Science and Religion

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by fantASTic

Maybe. But why is it okay to say that about creationism, but it's NOT okay to say that other parts of the bible are not to be taken literally?

For example - premarital sex and homosexuals.

There already have been some good answers. The only one I would add is this: passages of the Bible regarding sexuality and the moral code are set forth as laws or commands. The creation story is just that -- a story. So, the question to be raised in whether to take it literally is "is it factually, historically correct."

As I am trying to teach my kids, a story does not have to be true to be True.

BTW, I have yet to meet anyone who really, completely takes the entire Bible literally, even among those who claim to do so.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

At one time people actually believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that was because the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and prevailing interpretations of the Bible, where Earth is created before the Sun and the Moon as described in the 1st several verses of Genesis. So, if you were created 1st, then you pretty much have to be the center of all motion. I mean where else could you be? Also the Sun and Moon were described to be smooth celestial bodies. But if you look through a telescope, you can see the Moon's surface is bumpy and rocky, the Sun has spots that move across its surface, Jupiter has moons of it's own that orbit around it and not Earth as once believed, and Venus goes through phases just like the moon. I don't want you guys to think I'm not a believer because I am, I just see contraditions that I'm curious about. Also, I'm not trying to imply that scientist haven't been wrong, because they have. Most scientific claims made will be disproved, due primarily to bad or incomplete data. I just think the conflict between science and religion exist because there are fields in which there's significant overlap between the claims of science and those of religion. It's just that it seems like the conflict between the two are also in some areas of physics, and in geology and biology because these sciences are pretty much sort of bound up with theories that provide natural, non religious explainations of the origins and development of the world as we experience it.

Sorry, but first, the Catholic Church did not WRITE Genesis. Secondly your sentence actually suggests that somehow the earth was created because of the teachings of the Catholic Church and current biblical interpretations. I'm not sure how you managed that. And finally, since the Catholic Church has absolutely no problem with scientific explanations of the creation of the universe, evolution and the like, I'm going to sit back and be amused by people who find it impossible to reconcile the two.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I think you missed my point. The first two chapters of Genesis give differing and conflicting accounts of creation, pointing up the idea that, as AGDee says, maybe, just maybe, they are not to be taken literally.

Maybe I did. I just thought you were asking what part of Genesis was I reading. I also read the part about the conflicting views too. I was actually looking at all of it. How everything was created. And yeah, I totally agree with you. I wouldn't take the Bible literally. It's just knowing what to take literally and what not to.

The way I view the process of creation is so far off from the way the Bible describes it. Of course no one knows how everything started. We can only have an idea. I would just rather follow the clues that the present day gives to have an idea of how it all started. A lot of it is common sense. Ya know, the whole thing about man being made from dirt/clay and a woman being made from his rib...that sort of thing just doesn't make sense to me.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Sorry, but first, the Catholic Church did not WRITE Genesis. Secondly your sentence actually suggests that somehow the earth was created because of the teachings of the Catholic Church and current biblical interpretations. I'm not sure how you managed that. And finally, since the Catholic Church has absolutely no problem with scientific explanations of the creation of the universe, evolution and the like, I'm going to sit back and be amused by people who find it impossible to reconcile the two.

First of all, I never said the Catholic Chrurch "wrote" Genesis. Secondly Drolefille, I don't know why the Earth was created, but I know it wasn't created because of the teachings of the Catholic Church and current biblical interpretations. What I said, which you totally missed, is (to give you a better understanding) these religious claims and predictions, to me, have stalled or reversed the progress of science. A good example of what I was talking about is the trial of Galileo, where he showed the universe to be fundamentally different from the dominant views of the Catholic Church. In all fairness to the inquisition, however, an Earth centered universe made lots of sense observationally back then. With a full complement of epicycles to explain the motions of the planets against the background stars, back then, an Earth centered model had conflicted with no known observations. Furthermore, this actually remained true long after Copernicus introduced his Sun centered model of the universe a whole century earlier, which is why I said this whole thing was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. I never said anything about the Catholic Church "writing" the book of Genesis. "I'm not sure how you managed that."

