On the morality of evolution

[Lord Thesaurian]

Intelligent design is rejected by the Vatican and mainstream science. To the point of the discussion in response to Grudem’s video, we’re talking about the Christian God, not deism. The idea that God is a generic kind of Prime Mover would, as I said, seem to negate basic tenets of Christianity (God actively created everything from nothing in a state of eternal perfection, until sin and death emerged as a direct consequence of sin committed by the first human couple, made by God in his image) to fit scientific consensus, in much the same way YEC negates basic science to fit religious doctrine.

[basics]

Lord Thesaurian,

Our existence is built into the story about God as it unfolds. Where God is there is no darkness and so for the sake of the story He made and called it Heaven inside which was a water covered planet called earth. So scientifically we had time, the beginning, space, the heaven, and matter, the earth. What is unscientific about that? As for the papacy, it certainly is not Christian as anyone who reads the Bible can see. Sin and death are only part of the story the prime objective being to glorify God for His part in it.

[conon394]

Our existence is built into the story about God as it unfolds. Where God is there is no darkness and so for the sake of the story He made and called it Heaven inside which was a water covered planet called earth. So scientifically we had time, the beginning, space, the heaven, and matter, the earth. What is unscientific about that?

More or less everything is unscientific and its a creation story no better than average really out the lot you could pick from.

As for the papacy, it certainly is not Christian as anyone who reads the Bible can see. Sin and death are only part of the story the prime objective being to glorify God for His part in it.

Not every Christian has been or is a Paul->Augustine-> Calvinist. There are many who see a very different Christianity.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Lord Thesaurian,

Our existence is built into the story about God as it unfolds. Where God is there is no darkness and so for the sake of the story He made and called it Heaven inside which was a water covered planet called earth. So scientifically we had time, the beginning, space, the heaven, and matter, the earth. What is unscientific about that? As for the papacy, it certainly is not Christian as anyone who reads the Bible can see. Sin and death are only part of the story the prime objective being to glorify God for His part in it.

I would say there’s no reason Catholic people who express genuine faith shouldn’t be considered Christians. The fundamental difference with Protestants is that Rome asserts her own authority over that of Scripture, which is how she’s able to establish doctrine which contradicts Scripture to suit her own purposes, not the least of which pertains to theistic evolution, monotheism, dogmatic authority and the nature of salvation.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

Claiming Catholicism as not being “real Christian” is absolutely absurd

[Sir Adrian]

Once again, the church predates the scripture by 300 years. Representatives of the bishop of Rome participated in writing the scripture. Claiming that Rome uses her own authority over that of the scripture is as stupid as claiming Tolkien used his own authority over that of the Lord of the Rings.

Jesus was very clear when he said the gates of hell cannot triumph against His church, meaning there is no time when the real church of Christ was wrong.

Intelligent design is rejected by the Vatican

This is false.

[Lord Thesaurian]

First Paul and Basil, now Fr. George Coyne and Pope Francis are heretics now too? How is it you have the inside scoop on who the heretics are before anyone else? A bit sus if you ask me.

Jesus referenced the Bible all the time so it’s not true there was no Bible, no matter how many times it’s repeated. Also, the Romans ended up canonizing a Greek translation of the OT instead of the Hebrew original, so by their own account the Bible already existed long enough for it to get translated for them to use and add to. As for authority, there’s no ambiguity in Catholicism on who is right when the Pope and Scripture conflict. Spoiler: it’s not the Bible.

For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.

The Church's Magisterium asserts that it exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging Catholics to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

[basics]

[QUOTE=Sir Adrian;16079700]Once again, the church predates the scripture by 300 years. Representatives of the bishop of Rome participated in writing the scripture. Claiming that Rome uses her own authority over that of the scripture is as stupid as claiming Tolkien used his own authority over that of the Lord of the Rings.

Jesus was very clear when he said the gates of hell cannot triumph against His church, meaning there is no time when the real church of Christ was wrong.

Sir Adrian,

When Peter replied that " Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, " that was the Rock upon which the church would be built and that is the Rock that the gates of Hell cannot triumph against. That church is made of all them that are born again of the Spirit of God for no-one else can enter heaven.

[Sir Adrian]

Yes and if the message of Christ is true and eternal then there can be no point in history when the true church was in error because that would that the message of Christ was at one point lost.

