How do we explain Neanderthals?

[gzt]

Even after these criticisms Breck seems quite reasonable.

 

[rusmeister]

Even after these criticisms Breck seems quite reasonable.

Of course he's reasonable.
We don't think that evolutionists are unreasonable - unless they refuse to consider the possibility that their education might actually lead them astray; that the foundations of the general education given to the public, even of scientists, might really be founded on untruth - that can be most doubtful on matters which no one can possibly observe, confirm through observation, but must choose to believe or not believe, based on calculations and assumptions.

Jckstraw has expressed what we sticklers for Tradition generally HAVE done - considered the possibility that we might really be wrong. The trouble is, as he pointed out, is that it really does deny central tenets of our faith. But if you have expressed the consequences of even the possibility of your being wrong, I missed it.

Maybe if you actually openly considered the ramifications of that possibility, it would demonstrate your unquestionable reasonableness. If we are wrong, then we have drastically misunderstood Tradition and what the fathers were actually saying. In that case, modern science is correct, modern education does teach truth, and Traditionalists have been making a tempest in a teapot. We can see and consider that, and that makes us reasonable. We have answers as to why that is not the case, but we have sufficient reason to consider it.

Your turn!

 

[rusmeister]

https://oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-breck/ex-nihilo-1

excerpt:

"These opening verses are not meant to describe historical process or provide a scientific explanation for the appearance and development of the world and human life. The passage says nothing that can be exploited one way or another in the tedious debate between “creationists” and “evolutionists.” Its concern is not with historiography or paleontology, and its curious chronology (water existed before heaven or earth, living things appeared on earth before creation of the sun and moon) should not trouble the minds of any but those who insist on reading the narrative as a description of cosmological or biological development. The Genesis creation story is not concerned with scientifically determinable events. A we shall stress in the next column, it is concerned with salvation history, the creating and redeeming work of God, from the first creation to the last.

As the polarization intensifies in our schools and legislatures between “believers” and “Darwinists,” it is important for us to remember this point. Increasingly, Christian scientists are coming to see that this is a false choice, that on the question of the origin and development of species there is no necessary conflict between the biblical witness on the one hand and the findings of geologists, paleontologists and molecular biologists on the other. [See in this regard Francis Collins’ recent work, The Language of God (Free Press, 2006).] “Young earth” theorists and fundamentalists of various stripes will reject this point, as will those who insist on the total “randomness” of mutations in the process of natural selection. Evolutionary process (if not Darwinian theory in all its details) has been confirmed by recent studies of DNA, the genetic code of living organisms. Yet this need not call into question the basic conviction that the Creator of all things is God, that God created ex nihilo, that He infuses all things with ultimate meaning and purpose, and that apparent randomness conforms wholly, if for us imperceptibly, to His divine will."

(note* These links are being posted only because some have requested to be given evidence that many Orthodox clergy teach that evolution is compatible with Orthodox Theology)

To quote GK Chesterton from his debate with Clarence Darrow in 1931, "I am not sure whether my opponent is debating with me or with some fundamentalist maiden aunt of mine."

As always, the straw man of "creationists who think the book of Genesis is a scientific account" is brought out and easily defeated.
No one here is arguing that. We know very well that Orthodox people who absolutely believe that 'the Creator of all things is God, that God created ex nihilo, that He infuses all things with ultimate meaning and purpose, and that apparent randomness conforms wholly, if for us imperceptibly, to His divine will.'

Let us stop presenting our position as if it were otherwise. We know that on those points your views are certainly Orthodox. The issue is otherwise: whether death was part of the world without any sin of man in any mode of being, within or without chronology. We say that it was not. You say that it was, that man's sin somehow (VERY unscientifically) produced a reality in which death existed from the very beginning.

This is what FR John Breck, and everyone else, including you folks, seem to fail to realize. You continue to imagine that we hold a simplistic fundamentalist view that sees Genesis as a scientific text, and don't get at all that we think that the very education you rely on is a failure, that it has taught wrong ways of apprehending the world, reality, truth, and that the fathers, quoted copiously by jckstraw, and hardly at all by you, offer the way out of the trap of modern thought and its reliance on modern science.

