(March 30, 2020 at 10:08 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: I went to Catholic schools.  We were told the creation story but were taught science when it came to evolution.  In the area where I grew up the population was over 90% Catholic but I was seemingly amongst Catholics who understood that some things in the Bible were simply stories.

Don't think all Catholics are what you have pictured.

I would never say that all Catholics are what I have pictured. I am the one saying that Christians are diverse.

I'm glad to hear that your Catholic education didn't argue against proven science.

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(March 30, 2020 at 9:54 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote:

(March 30, 2020 at 8:50 pm)Belacqua Wrote: The Pope believes in evolution and Ken Ham doesn't. Are you saying that the Pope isn't Christian?

Please present evidence that Christians are not a diverse group.

The pope, the Vatican and most Catholics absofuckinglutely do not believe in evolution!
If evolution is guided by God then it's intelligent design aka, creationism.
That so many people are fooled by that cheap Vatican slight of language is mind bending. But then mebbie not, after all they are Catholics.

When you say that evolution is "guided" you may be thinking of a sort of demiurge who puts in his hand and manipulates which direction things will go. No doubt some Catholics believe in that sort of thing.

If you were to read some theology, especially the Neoplatonic kind, you would see how they explain all things being guided but not in a way that interferes or disrupts the operations of nature. 

Natural selection as described by, say, Ernst Mayr is compatible with several kinds of traditional Christian theology.

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It occurs to me that if someone says Christians aren't diverse, it may say more about the person making the claim than about Christians. It depends on whom you know.

When I started participating on forums like this one, years ago, I also tended to repeat the standard atheist shibboleths. I also thought that Christianity is only following literal Bible reading.

I was fortunate to discuss all this with several intelligent Christians. One was a former economist in the Clinton White House, whose proudest moment was facing down Lawrence Summers on some taxation issue. After Clinton was out he went to teach at an exclusive private school in Switzerland. He accepted all the current scientific consensus. His theology was much closer to that of Tillich, who calls God "ultimate concern." According to him, this was the norm among the members of his church.

Another person I was lucky to encounter was a woman who had an art history degree from a university in Italy (with a specialty in Byzantine workmanship in Venice). She was a retired Episcopalian minister who was the very first female minister in her country. (Not the US.) Her husband was a key contributor to the DSM-IV, and her son was in a famous rock band (not Christian rock). She also had no trouble reconciling her religion with science.

I have no idea about what percentage of Christians agree with them, nor do I care. Their existence shows that Ken Ham is not the only kind of Christian.

(March 30, 2020 at 10:08 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:

(March 30, 2020 at 9:54 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote: The pope, the Vatican and most Catholics absofuckinglutely do not believe in evolution!
If evolution is guided by God then it's intelligent design aka, creationism.
That so many people are fooled by that cheap Vatican slight of language is mind bending. But then mebbie not, after all they are Catholics.

I went to Catholic schools.  We were told the creation story but were taught science when it came to evolution.  In the area where I grew up the population was over 90% Catholic but I was seemingly amongst Catholics who understood that some things in the Bible were simply stories.

Don't think all Catholics are what you have pictured.

Fair comment. I do tend to go a bit ballistic when reading Bel's heavily disguised apologetics. As for Catholic schools, It looks as though we had very similar experiences. The place was infested with Carmelite drones, I doubt any of them ever had an original thought ever enter their heads. I'm pretty sure the canteen used holy water to boil the tatties, and the swimming pool was holy water. Science was not well represented, we had one and a half hours per week and evolution was never mentioned, ever. Religion was three hours per week.


A brand new school teaching bronze age campfire stories, but then talking to old schoolmates over the years it appears that none of it stuck. Census form Christians at most, the devout, none.
One has to wonder how such a school produced so few Christians but wee are told there are over a billion of them.

Or are there that many?

(March 30, 2020 at 11:11 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote: heavily disguised apologetics

Everything I say is exactly what I'm saying. There is nothing heavily disguised (or lightly disguised), and no secret motivation.

If you can't make out what I'm saying without fantasizing some sort of ulterior motive, you haven't understood.

