Thanks for responding. I think in your response to Guin and More Cowbell answered my question, partially.
To answer your question: it seemed to me possible that you were using “literal” differently than what is usually meant in these debates. I was afraid that by literal you meant merely “True”. This is what I was trying to get at with two phrases – not very well, I’m afraid.
But I see that is not the case, you apparently do not mean merely True but literal as well.
I thought I’d known this of you from previous threads. But somehow, I read an ambiguity into your response. Sorry.
Depends on what empirical evidence you mean. The arguments against the flood that are based on “that’s just impossible” are basically answered by, “it was a miracle, not a natural event.” The arguments based on “if there was a flood, we’d expect to see XYZ, and there’s no evidence of it” are answere similarly, that the after-effects of a miraclulous event are not the same as you’d expect from a natural flood.
Just to point one difference, in the Bible, the beginning of the flood is described as follows: (Genesis 7:11) “the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened” Now, “floodgates of the heavens” certainly sounds like it could be a poetic description of clouds, but certainly there’s no ordinary phenomenon that maps to “springs of the great deep”, (with the possible exception of geysers, but geyser water is an unlikely candidate as a major component in any flood). Most likely the latter…and quite possibly the former as well…are some supernatural, miraculous source of water from which the flood was fed. As such, not only is the “not enough water on earth to do that” argument answered (I know there are other arguments against the historicity of the flood, I’m merely giving an example), but also such arguments as the lack of certain expected erosion patterns and silt deposits and what have you…because the water didn’t flow down to the oceans and seas, it returned to its original source, and we have no accurate description of exactly how that flow goes.
Regarding the matter of human history being only 5764 years old, I’d say that evidence of older human fossils falls into that same category as dinosaurs and continental drift…basically, there’s no unified official “Orthodox Jewish” answer to the matter, and Rabbis have better things to think about while fossil evidence gets continually re-evaluated. Possibly these beings were not the Homo Sapiens we think they were. One thing that remains true is that there is no continuity between those fossil finds and any existing human civilization. The evidence that these beings might actually be our ancestors is no different, in substance, than evolutionary evidence in general…which fall within the “wiggle room” within the creation story in the first place.
And, to all: thank you for correcting my misunderstandings about Catholic theology. I’m curious: where does the Roman Catholic Church draw the line as to what Biblical events they believe are literally true and merely legendary? It the entire book of Genesis considered to be a category of its own?
Not to belabor a point but the evidence that human history far exceeds 6000 years is by no means confined to fossils.
Setting that aside, though, I’d like to thank you for responding in a calm and reasoned manner to my question rather than flying off the handle like a lot of people do. I’d also like to thank your for responding in purely religious terms rather than trying to resort to a pseudo-scientific argument for Biblical literalism.
The answer to your question about Catholic interpretation of the Bible is that it is inerrant in its theological messages, etc. but that it is filtered through human language. Catholic exegesis focuses not on the literal story but on what the author was trying to communicate about God with the story.
When I said that the RCC does not endorse a literal view of Genesis I should make it clear that it does not officially endorse a non-literal view either. The official position, as articulated by the current Pope a few years ago, is simply that a non-literal (e.g. evolutionist) view does not contradict Catholic doctrine. The important thing is that God made the universe. Whether the individual takes Genesis as a literal description or an allegorical one is inconsequential to the larger point. I’m over-simplifying just a little but essentially that represents the Catholic approach to Biblical interpretation.
There are some things that the Church does insist on as literal (i.e. the divinity and resurrection of Christ) but mostly it’s about finding the moral/ethical/theological message contained within the story. The story’s literal or non-literal historicity is regarded as somewhat incidental to the moral of the story.
Many literalists assert that the rock strata, fossils, and a host of other geological formations are the direct result of the Flood, which transformed the Earth out of all recognition. Are you agreeing with this camp or are you asserting that all effects of the Flood disappeared along with the water?
