EO & evolution

[gurneyhalleck1]

Do I think human beings will ever discover the origin of the universe through physics? No.

Zip for evidence? There are multiple lines of independent evidence Gurney, unless a person is prepared to discard truly fundamental physics and embrace full-on obscurantism and denial that humans can know anything at all. Is that what you are arguing?

 

[ArmyMatt]

What I meant was that human beings are clearly the same "affect driven" creatures that they were, and that they are. It's pretty hard to deny that this observation is true, when you really consider things.

any saintly examples, and I am all eyes. especially how you have shown how you see things

So your statement that mankind has been restored to an original perfect condition does not find any support within observable reality. We might say that Christ restored human nature in His own person, but even that would be less than accurate, because we tend to believe that He did a great deal more than restore human nature. I do believe, as you most likely do also, that He has greatly exulted it above what it ever had been, as is also the understanding of the Church.

it has in Christ and will be during the second coming. you are right that the intimacy with God and all things will be greater since God became incarnate, but it will be a greater version of what was in the Garden.

I don't think that's Orthodox, Matt. It's Manichaean, an attitude that the flesh is bad and the spirit is good. God MADE flesh. He LIKES matter. He made it good.

never said the flesh was bad, but the flesh that Christ had after He rose, while material and physical, was much more spiritualized. the spiritual matter is the matter than God made in the beginning. I said it was not crude flesh, I did not say it was not flesh.

 

[truefiction1]

any saintly examples, and I am all eyes. especially how you have shown how you see things

All of the saints were human, and being as such are affect driven creatures. This means that they are emotional beings. What do you know of emotion and where it comes from? Have you studied affective neuroscience? Are you aware of which areas within the brain are involved with specific emotions, or physiological responses. What do you know of the range of emotions experience by other kinds of animals? Were you aware that rats produce laughter when tickled? Did you realize that Orcas have at the same, probably greater, feelings of caring and protection toward their babys as human parents?

So yes... saints are creatures motivated by feelings and the desire to live with their feelings, understand and regulate them. It's what we all do, actually. Some become really good at it for a variety of reasons which can oftentimes be explained. We would tend to recognize these as saintly persons.

 

[jckstraw72]

I would think whatever Saints from this era come about would probably echo what the earlier Saints said because that's what they usually do and read from and emulate and of course the Gospel and Christ. I would think if it's truth, it's not going to change with time.

Dorothea FTW!

 

[jckstraw72]

and Matt is correct - the Fathers see various layers to the "coats of skin" - of course they were literally clothed in coats of animal skin, but it also means that man took on heavier, denser flesh - our bodies changed. now we are susceptible to sickness and pain, we are subject to the elements, we need food to live, we void waste, etc -- none of these things were true before the Fall.

 

[ArmyMatt]

All of the saints were human, and being as such are affect driven creatures. This means that they are emotional beings. What do you know of emotion and where it comes from? Have you studied affective neuroscience? Are you aware of which areas within the brain are involved with specific emotions, or physiological responses. What do you know of the range of emotions experience by other kinds of animals? Were you aware that rats produce laughter when tickled? Did you realize that Orcas have at the same, probably greater, feelings of caring and protection toward their babys as human parents?

So yes... saints are creatures motivated by feelings and the desire to live with their feelings, understand and regulate them. It's what we all do, actually. Some become really good at it for a variety of reasons which can oftentimes be explained. We would tend to recognize these as saintly persons.

we're not talking about emotions of animals (of which I know little, and have no doubt that what you just posted is true), so I don't know what this has to do with the topic at hand...? maybe I am missing something

 

[truefiction1]

we're not talking about emotions of animals (of which I know little, and have no doubt that what you just posted is true), so I don't know what this has to do with the topic at hand...? maybe I am missing something

Well, I do believe you challenged me to present "saintly examples" of affect driven creatures who were transformed by the restorative work of Christ. My response is that all of them (the saints) are examples of such creatures. That's all.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Well, I do believe you challenged me to present "saintly examples" of affect driven creatures who were transformed by the restorative work of Christ. My response is that all of them (the saints) are examples of such creatures. That's all.

if that's what you meant, than I did missread, cause I would agree with that.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Many of the fathers appear to have taken for granted the "common sense" science of their time. Take for instance the idea that the earth sits unmoving, supported by waters, at the center of the universe, and that the sun revolves around it . You can even find a few examples of Saints and early Christians supporting the idea that the earth is a flat round disk echoing early Jewish thought. You also might come across ideas physical or biological theories that no one would accept now a days too. I don't think being a Saint implies that a person has any special ability to judge such things. That's not what it's about imo. Most of the Fathers just didn't have access to the mountain of scientific evidence we have verifying evolution.

