Xavier's M.O.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Everybody who accepts teaching on authority does so through use of his reason.  The process of understanding what is taught by authority necessarily involves reason.  It is not possible to accept any teaching without it being mediated by reason.

When a person is unaware of a teaching, that is not a rejection of the authority.  Similarly, when a person cannot understand a teaching, that is not a rejection of the authority nor is it placing reason above authority. 

OK.

A person who cannot understand how two different teachings can both be true is "on hold" until he can resolve the question.  He has made no decision to reject authority and is accepting it to the best of his ability.

But he will still accept both teachings, because even if he cannot understand how both teachings are true, he nevertheless accepts that they are. 

If I really preferred reason to authority, I would ascribe my inability to understand to a defect in the teaching and decide to reject it.

So you admit there are no defects in Vatican II and post-Conciliar Magisterium then?  You fully accept Vatican II, the New Mass, Francis' teaching on the death penalty, Amoris Laetitiae, and so on?  You might not understand how they are reconciliable with pre-Conciliar Magisterium but you nevertheless accept that they are?

[Jayne]

So you admit there are no defects in Vatican II and post-Conciliar Magisterium then?  You fully accept Vatican II, the New Mass, Francis' teaching on the death penalty, Amoris Laetitiae, and so on?  You might not understand how they are reconciliable with pre-Conciliar Magisterium but you nevertheless accept that they are?

One possible solution is that, properly understood, these teachings are reconcilable.  Another possibility is that they will somehow turn out not to be authoritative teaching. I don't know.

[GloriaPatri]

So you admit there are no defects in Vatican II and post-Conciliar Magisterium then?  You fully accept Vatican II, the New Mass, Francis' teaching on the death penalty, Amoris Laetitiae, and so on?  You might not understand how they are reconciliable with pre-Conciliar Magisterium but you nevertheless accept that they are?

One possible solution is that, properly understood, these teachings are reconcilable.  Another possibility is that they will somehow turn out not to be authoritative teaching. I don't know.

As far as the bolded is concerned: They were the teachings and acts of an official ecumenical council of the Catholic Church and validly elected popes. I don't see how what they did was not authoritative.

And if some future pope come along and tries to turn back the clock he's just going to make the Church look foolish/open a huge can of worms concerning the teachings of every ecumenical council.

[Greg]

The best solution is to kill everyone (or a HUGE number of people).  That way no explanation is necessary.

Then they can revise history to suit and cover up the truth.

[Mono no aware]

I don't like clerical poofters but if the new springtime, introduced and run by poofters, actually produced successful outcomes like a growing church of people who actually knew what they believed, large families, less abortion a more stable and contented society, then I would have to rationally conclude that the modern church architecture, the lame masses and shitty hymns and limp wristed clergy had actually delivered a better outcome.

Results matter and there is no argument against a fact.

But going by this calculus, there wouldn't be any reason for a Roman to have converted to early Christianity, if he was looking to "successful outcomes."  The Church at that point was a fringe religion being persecuted as a fanatical "nutty nutbar" Jewish heresy, and its adherents (mostly slaves and women) were routinely being fed to the lions in the arenas.  At best you could admire them for their resolve, but it's not as if too many people these days admire Muslim suicide bombers for their dedication to the cause.  And if our Roman was already a pater familias of decent means with a large brood in a society he deemed contented, what would he have to gain?  He would only incur suspicion, resentment, mockery, and a loss of status.

The reason to be a Christian is not for this-worldly gain, but for what it presumably offers in the next life.  Otherwise anyone in any age or area where the faith was reviled would be rationally justified for not holding it.  Have you ever seen the movie Silence?  To my lights the most rational character in the whole thing is Father Ferreira, Liam Neeson's character, the Portuguese priest who apostatizes.  Had he persisted in his evangelical efforts, he was guaranteed nothing but torture and eventual death.  His solution was to renounce the faith and go native—and it's not as if that meant squatting on the earthen floor of a jungle hut for the rest of his days either, nibbling roots and surrounded by illiterate dullards; after all, this was Japan.  He had a high and cultured civilization he could take to.  Why not marry a nice Japanese girl, learn calligraphy, and become a scholar and translator, esteemed by the local shogun and kept in due comfort?  Beats being crucified.  As for the afterlife, I suppose he hedged his bets.  He probably a took a look around Japan and noticed that they had fared pretty well by praying to the Buddha and the Shinto gods, so maybe he figured religion was all a crap-shoot.  And why not?  "The times to come shall cover all things together with oblivion: the learned dieth in like manner as the unlearned."

