Creation and the Age of the Earth:

[Xavier]

Jesus Christ Our Lord on Darwin's Theory of Evolution to Maria Valtorta. Imprimatur: Bp. Ramon Danylak. Bp. Williamson also approves.

"       Jesus says:

    "One of the points at which your pride founders in error--which, above all, degrades precisely your haughtiness by giving you an origin that, if you were less corrupted by pride, you would repudiate as degrading--is that of Darwin's theory.

     In order not to admit God, who, in His power, was able to have created the universe from nothing and man from the already created mud, you take the paternity of a beast as your own.

    Don't you realize you are diminishing yourselves, for--consider this--won't a beast--no matter how exemplary, selected, improved, and perfected in form and instinct, and, if your wish, even in mental formation--always be a beast?  Don't you realize this?  This testifies unfavorably regarding your pride as pseudo-supermen.

    But if you fail to realize, I will not be the one to waste words to make you aware of it and converted from the error.  I ask you only one question which, in your great numbers, you have never asked yourselves.  And if you can answer Me with facts, I will no longer combat this degrading theory of yours.

    If man is a spin-off from the monkey, which by progressive evolution has become man, how is it that over so many years in which you have maintained this theory you have never succeeded, not even with the perfected instruments and methods at present, in making a man from a monkey?  You could have taken the most intelligent offspring of a pair of intelligent moneys and then their intelligent offspring, and so on.  You would now have many generations of selected, instructed monkeys cared for by the most patient, tenacious, and sagacious scientific method.  But you would still have monkeys.  If there happened to be a mutation, it would be this: the beasts would be physically less strong than the former ones and morally more degenerate, for, with all your methods and instruments, you would have destroyed that perfection of the monkey which My Father created for these quadrumans.

    Another question.  If man came from the monkey, how is it that man, even with grafts and repugnant forms of cross-fertilization, does not become a monkey again?  You would be capable even of attempting these horrors if you knew that it could give approvative sanction to your theory.  But you do not do so because you know that you would not be able to turn a man into a monkey.  You would turn him into an ugly son of man, a degenerate, perhaps a criminal.  But never a real monkey.  You do not try because you know beforehand that you would get a poor result and your reputation would emerge therefrom in ruins.

    For this reason you do not do so.  For no other.  For you feel no remorse or horror over degrading a man to the level of a beast to maintain a thesis of yours.  You are capbable of this and of much more.  You are already beasts because you deny God and kill the spirit, which distinguishes you from the beasts.

   Your science causes Me horror.  You degrade the intellect and like madmen do not even realize you are degrading it.  In truth, I tell you that many of the primitive are more men than you are." https://valtorta.org/darwin_and_monkeys_defaultpage.asp

[Kreuzritter]

If this is God speaking, why doesn't he just provide a biochemical refutation of Darwinism based in genetics and information theory?

[Sempronius]

Interesting that a spiritual message is about science (if its from God or not I cant say), but good point that secular scientists wont evolve a monkey, or turn him into a supermonkey.

The reason why God doesnt settle the matter about science (I think) is because He doesnt want to force people into believing certain things.

Thats why we will always have modernism in the Church because some people just cant reconcile science with faith. Even some traditional priests find it hard to believe that Adam was 900 years old.

[Kreuzritter]

I'm not ridiculing a straw man, I'm ridiculing your position.

No. You're ridiculing my position by means of a straw man.

You said

"Trustworthy source of information". You see, there is your problem, that you operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information" regarding claims that can and should in any case be scrutinised for evidence and arguments that can be logically analysed for validity.

So

1. You shouldn't operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information"
2. Rather than operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information," we should analyze each claim for validity via scrutiny for evidence.

