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Greg,"Orthodox hostility to it is immeasurably depressing"
not sure if you are implying there's a general Orthodoxy hostility (if not please correct me, thanks)
I think there is hostility from a very tiny minority, mostly Westerners, and mostly converts, who are creating an issue where there isn't any.
....
I know we've all hashed out evolution in here, but this "adaptation" angle is particularly fascinating to me. It's such a given now. I often wonder why adaptation and evolution are never questioned and are seen as such no-brainers. Did anyone ever consider a turtle might've been created by God with the shell on?
Sorry to vent. I just love teaching science and yet this language is strewn throughout the book and every video we use.
While we have never directly observed something as drastic as an organism developing a shell, haven't we observed other adaptations?
for example:
Peppered moth evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The idea that the turtle developed a shell is fascinating to me and points to a creator that actively participates in his creation. We are created beings that are meant to 'evolve' into something more, aren't we?
but theosis is not Darwinian evolution. We also fell from something more - something which materialistic uniformitarianism cannot account for.
If the logoi are Uncreated and "contained" in the Mind of God, the Logos of God, I see no reason that we would have to read evolution as requiring the generation of new logoi. We have seen the emergence of "new" things like the airplane that instantiate what it is to be an airplane, for example. It could simply be that the Logos contains all logoi that are ever instantiated, as he created a world in which they would all end up being instantiated.
we see here that he is speaking of natures, not persons, and that they enjoy perfection in their logoi in God and will never be other than what they are. i see this as incompatible with logoi acting basically as stepping stones for other logoi to be realized. if evolution is true, natures would change substantially enough that the old nature fades away and a new nature (many new natures) emerges.Ambigua 42, p. 89-90, 92
Generally speaking, all innovation is manifested in relation to the mode of the thing innovated, not its natural principle. The principle, if it undergoes innovation corrupts nature, as the nature in that case does not maintain inviolate the principle according to which it exists … For in general, there has never been, nor is there now, nor will there ever be any nature in created beings, subsisting according to its own principle, that is anything other than what it is at present; and it is not now or will it ever be in the future what it was not in the past. The principles of these natures have enjoyed perfection in God simultaneous with their very existence, and their creation and substantiation are thoroughly incapable of admitting any addition to, or subtraction from, what the nature is in itself. But I think that this will suffice as a digression from our discourse and a present inquiry directed toward these [opponents of ours], to keep us from being easily dragged off into absurd opinions by those who try to turn the faith into a piece of skillful rhetoric based on clever arguments.
The idea that the turtle developed a shell is fascinating to me and points to a creator that actively participates in his creation. We are created beings that are meant to 'evolve' into something more, aren't we?
From the writings of many Holy Fathers -Sts. Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, John Damascene, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory of Sinai-we know that, before the fall, Adam and Eve were free from the bodily needs of shelter and clothing, and even of sleep; they had no sexual relations nor even sexual passions; there was no emission of seed; their eyes did not produce tears; they partook of incorruptible fruits, but did not void bodily waste; they had no afflictions, infirmities, illness, disease, physical defects, or maimings of the body; they knew no difficulties, sorrows, labors, sweat, hunger, or thirst; they did not experience physical pain; they were no subject to cold an heat, or to the elements.
as Hieromonk Damascene writes:
this is what humanity looks like kata physin - according to nature. find me a scientist who agrees with this and can demonstrate how such a life evolved from something else, and we'll have a good starting point.
If an organism population X evolves into organism population Y, then organism population X is not "being" organism population Y. The nature instantiated by organism population X ceases at its bound and the nature instantiated by organism population Y begins.we see here that he is speaking of natures, not persons, and that they enjoy perfection in their logoi in God and will never be other than what they are. i see this as incompatible with logoi acting basically as stepping stones for other logoi to be realized. if evolution is true, natures would change substantially enough that the old nature fades away and a new nature (many new natures) emerges.
That wouldn't be the theory of evolution, though. No scientist thinks that there was, for example, an eagle species without talons that, in successive generations, adapted talons.If there is positively ZERO evidence that eagles used to NOT have talons and that turtles use to walk around without shells and that there were ladybugs that weren't red but developed the red color to tell insects they taste bad
I don't see how this "necessitates that X is not bound by its X-ness". Can a carpenter only whittle things that have human nature or carpenter nature?at some point parents of nature X are supposedly giving birth to children of nature Y - which would necessitate that X is not bound by its X-ness.
I don't see how this "necessitates that X is not bound by its X-ness". Can a carpenter only whittle things that have human nature or carpenter nature?
If you deny that something with a nature X can become or generate something with a nature Y, then you get some weird sort of ontological monism that is totally incompatible with Christianity.
the carpenter can only have a human child ... skillful creations are not what we're discussing. the Scriptures and the Fathers teach that each kind reproduces after its own kind.
Let me see if I'm following here: Your objection is to that moment of "exchange", where something of nature X produces something of nature Y via biological propagation, specifically;
But you don't have a problem with something of nature X producing something of nature Y through other forms of generation, like when God (Divine nature) fashioned creation as a whole (created nature), or with non-biological generation, like when a mason creates a brick.
Is that correct?
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