[Greg]

A lot of the early converts were slaves.  Not much to lose for them.

You get hieresses and rich kids joining cults now.  How popular is Tom Cruise and his devotion to scientology?  He would be better off (more respected) abandoning that cult.

In addition, in those days, death was ever present and struck fairly randonmly from infections, bad water, bad food.  Think of how many people get VERY religious in their old age today because death is a near term possibility.  My church is mostly old people.  I don't remember any of them being middle aged Trads 30 years ago and I am very good with faces. 

[Xavier]

Why I oppose evolution can be summed up in this article: "It's often said that Britain's church congregations are shrinking, but that doesn't come close to expressing the scale of the disaster now facing Christianity in this country. Every ten years the census spells out the situation in detail: between 2001 and 2011 the number of Christians born in Britain fell by 5.3 million — about 10,000 a week. If that rate of decline continues, the mission of St Augustine to the English, together with that of the Irish saints to the Scots, will come to an end in 2067.

That is the year in which the Christians who have inherited the faith of their British ancestors will become statistically invisible. Parish churches everywhere will have been adapted for secular use, demolished or abandoned.

Our cathedral buildings will survive, but they won't be true cathedrals because they will have no bishops. The Church of England is declining faster than other denominations; if it carries on shrinking at the rate suggested by the latest British Social Attitudes survey, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain in 2033. One day the last native-born Christian will die and that will be that." This from British Catholic writer Damian Thomson.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/06/2067-the-end-of-british-christianity/ It's up to us now to turn the tide. There are 50 years left.

In the nearly 1500 years since England was fully evangelized for the Faith by Pope St. Gregory the Great and St. Augustine of Canterbury, nothing has succeeded in de-Christianizing British society as effectively as has modern evolutionary agnostic secularism.

This is only a projection, it's not inevitable by any means. But it is what may happen if evolution is left unopposed. Evolution causes slow death to Faith. We see it all the time.

Christians are already perfectly assured God is One, He is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He rose from the dead. Some of you skeptics can read in the history subforum the testimonies of Josephus, Gamaliel, Pilate, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus and others, notwithstanding the fact that St. Paul and other former skeptics were directly converted to faith in the Risen Christ is itself demonstrative that the Lord truly rose and converted him. What can explain his life, and the life of the other Apostles and eyewitnesses, who testified that they had seen Christ rise after being crucified under Pilate, and lived holy and heroic lives that attest it completely? Only the fact that Christ rose from the dead.

So Christians already know without doubt that the Faith is true. What we wish to inquire here is whether the theory of evolution and its old earth claims are compatible with that Truth. IMHO, ID and old creation are fine if they stop evolutionists from sliding into atheism, agnosticism and indifferentism. Sometimes, however, doubt about the creation doctrine leads to doubt or disregard of much of Scripture, even the New Testament.

Dr. Walt Brown has a really nice theory, Hydroplate theory, that seems like a perfect explanation of the science of creation and the flood. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html All these things will take years if not decades to study and master, the evolutionists rely precisely on that. In the meanwhile, they try to create doubts and uncertainties about fundamentals of the true Faith. For Christians, it is enough to know eminently well-qualified scientists have excellent responses to evolutionary claims.

[John Lamb]

The problem is that Evolution undermines the first book of the Bible (Genesis), and by undermining the first it undermines the whole lot. No Original Sin? No need for a Redeemer – Jesus was just a nice guy at best. The way many Catholics get out of this is by more or less mythologising (allegorising) Genesis. This is a slippery slope, however. Soon Christianity, and religion in general, comes not to be seen as a way to understand reality, but at best as a system of symbols and rituals which provide comfort to those psychologically too weak to face reality without them. Christianity no longer has a "truth claim." It's just a nice form of therapy at best, and at worst an evil and backwards institution – but certainly not something that can tell us the way the world works, like "science" can.

This is the situation in modern Britain. The average British person will look down on Christianity condescendingly as therapy for the weak, or as a dark ages institution that ought to be outright abolished. Those that want to tell us how to live our lives based on what the Bible or the Catholic Church says are simply madmen.