Case in point of a straw man. I never stated 1, only that it's your mindset and that it's the problem underlying your entire approach to this issue, an approach that leaves you no wiser regarding the truth of any claim. As to 2, the only possible way of analysing such claims for veracity is by such means. Appeals to authority provide no basis for that. But I never made claim 2. Specifically, any child could see that I pointed out that you are the one looking at "trustworthiness" regarding claims that can be investigated, and should be if one is seeking to discover their truth; it is not that such claims "should" be investigated, much less all claims, but to point out the mindset that actually considers 1. as a replacement to this. That is to be contrasted with the mind that maintains skepticism in the absence of 2; that is the position of someone actually interested in truth, especially when it concerns matters that require no decision one way or the other to take action.

And I ridiculed this exact position; that while you can do that, it's fundamentally impossible to do that for every single claim someone makes to you, due to our limited time and resources.

And another straw man. I've never suggested it's necessary or desirable to check "every single claim someone makes to you", and it's neither necessary nor desireable to me to know the truth of "every single claim someone makes" to me. This is another stupidity of yours which you're projecting on me. I couldn't give a rats arse about the truth status of most claims or the bulk of claims of academics. But people who depend on "trustworthiness" of academics to come to their beliefs about something like evolution are self-deluding fools who are no closer to knowing the truth of the matter than the skeptic who makes no decision one way or the other because he hasn't or can't determine it for himself.

The claim you are making here is absolutely baffling.
What's absolutely baffling is that you think crying "layman" constitutes a refutation or "muh degree" evidence.

How funny is it that every single time someone attacks your position, you cry "stawman," but then you feel the need to ward off the crows by propping up your own strawman.

Not once, not once have I ever made a claim that an appeal to authority constitutes a refutation of claims. Nor have I engaged with any of the substance of his claims and appealed to authority to overturn them.

So you're njust unable to grasp logical implications, but informal implications of language and behaviour too.

I just made the claim that Kent Hovind is not worth your time not only because he's proven to be fraudulent and manipulative, and as people will inevitably take heuristic shortcuts (especially when people don't have a basic understanding of biological terminology to even contest the claims he makes), that you are better off finding someone more trustworthy to take heuristic shortcuts.

No. You said more than that.

If you want, I can go through this video and show why his claims in this video are absolutely retarded one by one, including his claim - made in this exact video that Xavier shared - that Catholics are secretly following the path of Eve and obeying Satan's will by holding onto the line of "God became man so men could become God," but thus far, I have not attacked anything regarding the substantive content.

Will you be making appeals to authority and trustworthiness in doing so?

If a Microbiologist with a PhD gave a lecture on the translation of ribosomes within a specific bacteria sample, who in their right mind would think "hmm...I need to make sure that every single claim this man has ever said in this lecture is verifiable.

What's so laughably ass-backwards about your entire line of thought is that this "trustworthiness" based in the acquisition of academic qualifications is built upon the premise that what this man has studied, learned and produced is, in fact, true. That you then appeal to academic qualifications to establish "trustworthiness" is order accept of dismiss these very things.

To the contrary, I believe that bacteria exist because I have seen them under a microscope.

Under the assumption that you actually saw then under a microscope and you perceived them to exist.

That's not an assumption. I've seen them under a microsope, and I know this to be absolutely true given what I mean by "have seen" and "bacteria". Now, you may have incoherent, magical metaphysical views by which you selectively dismiss the phenomenological world and contents of experience from being "real", whatever that means, but I really don't give a rat's arse about those either, and my dismissal of those as nonsensical is not based in assumptions but in the raw analysis of language and meaning.


Note also how you haven't responded ot this:

What's so laughably ass-backwards about your entire line of thought is that this "trustworthiness" based in the acquisition of academic qualifications is built upon the premise that what this man has studied, learned and produced is, in fact, true. That you then appeal to academic qualifications to establish "trustworthiness" is order accept of dismiss these very things.

This is question begging. It's why appeals to academic authority are so inane.

You cannot prove anything is definitively true without assumptions;

Horsecrap.

Proposition: The following argument is valid:

1.All men are mortal.
2.Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Proof:

Let Px mean x is mortal, Qx x is a man, and let a denote Socrates. In 1st order logic this argument is:

1. Ax(Px->Qx)
2. Pa
3. Qa (modus ponens)

3. follows from the definition of Ax(Px->Qx), namely, given any x, if x is a P, then x is a Q. In particular, for all the Dyerite morons, the rule of inference allowing B to be inferred from premises A and A->B is not a "presupposition" but the definition of the logical connective "->".