First Paul and Basil, now Fr. George Coyne and Pope Francis are heretics now too? How is it you have the inside scoop on who the heretics are before anyone else? A bit sus if you ask me.

Jesus referenced the Bible all the time so it’s not true there was no Bible, no matter how many times it’s repeated. Also, the Romans ended up canonizing a Greek translation of the OT instead of the Hebrew original, so by their own account the Bible already existed long enough for it to get translated for them to use and add to. As for authority, there’s no ambiguity in Catholicism on who is right when the Pope and Scripture conflict. Spoiler: it’s not the Bible.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[basics]

Sir Adrian,

Christ's words about His church are perfectly true, the problem as Paul and the others wrote of was that churches were being led astray from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is seen today as never before.

[sumskilz]

The following seems more on-topic here than it was in the thread I pulled it from...

Along those lines, I wonder if I’m correct in supposing the traditional Jewish reading of the Genesis account culminates in a kind of Spinoza’s God, that is, to know God is to know the culmination of all natural and supernatural processes that resulted in the existence of his “first born child,” Israel. I’m not sure how the individual personhood of God as a parent who created humans to solve his loneliness - the “why” - fits into the “how,” but I probably misunderstand it.

https://rabbisacks.org/faith-lecture...-we-come-from/

Spinoza's ideas about God were largely derived from a common conception in Jewish tradition. It requires knowledge of Hebrew to see its connection to the biblical text. The word ᵓêl, which is usually translated as "god", is a force, so the Canaanite gods were ᵓêlim (plural). The Canaanite gods were anthropomorphized and/or metaphorical representations of the forces of nature. As is seemingly universal in early human religions, they were a product of inferred agency. For example, someone must cause the storms, and if so, maybe there is some way to win his favor and perhaps influence him. The word ᵓĕlōhîm is usually translated as "God" or "gods" depending on grammatical context. As a plural, it's more like "gods" as a concept. It's an abstract and indefinite plural. As a singular, it is "god of gods" or "force of forces". That is the force behind all the forces of nature, but also God in the monotheistic sense.

The biblical texts stand witness to a development from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism. In this progression, the conception begins with competing agencies behind each of the forces of nature and ends with a conception of all creation having a single source. This was a theological development that was supported and promoted (at various times) by the kings of Judah, at least in part because it benefitted them politically. As in other religions and at other times, it's probably safe to assume that there were differences between how the theologians thought and how the common people understood their ideas.

In addition to ᵓĕlōhîm, there is also the personal name of God (Yahweh), which is a verb. It's the the past tense continuous causative form of "to be", so a combination of "has caused to be", "causes to be", and "will cause to be". Arguably, God in this sense is a process, but if you had to imagine the meaning as a noun, it would be causality.

However, the rabbis noticed in the biblical text that when God was interacting with humanity in a personal way, the name Yahweh was used. Whereas when God was manifested as the forces of nature, ᵓĕlōhîm was used. This led to the adoption by many (but not all) Jews of a panentheist conception of God. Essentially, ᵓĕlōhîm was synonymous with the forces of nature or the universe, whereas Yahweh was the first cause, causality, and the personal God. A variant of this view is what Rabbi Sacks is expressing in the above link.

Borrowing from what I've written about Spinoza elsewhere:

The language Spinoza uses sounds pantheist because the Jewish community he was from had a panentheist conception of God. The name Yahweh past tense continuous causative form of "to be". Keep that in mind, when you read Spinoza writing "That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists". In the Kabbalistic conception of God, the Ein Sof is the one aspect of God that is not in some way synonymous with the universe. The Ein Sof is the infinite.

There are many correspondences between Spinoza thought and the writings of the kabbalist Abraham Cohen de Herrera. For example:

This oneness is described by Herrera as the nature of the Ein Sof, which would entail the view that everything is one in God and moreover that God is one inasmuch as he is infinite and many inasmuch as he manifests himself in being. In this view, the essence of the world is nothing other than the revealed aspect of God. As Spinoza would later argue in his Ethics, this God, i.e., the Ein Sof, therefore remains the immanent cause of all things. Assuming this pan(en)theistic view of the Ein Sof in the Puerta, Dunin-Borkowski adds that what the Kabbalists teach concerning the one-and-all is an age-old philosophical heritage. This is what Spinoza would have recognized in Kabbalah and referred to in a letter to Henry Oldenburg as a tradition of the ancient Hebrews that he acknowledges.

https://brill.com/view/journals/jjtp...ml?language=en

The big difference between Spinoza and his community wasn’t regarding this conception, it was that Spinoza believed that which is called God doesn’t want anything, it just is.