Are Native Americans, etc., descended from Noah? What do you make of Archeological evidence that humans that humans have inhabites the Americas for at least 30000 years? Or of Native American legends that date back to the end of the Ice Age which are no less credible than your mythological claims? (And did the Ice Age even occur?)
What do they make of the geological/paleontological/acheological evidence that is not being “continually re-evaluaed” but which are part of the “robust conclusions of Science” and which contradict the Bible?
You’re ignorant. Fossilized remains of human ancetors are generally not homo sapiens but other, extinct species of hominids, such as homo erectus. They walked upright and had brains considerably larger than those of apres. And Neandertals buried their dead along with artifacts.
Fossils are at least 1 million years old. The oldest human civilization dates back 8000 years, IIRC. You wouldn’t expect any continuity. The archaelogical evidence on the other hand…
Neither. I do not attribute millions (or billions) of years of geological change to a single 40-day period 4000 years ago; I do think, however, that the flood did cause the world to be different in many ways from the way life worked prior to it.
Yes.
The same thing I make of any “old Earth” stuff. There are differing opinions amongst Orthodox Jewish authorities regarding exactly how those things fit into our Bible-based world view. But the opinions are there, and quite frankly, I’m not going to let myself, in this thread, be tied down to just one and try to defend it.
How exactly are those legends accurately dated to the end of the Ice Age? I’m not trying to challenge you here, but if their legends are to be taken as counter-evidence to my own beliefs, I’d need to know what the evidence for that degree of antiquity is.
See above, re: “old Earth” stuff.
That’s way too broad a question to give a blanket answer to.
Mods! Cleanup of personal insult on aisle sqweels!
This “ignoramus” is well aware of the distinction between homo erectus and homo habilis and australopithecines (sp?) and Lucy and homo sapiens, thank you. And I didn’t realize that “Fossils” meant only one million years old and older. My comment was intended to address specifically remains that we consider to be older-than-biblical genuine human beings, such as Kennewick man (~12,000 years old). These remains (I’ll avoid calling them fossils from now on, thanks) may well seem to be human, but there’s no proven linkage between them and today’s societies…merely circumstantial evidence. Whatever explanations for other older-than-biblical items the religious scholars like to put forth would suffice to explain these as well, unless it can be definitively proven that some historically-known society has traced continuity to them.
Actually, Diogenes, Pope JP2’s statement went further and stated that not only is evolution non-contradictory to Catholic doctrine, but IS the “best fit” explanation for the observed world of life (“But don’t a-you touch-a the soul! The soul, it’s-a from God, OK?” ).
The thing about literalism vis-a-vis Catholicism is that the longstanding position of the RCC is as DtC states, that the Bible is true in its overall message; but also that what that message is, is subject to interpretation which is a job for trained professionals, using primary sources from Scripture AND Tradition AND Scholarly writings. Protestantism, OTOH in rejecting what they saw as Catholic corruption of the original Christianity, went for the “sola scriptura” doctrine: the teachings can be figured out by direct study of the Scripture alone. Thus the Reformation’s big push for vernacular-language translations of the Bible, from texts older than the Catholic Latin Vulgate.
For the couple of centuries immediately after the Reformation, both Catholicism and Protestantism were amenable to the idea that since “the Heavens themselves do witness to the Glory of the Lord”, when you came across some undeniable hard fact of reality that seemed at odds with Biblical text, it probably meant we fallible humans were misinterpreting the ancient inspired writer who was really trying to make a point which we were missing (“truth cannot contradict Truth”) . “Literalism” was still the “default”, so to speak, in the sense that the safe play was to start with the literal reading until you were shown a good reason to adopt the metaphoric/mythological explanation. During that period the RCC backed down from the extremes of the Galileo age and eventually adopted a (mostly) science-friendly POV. The one condition, of course, for all churches being that the orthodox teaching about Jesus, sin and Salvation were undisputable and out of play.
