OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10hr ago
To be frank, even if they did experience fewer miracles, the appropriate amount of miracles supporting a false religion would be zero, would it not?)
There's a difference between paranormal circumstances, miracles, and vindictatory miracles. I'd expect 0 miracles that vindicate distinctively Muslim claims, meaning theological claims that Muslims make that Catholics do not also make. But "God loves us and has a plan for my life so He healed me" is a claim that holds as true in both Christianity and Islam. I'm even open to the possibility that humans have senses that we have yet to study in depth. Parapsychologists study and claim that many humans have an innate talent for water dowsing, remote viewing, telepathy, etc, which might be confused for a miracle in another religion but might actually follow some natural laws that we have yet to unpack.
Catholicism has the best attested vindicatory miracles and there are no real attempts in other religions to claim otherwise. Atheists like to believe that it must all be the same, but I haven't' seen one actually put in the effort to prove that other religions make anything like the claims of Catholicism.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
12hr ago
I am coming from the assumption that Muslims experience signal graces, miracles and spiritual experiences.
Why do you assume this? I think, if I accepted Islam as true in a world where it is not true, I would not have made as much spiritual progress.
I understand that Islam is a totalizing ideology, which seems to be what you are getting at. But the example of the Catholic and Orthodox saints blow the Awliya completely out of the water in terms of life-changing conversions, selfless love, signs and wonders. In fact, while Islam has a concept of miracles, Karamah, their theology says that people should hide their miracles and not flaunt them. This means that unlike Catholic miracles, most Islamic miracles have very little investigation, even from Islam-friendly sources.
Let's put the question to you. If you were in a world where Catholicism was true, would you expect that Catholics would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Muslims? If you were in a world where Islam was true, would you expect that Muslims would experience more miracles, inner conversions, spiritual progress than Catholics?
Can you not imagine that had you instead accepted Islam as true, you would be saying the same about Islam today? If you can't, why?
Yes I can imagine an alternate world where Islam was true. If it was this world, where Islam is false but I accepted it anyway, I doubt I would experience the same signal graces, miracles, and spiritual experiences that I do now. You are assuming that I would because you are coming from the assumption that neither is true.
Edit: I also think that to be a Muslim you have to ignore a lot of things to get by, while as a Catholic I don't have to ignore anything. Largely how the Quran is actually considered literally the word of God and yet misunderstands Christianity severely, gets events wrong from the Old Testament while claiming that the OT is also simultaneously true. Whereas the Biblical interpretive key has room for individual authors writing in their biases.
I don't believe God gave us a Book but rather a Church. I find the Old Testament very fruitful for spiritual truths but only after guidance. Your idea that line by line it has to be literally exact or else it's all false is just not a good argument. You're arguing against a position I do not hold and will not hold and have no obligation to hold.
Her: Why did God make Adam sin if he's all knowing?
God did not make Adam sin. I think your question is getting at, why does God make humans knowing that they will chose Hell over Him. And my response would be He doesn't know before He makes a human which way they'll choose.
If free will is real, then "knowing the result of a free choice never made" is like "can God make a square circle." It's logically inconsistent and therefore not covered under omnipotence/omniscience. God has a very good idea of what choices a human would make, but does not know what choices a specific human will actually make until after He's committed to making them.
God had hope that Adam would avoid the temptation to sin and make the correct choice, up until He created Adam and then was locked into this course of action.
Her: Why do humans have free will?
Because only someone with free will can love, and God created us to love Him and each other.
Her: Why do we pay for the sin of Adam and Eve?
We are experiencing the consequences of their actions but nothing has been taken away from us that rightfully belonged to us. God gave Adam and Eve special grace to enjoy a life beyond their natures. Original sin removed us from that grace, it is nor ours by right but was a gift they rejected. This life of struggle is what our natures deserve on their own. We pay for our own sins, Adam and Eve paid for theirs, no one is being treated unfairly here.
Another way to look at it though is that the "curses" of God at the end of Genesis 3 is a remedial lesson on love. Adam failed to protect his wife, Eve failed to love her God, their failure was one of love. In response, Man will toil, Woman will suffer, but by doing so this is the remedy, the school of love. By undergoing the curse, we learn to love as our first parents did not, we sacrifice for others.
Her: How do you know what church to join?
History, saints, etc.
Her: I think God is too cruel.
The worst suffering in this life is a blip in time compared to the goodness that awaits us.
Her: What's the trinity?
Going to respond with a quote from Dorothy Day to start:
There are some paragraphs about the Holy Trinity which I read not long ago that point out an analogy between the soul and God. The soul is always one. It knows itself and loves itself. “I am conscious of myself, and it is this I that is conscious of this self, the I that is objectified to itself, and knows itself in itself. But once more, whist the principle that is the I is the principle that knows, the myself is the term that is known, and in virtue of this a distinction is established between I and myself, and this perception that I get of myself involves and implies a third term which is the love of I for self.