Here is a very small selection of the geocentric, unmoving earth, sun revolving around earth quotes I've seen to use one example:

St Athanasius: but the earth is not supported upon itself, but is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the center of the universe. (Against the Heathen, Book I, Part I)


St Athenagoras: to Him is for us to know who stretched out and vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a center (Why the Christians do not Offer Sacrifices, Ch XIII)

ST Basil: There are inquirers into nature who with a great display of words give reasons for the immobility of the earth…It is not, they go on, without reason or by chance that the earth occupies the center of the universe…Do not then be surprised that the world never falls: it occupies the center of the universe, its natural place. By necessity it is obliged to remain in its place, unless a movement contrary to nature should displace it. If there is anything in this system which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such perfect order, for the wisdom of God. Grand phenomena do not strike us the less when we have discovered something of their wonderful mechanism. Is it otherwise here? At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason. (Nine Homilies on the Hexameron, 10)

St Basil: It will not lead me to give less importance to the creation of the universe, that the servant of God, Moses, is silent as to shapes; he has not said that the earth is a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs in circumference; he has not measured into what extent of air its shadow projects itself whilst the sun revolves around it, nor stated how this shadow, casting itself upon the moon, produces eclipses. (Homilies, IX).

Seems similar to what Galileo experienced when it came to what occurred in his day when he chose not the geocentric cosmos generally accepted at the time, but the heliocentric cosmos proposed by Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310-230 BCE), which would have to be many times larger because of the lack of observable stellar parallax - and with the Early Church at the time holding to the geocentric perspective based on their interpretation of the scriptures. It is unfortunate that cultural leaders responded by declaring him a heretic, denouncing him to the Roman Inquisition, and ultimately, rewarding him with lifelong house arrest. But even though he paid a price, Galileo was right. And history remembers his dissent forever n the positive.

It does seem present that just because the early Saints were illumined doesn't mean that all of what they said was always accurate - and needed to be taken into consideration if/when it went against what was accurate.

 

[rusmeister]

It does seem present that just because the early Saints were illumined doesn't mean that all of what they said was always accurate - and needed to be taken into consideration if/when it went against what was accurate.

it DOES need to be considered when what seems to you to be accurate destroys/makes nonsense of the theology by which we understand the Faith and hold anything in common as enduring truth when the "accurate" theories change.

 

[rusmeister]

The Church hasn't had any authority since the separation of Church and state, which is probably a good thing, since when it had the backing of the secular authorities it persecuted, tortured, and killed its detractors on many occasions, thinking that it rendered service to God by destroying human beings for the protection and advancement of its own religious culture and dogmas.
Please refrain from shouting. The Church no longer has the power to shout at those who disagree with some of its ideas. It must now resort to gentle persuasion through the discussion of ideas that actually make sense and provide much sought after answers. Evolution makes very much sense indeed, as do Orthodox Christians who are okay with it.

You obviously don't understand what I mean by "authority". I do NOT mean "power to impose law on unbelieving citizens", but "the right to tell people who DO accept and are accepted into the Orthodox Church what truth IS". You can disagree and leave the Church, but you can't stay in and say the Church is wrong on its age-old doctrines. Tolstoy tried that. They finally had to formally announce his self-ex-communication.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

it DOES need to be considered when what seems to you to be accurate destroys/makes nonsense of the theology by which we understand the Faith and hold anything in common as enduring truth when the "accurate" theories change.

The theology by which the faith is understood was NEVER the same as noting that each and every opinion of the saints was what theology was founded upon. That makes nonsense of what the saints already said when it came to noting directly that not everything that they said in each and every area was ever meant to be dogmatic - that is a later innovation that skews directly what the saints said (as well as how they saw themselves) since even they disagreed among themselves and were limited.

Unless one dogmatically wants to assert that the saints were correct in believing in the geocentric cosmos generally accepted at the time (despite where that is wrong) and ignoring what St. Augustine noted alongside other saints in not holding interpretations that go flatly against reality, one doesn't deal with the saints as they are. If a saint says that gravity does not exist - or that Earth is the only planet in existence (based on what they knew), that does not make them the final say on the matter.

 

[rusmeister]

Oh, and if a supposedly Orthodox member says he may correct the Church when he thinks it wrong, I AM GOING TO SHOUT. Gentle persuasion is counter-productive. A punch in the nose is called for.

 

[rusmeister]

The theology by which the faith is understood was NEVER the same as noting that each and every opinion of the saints was what theology was founded upon. That makes nonsense of what the saints already said when it came to noting directly that not everything that they said in each and every area was ever meant to be dogmatic - that is a later innovation that skews directly what the saints said (as well as how they saw themselves) since even they disagreed among themselves and were limited.

