How do we explain Neanderthals?

[YCGP]

This does not hold true in the account of things as the Scripture reveals.

The two histories could have taken place on two separate line. One for evolution and one for spirituality. It doesn't need to make complete sense to us right now anyhow.

PS: Didn't Greek Orthodox prove that God exists through logical reasoning? He cannot be disproven, therefore He exists.

 

[Petros2015]

Didn't Greek Orthodox prove that God exists through logical reasoning?

lol No. Greek Orthodox is from the apostolic line, directly from the 12 apostles of Christ. They didn't need to prove God existed, He visited.

You might be thinking of arguments from other Greek philosophers like Socrates? I think some of them were highly regarded by the Church.

http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/09/ancient-greek-philosophers-in-orthodox.html

 

[rusmeister]

"But you speak as if being outside of time resolved contradiction with evolution. It doesn't. The moment the first people experienced time as we do, in being expelled from the Garden, I could say "THE moment", you have chronology as we know it, and that demands immediate chronological accountability. And then what do we say happened to them? Scripture tells it in a straight-forward manner. There is no cancellation of their very existence in favor of amoebas that struggle, fight and die in an effort to evolve and develop to produce the very mankind that had already been produced and already existed in time. Fallen Creation already existed in a fairly complete form, however it was formed prior to any movement of time. This does not prove a young earth, and I see no necessary theological contradiction with an old earth, but in time as we know it, things, human beings, animals and plants, already existed when death burst into the world. That must necessarily contradict the evolutionary narrative. The narratives are mutually exclusive. Which, then, do you choose?"

The moment that Adam and Eve experienced time as we do was not within the Garden. The narrative points at things in a chronological way after the manner of how we tend to think, while the things being pointed to are beyond our ability to comprehend, as is any chronological order outside of time.

Once fallen, Adam and Eve entered into an existence that had already been in motion from the beginning of created time (billions of years earlier or more) as the result of their failure in the Garden outside of time. We will not understand this anymore than we will understand how a chronological story can unfold in Eternity, because it is a Mystery that will always defy comprehension, like the Mystery of Redemption.

Understandable. I could be wrong. I can easily entertain that possibility. If various Church fathers have been incorrect about a few things, individually and collectively, then I sure as heck can be as well. I think, however, this is not exactly the case, and that there is something else happening here. We will see.

Christ is in our midst.

This simply avoids the question. Even if we speak in terms of entering chronological time, you can't posit it, as you are, as them entering a time where your evolutionary model has already been in progress for millions of years. The Faith holds that all of Creation fell, not just Adam and Eve, and you are still left with trying to fit a mystical story of Creation into the evolutionary narrative. There simply is no place for it. It is not mystical. It is just irrational. 2+2=5 is not deep mysticism. George Washington was not both an American founding father and a Japanese serving woman of the 15th century. You leave me with a picture of Created fully functional animals that Adam names in an unFallen state being suddenly all undone, rewinding time backwords to a primordial state, and starting all over again in a narrative this time devoid of any Adam. It's not a paradox like "He who would save his life must lose it". It's just self-contradiction, and an appeal to our inability to understand the mystical and ignore the self-contradiction.

 

[rusmeister]

The two histories could have taken place on two separate line. One for evolution and one for spirituality. It doesn't need to make complete sense to us right now anyhow.

PS: Didn't Greek Orthodox prove that God exists through logical reasoning? He cannot be disproven, therefore He exists.

If the one did not definitely mean that there was no Adam, and that death was in the world from the beginning, then maybe we could accept that and say that the contradiction is not important. Unfortunately, the evolutionary narrative DOES say that. And so we can't accept it and remain faithful to the understanding of truth in Tradition. We will invariably be lead into heresy when we accept contradiction of Tradition, including any narrative that de facto denies it.

 

[jckstraw72]

The two histories could have taken place on two separate line. One for evolution and one for spirituality. It doesn't need to make complete sense to us right now anyhow.

PS: Didn't Greek Orthodox prove that God exists through logical reasoning? He cannot be disproven, therefore He exists.

sorry, if you need to go to such degrees to almagate Tradition and modern science -- changing each where necessary -- it's a good sign that they simply are nor harmonious. of course, were they harmonious, you wouldn't need to change either. truth doesn't contradict truth.

 

[YCGP]

sorry, if you need to go to such degrees to almagate Tradition and modern science -- changing each where necessary -- it's a good sign that they simply are nor harmonious. of course, were they harmonious, you wouldn't need to change either. truth doesn't contradict truth.

So what you're saying is evolution simply did not happen...?

 

[rusmeister]

So what you're saying is evolution simply did not happen...?

That is what I do say.
And I realize that it seems like an astounding thing to say: we have been taught so thoroughly to have faith in our experts and their education. Furthermore, on things that can be observed, experts are often right. They build airplanes that fly, make medicines that arrest diseases, and so on. For me it is knowing that a) the education system dominating nearly all of public and private schooling is thoroughly diseased, and does not educate, and b) the fact that we really cannot observe the distant past to even see if it was really that distant, or as described by the clever calculators and assumers. It even requires faith in authority to believe in past events that we all accept; what can we say when we do not accept the authority? When we find that they have no coherent and true philosophy and theology? When they have been taught that such things are "subjects" like their own professional field, but different, and not particularly relevant, rather than the governing understandings that determine what they do see in their field?