 

[jckstraw72]

Even after these criticisms Breck seems quite reasonable.

it'd be one thing to float his own personal creation myth -- there's plenty of those around. the problem is he tried to pass it off as actually being what the Fathers teach, but that is, quite simply, demonstrably false. there are those Orthodox evolutionists who are bolder and more logical and simply admit that they are forging a new theology.

 

[Radrook]

Well, some have identified Neanderthals with the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis.

 

[ArmyMatt]

lots of folks say stuff about the Nephilim in Genesis

 

[Radrook]

lots of folks say stuff about the Nephilim in Genesis

Hard to envision the Nephilim who are referred to as giants as short stocky Neanderthals.

 

[truefiction1]

Hard to envision the Nephilim who are referred to as giants as short stocky Neanderthals.

I like the Einstein quote in your signature. Just sayin.

 

[Radrook]

I like the Einstein quote in your signature. Just sayin.

Thanks! Einstein was definitely NOT an atheist to his great credit. In fact, he was a great critic of atheistic thinking.

 

[JackRT]

Thanks! Einstein was definitely NOT an atheist to his great credit. In fact, he was a great critic of atheistic thinking.

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

~~~Albert Einstein

 

[Radrook]

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

~~~Albert Einstein

I am not suggesting a personal God and neither was Einstein.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Hard to envision the Nephilim who are referred to as giants as short stocky Neanderthals.

indeed, I have yet to read of any great men of renown that fit the Neanderthal bill

 

[Kristos]

To quote GK Chesterton from his debate with Clarence Darrow in 1931, "I am not sure whether my opponent is debating with me or with some fundamentalist maiden aunt of mine."

As always, the straw man of "creationists who think the book of Genesis is a scientific account" is brought out and easily defeated.
No one here is arguing that. We know very well that Orthodox people who absolutely believe that 'the Creator of all things is God, that God created ex nihilo, that He infuses all things with ultimate meaning and purpose, and that apparent randomness conforms wholly, if for us imperceptibly, to His divine will.'

Let us stop presenting our position as if it were otherwise. We know that on those points your views are certainly Orthodox. The issue is otherwise: whether death was part of the world without any sin of man in any mode of being, within or without chronology. We say that it was not. You say that it was, that man's sin somehow (VERY unscientifically) produced a reality in which death existed from the very beginning.

This is what FR John Breck, and everyone else, including you folks, seem to fail to realize. You continue to imagine that we hold a simplistic fundamentalist view that sees Genesis as a scientific text, and don't get at all that we think that the very education you rely on is a failure, that it has taught wrong ways of apprehending the world, reality, truth, and that the fathers, quoted copiously by jckstraw, and hardly at all by you, offer the way out of the trap of modern thought and its reliance on modern science.

That a strawman to a strawman - a double strawman with a reverse...LOL!

 

[Kristos]

I do appreciate being made aware of the extent to which modern Orthodox pastors trust modern education to the point of reducing to only allegory that which was never seen as only such in Orthodox Tradition. It winds up being people like Fr Stephen Freeman, Fr John Breck, and yes, Fr Tom Hopko against all of the evidence of the fathers cited by jckstraw and A.Matt. It does mean a real schism brewing. The only question that matters is which view contradicts the consensus of Tradition. THAT is, above all, what we ought to desire to be faithful to, and we ought to fear denying that consensus.

So, you are saying that you believe two random guys on the internet over these respected clergy of the Church - and this is somehow in better keeping with Tradition??? LOL! You can add Vladimir Lossky to the list of people who don't agree with jckstraw and A.Matt. I put together a list one time but I'm too lazy to find it right now. This forum is, in fact, the ONLY place I ever hear this YEC stuff...I wonder why...(I don't actually, so don't try to answer that)

 

[ArmyMatt]

So, you are saying that you believe two random guys on the internet over these respected clergy of the Church - and this is somehow in better keeping with Tradition??? LOL! You can add Vladimir Lossky to the list of people who don't agree with jckstraw and A.Matt. I put together a list one time but I'm too lazy to find it right now. This forum is, in fact, the ONLY place I ever hear this YEC stuff...I wonder why...(I don't actually, so don't try to answer that)

it's because we are actually quoting Scripture, saints, canons, Fathers, hymns, and prayers. these hold the weight in Tradition. and while I personally have been taught by many well respected men and women that are very educated who believe in a Young Earth, since they are not saints of the Church, I don't mention them.

and no one is saying to believe either of us, but rather the saints. not those with PhDs or who were ordained, but what Orthodoxy has always said. I am not saying it is wrong because I figured anything out. I am saying St Nikolai of Ziccha, who is on the calendar and has three doctorates, rejects old earth and evolution. and he is a greater authority than the Losskys, Hopkos, etc.

