What is the Church's position on Creation/Evolution

[ArmyMatt]

...Which is not really all that many saints.

still more than zero. it wasn't that many saints who opposed Arius either.

 

[fat wee robin]

At some point evolutionists have to realize that evolution is a mindset with an agenda that has a conscience formed by atheism. It is not an observed phenomenon that is objectively analyzed. It has social, political, religious implications that are all part of an agenda. It boggles my mind how one can be Orthodox and NOT see these factors? And the idea of the faith being subordinate to atheist agendas should be spooky....

Yes ,it is the basis for all those who can ,without qualm, say that God does not exist ,that we are our own creators ,so we can do as we please .That the 'enlightenment ' was the high point of our self 'evolution ' ,and that since then God is dead and we will advance towards total personal power.
This I believe is the repetition of Lucifers rebellion , exactly the same being repeated .

Without it, people would fear judgement ,would be more likely to look for God .
As it is ,the young ,many of them , have no counterpoint to the darkness this brings ,as it compulsory to accept it if you are 'intelligent ' and universally taught .

The problem for me is that the earth is not 6000 -7000 years old ,and that the GAP theory is most to be true . So for neither evolution , or young earth
correspond to the evidence .

 

[gzt]

The consensus of the Saints and Holy Fathers, all rooted in the Holy Spirit, is what Tradition is. The Saints and Holy Fathers argue against evolution.

I would also like to point out that you avoided my question and evaded addressing it directly as you have done continually through this discussion.

Which question?

I would more or less agree with your first sentence, but quibble with the second and question its relation to the first. Some of them argue against it, some of them predated it and said a lot of things, some of which conflict and some of which don't. We're in the midst of a conversation or even an argument about it as a Church - which has not really defined its doctrine on this matter. "The saints and holy fathers" are not a monolith and are not timeless.

 

[SingularityOne]

Which question?

I would more or less agree with your first sentence, but quibble with the second and question its relation to the first. Some of them argue against it, some of them predated it and said a lot of things, some of which conflict and some of which don't. We're in the midst of a conversation or even an argument about it as a Church - which has not really defined its doctrine on this matter. "The saints and holy fathers" are not a monolith and are not timeless.

The question is “what is the foundation of your position?”

The Holy Spirit is timeless and the Saints and Holy Fathers were/are purified in that they were in accordance with the Mind of the Church/The Holy Spirit.

 

[prodromos]

...Which is not really all that many saints.

How many do you need?

 

[gzt]

Real consensus in the Church or definition of the doctrine by one of the various methods the Church defines doctrines would suffice.

 

[gzt]

The question is “what is the foundation of your position?”

The Holy Spirit is timeless and the Saints and Holy Fathers were/are purified in that they were in accordance with the Mind of the Church/The Holy Spirit.

The foundation? The Church, of course.

Yes, t he Holy Spirit is timeless, but this doesn't mean you're right. Again, you beg the question.

 

[SingularityOne]

The foundation? The Church, of course.

Yes, t he Holy Spirit is timeless, but this doesn't mean you're right. Again, you beg the question.

Would you provide for me a Saint or Holy Father that advocates for evolution?

 

[gzt]

We've been going in circles for like 200 posts, dude. The vast majority predate the notion. Many modern Orthodox theologians speak in favor of it, though, sure, the few modern people who have been canonized that spoke about evolution have not been fans.

 

[SingularityOne]

We've been going in circles for like 200 posts, dude. The vast majority predate the notion. Many modern Orthodox theologians speak in favor of it, though, sure, the few modern people who have been canonized that spoke about evolution have not been fans.

Canonized Saints > Orthodox Theologions that haven’t been canonized. The former is a part of Tradition while the latter is not. I think this concludes our discussion.

 

[gzt]

There's a sense they're greater, sure, but that's still a far cry from definitive. But yes, I'm quite willing to end the discussion, as we have literally been repeating ourselves.

 

[TheLostCoin]

Real consensus in the Church or definition of the doctrine by one of the various methods the Church defines doctrines would suffice.

Too bad we don't have a God given emperor to enforce doctrines, so the various methods don't really work as well.





Yeah, I know I'm going to hell for saying that, but let's be honest - that's how the Church managed to anathematize heresies effectively.

When Pope Vigilius refused to condemn the heretical 3 Chapters out of allegiance to the judgments of all the Fathers of Chalcedon, Saint Justinian sent a group of soldiers who captured him while he said Mass and imprisoned him until he condemned it as heretical.