A view more like that of Spinoza's than that of Rabbi Sacks' in not uncommon in the non-Orthodox Jewish movements, and not unheard of among Orthodox Jews, but of course it leaves open the question of what then is special about Judaism or Jewish morality.

Mordecai Kaplan's concept of transnaturalism as an alternative to supernaturalism represents an attempt to address this:

Transnaturalism is that extension of naturalism which takes into account much that mechanistic or materialistic or positivistic science is incapable of dealing with. Transnaturalism reaches out into the domain where mind, personality, purpose, ideals, values and meanings dwell. It treats of the good and the true. Whether or not it has a distinct logic of its own is problematic. But it certainly has a language of its own, the language of simile, metaphor and poetry. That is the language of symbol, myth and drama. In that universe of discourse, belief in God spells trust in life and man, as capable of transcending the potentialities of evil that inhere in his animal heredity, in his social heritage, and in the conditions of his environment. Transnaturalist religion beholds God in the fulfillment of human nature and not in the suspension of the natural order. Its function is not to help man overcome the hazards of nature, but to enable him to bring under control his inhumanity to his fellow man.

But mostly, Judaism just isn't that concerned with belief. Rabbi Sacks addressed that in the link - emūnah does not mean "faith", it means "faithfulness" or "loyalty".

[basics]

I get inspired by men like RC Sproul and James White who know their latin, Greek and Hebrew enough to confirm what I have learned out of the Scriptures and am still learning. I honestly can't even remember when I first heard of evolution in the Darwinian sense.

[conon394]

I get inspired by men like RC Sproul and James White who know their latin, Greek and Hebrew enough to confirm what I have learned out of the Scriptures and am still learning. I honestly can't even remember when I first heard of evolution in the Darwinian sense.

Really know how pick some winners there who went to schools I never heard of and spent their entire life more or less not challenged on their views or academics.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

What do you expect, if you can be a priest, after you have paid 10,00 Dollars online?

[Flinn]

What do you expect, if you can be a priest, after you have paid 10,00 Dollars online?

I got my certificate of Ordained Dudeist Priest for free, juts saying.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I would not expect something else from relaxed Dudes.

[Akar]

I also became an ordained minister for free, I forget through which church though.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Spinoza's ideas about God were largely derived from a common conception in Jewish tradition. It requires knowledge of Hebrew to see its connection to the biblical text. The word ᵓêl, which is usually translated as "god", is a force, so the Canaanite gods were ᵓêlim (plural). The Canaanite gods were anthropomorphized and/or metaphorical representations of the forces of nature. As is seemingly universal in early human religions, they were a product of inferred agency. For example, someone must cause the storms, and if so, maybe there is some way to win his favor and perhaps influence him. The word ᵓĕlōhîm is usually translated as "God" or "gods" depending on grammatical context. As a plural, it's more like "gods" as a concept. It's an abstract and indefinite plural. As a singular, it is "god of gods" or "force of forces". That is the force behind all the forces of nature, but also God in the monotheistic sense.

The biblical texts stand witness to a development from polytheism to henotheism to monotheism. In this progression, the conception begins with competing agencies behind each of the forces of nature and ends with a conception of all creation having a single source. This was a theological development that was supported and promoted (at various times) by the kings of Judah, at least in part because it benefitted them politically. As in other religions and at other times, it's probably safe to assume that there were differences between how the theologians thought and how the common people understood their ideas.

In addition to ᵓĕlōhîm, there is also the personal name of God (Yahweh), which is a verb. It's the the past tense continuous causative form of "to be", so a combination of "has caused to be", "causes to be", and "will cause to be". Arguably, God in this sense is a process, but if you had to imagine the meaning as a noun, it would be causality.

However, the rabbis noticed in the biblical text that when God was interacting with humanity in a personal way, the name Yahweh was used. Whereas when God was manifested as the forces of nature, ᵓĕlōhîm was used. This led to the adoption by many (but not all) Jews of a panentheist conception of God. Essentially, ᵓĕlōhîm was synonymous with the forces of nature or the universe, whereas Yahweh was the first cause, causality, and the personal God. A variant of this view is what Rabbi Sacks is expressing in the above link.