Whence result three imperfect but irreducible elements, co-existent in the undivided unity of my soul, three that are blended into one without becoming confused; one that radiates out into three without subdividing itself. Now in God there is the same law of activity and fecundity, but in the supreme degree of power and perfection. . . Although we are always capable of thinking and willing, we do not always exercise our faculties in practice, there are interruptions, moments when we feel powerless, when we are weary. A fly is sufficient to prevent a man thinking. In this we distinguish . . . and this is weakness . . . the capability to act and the action itself. In God this weakness does not exist. If we strive in vain to put into our thoughts the best of ourselves, or better still, if we labor, without succeeding, to make ourselves wholly and entirely the objective of our thoughts, to objectify ourselves in our thoughts . . . the Divine Spirit succeeds where we fail.” (Landrieux, Le Divin Méconnu.)
The Trinity is the unity of the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that unites them.
Her: The Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old.
It doesn't exactly say that, this is what people after the fact said because they try to use math without understanding the cultural context in which certain parts, like people's ages and genealogies, were written.
Her: Then so is Jesus.
The New Testament is substantially different from the Old Testament. It starts with five ancient biographies, followed by epistles written very early on, and ends with some banging apocalyptic (in the sense of "removing the veil of the bride" rather than "end of the world") literature.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
There is something in the Search that is valuable and God does not want to squelch it. I think this line of thought is only pressing if you think that everyone is going to Hell except a small few, and that we don't all have the opportunity to be saved. Whereas I believe Jesus gives everyone a choice as they die, regardless of what they knew during life.
Her: Why is he obsessed with people believing in him anyway? I think a remote God makes a lot more sense.
Why do you think God is obsessed with people "believing" in Him? Rather, I would say He wants us to love Him because it is in our nature and failing to live up to this hurts us. He cares that we're hurting ourselves.
Her: Nietzsche said it's slave morality and cope.
Nietzche died alone and crazy.
Her: He can forgive us, why didn't he just do that.
Because that would not be comporting with the dignity He wishes to give us. The problem isn't one of just forgiveness but that we are broken and in need of healing. If He just snapped his fingers and forgiven us it would have been unjust to His nature and unmerciful to ours. Instead, Jesus, true God and true Man, was able to offer Himself as a sacrifice. Because He is God He has infinite worth, because He is human He actually is a real human being doing something incredibly selfless and sacrificing something of infinite worth.
Now we can take part in Jesus' sacrifice and have its merits applied to us. And this is not a cheap and easy fix, but something that elevates our dignity and inspires love towards our God who went to such extremes to save us. And remember that the original sin, the whole problem to solve, was that we need to learn love.
Her: Why doesn't God do something to make everyone believe now?
Me: He did. The crucifixion is a publication. Maybe we'll get another message in our life time that is explicit.
This is a cop out answer. If you say the crucifixion is a publication and sufficient to make everyone believe now, then the same holds for Christianity.
I suspect you don't like it because you're judging by prior ethical and political standards.
No. I was clear that I am not Muslim because I found the truth, and once you find the truth you don't keep searching.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I showed what the Church believed for most of its history, which was your original claim («most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths»). The Fathers disagreed about which young date, so they were literalists regarding that who disagreed with each other.
This was not my claim either. I went into lots of paragraphs to be clear on this point, that it was the best account they had at the time as well as being interpreted as an allegory from the beginning, and these two ways of reading the text are not exclusive but are actually part of four modes of reading the Bible that have been encouraged by Christians since the beginning.
I have little hope that you understand me anywhere if you misunderstand this.
Pius XII doesn't make it a mere regulation. He gives the reason:
Giving a reason for a regulation does not mean it's not a regulation. He certainly didn't make it dogma.
Trent, Session V, canon 1:
This is not the same as condemning polygenism. Again you are jumping around. "The first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted" is perfectly compatible with an allegorical read of Genesis. The bare bones, what you're required to believe in order to be Catholic is that:
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God made a man by giving him a rational soul. This is something extra God had to do of His own choice, it's not something that developed naturally from evolution.
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God also made a woman through the first man, man and woman share the same nature despite our differences, and this relates the the way in which God ensouled us.
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Originally man's life would have been in perfect happiness with no suffering. Then the first man and woman together sinned against God and messed it up.
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All humans inherit the fallen human nature and the fallen world these two blockheads made through their sin. We share a common dignity between sexes and races, we share the same fate.
The interpolations from the extended Acts in Codex Bezae do not match the style of Luke and Acts. Pretty much everyone agrees that they are additions, not that Luke/Acts were redactions.
This is getting too long. Calanda is not like the hadiths, my argument was not that the hadiths were from long ago but rather contradicted testimony written down earlier regarding this event. I feel like you keep missing what I am saying and which point I'm making by what I'm saying. It's an experience not unlike talking to an LLM.
Did you look at the photos and the analysis from Fatima? https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737 Photographs capture a light source from something that could not have been the sun. It also doesn't help that all these explanations for various phenomena contradict each other. The explanation against the colors is that they saw an effect that takes place is that this only happens when there is a specific, non visible cloud cover over the sun. But also the explanation for clothes drying (an effect also captured in photos) within minutes is that the sun was very hot/bright, the kind of hot that only happens when there is no cloud cover. Which is it?
Why am I not a Muslim? Because Catholicism is true. Once I accepted Catholicism as true, everything fit together, everything. All stories, all science, all longings of my heart and all the mental itching that told me I was missing something big, it all fell into place. The closer I grow to God through the practices of Catholicism the more certain I am. But I guess my path leading to it was the philosophical exploration of the uncaused cause, arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, the history of the Church, the witness and example of the saints, the proof present in their lives that a transformative union with God is possible, and not just possible but something with a clear path to those willing to try.