 

[jckstraw72]

Lossky says philosophy and science are always changing and have no impact on our theology. that is the Creationist position.

Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church Pg. 104-105

Having no philosophical references, the Church always freely makes use of philosophy and the sciences for apologetic purposes, but she never has any cause to defend these relative and changing truths as she defends the unchangeable truth of her doctrines. This is why ancient or more modern cosmological theories cannot affect in any way the more fundamental truth which is revealed to the Church: “the truth of Holy Scripture is far deeper than the limits of our understanding,” as Philaret of Moscow says [Sermons and Discourses, Moscow, 1877]. In the face of the vision of the universe which the human race has gained since the period of the renaissance, in which the earth is represented as an atom lost in infinite space amid innumerable other worlds, there is no need for theology to change anything whatever in the narrative of Genesis . . .

 

[jckstraw72]

here's the quote from Lossky you brought forward last time:


Now the Bible has depth: but its most ancient parts, particularly Genesis, proceed according to an archaic logic which does not separate the concrete from the abstract, the image from the idea, the symbol from the symbolized reality. Poetic logic, if you wish, or sacramental, one whose simplicity is only apparent, pregnant as it is with a Word that gives to the flesh (inseparably from words and things) an incomparable transparency. Our language is no longer such: less total perhaps, but more conscious and more rigorous, it divests archaic intellection of its fleshly envelope. It grasps it at the level of thought: not ratiocination, one must repeat, but of contemplative intellection. A modern man, if he interprets the Bible, must thus have the courage to think: for one does not act like a child with impunity. If one refuses to abstract at depth, one nonetheless abstracts, by the very virtue of using language; but one abstracts at the surface, and thus one ends, not with the childlike wonderment of the archaic writer, but with infantile positions. -- Orthodox Theology, p. 60

As I responded last time, which you never responded to, what we see here is that Lossky is emphasizing that the Scripture holds together in union the concrete and the abstract. that is the Creationist position, while the evolutionist position necessarily rejects the concrete. the abstract has its grounding in the concrete - the symbolized reality in its symbol. Lossky says we no longer have this - thus our language is less total. His Grace Bp. Irenei (Steenberg) talks about this in his article on Adam and Eve according to St. Irenaeus -- he talks about how St. Irenaeus was quite explicit and insistent upon the historical/literal/concrete reading of Adam and Eve, and that without it their symbolism loses any real value because it becomes ungrounded in reality. God actually acts within history itself, and thus the literal/historical/concrete becomes a womb bearing spiritual realities. History is not divided against the spiritual in the Fathers. There is not history and then this other thing called salvation history. History simply IS salvation history.

 

[Radrook]

indeed, I have yet to read of any great men of renown that fit the Neanderthal bill

Hercules certainly isn't depicted that way. There are Babylonian mythologies that do however mention hairy creatures who might approximate that appearance. The epics of Gilgamesh I think they are called. Weird! I can't seem to locate that account but do recall having read it.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Hercules certainly isn't depicted that way. There are Babylonian mythologies that do however mention hairy creatures who might approximate that appearance. The epics of Gilgamesh I think they are called. Weird! I can't seem to locate that account but do recall having read it.

I know Michael Crichton makes use of them in his novel Eaters of the Dead, called wendols. I think he combined the myths of Grendel and the historic Neanderthals into his book. there is certainly a precedent for Neanderthals in classic mythologies, but I agree that the Nephilim don't really work.

 

[Radrook]

I know Michael Crichton makes use of them in his novel Eaters of the Dead, called wendols. I think he combined the myths of Grendel and the historic Neanderthals into his book. there is certainly a precedent for Neanderthals in classic mythologies, but I agree that the Nephilim don't really work.

Some have suggested that they represent a degeneration of a branch of mankind.