The only way around this is to get Christianity to have a plausible "truth claim" again, and the only way to do that realistically is to get rid of the Evolutionist cosmology which has made a myth out of the Bible. If it came out today in the media that scientists had wholly abandoned Evolutionism as a plausible theory to explain the origins and diversity of life, it wouldn't cause an instant conversion back to Christianity, but there would certainly be a sudden upswing in the public's interest in religion.

[Greg]

Assuming an alternative scientific explanation to evolution could be found, how would the Church deal with the problem of its entire hierarchy staying silent on child rape and predatory/compulsive sexual abuse over nearly a century? (at least.  It might be a lot longer).

[John Lamb]

Public retribution.

[Greg]

I cannot see that that is enough, frankly.

Once it has been THAT corrupted who is going to trust it again?

It's one thing to take your wife back after a fling with her boss or even the milkman.  But who is going to take their wife back when she has whored herself with every man in town and had sex with the horses in the stable as well.  The betrayal and the cover up is so complete and so disgusting that it makes Windswept House read like a seminary welcome pack.

We will need to burn Rome to the ground just to have enough ashes.  Lord knows where we will get the sackcloth.

As Bishop Steven Lopes just said.  "We all knew".

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/08/30/bishop-lopes-i-dont-believe-bishops-who-plead-ignorance-of-mccarrick/

If we ONLY go on what we know, it is an appalling state of affairs.  Abomination is not too strong a word.  But now the cat is out of the bag after 80 years (at least), imagine what else is going to come out in the wash.  There's probably video.  That's going to find its way onto the internet and still exist in 500 years from now.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Why I oppose evolution can be summed up in this article:
...

In the nearly 1500 years since England was fully evangelized for the Faith by Pope St. Gregory the Great and St. Augustine of Canterbury, nothing has succeeded in de-Christianizing British society as effectively as has modern evolutionary agnostic secularism.

This is only a projection, it's not inevitable by any means. But it is what may happen if evolution is left unopposed. Evolution causes slow death to Faith. We see it all the time.

That's all fine.  But you have to deal with reality, and realize that reality is not going to conform itself to your desires.  You have to make intelligent arguments grounded in reality.  Otherwise you simply will not succeed, nor will you deserve to succeed.  Everyone will write you off as a crackpot, and they will be correct.

First of all, your diagnosis that "evolution" is THE cause for the current malaise is completely off base.  The entire conflict is being played out on a battlefield where religion cannot hope to win, and this is religion's fault.  It may win a few minor skirmishes, but it will lose the war.  This would be happening with or without evolution.  You could find a pre-Cambrian rabbit which would disprove evolution tomorrow and you would still lose.  Scientists would give up evolution and say (rightly) they were being scientific by doing so, just like they gave up phlogiston, Ptolemaic cosmology, and Newtonian physics (in the microworld).  Creationists would gloat about finally "evolutionist" myths were shattered once and for all, while scientists would say, look see science is actually self-correcting, contrary to the myths of how "dogmatic" we were.  But would everyone flock to Church the next day?  No.  Because, you see, religion (or philosophy) has to be actually right, not just prove science wrong on this or that thing.  And all it can do is talk about a God who fashions everything according to the dictates of His will, demands obedience from His creation, punishes severely those who fail to give it (or maybe not for the few lucky ones to whom He is merciful), and punishes the entire human race for the sin of one man, and so on, and should we dare complain about our situation, we are told it is because our intellects are so darkened that we cannot see clearly.  IOW, the entire debate has been completely contaminated with nominalism and voluntarism.  Even Protestants like Craig who make the fine-tuning argument, Kalam argument, etc., don't really believe in God.  They say they do, but they don't. They believe in an ultra-powerful entity, indeed, but not the ipsum esse subsistens of St. Thomas.  Once you give in to nominalism, materialism follows as a direct consequence, evolution or no.  If it isn't materialism it is the absurd Cartesian "ghost-in-the-machine" idea of a spirit and the only question is how far you can go in eliminating that as a necessity.

