Where Conservative Christians Go Wrong
Dear Fred,
Almost always, we believe what we believe.
And the more a person becomes convinced of his beliefs the more intransigent s/he become.
The only hope in all this is science.
Friend Byron likes to say: "The Scientific Method is the only mechanism humans have which reveals truth by trying to prove that postulates -- and preliminary findings -- are wrong."
Utilitarians that gringos are, we tend to think of Science narrowly: it is "the motherlode" from which we "mine" techonology.
In this view, Science is The Source of Gizmos.
In the American mind, science is ultimately about practicality, not theology... and n'er the twain shall meet.
"Better living through chemistry!"
However, as I see it, the scientific method is an exquisite epistemological device adumbrated by Thomas Aquinas who (as you may tire of hearing) said we must take sensory evidence as far as we can and -- at that point -- faith begins.
I think Aquinas would have changed his theological mind about female fetuses being "en-souled" later than males during the embryological process because contemporary science would have persuaded him of what his senses could not see in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
Ensoulment
Wikipedia
Did St. Thomas Aquinas believe ensoulment occurred 40 or 80 days after conception, making abortion permissible until then?
Even more importantly, Aquinas said sensory knowledge and divine knowledge cannot be in conflict because God-Summum-Bonum-Truth is the orgin of both and since God is good, what emerges from God is good.
Compendium Of Pax Posts On Thomas Aquinas
Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible."
"Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" by John Freely
Notably, in Aquinas' view, The Natural Order is the touchstone to which our understanding of The Divine must correspond.
In effect, our understanding of The Divine is backchecked by comparing it with what we DO know -- sensorially -- about The Natural Order.
Most Christians -- and probably most believers in any faith system -- put it the other way around, positing theological premises "out of the blue," then making phenomenal reality correspond to that sheer conjecture.
Pax tecum
Alan
On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 1:21 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
RF and Laura Wood need to talk to each other about Sandy Hook --- too strange for me
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