Friday, May 18, 2018

Slumming with the Creationists

A display at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky

This week I wrote two posts where I bashed what I called the modern synthesis between the theory of evolution - including its accompanying claims about the 4.5 billion year age of the earth - and orthodox Catholicism.

However, nowhere in the posts did I call myself a "creationist," endorse "creationism" or, for that matter, even use the terms.

For the record, I wouldn't currently call myself a creationist. I'd call myself a Catholic who is also a skeptic. And, yes, that means, among other things, that I'm quite skeptical of the creationist view that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that dinosaurs probably lived alongside men and all the rest. To believe that, you would have to discard or at least radically reinterpret much of what the overwhelming majority of scientists believe about geology, astronomy and chemistry. Specifically, certain core assumptions underlying radiometric and radiocarbon dating as well as the consistency of the speed of light would have to be thrown out.

On the other hand, I think the standard theory of evolution is preposterous - from a scientific standpoint more than anything else - while the modified Catholic version of it - some type of theistic evolution or "intelligent design" ends up being very difficult to square with Catholic doctrine. Specifically, I do not see how animal suffering and ancient mass extinctions can be comfortably accommodated with a pre-Fall creation that was "very good" or how common descent from pre-human ancestors can be made consistent with a literal Adam and Eve. For the latter point, I stand by my claim that no Catholic or theistic proponent of intelligent design has ever even tried to outline precisely what it would mean for Adam to have been what I called a "near ape man." Indeed, Catholic and Christian quasi-evolution or design proponents are very uncomfortable even talking about the subject. That tells you something in and of itself.

So we're back to having a certain sympathy, albeit for mostly negative reasons, for creationism - a theory almost exclusively associated with 20th century American Protestant evangelicals, although its current chief proponent is an Australian transplant.

You might call my current position slumming with the creationists.

So what do I believe? If you could take a video camera back in time 6,000 years (the approximate point many creationists believe God created the world) or 4.5 billion years (if there was such a time) what would it record? I don't know. I'd very much like to know, but I don't. Quite honestly, I think all the alternatives are problematic for a believing Catholic.

That's not a magisterial opinion, obviously. It's my opinion.

And in this - the problematic nature of all the alternatives - I think intelligent and honest atheists such as Richard Dawkins have a sort of advantage.

How do you combat that? From a sociological point of view, you can't, or at least you can't very easily or quickly. Atheism or secularism are now the dominant intellectual and cultural paradigms, and there's no reason to believe this will change in the near future, whatever brilliant empirical or logical considerations any particular Christian can come up with in any particular intellectual battleground.

But here's what you don't do: You don't sweep the problems under the rug or ignore them because they might be difficult or embarrassing or whatever in favor of "I (as a Catholic) believe what I believe and that makes me feel very spiritual inside, etc., etc." Cue violins.

Or at least that's never been how I viewed my own Catholic faith.

Personally, I think much of the hostility to creationism among contemporary Catholics, even conservative or traditionalist Catholics, is because of its current association with evangelical Protestants. They're Protestants, after all. Plus, they're sort of lower class, have bad taste in clothes and often speak with a twang.

That the identification of creationism with Protestanism is almost entirely a 20th and 21st century phenomenon, that some version of "creationism," though it didn't go by that name, was the view of virtually all Catholics, including the Church Fathers and Doctors, and all the saints and popes up until the late 19th or early 20th centuries is something that many contemporary Catholics seem to be unaware of.

That doesn't make it true, of course. But at the least it should give faithful contemporary Catholic pause. The intellectual and theological wreck of Modernism with its first culmination in Vatican II created a sort of vacuum that evangelical Protestants in some part filled. That they filled it with their energy at evangelization is a certainty. They also filled it with their intellectual drive, which is ironic since so many would sneer at their "anti-intellectualism."

In some ways I feel more comfortable in a Moody Bible bookstore than in the basement annex of St. Peters in the Loop with its America magazine displays and row upon row of hippy-priest Paulist Press paperbacks.

If you have a problem with the fact that in recent times Christian evangelicals have done much of the work that Catholics should have been doing, don't blame them.

Protestant evangelical or Vatican II Catholic? Of course it's best to be neither.

But I'm not above slumming.         

20 comments:

  1. I feel your pain brother.

    It is a conundrum.

    This quote from Chesterton has always given me solace in some indefinable way:

    “It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

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  2. I'm a Catholic creationist. No need to be ashamed.

    In terms of the age of the earth and geology/astronomy/chemistry - you only need to make one or two false assumptions in order to skew the numbers by several orders of magnitude, and when those (false) assumptions would end up supporting your accepted paradigm (evolutionism) - why not?
    But old earth creationism is still creationism - just a pointlessly inefficient kind for the sake of half-placating the same scientific establishment whose world-mission is to convince humanity of its ape origins.