It is true and there is very little anyone can do that will convince me otherwise. I know it is true like I know I breathe air. And because it's exclusive against the strongest Islamic claims, I know that Islam is unfortunately false, and not only false but frightening and sad.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Iran seeks nukes primarily for self-defence against Israel.
This is ludicrous. Iran is continuously attacking Israel by proxy because its leadership has a belief that they cannot be allowed to be there, being Jewish. Israel in response fights the proxies and assassinates targets inside Iran. A nuke does not improve Iran's position at all. Having nuclear weapons doesn't prevent Israel from getting attacked on all sides constantly.
Iran's IRGC leadership are literally insane cultists who want to hasten a massive war in order to bring their prophet back. Most Iranians aren't, but the small percentage who are gained power decades ago and now that is a reality the rest of the world has to deal with.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
Why do you think these are better answers? Why are these limited responses better than "the answer in its entirely would fill a book wider than the universe and at every twist and turn we will find intellectual satisfaction and appreciation for the harmoniousness and fittingness of the event for all of eternity?"
Bede, Eusebius and Africanus disagreed, yes, but about which young date, between about 5500 and 3952 BC. In other words, all of them were literalists, but read it literally in different ways.
You are missing my point to argue this. My point was that a line during the liturgy doesn't need to be treated like a dogmatic declaration of something.
in 1909 the Pontifical Biblical Commission ruled that the literal historical sense of Genesis 1–3 may not be questioned where it concerns the special creation of man, the formation of the first woman from the first man, and the unity of the human race. In 1950 Humani Generis §37 still ruled that the faithful «cannot embrace» any view in which «Adam represents a certain number of first parents,» because original sin «proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam» (vatican.va).
This does not mean what you want it to mean. In 1909 the commission is narrowing down the required significance of the Genesis allegory to quite a small scope - humans are special, women and men are equal in dignity, all humans are related. These things are required for Catholics to believe, every other interpretation can be as literal or un-literal as you like.
Humani Generis is making a regulatory decision. Papal encyclicals are written very carefully, and they have to be read very carefully. There’s a difference between saying that something is false and saying that you’re not allowed to discuss and advocate it. The language in Humani Generis §37 is very specificly making a regulation, not a truth declaration. There is a formula you would expect from a Pope who wishes to define something dogmatically, it would be something like, "I declare, using my papal authority, in unity with the magisterium, that all Christians are to hold X as true."
The Second Council of Constantinople condemned Origen and Origenist teachings, such as the pre-existence of souls and universal restoration. So the Church later condemned the very authority that you are citing.
I am not citing Origin as an authority, I am using quotes from him as examples of how historical Christians approached the texts.
If you really want to get into Galileo, I recommend this as background reading: https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html
Regarding the events you quote, this is how it happened:
24 Feb. 1616. The consultants ("Qualifiers") meet on the 23rd and the following day make their recommendations:
The notion that the Sun is at the center of the world and at rest is "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors" The statement that that the Earth moves "deserves the same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological truth, is at least erroneous in faith."
Reminder: The main reasons why the motions of the Earth are "absurd in philosophy" is that if the Earth revolves around the Sun there would be visible stellar parallax, and if the Earth rotated on its axis there would be Coriolis effects. There were none, thus falsifying the theory that the Earth moves. (There were also other reasons that seemed important because no one had formulated a theory of inertia and so forth.) We can hardly blame the theologians for taking the word of the natural philosophers any more than we could blame the lawyers in the Dover case for taking the word of the biologists.
25 Feb. 1616. But no board of theologians, even those basing their ruling on Settled Science™, can declare a heresy, even a formal heresy (i.e., heretical in form). Lord Cardinal Mellini notifies the Reverend Fathers, the Assessor, and the Commissary of the Holy Office that the censure of the Qualifiers has been reported, and His Holiness [Paul V] directs Lord Cardinal Bellarmino to summon before him the said Galileo and inform him of the decree. If he resists, Galileo is to be presented with an injunction that includes imprisonment.
Pope Paul V is inclined to declare the hypothesis as contrary to faith, "but the Cardinals Caetani and Maffeo Barbarini withstood the Pope openly and and checked him with the good reasons they gave. The decree makes a careful distinction between a mathematical hypothesis and a physical fact and it is only the latter that is to be avoided.
It's what (purportedly) happened on the next day, 26 Feb. 1616, that really sealed Galileo's fate and where his political enemies got him good. But to find out what that was you should read the whole article series, I have no time to expand here.
I simply say these books are not true
What do you mean by true? You are quoting a bunch of songs (Psalms is literally a songbook) with figurative language and saying they're proof of falsehood. I say they're true because the sentiment they are expressing is true. Is Madonna's greatest hits "True?" You're evaluating these things with criteria that they were never meant to be examined by.
Calling the Gospels bioi is mere sophistry, a post-hoc categorization. It is unconvincing. It doesn't tell you that Luke and Matthew are legitimate, nor the redacted (suspected) parts of Mark and Joh. Philostratus's Life of Apollonius is also a bios, and Apollonius raises a dead girl in Rome and appears after his death.