You've been listening to too much Jay Dyer.

By the way, is

You cannot prove anything is definitively true without assumptions

Absolutely proveable, only proveable with assumptions, or not proveable at all? If the first, it's incoherent; if the others, why would I accept it?

If you actually believe this kind of epistemological relativism, we can just stop right now and cease all further communication about "truth". In which case, we might as well stop talking.

you could believe Descarte's demon is manipulating you and everything you ever perceived is false, and nobody could disprove that.

This statement is, in context of Descartes's demon, nonsensical. "True" or "false" are predicated of propositions, not of what I experience; if by "perception" you mean propositions made about experience, that is another matter.

But you would go insane otherwise, so you would have to make assumptions that your experiences are real.

"Reality" is implied in "experience"; that is what I understand by these words and their referents. What exactly is an "unreal experience"? If you have different definitions of these words, by all means, please explain to me their cognitive content and point me to their referents, most particularly to this "reality" you're invoking.

Science, more narrowly, requires uniformitarian assumptions to a substantive degree, because you could not gather data or make predictions if a demon could manipulate your measurements from what it really is.

Yawn. This is a far weaker statement of the basic inductive problem, and one that introduces metaphysical assumptions by invocation of "manipulative" demons and the words "really is".

And human society as a whole has agreed to that.

Society is an inanimate abstraction, not an agent, and can't agree to anything.

Regardless if those uniformitarian assumptions are true or not as it pertains to evolution, we would not have iPhones without assuming that circuits would always be uniformitarian in how they behave.

But an iPhone's functioning doesn't depend upon anyone's beliefs, and its construction only on local assumptions.

I contend that people who actually understand the concepts they are discussing and have studied science under the purview that it is uniformitarian for at least enough years to receive an undergraduate degree in that field are much more trustworthy than people who have demonstrated they don't understand the concepts they are talking about, have intentionally and knowingly used false information, and don't have enough exposure to science with such an assumption to work within what we define "science" to be are not trustworthy, see my argument above.

And I contend I have absolutely no need to know Kent Hovind's "trustworthiness" to consider and evaluate his videos and that people who do for "heuristic" reasons are no closer to knowing that their beliefs about his claims are true or false.

If you disagree and want to define science as a search for a Leprechaun's gold or to unplug one's self from the Matrix, go ahead, but that is a facially foolish endeavour.

What?

The notion of "winning arguments", as if the truth were some sort of competition in persuading people, is absurd. But it again unmasks your mentality.

"If I only had a brain..."

I'm not contending that.

What? You used that very expression:

Truly, if people operated on this level, anybody could win any argument by just flooding the other side with an over quantity of information regardless of their validity or soundness.

That's such a non sequitur.

I am contending that people's ability to grasp truth is fundamentally limited; see Saint Augustine's beach story:
https://olmlaycarmelites.org/reflections/mystery-trinity

People's ability to grasp reality is fundamentally limited, not least of all because much or reality is essentially and absolutely not "graspable", reduceable to concept to be analysed and "understood" by an intellect. But a "truth"?

As such, people will accept information heuristically from a "higher source" without understanding it fully.

How on earth has one "accepted" what one doesn't understand?

"Muh, I don't really know what this setence means, but I believe it's true."

That's not assent to a truth but assent to a string of words.

[christulsa]

Heinrich, what are we going to do with Kreutzritter?   Prescribe him a kettle bell work out?  Give him a wedgy?  Take him off gluten?   I'm starting to really worry about our resident troll. 

[Kreuzritter]

Heinrich, what are we going to do with Kreutzritter?   Prescribe him a kettle bell work out?  Give him a wedgy?  Take him off gluten?   I'm starting to really worry about our resident troll. 