Actually, all of that changed, of course, with the invention of the telescope and Galileo's observations of space. For his radical discoveries, which (like I posted earlier) totally conflicted with the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. So, Galileo was put on trial, and found guilty of heresy. Let me add, that he was burned at the stake for suggesting that Earth may not be the only place in the universe that harbors life. Finally, you may be speaking of the present day Catholic Church, and it may not have a problem with scientific explainations of the universe, evolution or whatever....but it did during the time I'm speaking of. So if you want to be amused by people who find it impossible to reconcile the two, fine....have at it.

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

The way I view the process of creation is so far off from the way the Bible describes it.

It's probably not as off as you seem to think it is. The creation stories support A LOT of interpretations.

Ya know, the whole thing about man being made from dirt/clay and a woman being made from his rib...that sort of thing just doesn't make sense to me.

So, you're not made of the same stuff everyone else is made of which is turn is made up of the same stuff the known universe is made of? I'm a carbon-based being. Are you?

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

I would take that Bible story more seriously if it said that man and woman were made from dirt/clay. I never understood why man had to be created first and woman had to be created from the man's rib.

Was that God-the-Creator doing that or "divinely inspired men" with a gendered bone to pick?

It's a cultural thing. God works within culture and you'll see many times S/he doesn't admonish humankind for doing things that are destructive. It's rather complicated and sometimes doesn't make sense within our current worldviews.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Ya know, the whole thing about man being made from dirt/clay and a woman being made from his rib...that sort of thing just doesn't make sense to me.

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

I would take that Bible story more seriously if it said that man and woman were made from dirt/clay. I never understood why man had to be created first and woman had to be created from the man's rib.

As jeni said earlier, one has to be very careful about translations. The word we translate as "Adam" means "human" generically, and it comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for "earth" or "ground." (Adamah; the word for "blood" also comes from this root.) "Eve" means "living one" or "source of life." In Genesis 2, the words for "man" and "woman" are ish and ishshah.

What is typically translated as "helper" literally translates as "one who corresponds to," while the word typically translated as "rib" (tsela) can also mean "side" -- these alternate transations show not a "helper" who is formed from a part of man, but basically an equal who is formed by splitting man. With this understanding, the "man" after the creation of woman is not really the same as the "man" before the creation of woman. This is how the ancients would have understood the origin of the male-female attraction -- the desire to return to the original "whole" -- and male and female can be seen to represent complimentary aspects of the imago Dei, the image of God.

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

Exactly and that's a viable alternative (there are various alternative meanings and interpretations that have been proposed).

Now guess how many people know that their Bibles' translations of words (and the subsequent interpretations of the Bible) are missing the mark and are receptive to being told that? Instead, words and accounts have been mistranslated and meanings completely lost, which perfectly suits whatever agendas the translators (and/or authors) had.

Hey I'm more concerned with the ministers who haven't been trained properly than the Bible translations.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

First of all, I never said the Catholic Chrurch "wrote" Genesis. Secondly Drolefille, I don't know why the Earth was created, but I know it wasn't created because of the teachings of the Catholic Church and current biblical interpretations. What I said, which you totally missed, is (to give you a better understanding) these religious claims and predictions, to me, have stalled or reversed the progress of science. A good example of what I was talking about is the trial of Galileo, where he showed the universe to be fundamentally different from the dominant views of the Catholic Church. In all fairness to the inquisition, however, an Earth centered universe made lots of sense observationally back then. With a full complement of epicycles to explain the motions of the planets against the background stars, back then, an Earth centered model had conflicted with no known observations. Furthermore, this actually remained true long after Copernicus introduced his Sun centered model of the universe a whole century earlier, which is why I said this whole thing was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. I never said anything about the Catholic Church "writing" the book of Genesis. "I'm not sure how you managed that."