You are conflating different parts of my reply as arguments for other parts in my reply. I am saying that the Gospels and Genesis are not the same genre and do not have the same literary conventions. A feature of the genre the Gospels was written in is that there were honest attempts to gather eyewitness testimony and stick with things confirmed in already circulating stories. They differ from modern biographies in that there was much less concern with chronology and instead things were grouped by ideas.
Why are you so sure Apollonius did not raise a dead girl in Rome?
by D. C. Parker's account (The Living Text of the Gospels),
....Your source is a book written in 1997? So be it, but we have found more texts since then.
Marcion's "Gospel" has virtually no direct physical evidence and exists almost entirely as a reconstructed text through his opponents. If you're using that as criteria, the New Testament also can be entirely reconstructed from citations from Church Fathers.
The earliest papyrus fragments for the gospels we have are from c. A.D. 125–175. We have 0 direct early physical copies of Marcion's writings.
Reconstructions of Marcion are made primarily with Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem, Epiphanius' Panarion, and Pseudo-Origen's Dialogue of Adamantius. Using these same three texts, you also could reconstruct a significant amount of Luke! And the parts of Luke you can't reconstruct from these, primarily Luke 1-3, you could reconstruct from works published before Tertullian, like Justin Martyr's writings.
Most NT Scholars date Luke to before AD 90. Marcion was born around AD 85 and could not have written first. Marcion’s text displays clear linguistic and stylistic features unique to Luke's specific Greek style, meaning Marcion was pulling from a pre-existing Lucan text.
All a lot of copies tell you the text was copied a lot.
It takes time to make a copy in the ancient world. It takes time for copies to go from one land to another across the Mediterranean. The more copies we find early on in far away places the more it attests to an early date. The consistency of the copies attest to a faithful rendering of the original. There just isn't a lot of room in the historical record for an interpolation of an original Marcion text to have been edited into Luke and then circulated wider than Marcion's original text.
Popularity isn't a test of truth. There are more Muslims than Catholics.
That's not the point. The point is that if Jesus did not leave behind a lasting legacy then he failed. If gnosticism is true, then Jesus did not leave behind a lasting legacy.
Re: Miracles. The topic of "vindicatory" miracles is a huge one and I'll just scratch the surface here, but I have no problem with healings happening in different faith contexts. God loves all of us, He may choose to heal any of us as he sees fit.
Someone having their leg amputated and buried, then getting an official beggars license on account of his missing leg from a government agency, then appearing in public without a leg for years, and then having the very same leg that had been buried appear on his body overnight and begin functioning again, is not a natural healing. It might not be proof of Catholicism specifically, but it's not the body fighting cancer.
The fulfilled prophecy and miracle at Fatima is less easy to dismiss. Scott Alexander tried and i think he failed. Fatima is vindictatory in a unique way because it is tied to prophecies and a distinctively Catholic message.
Demonic possession is also vindicatory in a unique way because time and again, only Catholic priests with the faculties given to them through their bishop are able to exorcise demons, while other faith traditions struggle.
Eucharistic miracles are vindictatory in a unique way because they happen in Catholic contexts and vindicate a distinctive Catholic doctrine.
The Orthodox miracle of fire is not a miracle and they admitted to it a while ago. . There are still lots of lay Orthodox who think it's a miracle and it's a bit of a letdown like telling your kids Santa is not real so they don't really push back as hard as they ought.
For Islam, I'm not an expert but my understanding is that Mohamed did not perform miracles in his life. In the Quaran, (Q 17:59, 10:20), he explicitly declines to perform physical, cosmic miracles on demand, presenting the Quran itself as his sole sign. The hadiths which describe miracles come from the 8th century and after, and cannot actually be eyewitness testimony. The hadiths may be oral traditions representing stories from earlier in time, but are not "eyewitness" testimony the same way we have testimony of the Miracle of the Sun from miles around recorded within days of the event, photos, etc.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I guess it could be literal but it doesn't have to be literal and even if it were literal the words have symbolic significance as well.
Ancient genealogies serve a purpose that we moderns find obscure. There are two major parts to point out:
The genealogies shows a lessening of human lifespans. This seems to show a growing weakness inside humanity that is portrayed through the genealogy.
The genealogies portray famous names to them, possibly referencing other folk heroes and stories that are lost to time. They connect different traditions into one grand narrative.
I think the ancients felt a pleasure to hearing genealogies that we cannot connect with but probably resemble modern cinima's Memberberries phenomenon.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
It's an allegory if there isn't a literal fruit or nachash.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
"Nobody wanted it."
Would you prefer Nuclear winter in the next ten years over this Iran war? It really depends on the alternatives being discussed.
The people who support the war genuinely believe that Iran was on a path towards getting nukes and had a will to use them against the Great Satan. If that is the case, then the Iran war is something everybody wants. They just had to make that case but they failed.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
You can take any given line and it's rich in meaning. For example:
Genesis 3:6: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
These are regarded to this day in Christian circles as the three categories of temptations - physical comfort/pleasure (lust of the flesh), mental curiositas/pleasure (lust of the eyes), and pride. And as a consequence of the fall we have rebellious bodies, darkened minds, and weakened wills.
