Creationist: "I literally hated science."

[Dale]

John Larson, a Roman Catholic, clearly opposes evolution, partly because he doesn't like what some theologians, including Popes, have done with the idea. Yet he makes no place for a natural process of evolution, even if all notion of evolving theology is rejected.


John Larson: << I literally hated science, technology, and most of all the theory of evolution. All of these things were suffocative with the intellectual ambience of reductionism. >>

Link: Part VIII: Beauty | The War Against Being ; Title Art VIII: Beauty


Larson has no use for science and no use for technology, so he feels free to reject it. I'm sure he uses technology like everyone else but he doesn't want to think about it. Larson hates evolution, which he regards as "suffocative" and the outcome of "reductionism." By reductionism he apparently means the attempt to replace religious ideas with secular ones. Yet the use of secular ideas doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is attacking God. It just means that people have their eyes open.


Larson has trouble using the word "science" without saying "reductive science." More quotes from his theological articles:


<< Reductive science is the primary causative factor for the material heresies we find in his [Benedict XVI's] writings. The two scientific “dogmas” which have come to dominate his thinking are reductive “atomism” and evolution. >>

Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter | The War Against Being
Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter


By "atomism," Larson means simply belief in atoms. To Larson, anyone who believes in chemical elements is trying to deconstruct God's universe.

<< All of this, as I have discussed in numerous previous articles, is rooted in the subjection of faith to modern reductive science (especially analytical physics and evolution), and the consequent loss of the entire concept of substance as applicable to anything to do with either God or man. >>

<< The most powerful engine of reductive science is the theory of evolution – both physical and spiritual. >>

For both quotes:

Link:Part XXI: Amoris Laetitia, Part IV: The War Against Being | The War Against Being
Part XXI: Amoris Laetitit, Part IV: The War Against Being


By describing "evolution" as a "engine of reductive science," Larson assumes, like many other creationists, that evolution is a conspiracy to undermine religion. This isn't true, the history of science doesn't support it. Besides, if your religion is constantly at war with the facts, there is something wrong with your religion. It looks like John Larson begins and ends with hatred of evolution, science and technology. Perhaps he suffers from an incredible case of the Not Invented Here syndrome: If a Catholic theologian didn't invent it, it must be wrong.



***

 

[chevyontheriver]

John Larson, a Roman Catholic, clearly opposes evolution, partly because he doesn't like what some theologians, including Popes, have done with the idea. Yet he makes no place for a natural process of evolution, even if all notion of evolving theology is rejected.


John Larson: << I literally hated science, technology, and most of all the theory of evolution. All of these things were suffocative with the intellectual ambience of reductionism. >>

Link: Part VIII: Beauty | The War Against Being ; Title Art VIII: Beauty


Larson has no use for science and no use for technology, so he feels free to reject it. I'm sure he uses technology like everyone else but he doesn't want to think about it. Larson hates evolution, which he regards as "suffocative" and the outcome of "reductionism." By reductionism he apparently means the attempt to replace religious ideas with secular ones. Yet the use of secular ideas doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is attacking God. It just means that people have their eyes open.


Larson has trouble using the word "science" without saying "reductive science." More quotes from his theological articles:


<< Reductive science is the primary causative factor for the material heresies we find in his [Benedict XVI's] writings. The two scientific “dogmas” which have come to dominate his thinking are reductive “atomism” and evolution. >>

Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter | The War Against Being
Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter


By "atomism," Larson means simply belief in atoms. To Larson, anyone who believes in chemical elements is trying to deconstruct God's universe.

<< All of this, as I have discussed in numerous previous articles, is rooted in the subjection of faith to modern reductive science (especially analytical physics and evolution), and the consequent loss of the entire concept of substance as applicable to anything to do with either God or man. >>

<< The most powerful engine of reductive science is the theory of evolution – both physical and spiritual. >>

For both quotes:

Link:Part XXI: Amoris Laetitia, Part IV: The War Against Being | The War Against Being
Part XXI: Amoris Laetitit, Part IV: The War Against Being


By describing "evolution" as a "engine of reductive science," Larson assumes, like many other creationists, that evolution is a conspiracy to undermine religion. This isn't true, the history of science doesn't support it. Besides, if your religion is constantly at war with the facts, there is something wrong with your religion. It looks like John Larson begins and ends with hatred of evolution, science and technology. Perhaps he suffers from an incredible case of the Not Invented Here syndrome: If a Catholic theologian didn't invent it, it must be wrong.



