If one doesn't 'interpret' the book of Genesis literally, the age of the Earth as described by "science" doesn't necessarily come into conflict with "Christian" beliefs as Catholics can attest.
If we didn't interpret the resurrection literally I suppose you could say the same thing.
Ultimately I would argue that you simply prefer/choose to believe that your own personal interpretations of the Bible are accurate in spite of the fact that they tend to come into serious conflict with "science".
Creation from cover to cover indicates a real Eve and real creation. It is a matter of belief not interpreting. Those who want to interpret creation away are simply trying to justify unbelief.
Catholics don't have those same conflicts between their religious beliefs and science.
? Why would I care about what they think unless it agreed with what Jesus thinks?
An outfit that is so riddled with abuse of children that they should be bankrupt due to all the money they should pay victims does not rank high on my list of organizations I wish to emulate.
I was born Catholic by the way. In a Catholic school I was taught catechism. They taught about creation and Adam and Eve and Noah.
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Both the Council of Trent and Vatican Council I taught that no one is permitted to interpret Sacred Scripture “contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.”[1] In the words of Fr. Victor Warkulwiz:
The Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously agreed that Genesis 1-11 is an inerrant literal historical account of the beginning of the world and the human species as related by the prophet Moses under divine inspiration. This does not mean that they agreed on every point in its interpretation, but their differences were accidental and not essential. Pope Leo XIII, following St. Augustine, affirmed the Catholic rule for interpreting Sacred Scripture, “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires.”
For the first five centuries of the Church, all of the Fathers believed and proclaimed:
- that less than 6,000 years had passed from the creation of the world to the birth of Jesus.
- that the creation of the cosmos took place in six 24 hour days or in an instant of time
- that God created the different kinds of living things instantly and immediately
- that Adam was created from the dust of the earth and Eve from his side
- that God ceased to create new kinds of creatures after the creation of Adam
- that the Original Sin of Adam shattered the perfect harmony of the first-created world and brought human death, deformity, and disease into the world.
This patristic teaching on creation was implicit in the words of the Nicene Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” Not until the Middle Ages when the Albigensian heresy denied the divine creation of the material universe did an Ecumenical Council elaborate on the first article of the creed in the following words:
God…creator of all visible and invisible things of the spiritual and of the corporal who by his own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual and corporal namely angelic and mundane and
finally the human, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body.
For 600 years, according to the foremost Catholic Doctors and commentators on this dogmatic decree, the words “at once from the beginning” signified that God created all of the different kinds of corporeal creatures and angels “simul” (“at once”). This could be reconciled with the six days of creation (the view of the overwhelming majority of the Fathers) or with the instantaneous creation envisioned by St. Augustine—but it could not be reconciled with a longer creation period. Among the commentators who taught that Lateran IV had defined the relative simultaneity of the creation of all things, perhaps the most authoritative was St. Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619), Doctor of the Church. In his commentary on Genesis, St. Lawrence wrote:
the Holy Roman Church determined in the Fourth Lateran Council that the angels along with the creatures of the world were at once created
ex nihilo from the beginning of time.
This precise meaning of the words of Lateran IV was also explained by the most authoritative catechism in the history of the Catholic Church—the
Roman Catechism—which taught that God created ALL things by his Fiat instantaneously “in the beginning” without any natural process:
[T]he Divinity created all things in the beginning. He spoke and they were made: He commanded and they were created.
According to the
Roman Catechism, “Creator of heaven and earth” in the Creed also referred to the creation of all of the different kinds of living things. It states:
The earth also God commanded to stand in the midst of the world, rooted in its own foundation, and made the mountains ascend, and the plains descend into the place which he had founded for them. That the waters should not inundate the earth, He set a bound which they shall not pass over; neither shall they return to cover the earth.
He next not only clothed and adorned it with trees and every variety of plant and flower, but filled it, as He had already filled the air and water, with innumerable kinds of living creatures (Catechism of Trent)
.
Note that God created all of these creatures by his word, instantly and immediately. During the creation period, He made, specifically, trees, “every variety of plant and flower,” air creatures and water creatures and land animals. There was no evolution. There was no long interval of time.
The Council Fathers reiterated the constant teaching of the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes, that God created the first man, Adam, by an act of special creation. They wrote:
Lastly, He formed man from the slime of the earth, so created and constituted in body as to be immortal and impassible, not, however, by the strength of nature, but by the bounty of God. Man’s soul He created to His own image and likeness; gifted him with free will, and tempered all his motions and appetites so as to subject them, at all times, to the dictates of reason. He then added the admirable gift of original righteousness, and next gave him dominion over all other animals. By referring to the sacred history of Genesis the pastor will easily make himself familiar with these things for the instruction of the faithful
(Catechism of the Council of Trent)
.
Notice that the plain sense of the “sacred history of Genesis” is so sure a guide to the truth of the creation and early history of the world and of man that the council fathers direct the pastor to read the sacred history so that he can “easily” make himself familiar with the facts. “Lastly” means God created man last. There has been no further creation since the creation of Adam and Eve. Only variation within limits established during the six days.
The Catechism of Trent underscored the teaching of all of the Fathers and Doctors that creation was complete with the creation of Adam and Eve—and that God ceased creating new kinds of creatures after creating the first human beings.
We now come to the meaning of the word sabbath. Sabbath is a Hebrew word which signifies cessation. To keep the Sabbath, therefore, means to cease from labor and to rest. In this sense
the seventh day was called the Sabbath, because God, having finished the creation of the world, rested on that day from all the work which He had done. Thus it is called by the Lord in Exodus (
Catechism of the Council of Trent)
.
Note that God finished the creation of the world and all of the different kinds of creatures specifically on the
sixth day of a seven day week. Soon after the Fourth Lateran Council, St. Thomas Aquinas had summed up the teaching of all the Church Fathers on the two perfections of the universe:"
The Traditional Catholic Doctrine of Creation