Easter Is Coming in 8 Weeks

Quote: FrGamble

I'm so sorry you were taught over and over in school that the Church was an impediment to the advance of science because it is blatantly false. It must have been awkward in your science classes when they talked about the monk Gregor Mendel or Rev. Nicolaus Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, Msgr. Lematrie, and Fr. Roger Boscavich.

Did you ever hear about Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno?

BTW Mendel never published his findings. We'd be a bit farther along in genetics if he had.

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Please remember that one of the fundamental teachings of the Church is that the world is created with laws and order by God and therefore can be studied.

There are laws by which the universe works, yes. But it's anything except ordered. All purely physical, as opposed to volitional, processes are the result of random interactions at every level. This so well documented it's barely worth bringing it up.

And before someone objects that our world is perfectly suited to us: 1) it got to be the way it is now only after billions of years. At one time it was dust and small pebbles, hardly an ideal environment. 2) how many of you need to wear clothes every day? We require protection from this world so suited to us.

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The fact that the universe is ordered and follows establish laws and is worthy of study comes from a belief in God.

No, it doesn't. There are as many reasons to want to study the universe as there are people studying the universe.

Evenbob, I’d like to challenge you to at least reference your sources in the future as your last post was a direct copy from a paragraph from Vatileaks website a virulent anti-Catholic website that is all about hate and should not be taken seriously by any reasonable person truly seeking truth. Here is a smattering of quotes from well-respected historians and theologians:

Quote: Dr. Peter Kreeft

The classic Protestant suspicion is that Catholics fear the Bible; that the Church forbade the laity to read it for centuries because if that had been allowed, people would have seen how unscriptural Catholic doctrines were. This is simply untrue, of course, but is still widely believed among Protestants. The belief is declining, though, in the face of the strong encouragement by Vatican II and all recent Popes to Catholic laity to read Scripture regularly. This has done more to win Protestant respect than perhaps anything from Rome since the Reformation. Protestants have suspected that we fear the Bible ever since Luther discovered its dynamite.


("Protestant, Catholic Views on the Bible," National Catholic Register, 3 November 1991, 10)

Quote: Henry Ghram

The common and received opinion about the matter among non-Catholics in Britain, for the most part, has been that Rome hates the Bible . . . If she cannot altogether prevent its publication or its perusal, at least she renders it as nearly useless as possible by sealing it up in a dead language which the majority of people can neither read nor understand . . .


The Protestant account of pre-reformation Catholicism has been largely a falsification of history . . . She has been painted as all black and hideous, and no beauty could be seen in her. Consequently people came to believe the tradition as a matter of course, and accepted it as history.

Many senseless charges are laid at the door of the Catholic Church; but surely the accusation that, during the centuries preceding the 16th, she was the enemy of the Bible and of Bible reading must, to any one who does not wilfully shut his eyes to facts, appear of all accusations the most ludicrous . . .


We may examine and investigate the action of the Church in various countries and in various centuries as to her legislation in regard to Bible reading among the people; and wherever we find some apparently severe or unaccountable prohibition of it, we shall on enquiry find that it was necessitated by the foolish or sinful conduct on the part either of some of her own people, or of bitter and aggressive enemies who literally forced her to forbid what in ordinary circumstances she would not only have allowed but have approved and encouraged.


(Where We Got the Bible, St. Louis: B. Herder, revised edition: 1939, 1, 4)

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The well-known Anglican writer, Dr. Blunt, in his History of the Reformation (Vol. I. pp. 501-502), tells us that:

There has been much wild and foolish writing about the scarcity of the Bible in the ages preceding the Reformation . . . that the Holy Scripture was almost a sealed book until it was printed in English by Tyndale and Coverdale, and that the only source of knowledge respecting it before them was the translation made by Wyckliffe. The facts are . . . that all laymen who could read were, as a rule, provided with their Gospels, their Psalter, or other devotional portions of the Bible. Men did, in fact, take a vast amount of personal trouble with respect to the productions of the Holy Scriptures . . . The clergy studied the Word of God and made it known to the laity; and those few among the laity who could read had abundant opportunity of reading the Bible either in Latin or English, up to the Reformation period.

Quote: FrGamble

I'm so sorry you were taught over and over in school that the Church was an impediment to the advance of science because it is blatantly false. It must have been awkward in your science classes when they talked about the monk Gregor Mendel or Rev. Nicolaus Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, Msgr. Lematrie, and Fr. Roger Boscavich.
.

You obviously didn't read the article. All the
people you name are post Renaissance,
which is exactly what Catholics always point
to. They ignore The Catholic Dark Ages
when science was almost at a standstill
because of the Church. Science and religion
have never mixed. There's a reason that over
90% of the worlds top scientists are non religious.

