Shellfish, and the meaning of everything

[Richard David Hawthorn]

Christ is Among Us!

I have a Protestant friend who likes to razz me on how the the Church allows us to have shellfish during the fasts but no other meat products. He says shellfish are still animals and if we were to allow any form of animal during a fast why would it be shellfish which was considered unclean in the OT?

I said something about shellfish not really being considered animals in ancient times because of their lack of a backbone and different circulatory system (not having the type of blood that excites the passions) but he seems unimpressed- anyone out there with a good concise answer that works for them?

In Christ,
Rd. David

[Father David Moser]

Indeed the life of the soul is in the blood. St Basil the Great makes that point in the Hexameron quite clearly. He points out that cold blooded animals are inferior to warm blooded animals and this is reflected in their blood. Shellfish and other creatures with no discernable blood/circulatory system are even lesser (and argueably not animals in this sense). Your friend is probably assuming that the definition of "animal" is that of the evolutionary taxonomy whereas that is not necessarily the assumption of the Church. Nor is he taking into account that the spiritual effect of the consumption of blooded animals different from that of the consumption of non-blooded creatures.

But you know - if he doesn't want to be impressed - he won't be.

Fr David Moser

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Although fasting was practised in the time of the Old Testament the Orthodox Church as the fullfilment of the old bases its fasting on quite different principles. That is- the starting point is not that certain foods are 'clean' or 'unclean', or animal or not. Rather the type of fasting we practice in the Orthodox Church is the result of many centuries of ascetic/spiritual experience as to what most effectively cultivates a life in Christ and the Gospel commandments. So the most important thing is not whether something is an animal or not- but if or how this contributes to fighting of the passions. That is why for example there are a number of different rules of fasting within the Church.

In any case we can eat shell fish of different types during a fast period because since these are not so rich as meat, dairy products, etc they do not do not contribute to inflaming of the passions as much & also these more modest types of food are a means of conscious self-control.

Just my thought but I also have the idea that in pre-modern times in a country like Greece one would much prefer to eat fish than shell-fish which almost amounted to the trash at the bottom of the net. So there is also perhaps some local element here.

In any case as many have pointed out there's not much of a fast being kept if during lenten times we indulge ourselves on a fancy lobster dinner.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Rd David,

As far as I can make out from a brief internet search, shellfish is allowed because of having no backbone and no blood. "Bloodless" living things are permitted, but not living beings having blood. This may reflect the kosher practices of Judaism in some way, rather than any connection with the "bloodless" Sacrifice of the Eucharist. So maybe we are not following Mosaic Law to the letter by eating shellfish, but we are accepting a link between blood and life or spirit?

Incidentally, I came across one site that claimed reptiles such as alligator, turtle and rattlesnake are allowed, as well as amphibians (eg. frog legs). I'm not so sure about those, they sound rather spiney and bloodey to me, but it was definitely an Orthodox website, and it looked serious. The same site gave the following reasons for fasting:

1. To recall and emulate the condition of Adam and Eve before the Fall, who consumed no animal products, and killed no animals.
2. To avoid exciting the passions by the consumption of meat, and to maintain a healthy body free from toxins.
3. To practise self-control before temptation.

Elsewhere I have heard that fasting without prayer is the fasting of demons, so definitely a spiritual exercise and purpose there, not a "diet" of any sort. Perhaps what confuses non-religious people is the idea of abstaining from certain foods but not others, but once it is placed in the perspective of most world religions, the purposes of fasting become clearly spiritual and not dietary / scientific-rational (although in the case of Orthodox Christianity the fasting we do is also eminently healthy).

Interestingly, the Gnostics ate only fish (among meat products) because they (wrongly) believed fish don't reproduce sexually.

Just a few comments, maybe not an answer to your question as such.

In Christ
Byron

[Alec Lowly]

Byron writes:


"Interestingly, the Gnostics ate only fish (among meat products) because they (wrongly) believed fish don't reproduce sexually."

And we believe that eating meat excites the passions, on the basis of patristic testimony. May the Lord forgive me, but I really wonder about that. It's something that I just have to accept with humility.

And if the blood is indeed the life of the soul, one really has to wonder about the spiritual propriety of transfusions, I would think.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Father David writes:


"Indeed the life of the soul is in the blood. St Basil the Great makes that point in the Hexameron quite clearly. He points out that cold blooded animals are inferior to warm blooded animals and this is reflected in their blood. Shellfish and other creatures with no discernable blood/circulatory system are even lesser (and argueably not animals in this sense). Your friend is probably assuming that the definition of "animal" is that of the evolutionary taxonomy whereas that is not necessarily the assumption of the Church. Nor is he taking into account that the spiritual effect of the consumption of blooded animals different from that of the consumption of non-blooded creatures."

Forgive me, Father, but are you saying that patristic views on matters of the physical and biological sciences must be accepted in the same spirit as we accept the fathers' spiritual teachings and praxis teachings? Are you saying that patristic views on scientific matters are inerrant truths?

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Fr Aaron Warwick]

Dear Alec:

If you wish to question the patristic testimony about meat and the excitement of the passions, feel free to do so as, I believe, you will find it to be scientifically true. There is research that shows people on the Atkins diet, for example, experience more feelings of anger. Also, visit some websites or read some material from dieticians that also shows a correlation between meats--especially red meats--and what we would refer to as the passions.

Also, I can't believe that an Orthodox Christian who attempts to fast as the Church teaches would not have 'proven' the benefits and efficacy of fasting to himself. I am certainly not trying to say that you are not fasting correctly, but it has been my own experience, and the experience of everyone else I know who fasts, that they feel much better and healthier--both physically and spiritually--during the fasts. I am just surprised that your experience has evidently been different.

Aaron

[Father Anthony]

Alec Lowly wrote:


"are you saying that patristic views of the physical and biological sciences must be accepted" etc.

I hope not. St. Basil also wrote in the Hexamaron that trees grow from elephants' toes and that baby adders are born by gnawing their way out of their mother's body, thus inflicting just suffering on such a loathsome creature!

The Fathers were no more biologists than the writers of Genesis.

Fr. Anthony

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Alec,

The question you pose about the spiritual propriety of blood transfusions is an interesting and important one. Here in Cyprus a few years back there was a scandal which attracted international media attention, when the parents of a baby who needed a blood transfusion would not give their permission to doctors on account of being Jehovah's Witnesses - even at the risk of the child's life! I'm not sure what happened, but I think the state actually had to intervene.

Regarding science and the Fathers, as far as I know Orthodoxy does not regard scientific research with suspicion or hostility; instead, the attitude taken is that the increase of scientific knowledge serves to highlight and clarify the skill of the Architect for us. The question, however, of how to approach patristic ideas about the workings of creation which modern scientific research has disproved or is in conflict with, is one I would also like to know more about.

In Christ
Byron

[Father David Moser]

Alec,

I did not say that we must accept these things as literally true. However, I *do* think that the comments of the fathers that might fall in the realm of "science" should be taken seriously when they propose a different philosophical construct within which to interpret and correlate the observations of the natural world. (for example the evolutionary based taxonomy which is born of and so supports an evolutionary intepretation of observations) We so freely accept the evolutionary/naturalist philosophy when it proposes an explanation of the natural phenomena but when the patristic fathers do so based on the science of their time, we dismiss their comments as ignorant superstition. I would suggest that rather than dismiss them, it would be much more profitable to try and discern the system of spiritual "philosophy" behind the comments and then apply it to the observations that we have today - this would produce a much more theo-centric scientific system that the rational/empirical naturalism that reigns unquestioned today.