Because of this, thousands or millions of scientists can have the same poor education, observe the same bits of evidence, consistently come to the same conclusions, creating a consensus, and yet be deeply wrong.

 

[YCGP]

Exactly. They are not looking at the whole picture. They just simply do not believe in the supernatural.

 

[rusmeister]

Exactly. They are not looking at the whole picture. They just simply do not believe in the supernatural.

But it's not that simple. There are plenty of Orthodox Christians with this same modern education that absolutely believe in the supernatural. The whole point is that it's not enough to believe in the supernatural (even the demons believe, and tremble...) when most of your thinking about science, history, the nature of man is formed from the very atmosphere of the schooling environment, the schedules, bells, division into subjects, and the rules, regulations and requirements imposed on both teaches and textbooks to be certified or approved which run counter to Christian tradition in general, and Orthodox Tradition in particular. When Christian forms of education appear, they usually follow and borrow from the same model (invented in
Prussia in the 18th century), the same atmosphere and requirements, with the same general result. Consensus then actually opposes the Faith, and the unfortunate Christians with such an education then seek to reconcile the obvious contradictions.

My own story is not entirely irrelevant to this; the 10-cent version is that my mother taught me to read, and I grew up voraciously reading everything in the house and the school and public library, and this is what went a long way toward saving me. My first eight years were in the typical public system, upon which I was pulled out and spent the last 5 in a tiny Baptist Christian school with no teachers and a self-paced program (which STILL taught subjects as compartmentalized things, though they did have and teach an overall vision that referred to Christ). But I still abandoned faith almost as soon as I finished school and spent twenty years as an agnostic. I got a BA, and an MA, and became a maverick teacher in Russia for several years before returning to the US and applying in both NY and CA for certification. (I fulfilled pretty much all the requirements to get into the NY program before despairing and leaving, long story, but I have enough direct experience to confirm that the programs are pretty much identical, and differ in nothing of consequence.) It was seeing the teacher requirements and the rules and regulations of the public system (taught public 3 years in CA). I taught both public and private in both NY and CA on the way, language centers, dedicated schools, a fairly broad range of experience. You can read the story of Steve Head, which I can absolutely affirm is true.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/ed-schools’-latest—and-worst—humbug-12948.html
(Scroll down to the middle of the page or just search for his name on the page)

If this is what produces how nearly all scientists are taught, how could we believe their thinking could be shaped in any context of truth? We have a peculiar worship of science in our time; the word has near-magical authority; you can preface any statement, however absurd, with "Scientists have found..." and find credulity. In a word, scientism, a disproportionate value assigned to education in general, and the natural sciences in particular. The contradictions between scientism, that is, evolutionary teaching, and Tradition have been outlined clearly enough in this thread alone.

Sin and death cannot have both been present in the world from the beginning of a first amoeba AND have been introduced by a fully-formed man. It's so simple a small child can grasp it. It takes tremendous intellectual contortions that ignore numerous obvious contradictions to try to paste the two narratives together.

 

[YCGP]

It takes tremendous intellectual contortions that ignore numerous obvious contradictions to try to paste the two narratives together.

So then what do you suggest?

 

[gzt]

I don't think one needs to go to those lengths to combine, but it should be possible to both believe in evolution and the Orthodox faith without problem, as I have amply argued earlier in the thread. Going the other way places far too much certainty in aspects of the faith taht have not been conclusively revealed to us.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I don't think one needs to go to those lengths to combine, but it should be possible to both believe in evolution and the Orthodox faith without problem, as I have amply argued earlier in the thread. Going the other way places far too much certainty in aspects of the faith taht have not been conclusively revealed to us.

until you get to how death fits into the picture, and how God created His creatures in the first place.

the problem is that just because there are folks who are in good standing with the Church, pious and devout, that does not mean if their theology comes into conflict with what the saints have said, that their theology becomes an option just because they are not condemned or anything. there are many in the history of the Church that have contributed many good things, die in peace with the Church, are not heretics, but are also not saints because of some off things they taught and believed.

 

[gzt]

Yes, but, see, you have a few hurdles to get over. Just because the Church has acknowledged these people as saints does not mean that it has:

1. Acknowledged these visions
2. Accept these visions as true
3. Required assent to the truth of these visions
4. Recognized your interpretation of these visions
5. Required assent to your interpretation of these visions as true.

If we don't get to step 5, there's quite a lot still to discuss.

 

[gzt]

Frankly, the really sticky point is how to interpret these visions (if we must accept them as-is).

 

[jckstraw72]

that God created no death is already in the Scriptures -- we have no freedom to reject it. It's in the Wisdom of Solomon. it's been quoted so many times in these many threads that I'm sure you know what verses I'm speaking of. And let's be clear, it does NOT refer to man only.