As far as compatibility with known anthropology, Archbishop Leonard proposed a view which was privately endorsed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:
Between the world before the sin of Adam and the world after the first sin, there is a qualitative discontinuity; one must therefore not picture the original fall as taking place inside the present world. The sin of Adam is precisely at the origin of the present condition of man and of the world insofar as they are infected by evil...
Adam and his sin are not to be situated inside our universe with the physical and biological laws that we presently know it to have.
Our hypothesis amounts . . . to placing Adam and Eve in a real preternatural world, but one not coinciding with the present universe, somewhat as we situate the risen New Adam and the glorified New Eve in a real new world, but one not overlapping our cosmos.
The consequence of the sin of Adam is then precisely that the whole of the preternatural universe falls and becomes, from the initial big bang until today, this universe such as we know it, handed over to the irreversibility of time and to the laws of life and death of a nature abandoned to its own resources.
This is also similar to von Balthazar's view. There is an idea circulating that if humanity did not fall, the world of evolution would not have been as it is now. That the choice of humans to do wrong created the natural evils along with the general concupiscence.
I do not know if i subscribe to that view, and it's not necessary to answer evolution. Instead, it seems equally plausible to me that the fall of the angels, which preceded ours, had real consequences for us. The angels have real responsibilities and can have real failures. Maybe the Angel of Progress became the demon of Natural Selection, red in tooth and claw, after he fell. The important thing in the allegory is that we would have had nothing to fear from these demons if we had not fallen ourselves.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1d ago
I think it's likely the Iran war was necessary for the future stability of the world, but that Trump did not do what he needed to get the American people's buy in. He needed a single solid pitch for it and then stick to it for the duration. But instead he kept changing his tune.
The American people would not have been entirely opposed to a message like, "The USA has messed up on Iran for decades now. Obama's deal with Iran put them in a stronger position than ever. We have tried surgically removing their ability to build a nuclear bomb but were unable to do so. Here are the indicators that they are building a bomb and here is the intelligence that they would use it on US soil.
"To combat this, we need to either set back their industrial capacity to the point where they cannot economically complete a bomb, or destabilize the regime to the point where they can no longer politically make a bomb.
"This will require sacrifice from the American people - our blood, our treasure, a slimmer wallet for the duration of the war. But we are not a fearful people. We are not afraid of sacrifices to make a better world for our children. Every one of our ancestors that came here braved harsh conditions, deprivation, and uncertainty in the hope that they were building a better world for their children. We can do no better, and we choose to do no worse."
The execution of the war was pretty good, only thing I would change there is I wish they started the blockade sooner.
You can do the right thing and have it be politically unpopular. That's actually more likely than something being politically popular and it being the right thing.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
It's had a Republican governor about 50% of the time since it began having governors.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
The Christmas Proclamation from the 1584 Roman Martyrology was read for centuries:
"In the year, from the creation of the world… five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine; from the flood, two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven…"
Yeah it's a very baller line. I recommend everyone visit a Easter Vigil mass and a Christmas Midnight mass once in their lives at a large parish to experience it.
Doesn't mean it's required to believe those are exact dates, or otherwise the exact dates wouldn't have been debated so fiercely. Bede disagreed with Eusebius who disagreed with Julius Africanus who disagreed with a bunch of Protestant scholars all working from the same text and genealogies trying to find the exact day of creation.
Most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths that present theological truths about our identity as humans in relationship with God. Reading the Garden of Eden as something that has to be literally true or else all of the Bible and Christianity is false is something that developed relatively recently.
Origen:
I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
Augustine:
at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram, AD 415).
Also St. Augustine:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.
With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.
I do not want to give the impression that I think all Christians knew about evolution and the big bang since the 1st Century. Of course St. Augustine thought the Earth was created in a spectacular way by God. If I recall correctly "science" at his time thought the Earth was created in Spring and the Genesis account didn't indicate that (or something like that I can't look it up right now), which is why he wrote what he did about following the science instead of treating the creation accounts as literal.
But it is true that the average Christian looked to the first 11 Chapters of Genesis for allegorical, theological truths primarily, and a description of the actual beginning of the Earth secondarily. Same with the book of Joshua, it was primarily seen as an allegory for the importance of excising sin from the soul, and only secondarily as an actual historical record of something that happened. And this way of reading the narratives is not a post hoc rationalization in the face of evidence that should have disproved it, but rather just the natural way it's been approached applied to our present knowledge.
The beginning of the book of Genesis provides a thought provoking, textured, allegorical recounting of the origins of man. Everyone saw that there were two, contradictory accounts of the origin of man in the first two chapters. The purpose of handing down these chapters was not to present an accurate account of history but to present a Biblical anthropology. Most commentary on these stories focus on the relationship of God and man presented in the stories as perennial spiritual truths. They were also taken as the best account they had of the beginning of the human species, but we have since learned more through other means of exploration.
had to persecute Galileo and the others.
You don't know your history here. The Galileo affair was due to him being bad at politicking and writing a book where he called the pope an idiot. More than that, wrote a book where a character was called Idiot and had the Idiot character speak the Pope's lines.
The same as the Gospels? Both are men and a God doing things and talking to each other.