Oh - and by the way, Fr Anthony - there was only one writer of Genesis, the prophet Moses to whom God revealed the events of the distant past (just as He revealed the events of the distant future to other prophets).

Fr David

[Fr Seraphim (Black)]

I find these posts very interesting. Keep in mind that the rules of fasting must be placed in the context of each person. The same hypostatic principle I keep bringing up. As Father Seraphim Rose stated we must aim to comply with the typicon, however, as he states, and as I have witnessed over the years, each person, under the direction of their Spiritual Father, must also be aware of their state.

Do we ask the same fasting regulations of a woman who is pregnant, or an elderly person, or those ill-disposed due to illness?

In my experience, even in the strictest monasteries, economia is practised in fasting. Afterall, fasting is to lead us to receptivity to the Holy Spirit, a condition reached by this praxis. If we are physically weakened by illness, does it matter if we eat an entire bowl of shellfish?

Let us not get tied down by the issue of shellfish allowed during the four major Fasts. I lived in a very strict and ascetic monastery in Romania where (due to its geographic location) I never saw shellfish.

One fasting meal on Monday, Wednesday and Friday after 3:00pm will quickly lead a person to familiarity with the benefit of fasting.

But even such fasting without prayer and deep humility can lead to anger, which is why the final weeks of the Great Fast in monasteries and parishes can be ample ground for all sorts of temptations.

[Christopher]

Is it true that the theory of evolution is NOT accepted in the Russian Orthodox Church? Does the same apply to other Orthodox Churches as well, or is there no agreement on the subject? I ask this question because apparently in the roman-catholic church Darwinism is officially accepted as dogma (so I have been told by a catholic teacher of religious education).

Apparently even Darwin had his doubts about his theory in later years, but was prevented to voice his doubts by the proponents and students of his theory - does anybody know whether there is any documented evidence of this?

[Alec Lowly]

Byron writes:


"The question you pose about the spiritual propriety of blood transfusions is an interesting and important one. Here in Cyprus a few years back there was a scandal which attracted international media attention, when the parents of a baby who needed a blood transfusion would not give their permission to doctors on account of being Jehovah's Witnesses - even at the risk of the child's life! I'm not sure what happened, but I think the state actually had to intervene."

This happens on occasion in the United States. The courts always rule in favor of the child's life. When failure to treat a child's medical needs leads to the child's death, charges are brought against the responsible parties. When there's a conflict between religious belief and a child's health, two basic rights, the right to life trumps freedom of religion.

Thank you for acknowledging the transfusion problem. It appears that others are ducking the issue, if issue it be. Speaking for myself, I do not consult Leviticus on questions of hematology.

Byron continues:


"Regarding science and the Fathers, as far as I know Orthodoxy does not regard scientific research with suspicion or hostility; instead, the attitude taken is that the increase of scientific knowledge serves to highlight and clarify the skill of the Architect for us. The question, however, of how to approach patristic ideas about the workings of creation which modern scientific research has disproved or is in conflict with, is one I would also like to know more about."

Me, too. However, certain of our Orthodox brethren ~do~ regard scientific research with "suspicion or hostility." They are perfectly willing to concede that the earth is not flat and that the sun does not move, but flash forward to Darwin and there's trouble.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Aaron writes:


"If you wish to question the patristic testimony about meat and the excitement of the passions, feel free to do so as, I believe, you will find it to be scientifically true."

No, Aaron, not proved.


"There is research that shows people on the Atkins diet, for example, experience more feelings of anger."

Sure. They're eating an unbalanced diet, they're in a state of acute ketosis, i.e., no wonder they're not in the best of spirits.


"Also, visit some websites or read some material from dieticians that also shows a correlation between meats--especially red meats--and what we would refer to as the passions."

I would really appreciate it, Aaron, if you would suggest some sites.

Aaron continues:


"Also, I can't believe that an Orthodox Christian who attempts to fast as the Church teaches would not have 'proven' the benefits and efficacy of fasting to himself. I am certainly not trying to say that you are not fasting correctly, but it has been my own experience, and the experience of everyone else I know who fasts, that they feel much better and healthier--both physically and spiritually--during the fasts. I am just surprised that your experience has evidently been different."

I suffer from hypoglycemia, so I have to keep a close eye on my metabolism. I fast as best as I can, under my spiritual father's direction. Fasting has never made me feel "better and healthier." I'm grateful when fasting just leaves me feeling OK. Incidentally, the fasting regimen I follow is completely contrary to my physician's advice.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Father David wrote:

"I did not say that we must accept these things as literally true. However, I *do* think that the comments of the fathers that might fall in the realm of "science" should be taken seriously when they propose a different philosophical construct within which to interpret and correlate the observations of the natural world.

Father, bless ... Science is the objective investigation of nature by natural means. Change any word in the last sentence, and you do not have science, you have something else. In order for a proposition to be scientific, it must be susceptible to disproof. We can say, "God created the universe," a true statement, but it is not a scientific statement because it cannot be proved or disproved. Truth is wide, science is narrow.

"for example the evolutionary based taxonomy which is born of and so supports an evolutionary intepretation of observations)"

Taxonomy is no longer the key support for evolutionary conclusions. Genetic biology is. Genetic data clearly show "family relationships" among species, including the family that homo sapiens belongs to. Change about 4 percent of my DNA and I would be something like a chimpanzee. That's right: We humans share about ~96 percent~ of our DNA with creatures that we describe as hominids, a technical word for "animals." That's a fact. There's no getting atound it.

"We so freely accept the evolutionary/naturalist philosophy when it proposes an explanation of the natural phenomena but when the patristic fathers do so based on the science of their time, we dismiss their comments as ignorant superstition."

"The science of their time"? Forgive me, Father, but I'm not aware that much existed in the way of science in the Western world (the Arabs excluded) until the 15th century.

"I would suggest that rather than dismiss them, it would be much more profitable to try and discern the system of spiritual "philosophy" behind the comments and then apply it to the observations that we have today"

Yes, Father, that's excellent advice. I do try to do that.

"this would produce a much more theo-centric scientific system that the rational/empirical naturalism that reigns unquestioned today."

By definition, science cannot be "theocentric." That's for theology and philosophy to do.

"and by the way, Fr Anthony - there was only one writer of Genesis, the prophet Moses to whom God revealed the events of the distant past (just as He revealed the events of the distant future to other prophets)."

Deuteronomy 34 tells us about Moses' death and burial. Moses wrote the account of his own death and burial?

Forgive me, Father, but I'm a plain spoken man. I mean no disrespect. If we were face to face, I would kiss your right hand. I live in a country where well-meaning but ignorant religionists are attempting to dictate the content of scientific instruction in our schools. I feel as strongly about this as I would if scientists were to attempt to dictate the content of religious instruction in our religious institutions.

In XC,
Alec, sinner,
who needs to learn humility

[Richard David Hawthorn]

Alec wrote:
"However, certain of our Orthodox brethren ~do~ regard scientific research with "suspicion or hostility." They are perfectly willing to concede that the earth is not flat and that the sun does not move, but flash forward to Darwin and there's trouble."