Actually, all of that changed, of course, with the invention of the telescope and Galileo's observations of space. For his radical discoveries, which (like I posted earlier) totally conflicted with the Catholic Church and biblical teachings. So, Galileo was put on trial, and found guilty of heresy. Let me add, that he was burned at the stake for suggesting that Earth may not be the only place in the universe that harbors life. Finally, you may be speaking of the present day Catholic Church, and it may not have a problem with scientific explainations of the universe, evolution or whatever....but it did during the time I'm speaking of. So if you want to be amused by people who find it impossible to reconcile the two, fine....have at it.

I will indeed, and your exact wording was...

At one time people actually believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that was because the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church and prevailing interpretations of the Bible, where Earth is created before the Sun and the Moon as described in the 1st several verses of Genesis

Okay, so what we have here is you saying that people "believed that the Earth was the center of the universe" and that this "was because of the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church"
So, step one: you seem to suggest that it was the Catholic Church who first wrote and or interpreted Genesis, or was the first to teach the universe in that way. Step two: your wording is poor enough that you actually see to say that the literal creation of the Earth occurred because of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

You didn't actually succeed in saying your point until now.


Also, study Galileo, the whole thing was less about science and more about politics, yeah the Church was wrong, but it wasn't really the story you learned in school, very little of history actually is when it comes to that. Then again you may think that Columbus actually convinced Ferdinand and Isabella that the world was actually round and that this was a revolutionary idea. If so, I'm sorry.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Then again you may think that Columbus actually convinced Ferdinand and Isabella that the world was actually round and that this was a revolutionary idea. If so, I'm sorry.

Very true -- it was hardly a revolutionary idea, nor were Galileo's discoveries "radical." Pythagorus, Plato and Aristotle all taught that the earth was spherical. Eratosthenes did a pretty good job of estimating the Earth's circumference sometime around 240 BC. In the second century AD, Claudius Ptolomy plotted the Earth as a globe complete with latitudinal lines measured from the equator and longitudinal lines.

What Galileo brought to the table -- actually what Copernicus brought to the table -- was scientific support for the idea that the sun, not the Earth, was at the center.

And yet we still tend to think a little bit like the folks back in Genesis. Funny how we all know that it's the Earth that rotates and moves around the sun, but we still talk about the sun rising and setting, as though the sun is the thing that's moving. Interesting how we find no conflict with that traditional, even slightly poetic, way of thinking about it and what we know from science actually happens.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

I will indeed, and your exact wording was...

Okay, so what we have here is you saying that people "believed that the Earth was the center of the universe" and that this "was because of the creation of the Earth was aligned with the teachings of the Catholic Church"
So, step one: you seem to suggest that it was the Catholic Church who first wrote and or interpreted Genesis, or was the first to teach the universe in that way. Step two: your wording is poor enough that you actually see to say that the literal creation of the Earth occurred because of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

You didn't actually succeed in saying your point until now.


Also, study Galileo, the whole thing was less about science and more about politics, yeah the Church was wrong, but it wasn't really the story you learned in school, very little of history actually is when it comes to that. Then again you may think that Columbus actually convinced Ferdinand and Isabella that the world was actually round and that this was a revolutionary idea. If so, I'm sorry.

ok

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by preciousjeni

It's probably not as off as you seem to think it is. The creation stories support A LOT of interpretations.

preciousjeni, you may have a point and this may very well be true, but then again it could be off too. To me, science is not about finding out true things, at least not if by "true" we mean that those things never change. I think it pretty much helps us find descriptions of the world that seem to work, in the same sense that we can use those descriptions to make predictions that are usually pretty reliable. The way I see it, is if a scientific prediction fails, it does so because the theory that led to it is imperfect, or even totally wrong, or has been applied to a situation in which it's an inappropriate description of, and in this case, the way the Earth was created, but it can be anything. The science itself can't be wrong, because it's an activity, not a theory. I just believe in seeing beyond the obvious.