So confident and so wrong. The Bible is a collection of books of many genres. There is wisdom literature, proverbs, folklore, political satire. The Gospels are written in a very particular style - Ancient Biography. This was the most accurate way of recording events at the time and demonstrates a desire to stay to the truth. Genesis was not written in Ancient Biography, Ancient Biography was a style only developed in the centuries leading up to the Birth of Christ.
Well I made it clear I think the record you refer to is suspicious. Why are you so much more confident in it?
The textual evidence for the New Testament is by far the best we have for anything more than 500 years ago. The number of manuscripts, the spread of the manuscripts, the dating of the manuscripts eclipse everything else.
Not true, I think this is a coping mechanism for being wrong mostly, and besides I have not spent 100s of hours.
More's the pity. To try to explain with an example we would both agree with, let's say I debate a flat earther. I point to a basic trigonometric proof based on shadows. They then argue back that this effect was explained by the sun being a sphere, it does not mean the Earth is a sphere.
They were able to fire back this response in quick time because they have read a blog post or watched a video saying such. Another flat earther had already made a "Top 10 objections DEBUNKED" video. In order to refute this, now I have to break out the old waves and optics textbook, try to make a diagram, try to make it as simple as I can to someone with little knowledge of physics, and then I can maybe break it down enough to show why that objection does not hold.
The level of effort required to debate something you're not familiar with against someone who is obsessed with the topic to is not worth the effort. And gnosticism is esoteric these days.
Does it worry you that gnosticism isn't as popular as orthodox Christianity? If the truth disappeared shortly after Jesus's Ascension into Heaven, then I would doubt Jesus's power and significance. Even leaving aside all His comments that he was building a Church that would assault the gates of Hell and would be with us until the End of time, which I don't know are cannonical to you or not.
What vindications? If God did miracles on video in Rome once a year, or even once a lifetime, I'd convert.
You don't have to watch this video, I just want to share it to show it's not just one or two weird things, it's a ginormous ball of miracles: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7X_HmSQ6A1A?si=iwe66674GNuWpkrV
I do recommend these two videos though:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikdDzR-5EA8?si=zMNP1cBkcomQEuvV
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DgIduVknMnc?si=WGHRDpVVOxue89za
https://apcz.umk.pl/SetF/article/download/SetF.2021.001/28737
If you want a video of a miracle performed on command, watch a Hollywood movie. I don't know why a video is considered gold standard for evidence over sworn contemporaneous eyewitness testimony, medical imaging records, lab tests, and other evidence which seems much more convincing to me.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Omission says something, and the Catholic logical OR never was convincing to me.
There was no intentional omission here, I misremembered a few details (I was thinking he was a more recent translation but this was from the 70s, for example.) My point that he's not a religious scholar but a linguist still stands, along with he did not start off as a Christian when doing his translation.
This is not getting past the archaeological and geological issues with the creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden, sorry. You can easily add another 10,000 years and it's still wrong.
What genre do you think the first chapters of Genesis are? They are clearly not biography or history. As the USCCB writes:
The seven-day creation account in Gn 1:1–2:3 tells of a God whose mere word creates a beautiful universe in which human beings are an integral and important part. Though Gn 2:4–3:24 is often regarded as “the second creation story,” the text suggests that the whole of 2:4–11:9 tells one story. The plot of Gn 2–11 (creation, the flood, renewed creation) has been borrowed from creation-flood stories attested in Mesopotamian literature of the second and early first millennia. In the Mesopotamian creation-flood stories, the gods created the human race as slaves whose task it was to manage the universe for them—giving them food, clothing, and honor in temple ceremonies. In an unforeseen development, however, the human race grew so numerous and noisy that the gods could not sleep. Deeply angered, the gods decided to destroy the race by a universal flood. One man and his family, however, secretly warned of the flood by his patron god, built a boat and survived. Soon regretting their impetuous decision, the gods created a revised version of humankind. The new race was created mortal so they would never again grow numerous and bother the gods. The authors of Genesis adapted the creation-flood story in accord with their views of God and humanity. For example, they attributed the fault to human sin rather than to divine miscalculation (6:5–7) and had God reaffirm without change the original creation (9:1–7). In the biblical version God is just, powerful, and not needy.
How should modern readers interpret the creation-flood story in Gn 2–11? The stories are neither history nor myth. “Myth” is an unsuitable term, for it has several different meanings and connotes untruth in popular English. “History” is equally misleading, for it suggests that the events actually took place. The best term is creation-flood story. Ancient Near Eastern thinkers did not have our methods of exploring serious questions. Instead, they used narratives for issues that we would call philosophical and theological. They added and subtracted narrative details and varied the plot as they sought meaning in the ancient stories. Their stories reveal a privileged time, when divine decisions were made that determined the future of the human race. The origin of something was thought to explain its present meaning, e.g., how God acts with justice and generosity, why human beings are rebellious, the nature of sexual attraction and marriage, why there are many peoples and languages. Though the stories may initially strike us as primitive and naive, they are in fact told with skill, compression, and subtlety. They provide profound answers to perennial questions about God and human beings.