I think I am in this group but I would tweek this sentence in just two little ways: I don't regard scientific research with suspicion or hostility (especially the hard sciences) the suspicion comes into play in the soft "origin" science where the suspicion is reserved for a certain naturalistic philosophical interpretation of the evidence.
Oh yes, and I still hold that the sun DOES move- just not around the earth. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

In Christ,
Rd. David

[Fr Aaron Warwick]

Dear Alec,

I apologize if what I said was offensive to you. It was in no way intended to be so, which is why I stated that I was not trying to judge you, but simply sharing my own experience. Clearly, your situation is a departure from the norm and the Church, in my experience, is very loving and pastoral in regards to its standards for people with illnesses. I am glad to hear that you are working with your spiritual father on a proper fasting diet for someone with your condition. May your efforts be blessed!

If you go to Google and type things in such as 'meat,' 'passions,' 'excitement,' 'anger,' etc., you will find plenty of interesting articles to read, both supporting and contradicting the Orthodox position. You will also find that we are not the only religion that places an emphasis on abstaining from meat. It seems to be a common thread among ascetics of any religion.

Aaron

[Jill]

There was also a similar case in Australia, where a woman haemorrhaged badly while giving birth, where a blood transfusion would easily save her life. She and her husband were both JW. The woman's condition continued to deteriorate because of her refusal to accept a transfusion. The husband, of course, was in a real moral dilemma, but he was able to get an emergency Supreme Court injunction, making him his wife's legal guardian, and he approved the transfusion. The woman recovered, then had the nerve to take him to court for assault, where she alleged that the act of giving her the transfusion was tantamount to rape, that she now felt violated, and threatened divorce!

[Arsenios]

Great JW story, Jill. They very often DO take that blood business as gospel... I hope his wife has found a way to forgive him!

A JW friend of mine had open heart surgery to scrape away peritoneal scaling of the heart that was impairing his heart's elasticity [if I understood him right], and he required his surgeon to do it with no transfusions. And they managed to pull it off successfully, and were astounded at his recovery time, which was a fourth of normal post-op recovery, and they attributed it to his only having his own blood in him...

So it doesn't always end in death... But it sure can... And some are prepared to die for their faith in No Transfusions...

I'm sure glad I'm not God!

Arsenios

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear brother Alec,

I have the impression that, much like the word "love", "religion" and "Orthodoxy" tends to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, despite the clarity of our dogma and doctrine. Moreover, the way in which the religion is lived and practised is I think even more diverse than the concepts we have about it (and it has to be, since each of us is on a unique journey to God). Why am I saying this? Because in my limited experience "science" is also one of those words by which different people mean different things. I, for example, do not feel I have to deny the possibility that the theory of evolution may be true in order to believe in the story of creation also. It seems to me that it is very hard to tell at times what is concrete, sensory reality in both science and the Bible. However, I don't place quite so much trust in the scientific method, whether of the "hard" or "soft" variety, as others do. My experience suggests to me that much that passes for scientific fact today will be taken for science fiction tomorrow. Science, like religion, like marriage, are human activities, limited in their respective potentials by human weakness. So much "scientific" research is politically or economically motivated - even selecting which aspect of reality to research, and by which method, is a political choice. So I do think Fr David is correct in suggesting we should try to discern the underlying spiritual philosophy in the patristic writings on science or scientific facts. One French philosopher, I think Maurice Merlau-Ponty, said that humans are "condemned to meaning". I think pretty much everything we do, including science, including religion, is partly a function of our own bias in understanding. I hope as a Christian that the Truth will be revealed ultimately, when we no longer see "through a glass, darkly".

Forgive me if I'm sounding wiser than I really am. This is a very interesting and important topic.

In humility
Byron

[Christopher]

On the question of blood transfusion. An elder at a monastery mentioned that the (then deceased) founder of the monastery (20th century) once had to have a blood transfusion and he reported that for a time after the blood transfusion he felt very spiritually confused, having strong athestic doubts for a while - the implication being that he felt the blood transfusion did affect for a while the state of his soul. I thought this was particularly noteworthy since the monastery is at the more "modern/liberal", rather than the "traditional/conservative" end of the spectrum of Orthodoxy. I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, but I mention it since I myself was surprised to hear this from the elder from that monastery.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I think the operative sentence in Alec's post above is "Science is the objective investigation of nature by natural means." This is indeed how science would present its manner of knowledge sometimes- but on the other hand there is another way in which science could consider itself and it still be real science.

According to the experiential understanding of man's nature which the Holy Fathers attained (Orthodox anthropology) man has different levels of understanding. On the lower level is discursive/rational understanding while on the higher is noetic/spiritual. What is very important about these distinctions however is that for the Holy Frs they do not represent seperate ways of knowledge. Thus an immoral scientist who never prays is not a real scientist in the sense that the objective reality he thinks he sees is not real at all but rather the result of the subjectivity that comes from sin. This I think accounts for much of the 'here today- gone tomorrow' nature of modern scientific theories.

On the other hand we can also say that the man who prays also has a deeper understanding of creation than a scientist. As St Maximos the Confessor would say the man of prayer sees the hidden logoi in created nature. That is why I think that the above sentence, "Science is the objective investigation of nature by natural means," can as easily or more properly be applied to the person of prayer than the 'objective scientist' who doesn't let his mind and heart dwell in the world of the Divine. For the man of prayer indeed does see objectively and he sees nature in its reality and he does this by means of an illumined intellect which corresponds exactly to human nature as God created this.

There is no need to oppose the scientific understanding that the world revolves around the sun to the noetic understanding that creation revolves around its Maker Christ the Sun of Righteousness. But when this is taken into account then we see that true science does not claim to exhaust the meaning of all things with its theories.

It is not an affront to discover that not every statement of St Basil was 'scientifically correct'; it is a however a tragic impoverishment of our life to detatch his statement from the realm of the sacred.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

Thank you Fr Raphael - I think you expressed the same concept that I was trying to express - albeit from a different angle.

Alec - you said "I live in a country where well-meaning but ignorant religionists are attempting to dictate the content of scientific instruction in our schools. I feel as strongly about this as I would if scientists were to attempt to dictate the content of religious instruction in our religious institutions. " I assume that we live in the same country (the USA) and not only that I live in an area that is dominated by members of a very dominating religion (LDS). Those as aren't LDS are mostly fundamental protestants and both groups are big at dictating the content of not only science but every other aspect of school instruction and public life. I also am on the staff of a K-12 Orthodox private school (St John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy) at which my daughter teaches high school level (AP) biology. So I think I know your situation and your concerns first hand. I too resist the efforts of religionists - both those who advocate their own theological understanding of science and life as well as those who advocate a strict atheism (we get both here) and everything in between - to dictate the content of what is taught in schools, as well as what can be expressed in public ("happy holidays" anyone?).

But this isn't school and we are not children here. This is an internet list (and a list of higher than normal academic discussion) where we are all adults and all fairly well educated and able to think and reason. Therefore it does not follow that we should not prayerfully consider alternatives and examine our own prejudices.

Fr David Moser

[Owen Jones]

Science is not limited to the observation of natural phenomenon. That would be an example of the ideology of "scientism." True science is not limited to naturalism or natural explanations of causes. Classical science emcompasses the science of the soul and transcendent reality. Which is why, classically understood, theology is the queen of the sciences.

As for Darwinism, it was refuted by Kant over 50 years early on philosophical grounds (which means the idea was around for a long time prior to Darwin -- he just put it into a kind of mythological framework that captivated people), and scientists in Darwin's own day refuted that the scientific evidence proclaimed any such thing.