Unless one dogmatically wants to assert that the saints were correct in believing in the geocentric cosmos generally accepted at the time (despite where that is wrong) and ignoring what St. Augustine noted alongside other saints in not holding interpretations that go flatly against reality, one doesn't deal with the saints as they are. If a saint says that gravity does not exist - or that Earth is the only planet in existence (based on what they knew), that does not make them the final say on the matter.

It is uninteresting when you try to imply that we say what we have denied many times - that we need to treat "each and every opinion" of the saints as the foundation of theology. We defend only what they all agree on throughout history. And I am prepared to hear the day after tomorrow that the mighty theory of gravity has been overturned by another explanation. I believe in gravity, but only conditionally - as a passing piece of temporal understanding. You treat it as being on the same level as "Christ is the Son of God". I think the latter is an eternal truth. I think gravity is a temporal understanding - that we might really misunderstand. The truths of the Church are higher than the truths of science. They are not equal in value or authority.

 

[rusmeister]

I asked if you believe the Orthodox Church has the fullness of the truth, and you don't answer.
You take the understanding we laid out, that the consensus of the canonized saints over the history of the Church DOES represent truth that has been questioned and answered and no longer need - or ought to be - challenged, and recast it as the error of a single hierarch or a single age, which we don't defend at all.

Everything you say points to a refusal to accept the authority of that Holy Tradition, and I'm not talking about evolution per se, but about a general refusal to submit to and accept Church teaching if you don't happen to agree with it.

There is a basic principle you don't seem to be familiar with, let alone accept, that a fat jolly man once expressed clearly: "We need, not a Church that is right where we are right, but one that is right where we are wrong."

That is what I see to be out of sync with the Orthodox Church as an entity over space and time.

So is the Orthodox Church right? Or the RCC? Or only you?

My answer to that is that I am right only insofar as I agree with the Church.

I already answered that question, and the answer was that things don't really work in this manner that you insist they do. I already stated that a consensus of people whose cognitive landscapes lack genuine knowledge and evidence of evolutionary realities, has no authority in these matters. So the consensus of canonized saints is not the authority of the Church. God is the only absolute authority. All others, even if they seem to agree, may be held suspect of being mistaken about certain things that do no fall within the realm of their expertise, which in the case of the saints is spirituality and not the physical sciences.

So your answer to my question is "Only me."

You are your own authority. You do not accept the authority of the Church. This is not Orthodox.

 

[rusmeister]

I asked if you believe the Orthodox Church has the fullness of the truth, and you don't answer.
You take the understanding we laid out, that the consensus of the canonized saints over the history of the Church DOES represent truth that has been questioned and answered and no longer need - or ought to be - challenged, and recast it as the error of a single hierarch or a single age, which we don't defend at all.

Everything you say points to a refusal to accept the authority of that Holy Tradition, and I'm not talking about evolution per se, but about a general refusal to submit to and accept Church teaching if you don't happen to agree with it.

There is a basic principle you don't seem to be familiar with, let alone accept, that a fat jolly man once expressed clearly: "We need, not a Church that is right where we are right, but one that is right where we are wrong."

That is what I see to be out of sync with the Orthodox Church as an entity over space and time.

So is the Orthodox Church right? Or the RCC? Or only you?

My answer to that is that I am right only insofar as I agree with the Church.

I already answered that question, and the answer was that things don't really work in this manner that you insist they do. I already stated that a consensus of people whose cognitive landscapes lack genuine knowledge and evidence of evolutionary realities, has no authority in these matters. So the consensus of canonized saints is not the authority of the Church. God is the only absolute authority. All others, even if they seem to agree, may be held suspect of being mistaken about certain things that do no fall within the realm of their expertise, which in the case of the saints is spirituality and not the physical sciences.

So your answer to my question is "Only me."

You are your own authority. You do not accept the authority of the Church. This is not Orthodox.

I am not Orthodox whenever I sin. But I need to repent and accept the Church's authority to guide, direct and absolve me.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Oh, and if a supposedly Orthodox member says he may correct the Church when he thinks it wrong, I AM GOING TO SHOUT. Gentle persuasion is counter-productive. A punch in the nose is called for.

We need a new expression - "Going all St. Nicholas on someone."

Trouble is, anyone except an Orthodox is likely to very much misunderstand.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

There are many saints amongst the laity who fully accept the reality of biological evolution. To say that the only people who are saints are those few who the Church has honored with canonization gives a false and lopsided view of the Body of Christ, because it gives too much credence to the monastic, especially the hermetic life, and craps all over the laity who live and work in the world. The real Church does not just consist of monastics who choose to live within the artificial environments of the prayerful and meditative cultures they have constructed for themselves. The real Church also contains physicians of the body and the soul who fully embrace the theory of evolution, so that they may offer the best knowledge and care possible to the benefit of their patients, whom God has entrusted with their care. Canonized monastics and clergymen are generally not people who ever studied or practiced modern science and medicine. It is understandable therefore that they might forcefully reject any scientific claim that is not in keeping with their mental constructs of the nature of existence. But, it's irresponsible to suggest that one kind of saint is more informed than another in all matters. It's more responsible to understand and teach that everyone is perfectly capable of being incorrect about certain things.