I don't deal a lot with Gnostics so I'm not going to argue it with you. It's like diving into a Book of Mormon debate with a Mormon. Or a round Earth with a flat Earther. Someone who has spent 100s of hours on a topic is going to trounce someone who's only given it attention recently, even if the second person is correct. I am still confident in the historical record, Apostolic succession, and the vindication of present day Catholic spirituality and miracle claims.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2d ago
Genealogies are not there to provide a timeline in the way a modern reader might try to fit in. For one, it's not required to list exact father-son dyads, but someone listed as a son of someone may actually be a grandson or great grandson.
For another, Matthew is writing David, David, David in his genealogy and you don't see it because you aren't a first century Jew. In ancient writing, numbers are represented by letters. Think Roman Numerals. The name for King David and the number 14 are represented the same way in the language gMatthew was written in.
There are ways to sync up the nativity narratives but your specific objection is weird. "But in John and Mark he's just from Nazareth." In Matthew Jesus is taken from Bethlehem when he is around the age of 2 and goes to Egypt, and then after a few years goes to Nazareth. Let's say you were born in Georgia but moved to New York City when you were four. Later on, you travel around the US and people say you are from NYC. Are they wrong or inconsistent?
You are using an intentionally gnostic translation of John instead of a more neuteral source. Lattrimore is my go-to secular translation of the New Testament. He made waves with his Odyssey translation and is generally respected and far from a Christian hack. His translation of John 8:31-47 is:
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him: If you remain with my teaching, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. They answered him: We are the seed of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that you say: You will be made free? Jesus answered them: Truly truly I tell you that everyone who commits sin is the slave of his sin. But the slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. If then the son sets you free, you will be free in truth. I know that you are the seed of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my teaching does not work in you. What I have seen with my father, I tell you; do then what you have heard from the father. They answered and said to him: Our father is Abraham. Jesus said to them: If you are the children of Abraham, then do what Abraham did. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth I heard from God. Abraham did not do that. You are doing what your father did. They said to him: We were not bred from promiscuity. We have one father, God. Jesus said to them: If God were your father, you would love me, since I issued from God and come from God; for I did not come on my own account, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? Because you are not able to listen to my reasoning. The father you come from is the devil and you wish to do your father’s will. He has been a man killer from the beginning, and he does not stand upon the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks his lie he speaks from what is his own, because he is a liar and so is his father. And because I speak the truth you do not believe me. Which one of you proves me in error? If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is from God listens to the words of God. That is why you do not listen, because you are not from God.
And Lattrimore is not a Christian, he's translating from the Greek according to the most natural translation.
Jesus is not saving us from the Hebrew God but from our own sin and error.
Christian theology starts with this basic truth: we are made in the image and likeness of God and this comes with responsibility, which we have failed at. We have wills and intellects and were supposed to participate in Creation by taking dominion over the material world and instantiating the good over it, not as automatons but as free beings. We chose otherwise. Because of our choices we can never be happy unless there is a way to reconcile our current miserable poor choices with the original good we were made for.
This was impossible for us to accomplish on our own but it was possible for God. Our creator sent His begotten Son on a Rescue Mission for our sake. Jesus accomplished this Rescue Mission by being a Human of infinite worth, as He was also God. This Human offered something that was His to possess - His Divine self - as a sacrifice on the behalf of the human race, of which He also was. His life, death, and resurrection is humanity's sole boast through which we have accumulated infinite merit. Because of this infinite merit our redemption is made possible.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3d ago
For the past recent history, every midterm election the incumbent President loses the House. The Republicans losing the House this year should be baked in, unsurprising, not a sign of any significant animosity against the Republicans.
I think the Senate races are more interesting and I think if there isn't a at least a moderate blue wave it calls polling into question. To such an extent that any poll is questionable to me. Presidential approval ratings, favorite breakfast cereal, the popularity of pro life positions, all of it becomes questionable to me.
Why might polls be so bad? Either Republicans are just sick of institutions and if they get a call from a media group or place that ends with "-institute" they hang up immediately and Democrats don't. Or it's an artifact from AI.
As AI agents become better at conning people, mimicking people's voices, sounding more natural, etc, spam calls go up tremendously. In consequence, many carriers and phone manufacturers have instituted harsher and harsher call filters. I would be interested if pollsters are collecting the phone manufacturer and cell carriers of their respondents and if patterns emerge there.
The more conspiratorial answers would be that DOGE cut out a lot of grift that was going to ballot harvesting at retirement homes and bussing people from the ghetto, and without that the Democrats are unable to turn out the way they have in the past. Or the 3 million people who were deported or self-deported were also more likely to vote in our elections than the other 40 million foreign born people in the US?
Or the polls are correct, we get a blue tsunami, and we discover the will of the American people matches the polls in lockstep.
I don't know the answer but we will find out tomorrow. Looking forward to it.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
I even changed my flair to pink.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
7d ago
It's because boys are stupid and men are awesome. It's a byproduct of maturity, which is the better assessor of long term financial and emotional stability than their current discretionary money. A 32 year old who might not have a great job still can demonstrate that they will not quit in a huff when they face some pushback from their boss. A 23 year old with a small inheritance is less proven.
Once upon a time people became adults much earlier (see other top level thread). I think a 25 year old could be old enough to marry if they have had responsibility thrust upon them from their teenage years. But most people aren't forced to be responsible until later and later.
