How are the Saints experts in the same way that we might consider Hawking a scientific expert? They lived holy lives; they were not direct and convenient conduits to divine Revelation on every topic known to man, including the scientific explanations of our universe.

If Aquinas were not a Saint, I would consider his philosophy no more or less truthful.

Francis

I was pointing you to a non-Google search engine* that can, like other search engines, offer you many sources on the difference. It was a play on the now-old "Google is your friend" or https://lmgtfy.com/ or similar such. I wasn't going to choose a specific explanation as exemplary; don't have the time or inclination for that here for now, and folks can do that for themselves.

* https://duckduckgo.com/

Elmar,

We have some established information from (for example) the light emitted by elements when they are heated.

On the other hand, you're quite right that we don't know for certain how our planetary system formed as a planetary system. We have hypotheses which haven't been contradicted by information collected, for example.

There may be other procedures which solidify a claim as belonging within the realm of scientific knowledge, but falsifiability is fundamental to the scientific method.

The fossil record, with fossils of simpler species in earlier geological strata and more complex species in later strata, as well as shared DNA sequences among species support the theory that life on earth began in simple forms and evolved into more complex forms through gene mutations in offspring and the effect of the environment naturally selecting the best adapted individuals for survival to pass on their genes.

Or it could be that God created V2.0, 2.1, 2.5, 3.0, etc., right?

simpler species in earlier geological strata and more complex species in later strata

How does one define "simpler" or "more complex", for the purposes of this conversation?

Amphibians, for example, have two developed breathing systems and the timing mechanism to replace one with the other. That sounds remarkably complex to me.

Various kinds of bees are alleged to have developed language (of a sort), so this makes them more complex or less complex than those who managed to get everything done (including reproducing) with nothing but accident and reflex?

Then there are human beings, who "developed" the internet, gossip, the capacity to sin either gravely or less gravely.

@francis Just to briefly engage with the article you've just posted:

You've called for scientific and empirical data. This is hardly a source that meets those requirements. Tbh it just looks like you're sharing any article with a headline that supports your argument.

What information it does reference - the Cosmic Microwave Background, the orbital planes of other stellar and galactic systems, and so on - rely on Newtonian and later physics to make sense in the first place.

I think what we're seeing here is two different definitions of geocentricism. (1) is that the Sun and everything physically revolves around the Earth. (2) is that the Earth (which revolves around the Sun which revolves around the centre of the Milky Way) seems to be remarkably placed, and that there are a few alignments which are so improbable as to seem designed (a moon of the perfect proportion and distance to mask the sun during an eclipse fits in this boat.

(1) is the generally understood definition of "geocentricism". It is categorically false. The Sun couldn't possibly be revolving around a fixed Earth, as it is orders of magnitude more massive than the Earth. Newtons laws of gravity have been proven time and again (until Einsteinian relativity comes into play). There is no other system of mechanics proposed which stands up to testing.

(2) is NOT the generally understood definition of "geocentricism". Yes, there are many things about the Earth which are remarkable and seem to defy probability. This is where Christians could praise God for the wonders of creation. It is also where Christians and all people (with our God-given intellect) can continue to search for a mechanism we've missed which perhaps produced such coincidence. But it hardly rocks the scientific consensus on the position and movement of the Earth in the universe.

@MarkB I cannot think of an example of an FSSP priest spending too much time arguing with modern atheist led view of science. My experience is limited to England, Scotland and Switzerland.
In England many Catholic homeschooled students are using the US based science textbooks, "Exploring Creation with..." This is o.k. if they are doing a distance US High school diploma. But I recommend Catholic parents should use the International GCSE books, it only takes a couple of minutes to clarify what "Theory" means. Many of the state approved biology books are also pretty vague and hardly dogmatic about Evolution. The Physics course I teach did not have an astronomy section until recently and the section added is also vague, that it does not contradict a young Universe, interestingly it does explicitly contradict a geocentric universe.

In the U.K. we have a strong pro-evolution group https://www.faith.org.uk but a number of scientists have actively attacked their ideas on Evolution and have converted many to an Intelligent design based understanding of creation. The key groups that are part of this movement are http://www.daylightorigins.com and of course the http://kolbecenter.org Hugh Owen is regularly invited to give lectures in parish halls across Great Britain and Ireland. So in someways the Creationist movement is equally popular among O.F. Catholics.

@shonbergian

There is a universal difference between Hawking (who speaks untruth) https://www.rzim.org/read/just-thinking-magazine/stephen-hawking-and-god and the Saints.