Second, get actually acquainted with the scientific evidence.  I did, both before and after becoming Catholic, and I have an advanced degree in science.  Maybe I know some of what I am talking about.  Some of it supports your case, but not all of it.  There's ample evidence that biology is not reducible to physics (e.g. that mere physical processes will not produce life out of inert matter), and that physical constants are in the very narrow range they need to be for life to form.  But there's also ample evidence that the earth is very old, that there was no global flood several thousand years ago, and that at least some of the different species on earth today descended from a common ancestor.  This is not a case of "interpretation" with "evolutionist" assumptions.  It is the case, period, and the first two of these were known in fact before Darwin.  If you refuse to admit this you are denying reality just as much as materialists.  You would like it to be the case, but it isn't, and pretending it is is mere wish-fulfillment.  Moreover, I wouldn't say it's absolutely absurd to believe in descent from a single pair of humans, but the weight of the genetic evidence is definitely not on that side of the issue.

Now, you might not care what the evidence actually says, but your intended audience does, and they will realize you are talking out of your a** when you tell them the evidence strongly supports a global flood.  They will dismiss you out of hand.  You, of course, will stomp away saying how they are biased by "evolutionary assumptions".  But tell me, exactly what assumptions are those and exactly are you going to convince them that they are wrong?

By analogy, quantum mechanics in physics is used by some to deny causality; it has virtual particles just popping in and out of existence in Feynman diagrams, and has radioactive decay events also proceeding without a physical cause, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and subsequent developments (Bell's experiment, etc.) seem to suggest a real ontological randomness in nature.  So let's also oppose quantum mechanics as just another tool invented by evolutionary, secular, materialist scientists to deny God.  Except you have to deal with the fact that quantum mechanics (electrodynamics anyway) is a spectacularly successful theory in terms of making predictions.  It can't be completely wrong.  But Thomistic philosophy doesn't really have a whole lot of convincing arguments against this.  All it can say is, causality must exist because it must, because it is a first principle.  It can't actually explain why an apparently acausal physical theory does such a good job of making predictions.  It pats itself on the back but hasn't answered the question.  That's because it, too, has succumbed to the idea of a "dictator" God.

Dr. Walt Brown has a really nice theory, Hydroplate theory, that seems like a perfect explanation of the science of creation and the flood. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html All these things will take years if not decades to study and master, the evolutionists rely precisely on that. In the meanwhile, they try to create doubts and uncertainties about fundamentals of the true Faith. For Christians, it is enough to know eminently well-qualified scientists have excellent responses to evolutionary claims.

How do you know this response is "excellent"?  (It isn't.)  You want something to hand-wave so you don't have to deal with the actual evidence.

[Quaremerepulisti]

The problem is that Evolution undermines the first book of the Bible (Genesis)..

And the response is, "too bad".  Reality sucks sometimes.  Deal with it.

The only way around this is to get Christianity to have a plausible "truth claim" again, and the only way to do that realistically is to get rid of the Evolutionist cosmology which has made a myth out of the Bible.

And how are you going to do that?  By telling scientists they don't know what they're talking about when they say can estimate the date of a lake?

[Xavier]

That's all fine.  But you have to deal with reality, and realize that reality is not going to conform itself to your desires.

That's all fine. But you have to deal with the reality that God created, and realize that reality formed by His desire is not going to conform itself to one's desires.

Look, Quare, mate, this is the fundamental area of disagreement between Christians who believe in creation and evolutionists - Christians consider the testimony of the Prophet Moses, whom God made an eyewitness of His creation, to be a real and the primary source for our knowledge of His creation. It's very clear from what you said above that they have a very different methodology. It considers even the dogma of two human parents to be open to doubt, question, change and perpetual flux. That is unfortunately a modernistic methodology and leads ultimately to unbelief in divine revelation. We believe without wavering that God created the whole human race from two first parents, because He has testified to it, and we know a priori before any scientific investigation, that the evidence, rightly interpreted, will confirm that conclusion. I notice you skipped over the parts explaining why Christians give an unwavering assent to all Christ testified to, knowing He is God.

John and Jayne said something similar, and they are right. That's why any other methodology will necessarily end in an impasse.

And btw, the petty insults of worldlings who have self-professed scorn or contempt for Christ matters less than nothing to me. It will be a mark of honor before the throne of God.

How do you know this response is "excellent"?