So the philosophical premises behind Darwinism are inept, and the observational science, while sound at a certain level, are refuted by the overall scientific evidence.

The problem is that the criticism of Darwin is usually not very scientific or philosophic, but depend on treating symbolic representations as if they were in an of themselves scientific facts.

[Father David Moser]

Owen,

Could you give either a summary or a reference to Kant's refutation of Darwinism - I would like to read it.

Fr David Moser

[Alec Lowly]

Aaron writes:


"I apologize if what I said was offensive to you. It was in no way intended to be so, which is why I stated that I was not trying to judge you, but simply sharing my own experience."

Dear brother, be at peace. I'm not offended at all. And I thank you for your suggestions!

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Byron, my brother, there is much wisdom in what you say. A few comments, below. I feel like I've set the agenda here and I'm not comfortable with that. I'd like to make a few points and move on.

" ... "science" is also one of those words by which different people mean different things."

That's true. But science means only one things to scientists. There say be confusion among laymen, but not among scientists.

"I, for example, do not feel I have to deny the possibility that the theory of evolution may be true in order to believe in the story of creation also."

Neither do I. Here's an interesting point. The order (sequence) of creation as set forth in Genesis 1: 20-28 is exactly the order that science has confirmed.

"My experience suggests to me that much that passes for scientific fact today will be taken for science fiction tomorrow."

But that's precisely the beauty of science! No proposition goes untested. No new evidence goes untested. Truth is wrung from the evidence day by day, year by year, century by century. Forward, forward, always forward!

Incidentally, I have no brief for "science" and "scientific." What I'm talking about is science and scientific, no quote marks.

"So much "scientific" research is politically or economically motivated - even selecting which aspect of reality to research, and by which method, is a political choice."

That's the human condition. It affects even the church. This is not an argument against scientific exploration.

"So I do think Fr David is correct in suggesting we should try to discern the underlying spiritual philosophy in the patristic writings on science or scientific facts."

And I agree.

"One French philosopher, I think Maurice Merlau-Ponty, said that humans are "condemned to meaning". I think pretty much everything we do, including science, including religion, is partly a function of our own bias in understanding."

I agree with that, too. But it's much harder to persist in subjective bias when you have to submit your findings to your peers, for their investigation and replication. Your peers can be merciless in the cause of truth, and that's a good thing.

Umm, I guess folks may have guessed by now that my defense of the scientific method is as much professional as personal ...

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Father Raphael writes:

(Father, bless ... here are a few responses.)

"I think the operative sentence in Alec's post above is "Science is the objective investigation of nature by natural means.""

Exactly.

"Thus an immoral scientist who never prays is not a real scientist in the sense that the objective reality he thinks he sees is not real at all but rather the result of the subjectivity that comes from sin."

Father, no matter how sinful the scientist, the sun still rises in the east, apples fall down and not up, water freezes at 32 degrees, oxygen is essential to life, etc., etc.

"This I think accounts for much of the 'here today- gone tomorrow' nature of modern scientific theories."

Name three "here today, gone tomorrow" scientific theories of modern times, say, from 1850 on ...

"On the other hand we can also say that the man who prays also has a deeper understanding of creation than a scientist."

I would not dispute that, Father, not at all. But the praying man is most likely not attempting to find a medication that would cure Parkinson's Disease, while many scientists are engaged in doing precisely that.

"There is no need to oppose the scientific understanding that the world revolves around the sun to the noetic understanding that creation revolves around its Maker Christ the Sun of Righteousness."

Father, that's beautiful, and beautifully said. I live by that understanding.

"true science does not claim to exhaust the meaning of all things with its theories."

I agree with that completely. Science covers a limited ground. Science is not competent to answer all sorts of important questions, many of them being the "why" questions. Science is pretty good at answering "how" questions. Science cannot answer, and will never be able to answer, the fundamental Big Question: Why is there something and not nothing? That's the very question where faith and revelation begin.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Father David writes:

(Father, bless ... Here are a few responses.)

"I live in an area that is dominated by members of a very dominating religion (LDS). Those as aren't LDS are mostly fundamental protestants and both groups are big at dictating the content of not only science but every other aspect of school instruction and public life."

I think we agree, Father, that this is bad news. On a personal note, let me say that long ago a branch of my family went LDS and "war" ensued. There was no peace until they moved to another state. As things stand now, kinfolk have not talked to one another in 30 years. Kinfolk have died without reconcilation. I'm the ony member of the Orthodox side that keeps in distant touch. It's very, very sad, but that's the way it is.

"I too resist the efforts of religionists - both those who advocate their own theological understanding of science and life as well as those who advocate a strict atheism (we get both here) and everything in between - to dictate the content of what is taught in schools, as well as what can be expressed in public ("happy holidays" anyone?)."

Merry Christmas, Father. It's a comfort to me to learn of your struggle. It's a good fight.

" ... it does not follow that we should not prayerfully consider alternatives and examine our own prejudices."

Yes, Father. If I have offended any, I ask forgiveness. If I have spoken wrong, I ask correction. I may speak up strongly about the concerns that are peculiar to me and my position in life, but I am prepared to listen and to learn from anyone the Lord would send -- and particularly from those He has called to His holy altar.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Alec,
You wrote:


Father, no matter how sinful the scientist, the sun still rises in the east, apples fall down and not up, water freezes at 32 degrees, oxygen is essential to life, etc., etc.

Our perception will always be affected by our spiritual/moral state. So for one scientist seeing the sun rise its significance could be quite different from another. Even to say 'the sun rises in the east' has a different meaning according to whether this is placed within a divine context or not. By the use of language which arises from a certain materialistic context the inner meaning of what is being said and conveyed is radically different for example from what was meant in Byzantine or medieval times even if one used the exact same words, "the sun rises in the east." The important point I think is that this use of language and its inner meaning reflects a whole set of cultural/religious values. Even the use of the word 'objective' has a radically different meaning according to the materialist understanding than it did/does for the sacred. For the modern world 'objective' refers to truth that exists regardless of a sacred context. For the sacred world however there is no such thing as objective truth outside of the context of what is sacred. Such a change in how we think of truth represented an inner revolution of the deepest order which was recognised as it occured but which by more recent times came to be seen as merely being 'natural'. In other words behind all of this are two different worlds or ways of thinking- one the materialist & the other the sacred.


Name three "here today, gone tomorrow" scientific theories of modern times, say, from 1850 on ...

I like listening to a science program called Quirks & Quarks that airs on our CBC radio every Saturday at noon. One of the most striking things from listening is how rapidly scientific theories change or are outmoded. Also it is obvious how deep the fundamental divisions are within the scientific community which is often seen as positive. From this I think we can say that science should be seen objectively as unstable knowledge and that science should pursue its studies with this firmly in mind. But I don't think that science should fear that it would no longer be genuine science if it was to get rid of its 'materialist-objective' mind-set. Or to say it the other way around- science needs to grapple with the idea that it can still be real science without the materialist philosophy underpinning it.

A last point- again from listening to this program regularly. I am under the impression that there is an area of science that is trying to break out of its old 'materialist-objective' mind-set.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Alex Haig]

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."
Genesis 9:1-4

"Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
John 6:54

It is clear that blood contains a person's (or animal's) life in a way beyond our understanding: to consume it is to somehow take a part of its life - this is why it is forbidden to partake of blood, save that of Christ. As for transfusions, they are sometimes needed if a life is to be saved and we see from the example of Christ that life is something to be cherished and held onto at all costs. However, there needs to be much prayer when transfusions happen, both from (or on behalf of) the patient and from the donor. From the patient that Christ will "raise them from their sick bed" and from the donor that their sins might not be passed to the receiver.