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  3. Thanks Oakes. I believe God created everything. How He decided to go about, whatever mechanics he used, is not relevant to my belief.

    And between Protestant evangelicals and Vatican II Catholics I'm with the former. Vatican II is killing the Catholic faith with it's Modernist agenda.

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    1. Michael, I 100% agree with both points you just made. I trust God made it whenever it was made and I don't worry about the details, and the Modernists are killing the church and the faith. When Billy Graham speaks, I listen, when Franklin Graham speaks, I listen, I lament they are not Catholics, but I listen.
      When the Modernists speak, I don't listen, not at all. I have much more in common now with Southern Baptists.

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  4. To nitpick, St. Peter's in the Loop is Franciscan, not Jesuit, and I'm reasonably sure I have never seen a copy of America in their gift shop (I have been there 4 or 5 times to buy baptism gifts).

    "much of the hostility to creationism among contemporary Catholics, even conservative or traditionalist Catholics, is because of its current association with evangelical Protestants"

    Well, perhaps, but having little to no scientific basis doesn't help either. There just isn't any evidence for humans appearing in any way other than from descent from other primates.

    IMHO, what Genesis is about is becoming an animal that is able to understand morality. Today we do not ascribe moral judgment to any other species, because we believe that they are not capable of acting in any capacity other than instinct. Humans have the "distinction" of being able to execute agency against instinct, whether for good or ill. "Homo homini lupus est" is rather a pregnant phrase in how it refers to the animal species often considered among the most ruthless.

    Jesus said that he is the truth, and so the scientific mindset honors Jesus by its rigorous standards of proof. Nervous ex post facto justifications of the OLD Testament could be construed as more concerned with keeping up appearances than with the truth. The Jewish Old Testament of course contains many things that Christians simply do not care about, such as not eating pork and so forth.

    For Christians I think the focus must always be on Jesus.

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    1. That's funny. America Magazine was the first thing I noticed when I walked in. I'm probably overly sensitive. :)

      One of the reasons that a mainly non-literal reading of Genesis is problematic for a faithful Christian is that the many references to Genesis people and events in the New Testament almost always imply that things should be taken in the literal or historical sense.

      There's the genealogy in Luke that goes back to Adam, Paul's repeated references to Adam as "one man" and "first man" as well as "Adam was formed first, then Eve," and of course our Lord's statements about the days of Noah and the days of Sodom, etc.

      If you're right, then either those authors, as well as Jesus Himself, were mistaken about the true non-literal nature of Genesis, or the text did not record that everyone concerned was continually winking.

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    2. "Well, perhaps, but having little to no scientific basis doesn't help either."

      What about historic basis?

      "There just isn't any evidence for humans appearing in any way other than from descent from other primates."

      Scientifically, there is no good evidence either way, except on a philosophical level : mind and language, logic and morals can't evolve.

      Historically, there is excellent evidence for God creating Adam and Eve, unless you start out with throwing out historicity of Genesis.

      "Jesus said that he is the truth, and so the scientific mindset honors Jesus by its rigorous standards of proof."

      I see the scientific mindset as you here define it more in creationists than in evolutionists.

      "Nervous ex post facto justifications of the OLD Testament could be construed as more concerned with keeping up appearances than with the truth."

      As to "nervous" that is your pseudo-empathy. As to overdoing the distinction between the covenants into one where old one was not concerned with truth and even absolute truth is more like Gnostic or Manichaean / Ambigensian OT bashing than like Catholic Christianity.

      "The Jewish Old Testament of course contains many things that Christians simply do not care about, such as not eating pork and so forth."

      We do care about symbolic value of what was then expressed as not eating pork.

      Neither single nor double or cleft hoof = symbolises polytheism, which is how hare and bear were "impure food" since polytheism still is impure doctrine. Or get their "truth" from many diverse sources not the two testaments (including Coran).

      Single and uncleft hoof = symbolises those having only one Testament (certainly Jews, perhaps also Gnostics who reject the old one). We now have two Testaments and have to accept both, therefore rejecting having only one of them, as the old one rejected eating horse or donkey.

      Cleft hoof, but incompletely cleft = symbolises not clearly distinguishing the testaments, keeping cashroot while a Christian (yes, that woudl be swallowing a camel).

      Cleft hoof and completely so, but not chewing the cud = symbolises having access to the truth of both testaments, but not meditating it in prayer. And lack of prayer will get you impure as sure as wrong doctrine. That is what the pig symbolised.

      Pure mammals BOTH have completely cleft hooves AND chew the cud : a good Catholic needs to both have the correct, correctly distinguished, doctrine of both testaments and to meditate it in prayer.

      Short version : we no longer literally follow halacha, but we still must literally believe all the hagada of the OT.

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  5. Ksthleen1031:
    "I have much more in common now with Southern Baptists."
    Agree completely. And isn't it a tragedy for the Catholic Church that such a conclusion is drawn?