***

So who is John Larson and why should anyone care? He seems like another dime a dozen creationists, only oddly a Catholic one at odds with his own Church. Is he also a flat-earther?

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Love the science, hate the scientists.

Our lakes are overly fertile (hypereutrophic). Large weedbeds need to removed to reduce fertility. Scientists at the university here have prevented this so they can "study a newly discovered biological community recently found in these weed beds".

 

[zippy2006]

John Larson, a Roman Catholic, clearly opposes evolution, partly because he doesn't like what some theologians, including Popes, have done with the idea. Yet he makes no place for a natural process of evolution, even if all notion of evolving theology is rejected.

If you don't have a basic understanding of scholasticism and the Catholic tradition you're probably going misunderstand Larson's writings.

John Larson: << I literally hated science, technology, and most of all the theory of evolution. All of these things were suffocative with the intellectual ambience of reductionism. >>

Link: Part VIII: Beauty | The War Against Being ; Title Art VIII: Beauty


Larson has no use for science and no use for technology, so he feels free to reject it. I'm sure he uses technology like everyone else but he doesn't want to think about it. Larson hates evolution, which he regards as "suffocative" and the outcome of "reductionism." By reductionism he apparently means the attempt to replace religious ideas with secular ones. Yet the use of secular ideas doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is attacking God. It just means that people have their eyes open.

Here he is describing his non-religious years. Here is a more complete quote:

The chaos erupted within me in High School, largely due to a Humanities course taught by an avowed agnostic. We read such things as Voltaire, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Marx, Dostoevsky, and Camus. I told my adopted parents that I did not want to attend Church anymore. I began drinking a great deal, became an agnostic, and then proceeded to go off to college in 1959 to major in English Lit and Humanities. I was not a happy liberal. Except for a fondness for Russian literature, I felt contempt for most of what I read. I literally hated science, technology, and most of all the theory of evolution. All of these things were suffocative with the intellectual ambience of reductionism. It mattered little whether it was Physics and material reductionism, Freud and his sexual reductionism, Marx and economic reductionism, or Darwin with his evolutionary reductionism.
​

Why would reductionism mean the attempt to replace religious ideas with secular ones? That makes no sense. It means the tendency to reduce all macroscopic phenomena to microscopic laws, and particularly the reduction of all specifically human phenomena.

<< Reductive science is the primary causative factor for the material heresies we find in his [Benedict XVI's] writings. The two scientific “dogmas” which have come to dominate his thinking are reductive “atomism” and evolution. >>

Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter | The War Against Being
Article 21: The Sifting: The Never- Failing Faith of Peter


By "atomism," Larson means simply belief in atoms. To Larson, anyone who believes in chemical elements is trying to deconstruct God's universe.

No, he does not mean "simply belief in atoms." He means the ancient doctrine that all phenomena can be traced back to and explained by atomic entities.

<< All of this, as I have discussed in numerous previous articles, is rooted in the subjection of faith to modern reductive science (especially analytical physics and evolution), and the consequent loss of the entire concept of substance as applicable to anything to do with either God or man. >>

<< The most powerful engine of reductive science is the theory of evolution – both physical and spiritual. >>

For both quotes:

Link:Part XXI: Amoris Laetitia, Part IV: The War Against Being | The War Against Being
Part XXI: Amoris Laetitit, Part IV: The War Against Being


By describing "evolution" as a "engine of reductive science," Larson assumes, like many other creationists, that evolution is a conspiracy to undermine religion.

That's nonsense. Did you even read the article which was related to the comment? It is about the relation between evolution and social engineering, as well as an analysis of the influence of evolution on Ratzinger's theology.

I don't even generally agree with Larson, but all you've done here is misrepresented him. You didn't even manage to get his name right. It's James Larson, not John Larson.

 

[-57]

John Larson, a Roman Catholic, clearly opposes evolution,

I would say it's appropriate to deny the "science' of evolutionism because it can't explain original sin.

 

[JacksBratt]

I would say it's appropriate to deny the "science' of evolutionism because it can't explain original sin.

Or where life came from in the first place

 

[JackRT]

I would say it's appropriate to deny the "science' of evolutionism because it can't explain original sin.

Why try to explain something that does not exist?

 

[-57]

Why try to explain something that does not exist?

I stand corrected JackRT....sin didn't spread because of one man. The bible got that part wrong.