I would agree that the misunderstanding of Spinoza as pantheist or atheist comes from a misunderstanding of the themes that informed his view of God. I don’t know enough about the Kabbalah to make connections but am I correct to understand this lack of personal agency in Spinoza’s God, what got him into hot water, as a nod to the pre-monotheistic concept of El? By which I mean God as a supreme and creative but otherwise passive force in the world. If I’m not mistaken, it’s this lack of personal agency that periodically sidelined El in favor of Baal and other local gods, depicted in the Bible through the Israelites’ periods of favor and disfavor from the true God.

Taking that perspective further, the invasions and captivity that left Judah as the surviving Jewish state meant Judah’s El merged with elements of Israel’s Yahweh brought by refugees, where these had previously been distinct local gods. Jews got their creation/flood myths from their Babylonian captors and monotheism under El/Yahweh emerged as a backlash against perceived religious assimilation. My rudimentary understanding of the subject probably makes that an oversimplification, but I guess I’m wondering if Jewish panentheism emerged as an amalgamation of all these influences?

Borrowing from what I've written about Spinoza elsewhere:

The language Spinoza uses sounds pantheist because the Jewish community he was from had a panentheist conception of God. The name Yahweh past tense continuous causative form of "to be". Keep that in mind, when you read Spinoza writing "That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists". In the Kabbalistic conception of God, the Ein Sof is the one aspect of God that is not in some way synonymous with the universe. The Ein Sof is the infinite.

There are many correspondences between Spinoza thought and the writings of the kabbalist Abraham Cohen de Herrera. For example:

The big difference between Spinoza and his community wasn’t regarding this conception, it was that Spinoza believed that which is called God doesn’t want anything, it just is.

A view more like that of Spinoza's than that of Rabbi Sacks' in not uncommon in the non-Orthodox Jewish movements, and not unheard of among Orthodox Jews, but of course it leaves open the question of what then is special about Judaism or Jewish morality.

Mordecai Kaplan's concept of transnaturalism as an alternative to supernaturalism represents an attempt to address this:

Do you know of any connection between Spinoza or his influences and the Sabbateans? My casual understanding of Spinoza’s early life makes him seem like an aspiring Kabbalist, Herrera and Zevi both took inspiration from Luria if I recall correctly, and there are certain parallels with Spinoza’s modes. I would imagine the concept of an impersonal God who doesn’t want anything to be as controversial for the superiority of Jewish law/morality as the idea God’s law, as written instructions for what he wants, has been nullified. Transnatural theology as a reconciliation seems as inherently reverse engineered as the god of the gaps, but I don’t know enough about it to suppose the consistency it seeks between God and the natural order isn’t more proactive than that. My biggest source of confusion with the idea that God exists within or is the natural order itself might be why God is therefore a necessary explanation for anything under that premise.

[basics]

If anyone wants to know God then anyone can find Him in the Bible for within that Book lies the power of God not only to salvation but a deeper knowledge of Who He is and how Majestic He is to anything that exists. Oh men may well try to diminish His power but in the end all fail, why? Because they really don't know God at all. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life to know God and the only way.

[sumskilz]

I would agree that the misunderstanding of Spinoza as pantheist or atheist comes from a misunderstanding of the themes that informed his view of God. I don’t know enough about the Kabbalah to make connections but am I correct to understand this lack of personal agency in Spinoza’s God, what got him into hot water, as a nod to the pre-monotheistic concept of El? By which I mean God as a supreme and creative but otherwise passive force in the world. If I’m not mistaken, it’s this lack of personal agency that periodically sidelined El in favor of Baal and other local gods, depicted in the Bible through the Israelites’ periods of favor and disfavor from the true God.

I doubt anyone in Spinoza’s time knew about El, most of what we know comes texts that were discovered archaeologically. Canaanite El was depicted anthropomorphically, but he was distant, in that it was his children that acted in the world, each representing particular forces of nature.

Taking that perspective further, the invasions and captivity that left Judah as the surviving Jewish state meant Judah’s El merged with elements of Israel’s Yahweh brought by refugees, where these had previously been distinct local gods. Jews got their creation/flood myths from their Babylonian captors and monotheism under El/Yahweh emerged as a backlash against perceived religious assimilation. My rudimentary understanding of the subject probably makes that an oversimplification, but I guess I’m wondering if Jewish panentheism emerged as an amalgamation of all these influences?

