[Dolores de Barriga]

Re: Hi

Science does not yet have it's official answer, so please let it continue it's investigation and see what it comes up with as a final thesis (if we see it while we're alive).

Have you ever heard of DNA? It's a thing in your body which you inherit from your parents, and - together with the environment and epigenetics - it decides things like the color of your eyes and what diseases you'll develop in life. We share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and we share 90% of our DNA with rats. Given that hominid groups were interbreeding freely, and therefore there is no single hominid Adam and Eve, we would have to search earlier than that for a single couple ancestor of all humans - an early rat, maybe?

Monogenism is necessary to the doctrine of original sin, therefore the Church will always affirm it. And ultimately, it is the truth. Monogenism is also held by some modern biologists to be a very credible hypothesis. Anyways, not sure I see your point here.

Biological monogenism is different from religious monogenism. Idea that we descend from a single group of hominids is hypothetically possible. Idea tha we descend from a single couple is not.

Ratzinger cannot "know and believe"? What does that mean exactly? I "believe" my father when he tells me he played hockey as a kid. I am sure that my father would not lie to me in such a vulgar way, for no reason at all. Therefore, since I judge that he is credible and tells the truth, I KNOW he played hockey when he was a kid.

You seem to have a great faith in your father, but no, if you haven't seen pictures of him playing hockey then you don't really know. News flash: parents often lie to their kids, embellishing their own past.

"Believing" is just one of the many possible ways to acquire knowledge, it is not the opposite of knowledge...

Here is the dictionary definition of believe: http://i.word.com/idictionary/believe
... and know: http://i.word.com/idictionary/know

Basically, knowing requires some sort of evidence. Ratzinger obviously isn't trusting scientific evidence, but he isn't trusting the Bible as evidence, either - otherwise he would say that Adam and Eve were created by God from mud during the first week of the existence of the universe, period.

[Basilissa]

Re: Hi

Oh come on don't bring up that ridiculous media BS. Pope Francis has not changed nor has any intention of changing a single word from the church's traditionnal teaching.

All that hype about communion for the divorced, gay acceptance etc. is just things that journalists and the media use to bait you into thinking the church is on a sudden changing binge after 2000+years of unaltered authentic teaching.....yeah right....

Oh, so are you saying that the Catholic Church did support divorce and gay acceptance for the last two millenia? Now I'm really confused, dear!

You have no rebuttal right? You know very well that it is the Holy Catholic Church that has fixed the canon of the Original Bible, and that your belief in the Bible is in fact an apology of the Church!

Please read about the differences between Catholic and Protestant Bibles before you make such statements.

And please don't talk to me about hate, people here think torturing your children is a good deed.....I subscribed to this forum only because of the sheer amount of hate I found in here. People saying torturing children is good, Pastors telling people they have demons in their rectum, and I know you approve of all that. So you are filled with hate. Me, I came here out of compassion, hoping that you stray away from your God-forsaken pagan church.

How is following the Bible pagan, exactly?

And what about the argument about the thousands of branches of protestantism? About the authority of the baptist church? Are you purposefully ignoring all of that?

No. We do, however, despise all the groups that do not follow the Holy Bible 100%. Like your church, for example.

The CEO? JESUS made him CEO don't you get it? He gave Peter the KEYS. Read matthew 16 please. And you can read through the New Testament while you're at it, they do name a successor for Peter and he does have his authority, and this has been done up to today, and Pope Francis now has those KEYS.

What exactly does make you think that popes are the successors of Peter? Because that part is not in the Bible. In fact, at the beginning of Christianity, the bishops of five dioceses (Antiochia, Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria) held equal power. The bishops of Rome invented their interpretation of themselves as Peter's successors. Obviously, the other bishops did not agree with that interpretation, which is why the Catholic Church decided to separate from the Orthodox Church.

Heliocentrism is NOT against the Bible. That is why in front of the very strong evidence of its truth, the church accepted it.

1 Chronicles 16:30. Psalm 104:5. Daniel 4:10-11. Revelation 7:1. This is just a small selection, or do I need to cite all of them?

THIS DOES NOT MATTER. The church is infallible ONLY in matters of FAITH and MORALS, as teaches the holy Council of Vatican (the first one).

How do you decide which are which? Cherry pickers!

Creationnism is compatible with evolution. It just means that god created things gradually and beautifully in time, he didn't just make everything we know of today pop out magically as is. Don't you see that the big bang and evolution are just God's tools to make the word? And how it does NOT deny God's great creative action that brought us into being?

No, no, and no. Evolution says that change is blindly random: 90% of mutations don't mean anything, a few prove to be beneficiary, a few are bad. For an omnipotent God, it's a very inefficient way to make stuff.

However, even though science and natural laws are not in the Church's jurisdiction, it happens that "things cross over". For example, it is an infallible catholic doctrine that there are 2 FIRST HUMANS, ADAM AND EVE. So even though the church has no authority on Biology, saying we have MANY "first parents" contradicts the faith, and therefore the Church's authority extends to this biological truth, even though at first glance it seems out of her magisterium.