As for science, it is the study of the world around us. The trouble comes when people apply science to things out of its field. For a theory to be truely scientific it has to be able to make measurable predictions. The classical scientists used their theories to make predicitions about the universe, notably about the heavens revolving around the earth. They made observations and were able to make predictions about the position of the planets at any given time they could measure, so by science's standards this theory was scientific, albeit wrong (according to our current understanding). However, the idea of evolution lies closer to the realms of philosophy than true science.

Very often it is not the scientists themselves who attach such definitions of absolute truth to scientific theories but it is the people who report the findings to the public.

With love in Christ

Alex

[Alec Lowly]

Alex writes:

"... much prayer when transfusions happen, both from (or on behalf of) the patient and from the donor. From the patient that Christ will "raise them from their sick bed" and from the donor that their sins might not be passed to the receiver."

What?!?!?!

"As for science, it is the study of the world around us. The trouble comes when people apply science to things out of its field. For a theory to be truely scientific it has to be able to make measurable predictions."

Yes, indeed.

"Very often it is not the scientists themselves who attach such definitions of absolute truth to scientific theories but it is the people who report the findings to the public."

Yes, indeed.

Thank you, Alex.

In XC,
Alec Lowly, sinner

[Daniel Jeandet]

So what do you guys think of the astronomer Halton Arp's interpretation of redshift? He was denied telescope time in the U.S.A and now works in Germany. What he discovered through his telescope, and with the help of sense extending technology, has effectively disproven the expanding universe and big bang theories in one go. His work shows that galaxies are "born" from active parent galaxies and that the observed shift of light they emanate in to the red end of the spectrumn indicates age and not distance as most astronomers insist.

Unfortunately this calls relativity into question which is tantamount to denying the holocaust in the eyes of the boring media and mainstream science.

I recommend the work of Mel Acheson on science and epistimology as an introduction to the paradigm shift that is inevitably coming once the world catches up with Arp and other honest scientists and we are free of the media circus of creationism versus obsolete myths of scientism.

His essays can be found at his website here -

www.dragonscience.com (http://www.dragonscience.com)

For those who can be bothered with actual science rather than re-analysing each others opinions of it, this website has information on him and other people like australian physicist Wall Thornhill (my hero) and David Talbott who's research paths converged to produce the book "Thunderbolts of the Gods", a book that will make you re-think pretty much everything you have accepted as scientific fact until now.

You can read the introduction and first chapter to their book here for free -

http://www.thunderbolts.info/rainbow11/tbolts/tb-book.htm

theres a link to the pdf at the bottom of the page.

I think the Church should start publicly supporting people like Arp, actual scientists who talk about observations and mesurements rather than stupid discussion about how best to "educate" chidren so that the information they recieve is organized in such a way as it does no violence to the ideology or religion or peer group they are being molded to adapt to. But I dont think that will happen as long as her Chidren are worried about how Mother Church appears to the rest of the world.

Visit these websites and stop fretting about pointless debates, science is physical and beautiful, mind expanding and revalatory, it doesnt narrow, it exlodes. It all has to do with love and joy, God has allowed the gifts of space travel and expanded senses not so that we can determine what we can "know as fact" but what we have yet to discover, and the true science is always opening up wider and wider paths, not digging holes for one group to sit in and sculpting pedestal with the dirt for another group to preach from.

whoa, Im getting poetic, Ive lost my fear of science and all my teenage dreams are being fullfilled http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Alec,

My own impression is that science, like everything else, can be used to good or ill. In my post above I was trying to encourage you to put less faith in scientific claims to objectivity; not because I have anything against science or modernity in particular (had I lived in Byzantium I would have probably hated that show, too). Like Fr Raphael, I feel we do see a different world depending on the eyes through which we are observing it, and the sun rising or setting is not an identical phenomenon for any two people. Science tries very hard to fit the Popperian criterion of falsifiability, and to achieve parsimonious perspectives on observed phenomena; but useful as such an exercise can be, it becomes monstrous when it is turned into the truth by which we live our lives and human relationships. If you are a scientist, but also bring to your profession the humility and prayer of a Christian, then I think the world needs more scientists like you (and perhaps fewer "merciless colleagues" willing to victimise others for what they perceive as "the truth"!).

In Christ
Byron

[Alex Haig]

While this scientist's work may use scientific methodology, it cannot be taken as a true theory of science.

In astronomy and cosmology scientists make observations, find formulae and explanations for these phenomena then make more observations to see if they're right. However, making further observations is not the same as testing. While it is an interesting idea and may well be correct, it is not a scientific theory.

With love in Christ

Alex

PS, perhaps for all of these ideas (evolution, big bang, red shift &c) we should use the word 'conjecture' rather than theory?

[Alec Lowly]

Byron writes:

"Like Fr Raphael, I feel we do see a different world depending on the eyes through which we are observing it, and the sun rising or setting is not an identical phenomenon for any two people."

Well, my brother, I have a lot of problems with that line of thinking, but I don't this is to forum to get into that. The fact that two people observing a phenomenon may see two different things says more about one or the other of the observers than about the phenomenon. And please remember: We have numerous means of observation/measurement that depend not at all upon man's sensorium.

"Science tries very hard to fit the Popperian criterion of falsifiability, and to achieve parsimonious perspectives on observed phenomena; but useful as such an exercise can be, it becomes monstrous when it is turned into the truth by which we live our lives and human relationships."

I've never argued that science is "truth" in that sense. I would argue, and have argued, that any scientist who makes assertions of that sort has crossed the line into religion and thereby ceded any claim to scientific credibility. And as a Christian, I would have to add that not only is the scientist advocating a religious position, it is a false religious position.

"If you are a scientist, but also bring to your profession the humility and prayer of a Christian, then I think the world needs more scientists like you (and perhaps fewer "merciless colleagues" willing to victimise others for what they perceive as "the truth"!)."

Oh, no, Byron: We need the "merciless colleagues" very much. They keep science honest. It's ironic in the extreme that when it happens that a scientific conclusion does not hold up to peer review, and is shown to be false or flawed, some people use this circumstance to denigrate science itself. They fail to see that such a circumstance actually proves the value of the method -- proves that "the system works."

In XC,
Alec, sinner

"

[Alec Lowly]

Daniel writes:

"So what do you guys think of the astronomer Halton Arp's interpretation of redshift? He was denied telescope time in the U.S.A and now works in Germany. What he discovered through his telescope, and with the help of sense extending technology, has effectively disproven the expanding universe and big bang theories in one go. His work shows that galaxies are "born" from active parent galaxies and that the observed shift of light they emanate in to the red end of the spectrumn indicates age and not distance as most astronomers insist."

So he claims, that is. Would you elaborate a little on the "sense-extending technology" that's pertinent to this claim?

"Unfortunately this calls relativity into question which is tantamount to denying the holocaust in the eyes of the boring media and mainstream science."

The media has nothing to do with science. There's no such thing as "mainstream science." There's science and not-science.

"I recommend the work of Mel Acheson on science and epistimology as an introduction to the paradigm shift that is inevitably coming once the world catches up with Arp and other honest scientists and we are free of the media circus of creationism versus obsolete myths of scientism."