Further, that man dies ONLY because of sin, and not by natural necessity (which would be the case were evolution true), is explicitly taught by Ecumenical canons. This has nothing to do with visions that you hope to relegate to a trash bin. This is the undisputed voice of God speaking in His Scriptures and in His Church.

the visions and statements of all the modern saints who have spoken on evolution, are, in this light, simply another layer of confirmation of what has always been taught.

This is the main and most important sticking point, but really, it's hard to think of a way in which evolution DOESN'T contradict what the Church teaches.

 

[jckstraw72]

furthermore, the saints, including modern saints and elders are always emphasizing obedience, and not to trust a vision or appearance of an angel or anything like that on your own. everything is always taken to a spiritual father to determine if it's from God, if it's consonant with Orthodox theology, etc. given this, it's fairly ridiculous to think that a saint had a vision, judged it for himself to be true and started passing it on, even though, as some would have it, it was false. now we have the saints not only being themselves deluded, or at best confused, about what is and isn't from God, they're also disobedient and proud in not taking it to an elder and choosing of their own to make these visions public.

 

[rusmeister]

It is obvious that we can go back and forth with assertions forever. We KNOW it is possible to believe in mutually exclusive contradictions by simply not seeing the contradiction, whether it be by failure of ability or refusal to.

But the end run of the general line of your approach, gz, is that anyone who takes it can deny almost any doctrine at will - it actually denies consensual agreement. It takes a lawyerly approach to Tradition. Furthermore, it treats "the Church" as something that consists primarily or only of Council pronouncements. And it leaves you permanently in a state where you can only talk about "interpretations" rather than truths. Its effect has been to make you agnostic about Tradition, while being dogmatically certain of the age of the Earth.

It seems clear to me that nearly all of the fathers, like nearly all people in the two thousand-year history of the Church, certainly until Darwin came along, all acknowledged the Creation story as written, that is, as a largely literal account. And within the Church, the visions JS has referred to repeat, support and buttress that, a view which HAS been acknowledged, accepted, assented to, and recognized that common interpretation (according to your juridical list). You are bucking, not only against the visions, you are bucking against the entire consent of the entire Church over nearly all of those two millennia, championing an idea that says "we know better today"; that effectively teaches the evolution, actual change as opposed to mere clarification, of Church doctrine as well as of man. Your view means that anyone can believe what they want about nearly anything; it is opposed to the spirit of acceptance of teaching of the Church, of obedience in the face of our own doubts and desires. That is the nature of the Zeitgeist, not the Holy Spirit.

You're further in and further up now. I think it's the grace of God that lets us come into the Church and partake in the face of our various kooky and messed-up ideas of politics, education, history, etc, and I do include my own here. But we should always desire to be lead into all truth, and be open to correction, when the consensus is clear.

 

[prodromos]

Frankly, the really sticky point is how to interpret these visions (if we must accept them as-is).

Who would you trust to interpret them?

 

[YCGP]

It is obvious that we can go back and forth with assertions forever. We KNOW it is possible to believe in mutually exclusive contradictions by simply not seeing the contradiction, whether it be by failure of ability or refusal to.

But the end run of the general line of your approach, gz, is that anyone who takes it can deny almost any doctrine at will - it actually denies consensual agreement. It takes a lawyerly approach to Tradition. Furthermore, it treats "the Church" as something that consists primarily or only of Council pronouncements. And it leaves you permanently in a state where you can only talk about "interpretations" rather than truths. Its effect has been to make you agnostic about Tradition, while being dogmatically certain of the age of the Earth.

It seems clear to me that nearly all of the fathers, like nearly all people in the two thousand-year history of the Church, certainly until Darwin came along, all acknowledged the Creation story as written, that is, as a largely literal account. And within the Church, the visions JS has referred to repeat, support and buttress that, a view which HAS been acknowledged, accepted, assented to, and recognized that common interpretation (according to your juridical list). You are bucking, not only against the visions, you are bucking against the entire consent of the entire Church over nearly all of those two millennia, championing an idea that says "we know better today"; that effectively teaches the evolution, actual change as opposed to mere clarification, of Church doctrine as well as of man. Your view means that anyone can believe what they want about nearly anything; it is opposed to the spirit of acceptance of teaching of the Church, of obedience in the face of our own doubts and desires. That is the nature of the Zeitgeist, not the Holy Spirit.

You're further in and further up now. I think it's the grace of God that lets us come into the Church and partake in the face of our various kooky and messed-up ideas of politics, education, history, etc, and I do include my own here. But we should always desire to be lead into all truth, and be open to correction, when the consensus is clear.

OK, I am confused here. I have read every post and still I feel like I haven't learned what I wanted to learn.

If what you are saying is true, that we may not just choose to believe anything we want to believe, for it would go against what the Church has been teaching from the beginning, then how do you deal with evolution? You just say flatly that evolution is wrong? (And that the fossils found are inexplicable perhaps?)

Please help me understand.

Thank you

 

[JackRT]

Theology, doctrine and dogma come with a huge built-in problem --- a serious inability to adjust to new information. Sometimes it takes centuries and in the meantime much damage is done to the faith and to the faithful.