Because it covers very many ID arguments in depth and very convincingly in the first part. Did you even read it? Dr. Walt Brown is a very well qualified scientist and believes in creation. Why should I trust the evolutionists over him? I'm going through the second part now, and hydroplate theory shows much promise, is amply supported by evidence, and most important of all, appears to be in full conformity with the testimony of the Prophets and the Apostles, and that of God Himself. Why don't you write a detailed critique of it, if you find it lacking, especially the second part, which deals with flood science? We can discuss it in a new thread.

Also, some of the best scientists in history have been creation scientists, and historically long before the case of Galileo which secularists misunderstand, the great universities of Christian Europe, with the enthusiastic support of the Papacy, built the most scientifically minded civilization snd the monasteries contributed the most to rapid technological advancement. There is no conflict between true religion and true science. Evolution is false science and also a false heathen religion that claims monkeys are responsible for our existence. God has testified He did not need monkeys to create us. He said it. We believe it. That settles it.

"Pius IX. The year after the publication of Darwin's evolution thesis, the Provincial Council of Cologne issued the following canon, which was approved by Pope Pius IX:

"Our first parents were immediately created by God (Gen.2.7). Therefore we declare as quite contrary to Holy Scripture and the Faith the opinion of those who dare to assert that man, in respect of the body, is derived by spontaneous transformation from an imperfect nature, which improved continually until it reached the present human state." [10]"

http://www.theotokos.org.uk/pages/creation/cbutel/humanevo.html

[Greg]

Here is the problem Xavier.  A lot of people with your types of views are demonstrably idiots.  They refuse to consider rational, well reasoned, counter arguments and objective evidence because they think they have access to some secret knowledge or the truth is much simpler than it actually is.  They don't know, what they don't know.

They repeatedly demonstrate that they don't think very deeply at all, and once that is demonstrated, then nothing they say is take too seriously.  Just as we don't take some Californian airhead/bimbo seriously.  Nobody has the time to waste time on the cretinous ramblings of people who don't know what they are talking about.




We know from well conducted studies that many stupid people think they are clever.  They are not objective at judging how little they actually know.  Clever people tend to underestimate their cleverness whilst stupid people substantially overestimate theirs.

I will give you a real life example of this.  The owner of another Traditional Catholic website/forum had a Traditional Catholic education and then self-trained as a computer developer.  He has very strong opinions on things.  For example, he has "examined the evidence" and claims that the moon landings were faked by NASA.

One day he posted on his Internet forum about how a water supply pipe had burst and he was facing a water bill for tens of thousands of dollars.   Since he was responsible for the supply pipe from the road and lived on his smallholding and the water had leaked onto his land, he was liable to pay and the water company (he had called a rep) said there was little they could do.

I think he claimed $90,000 but it was enough money to really send him into a terrible panic and he might have to sell his family home.  The other forum members all started saying prayers for him and sympathizing and claiming how evil and unforgiving big corporations were.

I wasn't unsympathetic.  Sudden bills like that are horrible and he is a father of a Catholic brood like myself.

But I turned a piece of paper over on my desk and worked out what $90,000 of leaked water would look like over a month or two period.  Find the volume of water and then calculated the cube root of it.   It took me about 2 mins and 1 more minute to check my decimal points were in the right place.  My 13 year old could do this.

Turns out it is a fairly large and deep lake as my instinct told me it would be.  Like 6 Olympic swimming pools in size and depth.  That much water could not possibly leak unnoticed onto his relatively small piece of land in Texas.  Somewhere on his property between his home and the road, would be terribly flooded, unless he lived on porous soil over some giant cave system, but then he would have a huge hole on depression in his yard.  Besides that, the flow rate from a domestic water supply is simply is not fast enough to supply that much water in the time he claimed that the pipe was broken.

This is basic common sense and basic arithmetic and googling free and easy to find data about water prices in Texas.

Once he looked like a complete prick, he deleted the thread, because he is like that.  He deletes lots of threads over there.  I was pretty merciless in mocking him for panicking like an old woman and not being able to read his own water meter, but suffice it to say, I solved the problem for him.  His real water bill was a few hundred dollars more than he thought it was.  Annoying, but nothing that needed a begging letter.

Now... does such a person have anywhere near the intellectual, mathematical, scientific or engineering knowledge to decide that NASA is incapable of sending manned missions to the moon, and rather it faked them?

I would say no.  Because I don't have that knowledge, not even close, and yet I am a lot smarter than that dumbass and had the intelligence and common sense to understand that $90,000 of water was a huge amount of water.