Well, I'm with you there, about the media circus, that is. How do you define an "honest" scientist? The ones who agree with your views?

"His essays can be found at his website here - http://www.dragonscience.com/"

The Web site will not open for me. I'll do a Google later on Halton Arp.

"For those who can be bothered with actual science rather than re-analysing each others opinions of it, this website has information on him and other people like australian physicist Wall Thornhill (my hero) and David Talbott who's research paths converged to produce the book "Thunderbolts of the Gods", a book that will make you re-think pretty much everything you have accepted as scientific fact until now."

I visited this site. It's interesting that no credentials are to be found for Thornhill and Talbott, and that the book has not been published by a reputable science house. But there's a conspiracy against them, right?

"I think the Church should start publicly supporting people like Arp, actual scientists who talk about observations and mesurements rather than stupid discussion about how best to "educate" chidren so that the information they recieve is organized in such a way as it does no violence to the ideology or religion or peer group they are being molded to adapt to."

I think that the Church should stick to an infinitely more important job of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, and should address scientific issues with enormous circumspection. The church's job is to show us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go (Augustine of Hippo).

" ... the true science is always opening up wider and wider paths, not digging holes for one group to sit in and sculpting pedestal with the dirt for another group to preach from."

I'm with you there, Daniel.

In XC,
Alec, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

I may have been a little too rough on our brother Daniel Jeandet, for which I beg his pardon. I had a look at Halton Arp's credentials, and there can be no doubt that he is a serious scientist whose views deserve to taken into account. Whether Arp's views on the red shift are correct, I cannot say, but Daniel has introduced a very interesting subject I intend to look into, privately.

In XC,
Alec Lowly, sinner

[Vasilis Kirikos]

> Re: "Unfortunately this calls relativity into question which is tantamount to denying the holocaust in the eyes of the boring media and mainstream science." I just arrived from another funeral. My brother-in-law. Only 67 he had a disease some of the doctors insisted was PSP (progressive super-nuclear palsy) often confused with Parkinson's. Unfortunately PSP acts very, very fast. His diagnosis was only 6 years ago. May The Lord grant him memory eternal. My two cents to this fray (I'm only a microbiologist) is that I thought that quantum mechanics already calls into question relativity especially where gravity is concerned. Isn't that what string theory is all about; to resolve this "disagreement"? Quantum mechanics and relativity are in a sense approximations that fail when we want to predict very small scale phenomena in the vicinity of very large masses....and I really don't have a clue what I'm talking about!!!!! But do any of those guys really understand?

[Olga]

Science and faith are not necesarily incompatible. We have a couple of great and recent examples of this: St Luke of Simferopol (1877-1961), monk, bishop, and at the same time, professor of surgery (under his worldly name of Valentin Voyno-Yassenetsky) during the Soviet period, including being a chief surgeon to injured troops during the Second World War. The other is the late Bishop Alexander of Buenos Aires (+2005), who continued working as a rocket scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, even after his consecration. His website www.fatheralexander.org (http://www.fatheralexander.org) is a real treasure trove of Orthodox material, and a good example of the use of high technology in the service of the faith.

[Daniel Jeandet]

Thankyou Alec,

By "sense-extending", I mean instruments that allow us to measure things, like x-rays, cells, and the ocean floor, and other things and things about things that up until very recently lay outside the limits of our un-extended senses.

I was going to go through your questions and try to answer them all but after re-reading your post, I realised that you really were a little rough on me, most of it I deserved, (although whats with the conspiraphobia on this message board? Isnt our Christianity a kind of Macrocosmic conspiracy revalation?, Owen, is that a gnostic thought? Im serious) so Id feel a bit stupid taking any of them seriously enough to type any more about them. Lets just say that I should have left a lot of it out and regretted much of what you criticised minutes after posting it. I really love writing but I hardly ever do it so when I write I get all intense and all these things come out that dont belong and I havent learned to deal with. Or I should get more sleep http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

If Halton Arp you find intriuging, dont let contempt before investigation stop you from looking into Wall Thorhills work. He has consistently predicted the observations of space probes used in NASA experiments including the mission to Titan and the Deep Impact mission, before these experiments took place based on his model of an electricaly active cosmos, in which electrical discharge is the primary agent in the scarring and sculpting of rocky planetary bodies and thier sattelites.

Why is the media silent on this? I dont really care, I dont have a conspiracy for it, it just makes me angry at the media and what I will continue to call mainstream science, like Doctor Karl (a very popular mainstream science spokesperson in Australia) with his cameo on the t.v. soap neighbors, and his boring pal Davies and others in the limelight who clearly know how you should interpret observations because they have the word "expert" superimposed over their image or they get articles in glossy magazines and you have to take thier word for it anyway because you cant do the maths.

Mr Thornhill's Deep impact predictions -

[LINK] (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050705impression.htm)

And Alex, I dont really get what you are saying.

What is a "true theory of science?"



Mel Acheson calls science a truthfullness-generator.

(Message edited by admin on 20 December, 2005)

[John P. Nasou]

The multitudinous messages arising from the shellfish arguments and = extending to the relationship of science and religion have become = annoying. As a person who has lived with science and my religion for = many years I have early made an accommodation which I feel is simple. I = have no problem with understanding that our Lord is the creator of all = creation. How and why is incomprehensible to mankind. In His revelatory = and prophetic messages to mankind our prophets labored under their = limited languages and understanding of the world to communicate His = thoughts to their hearers thus leaving us with. I also believe that our = Lord has endowed us with the ability to understand which is our basis = for our beliefs. I also think that this capability to understand = includes our ability to search our environment and our physical persons = for the truths of our God and this is my concept of science. I believe = that our Lord fervently desires for us to know His truths. This is part = of our reach for theosis and little by little mankind using prayer in = this scientific search for understanding creation will it benefit our = soul and that God intended it to be this way. Only when scientific = endeavors are deliberately done without prayer with the intent to = destroy religion is there a discrepancy and evil. Historically Orthodoxy = has never taken positions against science or scientific findings as the = Latin Catholic and Fundamentalist Protestants are accustomed to doing. = Our Fathers and scholars of the past may have made statements concerning = our physical world which do not find concurrence with our present = science but this is because they did not have the instrumentality for = investigation. On the other hand the Orthodox Church has not made use of = these statements as a matter of universal dogmatic =

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

"Like Fr Raphael, I feel we do see a different world depending on the eyes through which we are observing it, and the sun rising or setting is not an identical phenomenon for any two people."

Well, my brother, I have a lot of problems with that line of thinking, but I don't this is to forum to get into that. The fact that two people observing a phenomenon may see two different things says more about one or the other of the observers than about the phenomenon. And please remember: We have numerous means of observation/measurement that depend not at all upon man's sensorium.

I realised that when I wrote my previous post it could be interpreted as meaning that what we perceive is just a matter of personal perspective. I have difficulty expressing what I mean which is not at all that perception is subjective (although it can be) but rather that perception is always affected by our inner state. This is so even if we state something such as measurement in the sense that one can measure for the building of a church or for a death camp. One could still maintain that an inch is an inch regardless but I would submit that this is precisely an example of modern blindness that takes itself for objectivity.

Of course we are talking about much more than measuring and observation. We are talking about the overall context in which these observations take place and how this affects ones understanding of exactly what one is observing. So the discussion & arguments about evolution for which there is deep disagreement even among the scientific community.