And when there was the problem of Judaizing Orthodox in Russia, Saint Gennady of Novgorod with support of the Russian Orthodox government burned them all at the stake for heresy.


Whenever there is a council that is held by the Bishops without a Roman Empire or Russian Empire, there's always a problem which happens - either the synodal declaration is lost, the council is mismanaged, or the Orthodox population gets offended and ignores the synod altogether.

We have a supposed Sigillion of 1583 from the Council of 1583, but it's a complete forgery, having been forged from the Tomos of 1616 from the Patriarch of Alexandria.

All we know is that the Council anathematized the Gregorian Pascha, and we know nothing else.

 

[prodromos]

Many modern Orthodox theologians speak in favor of it

How many is "many"?

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I'm not of the mindset that the earth is 6,000 years old. For God, one day could be 20,000 years or 20 seconds for all I know. I don't take the "6 days" of creation to be literal 24-hour periods. I have zero idea how old the Earth is. But what I do know is that scientists can't agree on these skulls you plunk out here on this photo. Dating methods vary. You mention radiocarbon dating. While I don't dispute you likely know far more on this topic than myself, my understanding is that radiocarbon dating goes back as far as 50,000 years. Beyond that, it's super unreliable and spotty at best. I know there are other methods.

Just because skulls look like men doesn't mean they were men. They were hominids, primate-like. Do we share a lot of traits with primates? Yep. Do we descend from them? Nope.

Death, we are told by Scripture, Tradition, the Fathers, and the Church did not exist prior to the Fall. Evolution presupposes death in the matrix from the get-go.

Have you read Father Seraphim Rose's book on Genesis?

It doesn't matter whether or not it clearly has origins from an Anglo-supremacist and naturalistic worldview, or whether such a worldview has such a malicious agenda what you described, or even if such a worldview has created international peer pressure to hold fast on to this view otherwise be socially ridiculed by the scientific community - when it doesn't help to explain the data of the multiple radiocarbon dating systems which are consistent with each other, geological strata, the fossils of primates that slowly look more and more like men over time

and if we are going by the 6000 year old worldview, and the massive lack of evidence that something like Noah's flood occurred on a global scale (i.e., the lack of a gap or cultural divide in cultures, languages, art, calendars, etc., in cultures that are older than this).

A lot of the attempts to do so are by uneducated individuals who spend their time misrepresenting the other person's position rather than actually interpreting the data that's found in a logical, classical philosophical manner - like Dr. Dino for example.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Why would that make God deceptive? If a process takes millions of years and God makes the process happen in His time any way in which He chooses, how is that deceptive?

Jesus healed people right and left in the Gospels. Perhaps with medication and surgery, it would take the patient 3 months to recover, but Jesus cures the patient and advances a 3-month process into seconds. Is that deceptive? God exists outside of time in a mysterious way that is unknowable. What Prodromos, Rus, Father Matt, and myself are arguing is that time and God interact in a wholly different way than you or I interact with it. Our interactions with time are linear, obvious, measurable, and predictable. God is outside of linear time's restrictions and our understandings of it. God could create a universe that is billions of years old in the blink of His eye. And if he were to populate it, He could do so how He chooses. Having a tedious life-and-death evolutionary system with ammonia and primates, death and birth, more death and birth, reacting to the environment, coping, reacting, dying, being born, dying some more, adapting, coping, dying.....it's just not at all what the Scriptures and Fathers tell us how sin and man entered the world.

Exactly - if you believe God created the universe to look like that, you would have to come to the conclusion that God is being purposely malicious and deceptive, something that can't be True if God is omnibenevolent.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

I agree with most of what you say, and none of us in here who are traditionalists say that the Earth is 6,000 years old? I don't recall that being said, though the pro-evolutionists in here repeatedly seem to think we are saying that? I think the age of the Earth and Man's ascension are two different issues honestly. You can believe in an ancient Earth without buying the idea that we're descendants of monkey folk.

Yes ,it is the basis for all those who can ,without qualm, say that God does not exist ,that we are our own creators ,so we can do as we please .That the 'enlightenment ' was the high point of our self 'evolution ' ,and that since then God is dead and we will advance towards total personal power.
This I believe is the repetition of Lucifers rebellion , exactly the same being repeated .

Without it, people would fear judgement ,would be more likely to look for God .
As it is ,the young ,many of them , have no counterpoint to the darkness this brings ,as it compulsory to accept it if you are 'intelligent ' and universally taught .