Relatedly, did you know that in times of economic downturn in America, the teenager labor force participation rate goes down? It's because they have to compete in the job market with underemployed adults. The teenage laborforce participation rate never really recovered from the 2008 crash.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8d ago
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
9d ago
Maybe it gets better but I got to the part where the woman who was taken as a sex slave by the Mongol horde stand ins was rescued only to be raped by I forget who. And I felt that I was just reading the author's barely disguised fetish (though women are usually the ones who write stuff like that...)
The guy who was a monk and mastered himself and then was able to get anyone to do anything he wanted by psychological manipulation, able to learn other languages in hours of listening to someone speak it. That guy. Who then also psychologically manipulated the rape victim. It was too much.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
10d ago
I did not enjoy The Prince of Nothing. Pretty much every female character in the first half of the first book gets raped and exists to be a sex slave or prostitute. I don't think all men are that shitty. And one of the men is a huge Marty Stu.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
13d ago
My husband and I got to room 46 and then thought the same thing "we'll just take a break" and then never came back to it. I get the feeling that there are diminishing returns, and you can grind another 20 hours to find the next ending or whatever but at a certain point the randomness and needing to plan things over multiple days gets annoying.
No, you have an interpretation error. All the "geographical errors" people claim in Mark are modern people assuming that the authors of the Gospels felt a need to stick to precise chronology, listing things in order, or that geographic areas have to be specific or else they are wrong. If I wrote, "I went down to West Palm Beach and had fun in the Atlantic Ocean," would people understand what I mean? Or would I have people thousands of years later saying, "According to our best records, the city of West Palm Beach did not actually share a coast with the Atlantic, showing that this was written by someone unfamiliar with the area?"
I obey the person who sits on Moses' seat now. With the fall of the second temple, the Jewish religion as practiced in Jesus' day is ended. Jesus gave the parable of the vineyard where he described taking the vineyard and giving it to someone else. That someone else was the 12 Apostles and continues to this day in the bishops throughout the world.
Because without it there would be 0 positive utility. Infinities are of different sizes, yes? You can have a larger infinity than another. In order to have the larger infinity of Heaven, there has to be the possibility to not love God, which is Hell. Heaven is much better than Hell is worse.
Adam had to have a choice. The Tree is a manifestation of the ultimate choice - do you trust in the love of God and His desire for what's best for you? Without the possibility of that choice there is no love.
Middle knowledge is still an open topic of discussion inside Catholicism. Here is a Catholic Answers apologist explaining this position: https://jimmyakin.com/2020/12/why-would-god-create-people-he-knows-will-go-to-hell.html Catholics are not required to believe in Middle Knowledge (the belief that God knows what every possible creature would freely do in any given circumstance ("counterfactuals of creaturely freedom"). Molinism is a permissible opinion, but it's not heresy not to believe in it. I stick to the Catholic belief that God has:
And this is consistent with what I said too. God stands outside of time and knows all that will happen, including our free-will choices.
No it doesn't.
Adam has injured us all by his actions, in the sense that we would have had a gift and now we do not receive it.
The consequences of this revocation of a gift is not just to the body, but also to the soul, preventing us from achieving everlasting life outside of intervention.
My statement fits comfortably inside this canon.
Yes, Adam's sin is one that we inherit, as if by propogation. This canon is rejecting the idea that we only have original sin due to the world around us, but that if we were placed in the garden of Eden ourselves as an infant we'd be ok. It's not through imitation of a fallen world external to use but through something we genuinely miss in ourselves now.
You are misreading me. I said, "As they die" as in, as they are still alive, taking part in the process of Death. After death is complete and the soul exits time, no choice is possible. But many saints attest to the power of final repentance, and Saint Faustina particularly goes into depth regarding Jesus's fight for every soul:
Diary Entry 1486:
Where are "«" these marks coming from? What do they mean to you?
I think you have a misunderstanding about Church teaching that I need to clear up now. There are many millions of permissible theological opinions any faithful Catholic can hold. As conflicts develop, the Church may declare one out of bounds, and narrow the number of theological opinions that are permissible. It doesn't matter that the "final option" theory hasn't been declared infallible Church teaching as very little has been declared infallible Church teaching. I am still free to hold it if it seems to be the best answer to the data I see.
I think St. Aquinas is wrong here, and St. Anselm got it right. In Cur Deus Homo Chapter 13:
No, God gave a Church and the Bible is written by the Church for the Church. And yes, the Bible is inspired and without error, in everything that the human authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, intend to assert regarding God, salvation, and faith. You're missing the importance of a clause in Dei Verbum you are quoting. "that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation."
You're just following the wrong Catholics. Follow Bishop Barron, Jimmy Akin, Joe Heshmeyer, Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, Fr. Bonaventure Chapman, Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress, Fr. Gregory Pine. Read the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, Hans urs von Balthazar, St. John Henry Newman.
I am not a heretic and your objections depend on a misreading of what I say. But regardless of labels, if you think my answers are half decent, then jump in, I'm not a lone wolf making this up on my own. There are a large community of priests and lay theologians who provide the philosophical backing to what I'm saying.
I highly recommend watching this... not sure what genre this is. Interview? Debate? on Divine Hiddenness between a Dominican priest and an atheist and maybe you can see that I'm not some lone wolf crazy person: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8k9A7d2Wnjk
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