(March 30, 2020 at 10:32 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(March 30, 2020 at 10:08 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: I went to Catholic schools.  We were told the creation story but were taught science when it came to evolution.  In the area where I grew up the population was over 90% Catholic but I was seemingly amongst Catholics who understood that some things in the Bible were simply stories.

Don't think all Catholics are what you have pictured.

I would never say that all Catholics are what I have pictured. I am the one saying that Christians are diverse.

When you say that evolution is "guided"...

I do not say evolution is guided, the pope does.

Quote:If you were to read some theology, especially the Neoplatonic kind, you would see how they explain all things being guided but not in a way that interferes or disrupts the operations of nature.

You fucking idiot! If evolution is guided then Godidit. Natural selection is out the window. .

I don't know if you're a troll but you're indistinguishable from one.

Quote:Natural selection as described by, say, Ernst Mayr is compatible with several kinds of traditional Christian theology

We you are not talking Natural selection you are talking divine intervention which is exactly what theistic evolution is.

Quote:Please present evidence that Christians are not a diverse group.

Please present evidence someone other than you said any such thing.

(March 31, 2020 at 12:02 am)Succubus#2 Wrote: If evolution is guided then Godidit. Natural selection is out the window. . 

I'm sorry you haven't studied any theology at all. You don't know what they say.

Would you say that you prefer not to know? Maybe it's easier to keep your vehemence that way.

If you're at all interested, the key is in the Platonic idea of the Good, which takes no action.

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The first step in any honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way he would agree with. This doesn't mean you agree with it, only that you understand it well enough to describe it accurately.

If you can't, then at best you don't know what you're arguing against, and at worst you have set up a straw man.

The Neoplatonic idea of God, as held by Erasmus Darwin and others, is entirely compatible with natural selection. If you can't describe that position then you don't know how to argue against it.

(March 31, 2020 at 12:19 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(March 31, 2020 at 12:02 am)Succubus#2 Wrote: If evolution is guided then Godidit. Natural selection is out the window. . 

I'm sorry you haven't studied any theology at all. You don't know what they say.

Would you say that you prefer not to know? Maybe it's easier to keep your vehemence that way.

If you're at all interested, the key is in the Platonic idea of the Good, which takes no action.

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The first step in any honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way he would agree with. This doesn't mean you agree with it, only that you understand it well enough to describe it accurately.

If you can't, then at best you don't know what you're arguing against, and at worst you have set up a straw man.

The Neoplatonic idea of God, as held by Erasmus Darwin and others, is entirely compatible with natural selection. If you can't describe that position then you don't know how to argue against it.

Dude you're a fucking troll.

(March 31, 2020 at 12:48 am)Succubus#2 Wrote:

(March 31, 2020 at 12:19 am)Belacqua Wrote: I'm sorry you haven't studied any theology at all. You don't know what they say.

Would you say that you prefer not to know? Maybe it's easier to keep your vehemence that way.

If you're at all interested, the key is in the Platonic idea of the Good, which takes no action.

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The first step in any honest debate is that you have to be able to present your opponent's position in a way he would agree with. This doesn't mean you agree with it, only that you understand it well enough to describe it accurately.

If you can't, then at best you don't know what you're arguing against, and at worst you have set up a straw man.

The Neoplatonic idea of God, as held by Erasmus Darwin and others, is entirely compatible with natural selection. If you can't describe that position then you don't know how to argue against it.

Dude you're a fucking troll.

The history of Erasmus Darwin is fascinating. It can help you to overcome your prejudice.

There is a concept in Neoplatonism called the "Great Chain of Being." It posits that there is no hard and permanent line between species -- there must be a graduated change. So there was a long-running discussion among intellectuals -- Christians, but in the minority -- in which it was suggested that every niche in nature would be filled by some animal, though some of these might have disappeared. It also suggested that over time one species might change, or even become a different species. 