To me, it just seems way off, because the fact that all living things we know of use the same building blocks in essentially the same way, which to me is a powerful piece of circumstantial evidence that all life on Earth may stem from a single origin. I mean, how do we know that we're not all descended from some common ancestor? I wouldn't even rule out the possibility that some completely different form of life also existed on Earth long ago, because there's been fossil evidence that shows that life already existed on Earth before us. I'm not just talking about dinosuars, but single celled life that may have dated back 4 billion years ago. I mean, that's less than a billion years after the Earth formed, and long before dinosaurs and man. To me, a few hundred million years seems like a short time for chemistry to progress from simple things like carbon dioxide and ammonia, to things like proteins and DNA. No one really knows how life started, but based on fossil findings, Genesis doesn't make sense to me.

I read the book of Genesis a couple of days ago, and Mysticat you're right, the part you were referring to does get confusing.

Then we have the whole Big Bang theory. It may be true, but I see some flaws in this theory.

preciousjeni, you made a great point though.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Pythagorus, Plato and Aristotle all taught that the earth was spherical. Eratosthenes did a pretty good job of estimating the Earth's circumference sometime around 240 BC. In the second century AD, Claudius Ptolomy plotted the Earth as a globe complete with latitudinal lines measured from the equator and longitudinal lines.

Yep, you forgot to mention Herodotus though. Herodotus pondered this idea too. It was both Pythagoras and Herodotus that pondered that idea. Yep, Arisostle summarized several arguments in support of that view. One of them was based on lunar eclipses. Every now and then, the Moon as it orbits Earth, intercepts the cone shaped shadow that Earth casts in space. Aristotle noted, Earth's shadow on the Moon was always circular. For that to be true, Earth had to be a sphere, because only spheres cast circular shadows via all light sources, from all angles, at all times. If Earth were a flat disk like some people actually still believe to this very day, the shadow would sometimes be oval. And some other times, when Earth's edge faced the Sun, the shadow would be a thin line. Only when the Earth was face on to the Sun would it's shadow cast a circle.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

In the second century AD, Claudius Ptolomy plotted the Earth as a globe complete with latitudinal lines measured from the equator and longitudinal lines.

The crazy thing about this is you would think cartographers would have made a spherical model of Earth within the next few centuries. But no. I could be wrong, but I think the earliest known terrestrial globe didn't appear until somewhere around 1490-92.

[dekeguy]

Perhaps I take a somewhat simplistic approach, but I never could see a problem between "science and religion". One can split hairs on the nuances of meanings of words, but for me the word science derives from the Latin infinitive "scire" rendered in the first person active as "scio" (I know). So it would seem to me that the word science indicates knowledge. Religion to me is the structured practice of demonstrable faith. Not the faith itself but the structured expression of it. Now, it seems to me that God reveals Himself to us as we are capable of understanding Him. He doesn't change, our ability to understand and grasp His nature develops as we as a species mature and develop. The question now arises what has changed since we have made great strides in knowledge (science)? Nothing. Does God exist? I firmly believe that He does. Do we understand His nature better than we did 200, 500, 1000, 2000 years ago and so on? I think we do. Do we fully understand the nature of God? Well, I sure don't, but faith is the trail I follow as we become more capable of a fuller understanding. So if I take a more comprehensive view perhaps science plus faith results in that wonderful Greek word "Sophia" (wisdom)! As a Jesuit trained Roman Catholic I remember some of the things that I was taught back in school that were and are important to me, among which were:
"There are only two great commandments, first love the Lord with your whole heart, soul, and being. Second, love your neighbor as yourself"
and, "When God gave you a brain, don't you suppose He had in mind that you do something with it".
If you are so inclined you might take a look at "The Phenomenon of Man" by
Pierre Theillard deChardin.
Anyway, I would sum up my thoughts as "Dominus vobiscum omnes, scio, creo, Catholicus sum, Te Deum laudamus".