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Please, be blunt.
You are saying that you know better than the fathers. That is absolutely clear. Your faith in modern science exceeds your faith in the Tradition of the Church. It is scientism. It is consistent, and it is at least clarifying that you do not deny it. It is worse when people pretend that they do not deny it.
It's really hard to maintain a charitable spirit if we are trivializing those Orthodox we really disagree with.
I am not saying it's good to not give it some thought! Many Christians just aren't bothered by evolution because they've never been biblical literalists. I have given it a very great deal of thought over the years! I would suggest that if this field of study (biological evolution) is something of passionate interest to you, you should examine - I mean really and honestly examine - the evidence rather than merely dismissing it out of hand. Isn't this what you would do if you really wanted to understand medicine, physics, geology, or astronomy? I can suggest some great books.You go on telling yourself that, brother stavros. The overwhelming numbers of atheists in the scientific community simply dwarf the tiny minority of the faithful. And the faithful in science usually are creationists who are lampooned and chided.
Darwin approached science as a theist, came out the other end as an atheist. End of story. It was said in here that he was a Christian. I proved that false. Simple math.
The last part of your post is of most concern---But many theists also maintain a position of theistic evolution or go about being Christians without giving a whole lot of thought to how Christianity and evolution can coexist
Christianity and science SHOULD co-exist! When we are told by the Fathers, the Church, by the Holy Spirit that there is a Creation and Man made in God's image without death, then the Fall creates death only to be then contradicted in the 19th century onward that we came from a primeval soup and ascended onto land into a simian form dying and being born, dying and being born already in our very matrix having death, no first parents, death abounding, we SHOULD BE giving a "whole lot of thought" to it!
I'm sure your correct in believing that humans were surely intelligent enough to understand and that some of them may have known enough about selective breeding to consider speculative theories about evolution. I'm also pretty sure, however, that religious minds would not have accepted these sorts of explanations for things in any canon of sacred writings. Beliefs are a matter of life and death for people. Ideas that are seen to oppose or invalidate long standing traditional beliefs are not welcome even in many religious belief systems in our own time. Much less would they have been in a time when many clung to their heartfelt beliefs to the point of surely killing those who threatened such beliefs.I would respectfully disagree with the assessment that humankind couldn't understand such things as genetic traits being passed on - ESPECIALLY in the mind of someone who holds to the popular anthropological theories.
Mankind had domesticated animals by that time. Breeding could be controlled, especially in the kinds of flocks and herds that require only a single male to many females, leaving the rest to be culled. Mankind would have figured out very quickly that traits are passed to the offspring and could be selected for. They would have been able to purposely produce changes in animal lines over a few generations. To explain such happening over a great period of time, larger changes, shouldn't have been beyond the ability of mankind with a written language and established culture to fathom.
I am reading a book called "Sapiens" and it tells the story of humankind. So far most of it has been about neanderthals and the other species of humans who existed at the same time. Eventually, all but one species went extinct and homo sapiens (us) made it to the top of the food chain.
These species, such as neanderthals and homo erectus, existed two million years ago.
What is the Orthodox explanation of this?
I'm sure your correct in believing that humans were surely intelligent enough to understand and that some of them may have known enough about selective breeding to consider speculative theories about evolution. I'm also pretty sure, however, that religious minds would not have accepted these sorts of explanations for things in any canon of sacred writings. Beliefs are a matter of life and death for people. Ideas that are seen to oppose or invalidate long standing traditional beliefs are not welcome even in many religious belief systems in our own time. Much less would they have been in a time when many clung to their heartfelt beliefs to the point of surely killing those who threatened such beliefs.
So, I will rephrase my earlier statement for greater accuracy: Although mankind was likely highly intelligent enough to grasp the concepts if presented with them and offered a sufficient body of supporting evidence, the social psychology of the cultures at large would not have stood for such concepts, especially if they were perceived as a threat to life and culture sustaining dogmas.
That is why the Pentateuch looks and feels as if written by Moses, rather than Charles Darwin. This, of course, as with all things, is by God's design.
The most recent saints who reject evolution most assuredly had their own motives for doing so. I don't begrudge them a bit. I also agree that God did not create death, and that sin is what is responsible for it. It is my ability to accept what Orthodoxy calls "mystery" and to determine what things belong to the realm of "mystery" that enables my mind to overcome what a strongly rational mind can only see as contradictions.and again, if that were the case, the post-19th century saints would be more open to the idea of evolution. and they are not.
while true, our theological origins point out that God did not create death and that (according to St John Chrysostom) vegetation was created after the sun to show that life comes from God and not from the sun.
Is that a fair assessment? Surely the motives would be the same as the saints of the past.The most recent saints who reject evolution most assuredly had their own motives for doing so. I don't begrudge them a bit.
How is it not a fair assessment? Whatever their reasons, whether saints of old or of this post modern age, they felt they had good reasons, and the rejection of the theory of evolution does not impact Orthodox Theology or praxis.Is that a fair assessment? Surely the motives would be the same as the saints of the past.
The most recent saints who reject evolution most assuredly had their own motives for doing so. I don't begrudge them a bit. I also agree that God did not create death, and that sin is what is responsible for it. It is my ability to accept what Orthodoxy calls "mystery" and to determine what things belong to the realm of "mystery" that enables my mind to overcome what a strongly rational mind can only see as contradictions.
Hi, Jack,I do not know what St. Pasios is qualified to discern. Blasphemy is a most nebulous term and depends very much on one's preconceptions.
It's a case of whether the shoe fits, gz. If the shoe fits, wear it.Hmm, it seems we've gotten to that part of the conversation where people start coming out and calling people heretics. We managed to go for so long without that happening.
But gz, the problem is not that we can't imagine an old earth. It's that you really do construct and try to hold together two incompatible histories - that man evolved slowly over time in a world full of death, AND that he existed in a state without death and in that state, sinned and Fell and introduced death into the world.There are quite a lot of theologians, bishops, and priests who work from the understanding that the earth is old, life is old, etc. Some of them might be intelligent design folks rather than evolution folks, I don't know, but it's not negligible. There are a lot of them.
Who knows? When somebody is acknowledged as a saint, it doesn't mean we think they were right about everything. This would of course be a logical impossibility, because the saints of the Church say a lot of things and there is quite a lot of disagreement.
Jack, please remember that you are in a congregational forum. You're welcome, and even to comment - carefully - but the truth of Orthodoxy is assumed here, not the beliefs of your confession which contradict OrthodoxyThat is easy because every single Christian in this world is a heretic to some other Christian in this world. Seems to be a tradition.
I'm far more concerned with what we might call the fact of evolution - what we see in the fossil record (and more) in terms of chronology and descent and change - than with the theory tying it all together. I think it's a problem to dismiss the latter, but I don't care about getting into a fight with the ID people, they're at least attempting to deal with the record and accept the fact of evolution.
This is another common habit I find in modern thought, the inability to distinguish between people and their ideas, to hear any condemnation of wrong as condemnation of the wrongdoer, to really not see that people are NOT their ideas and have the power to change them. I have said certain ideas are heresy, Gurney has said certain ideas are Manichaeism, and we are right - but you immediately fit the shoe and then object. The whole question is of whether the shoe fits. Does it? Do you, or does anyone here, hold ideas that contradict the consensus of the Church? I am sure that at this time you honestly believe you do not.Well, in the Orthodox Church we have a specific set of criteria. But, yeah, I think it's a major problem when people leave rational discourse and start calling other Orthodox Christians in the thread Manicheans and what-have-you.
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