This is also what I mean by my previous comments about a Byzantine 'seeing' these things differently from us. From my reading & study I am more & more convinced that past cultures saw reality in a much different way than we do. This is now widely recognised and acknowledged but we still tend to say these were pre-scientific cultures. I would submit though that these cultures in fact saw creation far more objectively and realistically than we do. Maybe that is one reason why modern scientists still cannot unravel the mystery of how many ancient structures were erected or even their purpose.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Alex Haig]

A True Theory of Science

1 We notice something in the world around us

2 We try to write formulae and explanations of phenomena

3 We extensively test the proposed theory

4 We alter theory where it differs from experimental data (this may be changing the theory itself or explaining how the errors have come in)

With love in Christ

Alex

[Owen Jones]

On the Immediate Experience of Nature

A plant is a plant. You see it. You don't see its physical-chemical processes, and nothing about the plant changes if you know that physical-chemical processes are going on inside. How these processes will result in what you experience immediately as a plant (a rose or an oak tree), you don't know anyway. So if you know these substructures in the lower levels of the ontic hierarchy (beyond the plant which is organism) and go into the physical, chemical, molecular and atomic structures, ever farther down, the greater becomes the miracle how all that thing is a plant. Nothing is explained. If you try to explain it in terms of some mechanism, you have committed the fallacy of reduction.
If you deform your experience by trying to explain what you experience by the things which you don't experience but which you know only by science, you get a perverted imagination of reality—if you see a rose as a physical or atomic process.

[Alec Lowly]

Vasilis writes:

"My two cents to this fray (I'm only a microbiologist) is that I thought that quantum mechanics already calls into question relativity especially where gravity is concerned. Isn't that what string theory is all about; to resolve this "disagreement"?"

Exactly, Vasilis.

"Quantum mechanics and relativity are in a sense approximations that fail when we want to predict very small scale phenomena in the vicinity of very large masses....and I really don't have a clue what I'm talking about!!!!!"

Yes, my brother, you do. I am sorry to learn of your brother-in-law's death. May his memory be eternal!

In XC,
Alec, sinner

But do any of those guys really understand?

[Alec Lowly]

Daniel writes:

"Why is the media silent on this? I dont really care, I dont have a conspiracy for it, it just makes me angry at the media and what I will continue to call mainstream science,"

The media is the bane of serious discussion in numerous areas of great importance to people, including the role of religion in society.

It is my experience that the media handles science news badly because so little of it is "exciting" and because few journalists have the scientific background to ask the right questions.

In that respect, American journalists are not so different from the American public, whose ignorance of basic science is woeful.

There is no mystery why so much of the productive research being done in science and technology in America today is being done by immigrants. American public education is in a very bad way.

In XC,
Alec Lowly

[Alec Lowly]

"So the discussion & arguments about evolution for which there is deep disagreement even among the scientific community."

Father, bless ...

Father, that's just not so. There is no "deep disagreement" among the scientific community about evolution. It only looks that way because of the agit-prop of the anti-evolutionists.

In XC,
Alec Lowly, sinner

[Alec Lowly]

Dear brothers and sisters,

This has been an interesting discussion on science and religion, but I think we've gone on about it long enough. I'm bowing out. I will continue to read the posts but will wrestle with myself not to respond. A minor podvig, as it were <grin>.

Much love from
Alec, sinner

[Owen Jones]

On Biological Phenomenalism and Charles Darwin

[. . . The] success of the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century [ is a source of bewilderment to the historian of ideas]. The evolution of the forms of life, as we observed [earlier in the text], was treated thoroughly in the biological theory of the eighteenth century. The creational theory of the species was abandoned; the idea of a chronological succession of living forms from primitive to the most complicated was conceived. The increase of phenomenal knowledge concerning their unfolding was acknowledged, but the insight was also gained that the idea of an evolution of living forms did not bring us one step nearer to an understanding of the mystery of the substance that was evolving through the chain of forms.

The chain of evolutionary forms as a whole was just as much of an ultimate datum in ontology as previously had been the single species. No speculative prolongation of the chain into inorganic matter and no raising of the question of whether organic forms originated in inorganic matter could change the problem either. Such speculation simply meant pushing the mystery of the potentiality that unfolded morphologically in time a step further back without understanding it any better. . . . By the time of Kant the problem of evolution was reduced to its phenomenal proportions.

And now, in the nineteenth century, as if nothing had happened, a new phenomenal theory of evolution, operating with the conceptions of the struggle for life, the survival of the fittest, natural selections, etc., had a popular success and became a mass creed for the semieducated. A theory that, assuming that it was empirically tenable, could at best furnish an insight into the mechanics of evolution without touching its substance was accepted as a revelation concerning the nature of life and as compelling a reorientation of our views concerning the nature of man and his position in the cosmos.

. . . . A theory that in itself might contribute to our knowledge of the phenomenal unfolding of a substance is perverted into a philosophy of substance; the causal relationship of phenomena (always assuming the correctness of the theory) is understood as an explanation on the level of the substance of life.

The principal causes of this transformation of phenomenal relations into a phenomenal reality are well known. Darwin was a great empirical biologist who marshaled convincingly the materials in support of his theory; the massiveness of empirical data opened a view into a new realm of ordered knowledge. At the same time, neither Darwin nor his followers were the best of theorists, so that the issue between phenomenal and substantial knowledge could remain relatively obscure. We are faced with the problem of the nineteenth century that with the increasing specialization of the sciences, scholars who are impeccable as masters of their field become unable to see the theoretical problems of their special science in proper relation to the problems of ontology and metaphysics.

Moreover, the will to create a phenomenal reality out of the propositions of a science of phenomena was an independent factor on the occasion of the magnificent unfolding of biology, just as it was on the occasion of the unfolding of astronomy and physics in the seventeenth century.

The evolutionary movement has a distinct anti-Christian, secularistic flavor through the assumption that the interpretation of man as the final link in the chain of evolution has a bearing on the understanding of man as a spiritual existence; the will to understand man as having his position in a world-immanent order revealed by a science of phenomena, instead of in a transcendental order revealed by the cognitio fidei, is the dynamic factor in the transformation.

The biological conceptions of the struggle for life, the survival of the fittest, etc., were absorbed into the interpretation of society and politics. Within the order of competitive society the idea of natural selection could fortify the belief that the successful man is the better man, that success is fated in the order of nature, and that the order created by success is a right order because it is willed by nature—irrespective of the moral and spiritual issues involved. . . . [T]he substance of man and society is overlaid with a coat of biological phenomena that smothers the spiritual and moral awareness and tends to replace the spiritual order of society with an order of biological survival . . . .
CW Vol 25 (HPI-VII)
Chapter 1 Phenomenalism
§ 1e. Biological Phenomenalism, pp184-187.

[Owen Jones]

Eric Voegelin on Relativity:


ABSOLUTE SPACE AND RELATIVITY

Introduction

[Eric Voegelin had a clear and penetrating understanding of modern physics. In fact, he had mulled over becoming a physicist when he was in high school. His presentation of the restoration of philosophy's preeminence by the supplanting of Newtonian Mechanics with the Theory of Relativity is brilliant. It is hard to condense or excerpt. But it is most important because Newtonian Mechanics still dominates our intellectual culture. Please go to the text itself. It is well worth reading in full.]