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  6. Scientists reject miracles. Do you follow scientists and reject miracles as well? Who do you believe--the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints or atheistic scientists? And yes, it does matter whether you accept the account of Moses in the Old Testament or not, since Scripture is inerrant and gives us true knowledge of God.

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    1. Michael Randolf:

      The creation of earth and all that is in it is a miracle. How that was accomplished is a miracle. We need go no further than that. Who cares, and what difference does it make? None that I can see. God did it all. Isn't that enough?

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  7. A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism - BY THEWAROURTIME - https://thewarourtime.com/2015/06/02/a-scientific-dissent-from-darwinism/

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    1. The links are here: https://dissentfromdarwin.org/resources-for-students/

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  8. http://www.podcasts.com/audio_sancto_catholic_sermons/episode/2013-10-20-evolution-the-religion-of-the-antichrist

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  9. "Personally, I think much of the hostility to creationism among contemporary Catholics, even conservative or traditionalist Catholics, is because of its current association with evangelical Protestants. They're Protestants, after all. Plus, they're sort of lower class, have bad taste in clothes and often speak with a twang."

    This is precisely the problem Catholics have with evangelical Protestants! The Catholic attitude -- whether Traditionalist or modernist -- is nothing but a kind of upper-crust, pseudo-intellectual snobbishness. It's one thing to disagree on theological matters. It's quite another to downgrade and degrade an entire group of people because of those disagreements.

    Yes, evangelicals do the same with Catholics. That's a manifestation of the problem from the opposite direction.

    Both sides exhibit the kind of attitude that Scripture condemns as "pride." Christ's blood doesn't cleanse Catholics from sin any more thoroughly than Protestants, or vice versa.

    This attitude is no different than the factionalism St. Paul criticized in the Corinthian church "I'm with Paul," "I'm with Apollos," "I'm with Cephas," "I'm with Christ." I wonder what St. Paul would have to say about this modern counterpart?

    The more times change...

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  10. "To believe that, you would have to discard or at least radically reinterpret much of what the overwhelming majority of scientists believe about geology, astronomy and chemistry."

    There is a difference between what scientists believe and what they can scientifically substantiate.

    Geology - I guess you think successive strata of Maastrichtian and Danian, Cretaceous and Palaeocene, Mesozoic and Tertiary or Cenozoic prove a succession of faunas, incompatible with dinosaurs being our contemporaries.

    A bit like Megiddo XX and XIX are some twentyish strata below Megiddo level I.

    In this response to Zangger, who used a palaeontological parallel to boost his archaeology, I wrote a post in which I linked back to earlier material I had written on this question.

    Creation vs. Evolution: Archaeology vs Vertabrate Palaeontology in Geology

    Short answer : nope, on land vertebrate palaeontology, no place of earth have I seen a succession of faunas.

    Astronomy - distant starlight paradox, which I deal with by Geocentrism. See how this diagram on the post Geo vs Helio demonstrates that the first step of cosmic distance beyond the distances "within solar system" is dependent on Heliocentrism. There is a reason why the Church opposed it, and now there are even more.

    Chemistry - I suspect you mean radiometric dating.

    Potassium Argon, see CMI (or they may already be among the Creationists you "slum" with?) (Did you already see this one?)

    On Carbon 14, I have done my own work (somewhat in conflict with CMI on details): Ultra Brief Summary and my newest table could perhaps be read first.

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  11. "Specifically, certain core assumptions underlying radiometric and radiocarbon dating as well as the consistency of the speed of light would have to be thrown out."

    Specifically, speed of light is just as constant as ever, if fix stars are one light day up.

    Specifically, the core assumption on carbon dates you'd need to throw out with my model would only be to consider you know that the sample which now has 2.4 pmc* once had 100 pmc, in which case of course 30 800 Years Ago would be the normal conclusion.

    If instead a sample having 2.4 pmc is from Flood, 4973 years ago, 2.4 pmc is 54.795 % of original content, meaning original content was not 100 pmc, but 0.024/0.54795 = c. 0.0438 (4.38 pmc).

    * pmc = percent modern carbon.

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    1. I'm not sure I fully understand the claims, but I don't think most YEC's, including, say, Hugh Owen, are claiming that the stars are really much closer. I think they have a more complex model. I could be wrong.

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    2. By the way, thank you for the links. I look forward to reading them.

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    3. You are welcome.

      They are not having one single, but several competing more complex ones.

      Fix stars being very close is so simple, and so few have got it. And with Geocentrism it is possible.

      Enjoy the reading!

      (Four models by Heliocentrics : Kent Hovind has "a very skinny triangle" - indeed the angle is not possible to measure directly, but is measured against background of other stars; starlight created in transit - doesn't work for starlight showing events which have happened before creation; Barry Setterfield has "speed of light has slowed down", another one used to have "white holes" and I have even heard of different time scales in different parts of the cosmos).

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