The historical narrative you’re piecing together here comes from various hypotheses I’m pretty sure are wrong in one way or another.

In the Late Bronze Age, El (whose name is simply God) was the head of the pantheon throughout Canaan. He was the father god, the creator god, who was wise, compassionate, and eternal. His consort was the mother goddess Asherah.

The earliest certain mention of Yahweh is a Ninth Century BCE stele commemorating Mesha the king of Moab’s victory against Israel during the reign of Ahab. In it, Yahweh is presented as the god of the Israelites. Inscriptions from Kuntillet ᶜAjrud and Khirbet al-Qom refer to “Yahweh and his Asherah”, “Yahweh of Samaria”, and “Yahweh of Teman”. Samaria is both the heartland and capital city of the Kingdom of Israel. Teman means the south.

The popular hypothesis is that the conception of the monotheistic God grew out of a fusion of El the Canaanite father/creator god and Yahweh the national god of the Israelites. However, Psalms 118:27 refers to El-Yahweh. This can be interpreted as “El [who] causes to be”, which suggests the possibility that name Yahweh simply began as one of El’s epithets. Likewise, we know from 2 Kings 23:6–8 that until sometime in the reign of Josiah (c. 640–609 BCE), Asherah (El’s consort) was venerated in the Temple of Yahweh, consistent with the extrabiblical sources mentioning “Yahweh and his Asherah”. Throughout the Bible, one of the most important Israelite shrines to Yahweh was at Bethel, that is Bēṯ ᵓĒl meaning “The House of El” or the “The Temple of El”.

The reforms under Josiah were wholly monotheistic before the Babylonian Exile. There were probably parallel versions of the Mesopotamian creation/flood myths in Canaan before the exile, and the Babylonian exile wouldn’t have been the first opportunity for Judahites to have been exposed to Babylonian literature. Nevertheless, several myths which appear in Genesis demonstrate clear engagement with Mesopotamian stories, as in the texts author(s) appear to expect the reader to be familiar with them, so that the way they were reworked can be seen as a polemic.

Returning to Jewish panentheism and its source, I would say that its largely derived from interpreting the Hebrew Bible through the lens of Greek philosophy.

Do you know of any connection between Spinoza or his influences and the Sabbateans? My casual understanding of Spinoza’s early life makes him seem like an aspiring Kabbalist, Herrera and Zevi both took inspiration from Luria if I recall correctly, and there are certain parallels with Spinoza’s modes. I would imagine the concept of an impersonal God who doesn’t want anything to be as controversial for the superiority of Jewish law/morality as the idea God’s law, as written instructions for what he wants, has been nullified.

Yes, keeping in mind Judaism’s concern is primarily about what people do rather than what they believe, it was presumably the implication that there is no reason to consider Jewish law binding that was the real problem.

Not really my area of expertise, but as I recall, Sabbateans were influenced by Luria, but also Christianity. Some Sephardi Jews who had spent time as nominal Catholics, despite not becoming true believers, were nevertheless influenced by Christian ideas about what a Messiah should be.

Transnatural theology as a reconciliation seems as inherently reverse engineered as the god of the gaps, but I don’t know enough about it to suppose the consistency it seeks between God and the natural order isn’t more proactive than that. My biggest source of confusion with the idea that God exists within or is the natural order itself might be why God is therefore a necessary explanation for anything under that premise.

The term “god of the gaps” refers to seeing God as the explanation for that which has not yet been explained by science, which leaves an ever shrinking space for the explanatory power of God. Kaplan was referring to those things that science simply cannot address. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of right and wrong, no scientific evidence for human rights, and there never can be. Science can offer explanations for why our species develops moral systems, but it can never confirm or falsify the inherent value or accuracy of any particular moral proposition.

Kaplan was writing in the 1950s, at that time, many of the Jewish movements had been moving toward embracing a worldview based on strict scientific materialism. Yet, the issue with that position is that it leads to the logical conclusion that there is nothing inherently better about Jewish traditions and morality than the beliefs espoused by the Nazis. But of course that isn’t what Jews believe, so the term transnatural theology was meant to be descriptive, not explanatory. It’s a description of a belief, not a justification for believing it, and a recognition that no justification can be found within the confines of strict naturalism.