Quote: Nareed

Yes, but you're getting off on a tangent.

We were arguing, acrimoniously, about the causes, not the extent. Your side is original sin, mine is progressing towards a better civilization. You took the tangent on my comment bout current trends.

Yes, speaking of tangents let's get back on track, but perhaps less acrimoniously.

We all agree, including Evenbob, that there is a problem. We make progress or that progress wanes for a time but we are striving to climb ever upward. This just reinforces this idea that we all recognize we can be better.

I have indeed given a cause for this problem and also an explanation why we don't just accept where we are but rather strive to be better. This is the doctrine of Original Sin. We are destined for greatness and glory, that is our true nature, what we were created as, yet we are weakened and find ourselves falling short of reaching this amazing potential in ourselves. This frustrating condition has played itself out for our entire existence. Even in making undeniable and almost unbelievable huge technological advancements we still long for something more.

Could you explain what you think is the cause of this "problem"?

Quote: FrGamble

We are destined for greatness and glory, that is our true nature,

No it's not. Where do you even get that
from. We aren't 'destined' for anything.
We only see destiny in hindsight, the
future is unknown, anything can happen.

And I never said we had a 'problem', quit
saying I did.

Quote: Evenbob

You obviously didn't read the article. All the
people you name are post Renaissance,
which is exactly what Catholics always point
to. They ignore The Catholic Dark Ages
when science was almost at a standstill
because of the Church. Science and religion
have never mixed. There's a reason that over
90% of the worlds top scientists are non religious.

Ha, I did read the article after I responded to you and I knew you were going to point that out.

First of all you do realize that to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages is something serious historians no longer do, it betrays your bias and that of the author of the article you quoted. There was much good that occurred during these times between the 5th and 15th centuries. To say science was at a standstill during this time is not true and it is a restricted understanding of science. Also to claim that the Church is solely to blame for any of your perceived retardation of science is to ignore the chaotic times following the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire. It was a time of barbarians, war, invasions, depopulation, and movement of peoples on a grand scale. It was a time of plague when the Black Death killed roughly a third of the population of Europe.

The fact is that Aristotle was rediscovered in the West and the development of scholasticism as a philosophy and theology that sought to integrate faith and reason in new ways. Aristotle also was essential to reestablishing the foundations to science. The artwork and architecture of this period is a science unto itself and many of the cathedrals built during this time simply could not be built today even with our best technologies. The advancements in warfare were many because of the unfortunate preoccupation with warfare and fighting at the time. However, the advancements and technology developed in the area of farming and industry were extraordinary.

Science and religion do best when they both work together respecting each other and recognizing their differences and similarities. Sadly, on both sides this has not always happened. Your statistic is just made up, but so are 90% of statistics.

Quote: FrGamble

Yes, speaking of tangents let's get back on track, but perhaps less acrimoniously.

But more ironically? ;)

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I have indeed given a cause for this problem and also an explanation why we don't just accept where we are but rather strive to be better.

You can accept where you are, and also strive to be or do better. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, to do or be better, you need to know where you are. You won't get too far entering a weightlifting competition tomorrow to test your skills, if you haven't worked out with weights a day in your life.

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We are destined for greatness and glory, that is our true nature

We, as individuals and as a group of individuals, are not destined to anything.

We are capable of greatness, yes. That is a potential inherent in everyone, within our nature as rational beings.

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yet we are weakened and find ourselves falling short of reaching this amazing potential in ourselves.

Speak for yourself. Falling short has many possible causes, not just One Big Cause. Often one can improve in time, if one bothers to make the effort required. There is no moral failure involved in, say, cooking an inedible dish. It's a failure of execution, which can be corrected.

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Could you explain what you think is the cause of this "problem"?

I have.

Quote: FrGamble

First of all you do realize that to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages is something serious historians no longer do,

If you had read it, you would see he explains
several times why he calls it that.

The Church invented the word 'propaganda'.

'Originally this word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic Church (congregation) created in 1622, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith), or informally simply Propaganda'

'Propaganda is information that is not impartial and used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively.'

They have been trying since the 1600's to
put a positive spin on the Churches past,
since they went into competition with the
Protestants. It continues to this day, a constant
denial of what they once were.

Quote: FrGamble

Science and religion do best when they both work together .

Science and religion are oil and water.
One is based on reason, the other is
based on superstition. They never mix.
Most scientists are nonreligious for
a reason.

Quote: Evenbob

Science and religion are oil and water.
One is based on reason, the other is
based on superstition. They never mix.
Most scientists are nonreligious for
a reason.

To hold this ridiculous notion you cannot explain the history of science or some of our greatest scientists.