I see. Attacking logical fallacies and defending the possibility of knowledge against epistemological relativism is trolling.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

[christulsa]

What about calling every other person dumb, in every other thread, month after month, in a Catholic Christian forum, because they disagree with you, and then not understanding how that fits the definition of forum troll?

[Xavier]

Evolution's influence on Communism - Stalin became an atheist after he read Darwin, Marx was a fervent admirer of Darwin, Mao loved Darwin etc etc etc - is enough for any serious Christian who is truly anti-Communist to be anti-Evolutionist as well. Those who don't understand the dangers of evolution and why all Christians should unite against evolution as against Communism - and the millions it has killed - are greatly misled.

[Xavier]

This is one on the amazing discoveries of Ron Wyatt that completely confirm the Archaeological and Biblical Record of Inspired History:



(1) Noah's Ark discovered
(2) Sodom and Gomorrah
(3) Red Sea Crossing
(4) Elim from Exodus
(5) Rephidim of Exodus
(6) Mt. Sinai from Exodus
(7) Ark of the Covenant discovered

Everything God has revealed in His Word always checks out as true whenever humanity's true knowledge advances to a point to confirm it.

There are some who for some reason still do not believe in Noah's Ark; and some others who say the global flood was only local.

Well, the holy Fathers of the Church reject such a claim, always basing their analogy to the Church as the new Ark on the fact that the Ark was the only means of deliverance from the flood at the time. Read some of the Patristic Material on St. Kolbe's Centre and you'll see Creation, Young Earth, Noah's Flood etc is basic Biblical and Patristic Doctrine.

Evangelical Creationist Christians err in not believing God on His Word about the Holy Eucharist, which He declared plainly to be His own Body and Blood, just as He declared the facts of creation. So they say they take God at His Word; and on creation they do, but on Holy Communion, as yet they do not. Most probably many of them are poorly instructed.

Catholics should be well instructed on both matters. We ought to ask Evangelical Creationists, "You say you take God at His Word? Very good. Then why do you not take Him at His Word when He declares He will give us His true flesh to eat and His true blood to drink". Those who till now were claiming they take the Bible literally will struggle answering that!

[TheReturnofLive]

I'm not ridiculing a straw man, I'm ridiculing your position.

No. You're ridiculing my position by means of a straw man.

Case in point of a straw man. I never stated 1, only that it's your mindset and that it's the problem underlying your entire approach to this issue, an approach that leaves you no wiser regarding the truth of any claim. As to 2, the only possible way of analysing such claims for veracity is by such means. Appeals to authority provide no basis for that. But I never made claim 2. Specifically, any child could see that I pointed out that you are the one looking at "trustworthiness" regarding claims that can be investigated, and should be if one is seeking to discover their truth; it is not that such claims "should" be investigated, much less all claims, but to point out the mindset that actually considers 1. as a replacement to this. That is to be contrasted with the mind that maintains skepticism in the absence of 2; that is the position of someone actually interested in truth, especially when it concerns matters that require no decision one way or the other to take action.

"You never stated 1"...I literally quoted it, from you, nearly verbatim. As with two. Since you seem to be unable to read, I have boldened and underlined your quote to compare it to my 1 and 2.

You see, there is your problem, that you operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information" regarding claims that can and should in any case be scrutinised for evidence and arguments that can be logically analysed for validity.

1. You shouldn't operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information"
2. Rather than operate on the level of looking for "trustworthy sources of information," we should analyze each claim for validity via scrutiny for evidence.

The only difference is the word "each." However, as we are both talking about the best methodology for analyzing claims, it would make no sense for you to not imply your methodology for each claim, otherwise, you would not even bother arguing the point that the best means for determining the veracity of a claim is through scrutiny and evidence over other means, such as shortcuts.

Sure, analyze each claim and its veracity, but

1. Human beings don't operate at that level on every single piece of information thrown at them.
2. Some people are not capable of analyzing the veracity of claims when there are terms, concept, and ideas that are incomprehensible due to a lack of education in the field of the hard sciences.