It would be Ad Hominem if Hawkin’s religion didn’t interfere with his science, but unfortunately, he ties the two together. Hawkins should never have ever talked about God in any of his scientific papers, books or theories. He is totally out of his sphere, so to speak, at that point.

I was simply saying: don’t waste your time reading nonsense science when you could be reading things that are true and actually benefit your eternal existence. I neither like nor dislike Hawking as a person. I don’t know anything about him except what he has written.

As for Joan and Sun comparison, I will let you know my views on that soon, but we shouldn’t do that on this thread. PM me.

we weren't exactly treating Joan of Arc as a master of military strategy like we do Sun Tzu

I think we enter dangerous territory when we speak lightly of the saints. In other threads we've seen posts that mock the intellect of the Cure of Ars, or speaking disparagingly of Pope Pius X. At the very least, we ought to be respectful of those who have earned the eternal Beatific Vision - the only thing we are here for, at the end of the day - even if we respectfully disagree with a position they may have held.

To your point, saints are not infallible. Saints backed antipopes. Saints have denied Christ three times. Saints have made mistakes. On the other hand, Saints are also privy to higher councils than you or I, and the ways of God are often inscrutable.

As for me, I'd rather have a Joan leading my army than a Sun Tzu. Just saying.

“Ah, well, I’m curious to know if Adam and Eve never existed
where did Original Sin come from?”...Richard Dawkins to George Cardinal Pell

https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2012-0415-mjm-dawkins-pell.htm

I wonder how many here that believe in the theory of Evolution, would answer Richard Dawkins question.

I'm not trying to speak lightly of saints, Incardination. But we cannot draw a comparison between them and scholars or experts unless they themselves were such in their lifetimes. Should we take their word infallibly in areas which have nothing to do with their beatification? We can take much from St. Peter's life, but we obviously shouldn't follow his denial of Christ as some sort of imperative. Rather, we must take everything they said and did in context to learn proper lessons and more closely understand their relationship to God.

I would rather have Joan leading my army, too. But if we're seeking to understand military strategy on an academic level, she wouldn't be my first choice. There have been great popes - pope saints, even - without the academic rigour of a Ratzinger. I don't think it diminishes their importance if we choose our sources based on the situation.

Francis, I don't read science to benefit my eternal existence. That's what philosophy and spirituality is for. Science is about a systematic understanding of our universe, and that is a niche that the Church has stayed away from. I see no reason we cannot accept the presence of both.

I may be starting to understand your position more, Francis. Thanks for your patience.

The Church has indeed supported scientific inquiry, but it does not make scientific proclamations as it does theological ones. Also, it has never been concerned with scientific minutiae as it is with theological minutiae. There have been countless debates, contradictory arguments put forth and settled, and heresies declared centred around the exact nature of Jesus Christ's existence and the composition of His soul. You'd never see that with precise scientific topics like CMBR or string theory.

Schonbergian has said, correctly, that the Church, historically, has been concerned with theological 'minutiae', not scientific ones. This is true and should ever be so. The few times that the Church has weighed in on scientific minutiae it has been embarrassingly wrong - to wit, the Galileo affair, for which the Church finally made apology five hundred years too late.

So I leave for a week, and all the exciting drama on the forum all of a sudden pops up. Figures.

As far as this topic goes, two groups of people I know qualify as Geocentrists. One is a family which runs the music program of a church I’ve attended in the past; they’ve always struck me as of above-average intelligence. The other group is the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, and woo boy- those guys invented the pugnacious homily, let me tell you. (Incidentally, I think both groups are Feeneyites, if that matters.)

Call it the Feyerabend in me, but I’ve always found this topic to be a prime opportunity to practice charity to those who disagree with us. There’s enough enlightened reasoning on both sides to merit hearing each of them out.

Regarding Galileo, he didn't have sufficient evidence to demonstrate conclusively that the Earth moves. He had some cockamamie idea that the ocean tides were caused by Earth's rotation, but he was widely ridiculed for that idea. Kepler was correct to suggest that the tides had something to do with the Moon, even though Kepler didn't understand gravity.

So the Church didn't -- and didn't need to -- apologize for being wrong about the science since in Galileo's time the scientific discoveries weren't able to confirm the Earth's motion. Galileo was asserting more than he could prove.

It was appropriate for Pope John Paul II to comment in 1992 that the Church's theologians in the Galileo affair had erred by thinking that Scripture was intending to teach something about the physical world's structure and for not distinguishing carefully enough between the words of Scripture and its interpretation. Yet even people like Cardinal Bellarmine realized that difference and, while prudently waiting for definitive proof of Earth's movement before abandoning traditional interpretation of the Bible, had proposed that if proof ever were available then the Church should be prepared to say that the Bible doesn't reveal nor teach about a stationary earth.