All others, even if they seem to agree, may be held suspect of being mistaken about certain things that do no fall within the realm of their expertise, which in the case of the saints is spirituality and not the physical sciences.

Good points - the saints were not above being human on differing points. Moreover, it tends to be disingenuous using the mindset of ignoring other saints in claims of "The ENTIRE Church believes this based on the majority of these saints" - as truth is not determined by numbers alone, the twisting of the concept of consensus. Logically, everyone here does this in practice by the very fact that NO ONE accepts the idea of geocentrism (the universe revolves around the Earth) even though a significant amount of saints held to it. If someone argues "The majority of saints were not for Evolutionary theories!" and claims they represent the Church - and yet they simultaneously claim to not believe in views we already know today to be false (since the Earth revolves around the sun), then we're not being consistent with the claims that the Saints were not dogmatic in EVERYTHING they held to.

No one questions that the Fathers were in fact geocentrists and this shouldn’t surprise anyone because geocentrism was the best science of their day and accorded best with the observations that men were able to make at that time. Nonetheless, it's unjustifiable to insist that because the Fathers held to a geocentric cosmology— due to the best science of their day within the limits of their observational abilities—that they therefore held it as a matter of divine faith. That also goes for other areas, including those they sought to use scripture on when it came to what they saw in the world of science. Those who believed that the Holy Scriptures were completely inerrant were dealt a severe blow of confidence when scientific views changed that alterted their interpretations. For not only did Scripture declare the motion of the sun, planets and stars around a stationary earth and a relatively small universe compared to today's theories (Ptolemy even delineated the relative distances from earth of the stars and planets), but the undivided testimony of the Church Fathers, especially Saint Basil and Saint John Damascene, all the way to the early eighth century and beyond, testified of the same...

And yet when what was seen in science showed otherwise, the view of how scripture was to be interpreted altered. The saints were STILL the saints to be respected - and we still learn from them. But we don't take it seriously when what they say goes directly against reality. We don't believe as many of the Cosmology: Geocentrism, the Flat Earth and Modern Astronomy- or feeling that the Earth itself was flat. The last of the Eastern Orthodox Church Fathers, Saint John Damascene, conveyed the classic Orthodox Geocentric Cosmology( largely based on the Hexaemeron of Saint Basil, which was also Geocentric) to subsequent generations. His teachings even held sway amongst the Catholics until, once again, the time of Copernicus, though faith in an absolute understanding of theology AND cosmology had begun to erode already in the time of William of Occam.

The saints are still the saints - and the Fathers are the Fathers. Nonetheless, in context of what they all advocated:

- No father or saint of the Church is infallible
- Time, being a created thing, is also fallen, as are our senses, reason and logic
- Unlike the Western Church, we don't make a habit of dogmatizing theologoumena

 

[jckstraw72]

we are not talking about science. we are talking about theology. classic evolutionist misunderstanding.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

It is uninteresting when you try to imply that we say what we have denied many times - that we need to treat "each and every opinion" of the saints as the foundation of theology. We defend only what they all agree on throughout history. And I am prepared to hear the day after tomorrow that the mighty theory of gravity has been overturned by another explanation. I believe in gravity, but only conditionally - as a passing piece of temporal understanding. You treat it as being on the same level as "Christ is the Son of God". I think the latter is an eternal truth. I think gravity is a temporal understanding - that we might really misunderstand. The truths of the Church are higher than the truths of science. They are not equal in value or authorit.

It is pointless when you deny what others have already addressed -that it doesn't anyone trying "to imply" that you feel each/every opinion of the saints as foundation for theology. For it still skews the saints when trying to claim based on numbers what view is correct when the saints NEVER claimed that those with the most numbers were the most correct - nor did they claim that other saints disagreeing with them were not following the Lord.

They never said that the views they advocated were what ALL held to throughout history - thus making the argument spurious whenever trying to assert superiority of argument based on many saints who consistently said things. Moreover, there is NO denying where the majority of them were flat wrong when advocating things like geo-centrism and ignoring those who didn't.

Truth is truth - and understanding the principle of gravity as well as other elemental forces (i.e. magnetism, fire, water, etc.) which were all proven are no more a matter of being less true than Christ being the Son of God. Whatever is present in Scripture is present in scripture - it testifies to the truth of reality. None of it is conditional - but what is a factor is how it's interpreted. Some in the Church saw the Psalms speaking to true realities in nature and interpreted it in one light. However, others did so differently - the truth is still present in the same way, although Christ being the Son of God is not open for debate in how that is interpreted.