The problem for me is that the earth is not 6000 -7000 years old ,and that the GAP theory is most to be true . So for neither evolution , or young earth
correspond to the evidence .

 

[TheLostCoin]

Why would that make God deceptive? If a process takes millions of years and God makes the process happen in His time any way in which He chooses, how is that deceptive?

Jesus healed people right and left in the Gospels. Perhaps with medication and surgery, it would take the patient 3 months to recover, but Jesus cures the patient and advances a 3-month process into seconds. Is that deceptive? God exists outside of time in a mysterious way that is unknowable. What Prodromos, Rus, Father Matt, and myself are arguing is that time and God interact in a wholly different way than you or I interact with it. Our interactions with time are linear, obvious, measurable, and predictable. God is outside of linear time's restrictions and our understandings of it. God could create a universe that is billions of years old in the blink of His eye. And if he were to populate it, He could do so how He chooses. Having a tedious life-and-death evolutionary system with ammonia and primates, death and birth, more death and birth, reacting to the environment, coping, reacting, dying, being born, dying some more, adapting, coping, dying.....it's just not at all what the Scriptures and Fathers tell us how sin and man entered the world.

The problem I have with non-evolutionary OEC that I haven't found satisfactory is the record of death in the Earth which exists, which makes no sense as to why God, outside time and space, would design skeletons in the Earth to give impressions that creatures died, and that over time, skulls which were once more ape-like look slowly more and more human, and how these skulls can appear in multiple layers of strata that are all distinct from each other, which give the immediate impression of millions of years of erosion and burial of skeletons by said erosion, if He is omnibenevolent.

How did those skeletons get there?

If you say the Flood, the question is how exactly did they get to the layers - which have been dated to millions of years - by flood water, and how have they lined up so consistently that one hasn't found, for example, a Homo Habilis looking fossil around the date of a Homo Erectus looking fossil, (e.g., est. 600,000 years ago.)

 

[TheLostCoin]

I agree with most of what you say, and none of us in here who are traditionalists say that the Earth is 6,000 years old? I don't recall that being said, though the pro-evolutionists in here repeatedly seem to think we are saying that? I think the age of the Earth and Man's ascension are two different issues honestly. You can believe in an ancient Earth without buying the idea that we're descendants of monkey folk.

The problem is that there have been very few or little Orthodox Creationist Scientists who would be willing to demonstrate something that is more explainable than a 6000 year old Earth - the majority of the Creation institutes that exist are Evangelical Protestant Christians who assume from the get-go a 6000 year old Earth, and have varying degrees of success and failure (a lot of times being not able to answer a lot of basic objections made by secular scientists) in trying to prove such an assertion. It's basically impossible to find a Creationist institution, which does research, that will bring forth arguments that contend the Earth is older than Bishop Usher's date, and as such, it's hard to disconnect the theory of YEC from the age of 6000 years.

One one hand of the spectrum, you'll have Jason Lisle, who has a PhD in Astrophysics, but who operates within the 6000 year old paradigm which can come across a bit of difficulties. Sometimes, I think he does an okay job - he does a good job of explaining away via pure logic the fallacies that Secular Scientists use in terms of scare tactics. Other times he'll argue that the speed of light is not necessarily constant and come across some other major problems which are difficult to logically answer within the 6000 year old framework.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Dr. Dino - Kent Hovind - a man who received a theology degree from a degree mill, and was arrested for tax fraud - who continually uses discredited arguments so much so that he is mocked by other Creationists in the field, and he contends the idea that it's ridiculous that "a frog can turn into a monkey and then a monkey into a human." He also believes the Leviathan in Job was a Brontosaurus. He also operates within the 6000 year old paradigm and believes very deeply in Chiliasm - and I mean deeply. He seems to imply the end times are coming soon and that Christ is gonna establish a Kingdom on Earth when the end times happen.

 

[TheLostCoin]

While I don't dispute you likely know far more on this topic than myself, my understanding is that radiocarbon dating goes back as far as 50,000 years. Beyond that, it's super unreliable and spotty at best. I know there are other methods.

No, you're absolutely right.

And I'm an idiot. I meant to say Radiometric dating, whose methodology is similar in measuring the decay of radiometric isotopes. It is far more accurate.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

You are by NO MEANS an idiot. Far from it!

No, you're absolutely right.

And I'm an idiot. I meant to say Radiometric dating, whose methodology is similar in measuring the decay of radiometric isotopes. It is far more accurate.