detected a form of water in space.  When speaking about the waters above the heavens, Augustine said: “These words of Scripture have more authority than the most exalted human intellect.  Hence, whatever these waters are, and whatever their mode of existence, we cannot for a moment doubt that they are there.”  Aquinas agreed with him.  This should be our attitude when dealing with realities that are so explicitly and repeatedly stated in the Word of God.

Fr. Robinson also picks three concepts from the Bible that he thinks modern natural science has disproven: 1. geocentrism, 2. a young earth, and 3. a global Flood.  His defense of the consensus view in natural science in opposition to those ideas is weak, at best.  He cites stellar parallax (the observation of near stars in slightly different positions every six months) as a proof against geocentrism, even though a geocentric model of the universe with those stars revolving around the Sun could also account for that.  He cites radiometric dating as a proof of an old earth, even though there are many assumptions built into it, and there are very discordant dates from the various dating methods and laboratories.  Never mind the fact that dinosaur bones have been dated to thousands of years old and that some have been found with soft tissue, red blood cells, and intact proteins and strands of DNA inside of them which obviously cannot be millions of years old!  His argument against a global Flood rests on one quotation from the French Catholic Biblical scholar Vigouroux, mostly complaining about the number of animal species required to be on the ark and the amount of water needed to cover the mountains.  Those can both be reconciled by assuming that only pairs of family/genus “kinds” of animals were on the ark, and that the mountains were lower and oceans shallower at the time of the Flood. (This is a reasonable assumption, since the highest mountain ranges all over the Earth show evidence of having been uplifted after multiple layers of sediment had been laid down by the Flood and before those sediments had hardened into rock.)

The Bible explicitly says three times that the earth does not move (Psalms 92:1, 95:10, and 103:5 DRB).  It also states three times that the world was created in six days (Gen. 1, Exodus 20:11 and 31:17) and the Genesis genealogies are given in exact years.  The long account of the Flood in Genesis, the words of Our Lord and St. Peter regarding that event, the witness of the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints, together with the Church’s understanding of the Flood as a foreshadowing of Baptism should solidly establish the fact of a global Flood in the mind of any believing Catholic.

Our Lord said, concerning the Second Coming: “And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  For as in the days before the Flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark, and they knew not till the Flood came, and took them all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matt. 24:37-39) Since the Second Coming will be a global event, Christ chose the Flood as another global event from history for a comparison.  To deny the global Flood is essentially to call Our Lord Jesus Christ a liar or mistaken about a fact of history.

So, Fr. Robinson does a good job of explaining that there is a reality created by God and how we can know it.  His advocacy for a balanced position between intellect/soul and senses/body is very good.  His criticism of the concept of life evolving from non-life and his recognition of the limits of evolution is also helpful.  However, Fr. Robinson gives far too much credit to fallible human hypotheses in natural science in thinking that geocentrism, a young earth, and a global Flood have been disproven, contrary to the Bible.  His acceptance of uniformitarianism, which was specifically condemned by St. Peter, is disturbing, especially in light of the anathema of Vatican Council I ten years after Darwin’s publication of Origin of Species against anyone who would say that “the progress of the sciences” demands that any dogma of the faith be understood in a different way. At the time that anathema was handed down, Blessed Pope Pius IX made the Roman Catechism the gold standard for teaching the dogmas of the Faith throughout the world, and the Roman Catechism clearly teaches the fiat creation of all things at the beginning of time, in direct opposition to theistic evolution or progressive creation over long ages.
It is ironic that Fr. Robinson’s main authority, Fr. Stanley Jaki, believed that special creation required God to intervene in the natural order, when St. Thomas and all of the Fathers and Doctors held that God created all of the different kinds of creatures for man in the beginning and then stopped creating new kinds of creatures.  Thus, it is progressive creation—which requires that God intervene periodically to create new kinds of creatures—which confuses the supernatural order of creation with the natural order of providence, not the true Catholic doctrine of creation which clearly distinguishes between the supernatural work of creation in the beginning and the natural order which began when the work of fiat creation was finished.  What is most disturbing is Fr. Robinson’s dismissal of the global Flood with his only defense being one quotation from Vigouroux, since the Flood is so solidly established by the Holy Bible, by all of the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints, and by the very words of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Eric Bermingham
May, 2018

  

I love your fixing of the book's title to --

"The Modernist Guide to Religion and Science"

I found Dr. Sungenis' book here, though I don't know if this is a copyright violation of some kind, so please keep that in mind.
https://tinyurl.com/3xuncchr

You raise an interesting point about copyright violation.

Apparently, no copyright violation exists, although I think it could understandably, although not necessarily, be a violation of one's Catholic conscience.  Dr. Sungenis lamented to me one time about the use of software such as the one seen seen here: https://calibre-ebook.com/, but as I recall there didn't appear to be anything we could do about it legally.  That is the same software Geremia makes use of in a public way.  See her defense of such use here:  https://isidore.co/forum/index.php?topic=53.0 . 

You raise an interesting point about copyright violation.

Apparently, no copyright violation exists, although I think it could understandably, although not necessarily, be a violation of one's Catholic conscience.  Dr. Sungenis lamented to me one time about the use of software such as the one seen seen here: https://calibre-ebook.com/, but as I recall there didn't appear to be anything we could do about it legally.  That is the same software Geremia makes use of in a public way.  See her defense of such use here:  https://isidore.co/forum/index.php?topic=53.0 .

I don't know if this individual has Dr. Sugenis' permission whether directly or else Dr. Sungeis wished to make this particular book freely available, but I'm not interested so much in the legalities of it as with the moral aspect of defrauding him of something that should be due to his labors.  So, I believe that if I were to read a substantial portion of it (vs. skimming a section or two that might be cited via Fair Use anyway), I would feel obliged to go purchase his book ... if I could afford it (and I can).  Now, for someone who can't afford it, I think the desire to nourish their faith and ward off the poison of Robinson's Modernist errors warrants accessing the book for free.

There's part of me that thinks Dr. Sungenis should not enforce his rights to a work like this, since it would be wrong to deprive people of the benefit of his defense of the faith, and perhaps should just solicit a free-will offering, like shareware with software.  [And perhaps he has done exactly that here and that's why it's out there like this?]  If I were he, I would put it out there in public, but might put something in the beginning to the effect, "If this book has benefitted you and you are able to afford it, I ask that you please make a donation of [an amount] to help support my work."

If I had the time to write a good book, I would do it for free and know that if I benefitted others with it my reward would be in Heaven.  At the same time, if I could support myself by revenue from books, that would enable me to quit my current day (and night) job of writing software to write more books to do even more good.  If Dr. Sungenis were't supported by revenue from his books (lectures, etc.), then he would have to pick up a job doing something else to support his family and would therefore be unable to write more books.

Sharing books has always been the nature of them. Libraries are essentially the original shareware, as a copy was sold but then loaned out to others ad infinitum. To me it seems that would make library books as immoral as calibre and other programs, if that is the case, because you're doing the same thing.

And with digital copies, you're not even removing the original file from ownership of anyone else like you would a tangible book; so it's difficult to justify it as theft. At best, you have a case of undermining the income of the author, but most authors are paid by a publishing house anyway (except independents like Dr. Sugenis), so even a claim of defrauding the author is not true.

Library books or sharing is a bit more borderline.  When you buy a physical book, it's like any other physical item you buy.  At some point someone has to buy the book, and there can be only one copy circulating at a time.  Meanswhile, with a digital, you can have 10,000 people reading it at the same time.