So.... you accepting the Bible whenever it suits your ideas, and you reject it whenever it doesn't.

Have you tried to open your mind, like, ever?

And as I already mentionned, Ratzinger refers to populations of HOMINIDS. This is obvious, because he goes on to mention the direct infusion of the Soul by god into the human body; what he is referring to before that are Hominids, being who physically ressemble humans but that have not yet received the Immortal Soul. God infused Adam and Eve with a Soul, and from them all Humanity descended, and we have all inherited Original Sin for we have descended from them.

Is this clearer?

Yes. It's very clear that you are a cherry-picker.

From what that Dolores-whatever says, science rejects the idea of a single couple. Which means, that in this case, you reject science and stick to the Bible. Which does not prevent you from rejecting the Bible and sticking to science in other cases.

Could you please just stick to one thing consistently? I think I'm going to have a headache.

The church's moral teachings say the use of any contraception is a GRAVE OFFENSE. So no, true catholics do not use condoms, do not have premarital sex. We believe it is wrong to masturbate, to lie, to steal.....we believe in the commandments of God.

.... except for the one about graven images (Exodus 20:4), right, dear?

Creation theology is in no way contradictory to evolution and the Big Bang. You think it is so because you read the Bible LITERALLY.

Creation implies a Creator. Big Bang makes the Creator unnecesary. You were saying...?

But when confromted with John 6:55 you pathetically argue that it is "Symbolic". What a shame. THAT is cognitive dissonance.

Oh, so you actually believe that you eat human meat and drink human blood during mass? That's so gross! I believe it's called cannibalism!

[Mary Etheldreda]

Re: Hi

And as I already mentionned, Ratzinger refers to populations of HOMINIDS. This is obvious, because he goes on to mention the direct infusion of the Soul by god into the human body; what he is referring to before that are Hominids, being who physically ressemble humans but that have not yet received the Immortal Soul. God infused Adam and Eve with a Soul, and from them all Humanity descended, and we have all inherited Original Sin for we have descended from them.

Is this clearer?

No, it sounds like Benny was trying to placate the liberal Catholics by suggesting they can have their evolutionary cake and eat it, too. Why on earth would God behave in such a way that not only directly contradicts the Words He Himself Divinely Inspired to be written into the Holy Bible, but also directly contradicts the very principles of evolution He supposedly created? Why would God create such an evolutionary sloppy design on purpose if He is a not a God of disorder, but one of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33)? Why would He create such an existence that gives the appearance of His being either cruel and capricious, or of being completely impotent with regards to following His own evolutionary design?

This is all very silly, and you might want to familiarize yourself with the hypothesis of evolution before pretending it works theologically.

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Hi

And not only Darwin's hypothesis!

You strayed away from your mother the Church

Ever heard of pope Leo IX? The great schism? It was the Romish heretics who strayed (according to orthodoxy).

Read about it here, and I will include a quote:

The Great Schism, also known as the East-West Schism, was the event that divided "Chalcedonian" Christianity into Western (Roman) Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Though normally dated to 1054, when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other, the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between the two bodies of churches. The primary causes of the Schism were disputes over papal authority -- the Roman Pope claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs, while the four eastern patriarchs claimed that the primacy of the Patriarch of Rome was only honorary, and thus he had authority only over Western Christians -- and over the insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. There were other, less significant catalysts for the Schism, including variance over liturgical practices and conflicting claims of jurisdiction.

You continued:

free-roaming, lost children, amassing into tribes that you call "churches" yet between you there is no true unity.

The differences between so-called orthodox groups, "tribes" I suppose you'd call them, and assorted catholic traditions like Eastern catholicism (as distinct from Eastern orthodoxy) interspersed with black popes and anti-popes and every hallmark of falsehood enable you to pick out a single line I suppose. And you can label that the "true" line. But there others who trace a different path from the same mess and label that the genuine route to Salvation. Some blaspheme by calling one another "Father" in direct contravention of a Scripture requiring no interpretation at all, others make themselves idols and bow dow to them, against in that case the Ten Commandments no less! "Oh, we're not worshipping the thing," they say and although I don't believe them it is quite immaterial since it's the bowing that's prohibited not just the making.

Matthew 23:9
[Jesus speaking] And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. KJV
[Jesus speaking] You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. JERUSALEM BIBLE
[Jesus speaking] And call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven. DOUAY-RHEIMS

When attempting to refute this, Catholic Answers delivers the most over-complicated chunk of labyrinthine prose I've encountered for some time with so many caveats and exemptions as to render the really quite simple instruction from Jesus completely meaningless.

There are probably more orthodox patriarchs than popes.

I'm assuming you know where to find the 10 Commandments. Here are the sources for Matthew:

Authorized Version (KJV)
Jerusalem Bible ©1966
Douay-Rheims

More here, including some comments from Augustine 410 AD.

Slice it where you like, all you get is baloney.