Therefore, someone who has demonstrably been shown to utilize false claims repeatedly but still spreads it among people who believe in such false claims, should not be spread. This "therefore" is not a logical inference, but what a reasonable person would see.

Also, it's a non-sequitur to claim that you can infer from my arguments above that I am not interested in learning the truth insofar as I am able to.

And another straw man. I've never suggested it's necessary or desirable to check "every single claim someone makes to you", and it's neither necessary nor desireable to me to know the truth of "every single claim someone makes" to me. This is another stupidity of yours which you're projecting on me. I couldn't give a rats arse about the truth status of most claims or the bulk of claims of academics. But people who depend on "trustworthiness" of academics to come to their beliefs about something like evolution are self-deluding fools who are no closer to knowing the truth of the matter than the skeptic who makes no decision one way or the other because he hasn't or can't determine it for himself.

So for each of the claims you do care to know the truth about, you never take shortcuts at all?

Also, let me be more explicit, because apparently, you don't seem to get what I'm putting down. Academics are "trustworthy" insofar as they use a restricted language with words and that have meanings and concepts that they have assigned to it and they properly understand it by, to which most of the population does not. Regardless of how you cut it, even such simplistic concepts like the "Calvin Cycle" is not a concept which the ordinary every man easily has memorized off the top of their with the heads via the definitions created and applied by academics.

Thus, they will more readily be able to actually argue with the substance of the claims.

I am not suggesting an appeal to authority for the veracity of each claim; that if an academic institution or professor makes a claim, it must be right. I'm just saying that someone who is unable to grasp the substantive concepts by which they make an argument should not be making an argument. And someone who is not educated to engage with those substantive concepts is not trustworthy, especially if they demonstrate they don't understand what they are talking about.

Again, I can go through his claims one by one.

It's dangerous for our world that someone who doesn't understand the substantive concepts they are discussing is "teaching" others ideas that they don't understand, which will lead to, for those who don't spend the time or effort to verify the veracity of each claim (which experience has shown most people don't do), heuristic shortcuts connected to confirmation bias from a seemingly authoritative source.

So you're njust unable to grasp logical implications, but informal implications of language and behaviour too.

"Informal implications of language and behavior too..."

Lol okay.

No. You said more than that.

Again, lol, okay.

That's not an assumption. I've seen them under a microsope, and I know this to be absolutely true given what I mean by "have seen" and "bacteria". Now, you may have incoherent, magical metaphysical views by which you selectively dismiss the phenomenological world and contents of experience from being "real", whatever that means, but I really don't give a rat's arse about those either, and my dismissal of those as nonsensical is not based in assumptions but in the raw analysis of language and meaning.

Try again. Your perception of bacteria does not mean that the phenomenological world exists and isn't based strictly on the raw analysis of language and meaning.

Horsecrap.

Proposition: The following argument is valid:

1.All men are mortal.
2.Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Proof:

Let Px mean x is mortal, Qx x is a man, and let a denote Socrates. In 1st order logic this argument is:

1. Ax(Px->Qx)
2. Pa
3. Qa (modus ponens)

3. follows from the definition of Ax(Px->Qx), namely, given any x, if x is a P, then x is a Q. In particular, for all the Dyerite morons, the rule of inference allowing B to be inferred from premises A and A->B is not a "presupposition" but the definition of the logical connective "->".

You've been listening to too much Jay Dyer.

I don't listen to Jay Dyer and haven't for like a year.

Good luck proving to me, though, the soundness of that argument. Prove to me that all men are mortal. Prove to me that Socrate is a man.

Further, prove to me the soundness of the claim that the rule of inference is always valid.

If you actually believe this kind of epistemological relativism, we can just stop right now and cease all further communication about "truth". In which case, we might as well stop talking.

No, because you and I can make assumptions to which we both agree with and then go from there. It doesn't mean we can know with absolute certainty that such assumptions are sound.

But an iPhone's functioning doesn't depend upon anyone's beliefs, and its construction only on local assumptions.

Sure, and your beliefs are constructed on local assumptions as well.