What is most commonly referred to modernly as “Literalism” IS an offshoot of American Fundamentalism. Unlike the literalism described by cmkeller which is a long-established teaching, this is rather a reaction: to the transformation of society in the Industrial Age, with their own version of an Information Explosion, that in the view of many threatened the rise of a society without solid “values”, where all morals would be at the whim of materialist philosophies. The Fundamentalists’ answer to moral relativism was moral absolutism, and one way that is expressed is to affirm that the source is itself absolutely immutable, inerrant and a factual report of events, from the “Bereshit” in Gen. 1:1 to the “Amen” in Rev. 22:21.
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but I was having a discussion the other day regarding what Jesus would say regarding capital punishment. He kept spouting off Old Testament quotes, but I insisted that Christ created a new law. I had read that here at the SDMB, but I can’t do a search on “new law AND Christ”, because of the 4 letter minimum. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
(Lk. 22:20)
In Christian theology the “New Covenant” supposedly eradicated the need to follow Mosaic law. That’s why Christians can eat lobster and wear cotten blends.
The closest the gospels come to giving Jesus’ views on capital punishment is when he stops the stoning of the adulterous woman ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone). That would seem to indicate that Jesus did not believe that humans had the right to execute people for crimes.
FWIW, the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty because it is believed that such decisions are the provenance only of God and cannot be usurped by humans.
Sorry for the late reply. I would think that any group of ancient people’s would have trouble wrapping their minds around the current theories of such things as cosmology, evolution, biology and the like. We’ve got people today who not can’t understand or accept it.
Of course, the pyramids are how old? Maybe I’m not giving ancient peoples enough credit.
To be fair, there was no difference in the intellectual capacity of ancient people than there is today. Scientific discovery is just a long process. Theoretically, ancient shepherds would have been just as capable of grasping evolutionary theory as we are once it was adequately explained to them. Of course, they would probably be quite resistant to it at first as it would seem shocking and uttterly contradictory to some deeply ingrained cultural conditioning (and the same can be said today for some people) but their brains were physiologically the same. They weren’t any stupider than we are.
Actually, DtC, I wonder if they would have an easier time accepting evolution than we do. They were closer to animals, and certainly knew both about variation in litters and that runts and the weak tend to die. Darwin after all got a lot of inspiration from his pigeons and his study of animal husbandry.
In addition, I am wondering if people aren’t stupider than they were before. After all, we can cruise by on just the scientific method whereas before we had to have very large BS-meters to get the truth behind the myths. In those days, we called it “wisdom.”
Knowledge builds on knowledge. In principle, it wouldn’t be so terribly difficult to teach ancient people things, but there are some things we’d have to remember.
Specifically:
Very few people had experience in formal thought, and most of them were grossly incompetent by modern standards.
Most people would be unable to read, and most of them wouldn’t have effective number systems to perform mathematics.
You’d have to start from the bottom up, teaching basic principles and the mechanisms by which more complex principles could be understood.
Any ancient culture could accept the decimal representation of pi as “revealed knowledge”, but it’s useless unless it’s understood what the information signifies and how it was found.
One of the ways in which fundamentalists dishonor themselves is their willingness to make up flimsy, off-the-cuff explanations for scientific evidense while demanding impossibly high standards of proof from the scientific community. And yet your approach is even worse! You’ll accept “whatever” nonsense you anticipate those on your side will make up, sight unseen.
Anyway, this link answers a couple of your questions.
That’s like a juror at the O.J. Simpson trial saying “Whatever explanations his lawyers put forth will suffice”. The actual explanation were ridiculous enough, but you’re not even waiting to hear them, let alone evaluate them in the light of all the other evidence. If the question involves geology, why not listen to the explanations put forth by–you know–geologists. The agenda of science is finding the truth. What’s your agenda?
Gamaliel, Christ abolished kosher in Mark 7:17-19 when He said, ‘After [Jesus] had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”)’ (By the way, from what I’ve seen in various translations, I suspect"out of his body" is a euphemism – one of my translations has it"comes out in the outhouse.")
).