Church authorities were fine with the Copernican model being discussed and taught as a theoretical model. Where Galileo ran afoul was in asserting the Copernican model as fact and suggesting, as someone not trained in theology, how the Church should interpret Scripture differently to accommodate the assertion of the Copernican model's reality. The Church had had enough of private interpretations of Scripture in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, and the concern to safeguard the Church's authority and unity motivated the response to Galileo.

The Church was merely unwilling to accept an interpretation of biblical passages such as the one cited by CharlesW that departed from the tradition of a stationary Earth unless and until there was sufficient physical/scientific evidence and demonstration to prove that tradition's literalistic interpretation was wrong.

Again, Cardinal Bellarmine was open to the possibility that the Bible wasn't teaching geocentrism and that passages seeming to teach a moving Sun and stationary Earth might have to be understood differently. However, at the time of Galileo there wasn't sufficient scientific evidence to compel that change.

The Church was far more intelligent, wise, prudent and reasonable than the popular myth about Galileo's trial gives her credit for. We shouldn't retroject our current knowledge and standards and approach to biblical studies back into Galileo's time.

I would like to hear a scientific explanation of the miracle of the sun 13 October 1917

Sorry tomjaw, but why? As a (sort of) scientist, I believe in miracles, and not that everything happens by mechanical cause and effect. At the same time I believe that simple cause and effect is far more common, and that miracles only happen for a sufficient reason.
You are right to point out that Galileo was quite gently treated. Was his offence not mainly his caricature of opponents in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, under the nickname Simplicius?

whew, a thread of this length really works against the idea of reading before posting

but this question was asked early on >> Are sickness and death consequences of sin or part of God's plan from the beginning?

Maybe that's a yes. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I understood, from my Thomistic training, such as it was, that human physical immortality prior to the Fall was a preternatural gift. Death in the animal kingdom, as such, then, does not seem to contradict this special exemption.

The three preternatural gifts were (if memory serves) immortality, impassibility, and infused knowledge. Immortality was freedom from death; impassibility was freedom from suffering; infused knowledge was the knowledge God granted Adam regarding the natural order.

So long as we are THIS far from the original question, here's another question: was Mary, the Mother of God, endowed with these preternatural gifts, too? Certainly immortality....why not impassibility and infused knowledge?

Interesting, Stimson, that you mention some people whom you believe to be Feeneyites in connexion with these questions; the only people I know who are ardent supporters of YEC (I don't know about Geocentism) are also Feeneyites.

Wow, so many interesting lines of discussion in this thread sice I passed by for the last time ... I'll just refrain from weighing in on my favorite 'bias topic' (physics) ad grab this one [tomjaw]:

the creation of Adam (out of nothing) in God's likeness is also a miracle

To me, that is IS the miracle!
Rather than any apparently fine-tuned aspects of nature, like elements, elemetary particles, the structure of the universe, or 'unexplainable' healings etc. etc.
Miraculous as they may appear, there is always the possibility that one day we can explain some phenomenon that appeared unexplainable, therefore 'miraculous', to earlier generations. Physics and astronomy are ahead, chemistry a bit behind, biology more so and medecine even farther, but it is the same story over and over again.

Anyone surprised that 'life sciences' tend to see human life (as life in general), however complex and fascinating, as ultimatively meaningless - rather than "God's likeness"? How could science get grasp of meaning anyway?
It is Revelation - not science - that tells us that life of man matters to God.
This will not change even when/if evolution of species (including man) and the start of the universe with a big bang out of 'nothing' (in the physical, not philosophical sense) become undisputed theories of how the material world works.

the earth is “remarkably placed” in the universe or, is the “axis of evil” just a universal coincidence? As I understand it, there are two 'lines' that criss cross the universe and where they intersect is earth. Is that a correct way to say it?

If that indeed is what the data shows us then of course, we must deal with it! I have no issue understanding the earth to be utterly unique, and for there to be signs of it somewhere in creation. Indeed this is where the creator of the vast universe established man in his own image and entered creation in the womb of the perfect Virgin. That being said, not every unsolved question is a sign, and if we find a naturalistic explanation for this, I am perfectly open to that as well. They are not mutually exclusive.

The thing is, I do not accept that the universe is less than 5 or 10k years old. That appears to be part and parcel of geocentrism among some, though clearly not all.