When people started digging up fossils of unknown creatures, E. Darwin and others plugged this data into the Neoplatonic theory. As you know, raw data must be interpreted in the light of theory. This analysis allowed Darwin to get right up to the brink of the theory of evolution. In fact it is more proper to say that he did posit a theory of evolution, although he didn't hit on the mechanism of natural selection. But his grandson Charles probably wouldn't have hit on it either if he didn't know grandpa Erasmus's writings on the subject. 

Anyway, the Neoplatonic God doesn't guide by putting down a hand and fiddling around. Fortunately the Darwin family was aware of this.

from Wikipedia:

Quote:Erasmus Darwin offered the first glimpse of his theory of evolution, obliquely, in a question at the end of a long footnote to his popular poem The Loves of the Plants (1789), which was republished throughout the 1790s in several editions as The Botanic Garden. His poetic concept was to anthropomorphise the stamen (male) and pistil (female) sexual organs, as bride and groom. In this stanza on the flower Curcuma (also Flax and Turmeric) the "youths" are infertile, and he devotes the footnote to other examples of neutered organs in flowers, insect castes, and finally associates this more broadly with many popular and well-known cases of vestigial organs (male nipples, the third and fourth wings of flies, etc.)

Woo'd with long care, CURCUMA cold and shy
Meets her fond husband with averted eye:
Four beardless youths the obdurate beauty move
With soft attentions of Platonic love.

Darwin's final long poem, The Temple of Nature was published posthumously in 1803. The poem was originally titled The Origin of Society. It is considered his best poetic work. It centres on his own conception of evolution. The poem traces the progression of life from micro-organisms to civilised society. The poem contains a passage that describes the struggle for existence.[11]

The most complete explanation is in Lovejoy's book The Great Chain of Being.

(March 30, 2020 at 10:08 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:

(March 30, 2020 at 9:54 pm)Succubus#2 Wrote: The pope, the Vatican and most Catholics absofuckinglutely do not believe in evolution!
If evolution is guided by God then it's intelligent design aka, creationism.
That so many people are fooled by that cheap Vatican slight of language is mind bending. But then mebbie not, after all they are Catholics.

I went to Catholic schools.  We were told the creation story but were taught science when it came to evolution.  In the area where I grew up the population was over 90% Catholic but I was seemingly amongst Catholics who understood that some things in the Bible were simply stories.

Don't think all Catholics are what you have pictured.

Seems to me Catholics haven't set their opinion yet on evolution but rather decided to avoid its implications into theology. It's more like they have a temporary truce with evolution.

I mean Pope claims to belive or accept evolution but that seems very hypocritical since he doesn't have the explanation for the purpose of Jesus and Christianity if Adam didn't exist and therefore there is no original sin. Especially since, according to Augustine, the sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the male line - transmitted in the semen.

Indeed, in the encyclical Humani Generis the pope wrote

Quote:For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

I mean creationists are wrong about evolution, but at least they are honest.

Catholic leadership seems to take a theistic evolution line, though to claim all Catholics follow this line is wrong. The Poles take the literalist 7 days approach which they have attempted to put in their education system.
However none of these tend to come round the forums to evangelize or knock on our doors or undermine our education system.
In any case I find Machiavelli provides a perfectly adequate description of Catholicism.
I'm also currently enjoying reading an account of the 4th Crusade with all the backstabbing, theft and dishonesty that believers indulge in.
Kind of like the dishonesty involved when you ask someone if they thought Americans were  good people and getting the answer; 'The Trump administration is corrupt'.

(March 21, 2020 at 11:04 am)WinterHold Wrote: You cry because Coronavirus is killing some thousands of you.

But why didn't you cry for Chinese Uighur Muslims butchered by the communist government?
Why didn't you cry for the Millions in Syria killed by Assad?
Why didn't you cry for Millions killed in Yemen by Saudi/U.A.E airstrikes?
Why didn't you cry for thousands tortured in prisons of Saudi Arabia?

Does humanity of today deserve covid-19 ?
I say yes.
Millions would also say yes.

Just like when the Black Death came.

Are you trying to cheer us up in our time of need?

To be honest, you're not really helping.

Also, I like the fact that you refere to "you" (us) dealing with covid-19. Do you already have the anitibody?