. . . . With the thinning out of faith into a reverential attitude toward symbols, the meaning of the symbols themselves is thinned out to propositions the truth of which has to be demonstrated by reason. As a residuum of reality there remains only the structure and content of consciousness, that is, of a self no longer open toward transcendental reality.

This general pneumato-pathological state, which in itself may occur and has occurred in other periods of history, receives its specific coloration as a result of the coincident rise of mathematical physics. A new world-filling reality, emerging from Galilean and Cartesian physics and systematized in Newtonian mechanics, is ready to substitute for God and his creation.

The new science, on principle, is a science only of phenomenal nature; that the edifice of science could assume ontological functions is a result of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” This fallacy becomes the vehicle of the trend toward materialism in the sense of a worldview wherein all realms of being are reduced to the one and true reality of matter. The pathos of this view, insofar as it is carried by the new science itself, is expressed in the anecdote of Napoleon and Laplace: when questioned by Napoleon whether, indeed, he had not mentioned God in his Mecanique celeste , Laplace answered proudly, “I have no use for this hypothesis!” The mechanism of matter extends infinitely, and God has been squeezed out of his world.

When the issue is stated in such bald language, it seems almost unbelievable that the movement of enlightened scientism could have the strength and duration that it actually had and still has, and that it should have taken the work of generations of thinkers to dissolve such crude mistakes of thought. . . . It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the authors are particularly deficient in intellectual capacity. Their inability to handle elementary speculative problems rather illustrates that there is no limit to intellectual disorder once the nosos of the spirit has corroded the personality of the thinker.

Nevertheless, the situation is not quite as bad as it looks at first sight. There is one real and very serious theoretical problem involved in the position of enlightened scientism. . . . We are speaking of the problem of absolute space that was built into the foundations of modern science through Newton’s Principia and that has found its full and satisfactory solution only through Einstein’s theory of relativity.

We must discuss this problem for two reasons. In the first place, it was Berkeley’s starting point for his recovery of the concrete. Beyond this restricted importance in the English quest for the concrete, however, it has an importance for understanding the impact of enlightened scientism on the Western scene that can hardly be exaggerated. The Newtonian theory of absolute space lent a semblance of justification to the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”

Without this piece of Newtonian doctrine scientistic materialism, with its ramifications in the Encyclopedist movement, in utilitarianism and positivism, in the sociology of Comte and Mill, in Marxism, and so forth, would have had little ground to stand on. The belief that science is the key to the understanding of nature in an ontological sense has entered as a decisive ingredient into every one of our political mass movements—liberalism, progressivism, Darwinism, Communism, and National Socialism. The historical root of this belief is the Newtonian theory of space.
CW VOL 24 (HPI-VI)
Chapter 4, The English Quest for the Concrete
§ 3, Absolute Space and Relativity, pp 183-184.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks Owen for putting into words much more clearly than I what I have been struggling to say.

I get the feeling that what we are doing without being aware of it is that we are imposing a cultural abstraction on creation. We call this abstraction 'the scientific view' and take it for absolute reality. Maybe it's because we don't have too many other ways of thinking outside the box as examples.

In Christ-Fr Raphael

[Olga]

Whoops! I must correct my earlier post on Bishop Alexander: I was relying on memory in stating he continued to work for NASA after his consecration as bishop. This is not the case, though he certainly combined his priestly vocation with his secular work as an electronics engineer. Apologies.

[Daniel Jeandet]

Hey Alex,

Thanks for the definition of a true theory of science. I agree 100% (better make that 99.99999%).

My next question is, why dont you apply this formula to the theory outlined at the other end of the link I provided? Its only a click away http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

Scientific method, like religious practice, does violence to the self and its illusions. It requires effort and the freedom to pursue knowledge without fear or favor. Both sides of the creation/evolution debate are driven by the fear that God may have some tricks up His sleeve, or that airtight mathematical equations may not represent anything in the real world.

I just want to mention that by "mainstream", I mean - where the research funding goes, and by "media", I mean - where the public's attention is directed. These two things are totally intertwined of course.

Alot of the corruption in science and religion has its root in the unatural desire to maintain the good opinion of other humans, this allows entrenched nonsense, like Einstiens relativity and metaphysical quantumn claptrap, to become dogma and any theory or experiment that claims to falsify these dogmas to be instantly dismissed as being "impossible" "far-fetched" "against the laws of physics" and therefore only supported by lunatics, non-scientists, bad scientists or those with an axe to grind and a conspiracy to feed. They are just ways of saying - "since this theory and these people do not enjoy the good opinion of the scientists Ive heard about, I dont even have to read what they say, I already know they are incapable of using the scientific method with any integrity."

Here are some links on Halton Arp -

[link] (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051102arp-galileo.htm)

[link] (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050106universe-arp.htm)

and here is quick look at the corespondence between ancient rock-art and modern plasma discharge experiments.

[link] (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040915plasma-rock.htm)

Thanks guys, I pray I havent upset anyone or anything. I speak boldly and in a challenging way becasue I am confident that these models (intrinsic redshift, electric universe, and ancient myth being an attempt to remember actual celestial phenomena close to the earth, now known as the "war of the Gods"), are the basis of an inevitable paradigm shift that will force anyone who is interested to completely re-evaluate science, history, myth, cosmology, everything. The evidence is overwhelming, IF WE CAN BEAR TO LOOK. I get annoyed because i know that many people on this board would find these ideas more enlightning and useful than anything alse they have read or studied on these subjects but it is almost impossible to get someone to even click on a link, look at a picture and read a paragraph or two.

(Message edited by admin on 21 December, 2005)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks for these quotes Owen. They're difficult for me to understand but I get the basic point about a fundamental shift in how we see- which is the premise of our modern culture- that is much more fundamental than we suspect.

I have always been interested in tying this in with the great schism for I believe that for us to be consistent the roots of this different way of seeing must have its roots therein. Is this not perhaps why we have a different reaction to the divisions between let's say the Oriental Orthodox (we're talking mainly about doctrine & theology) and our rupture with the west where we are talking about something so fundamental that it almost seems to underpin theological vision itself. Could it be so that there is something deeper than theological vision- spiritual vision that goes into creating the ethos of a culture? If so how does this occur to the extent that it creates what amounts to a new and radically opposed culture than what came before? Perhaps Voegelin has some insights here even if he is talking about a time in the west considerably later than the schism.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Alec Lowly]

Hmm. Has anyone here read Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man"?

In XC,
Alec Lowly, sinner

[Fr. George Morelli]

Alec .. Awaiting Our Savior's birth! ... I will make the simplist statement I can and invite you to state some question or proposition.. I believe I have read most published works Teilhard has written as well as current journals on his work ... in Christ ...FrGeorge

[M A Jackson-Roberts]

Yes, Alec,I have. Teilhard was an important element in my formation as a young convert RC. He also taught me to be extremely critical of supposedly immutable taught truths, as propounded by the Vatican, for example.

anchorite (aka seeker)

[Alec Lowly]

Dear Father George and M.A. Jackson-Roberts,

I am heartened that somebody, somewhere knows Teilhard and, one assumes, Teilhard's thought.

We've been going back and forth here, to and fro, about biological evolution, and I've been struck to see that some posters appear to be completely unaware that there's far more to this discussion than Charles Darwin. It's all very well to attack materialism, reductionism and "scientism" (have you noticed that anything we Orthodox don't like quickly becomes an "ism"?), but that done, we are left with this: If Genesis is not literally true, what then?

It is not my intention to argue that Teilhard has got it right. I don't know that. But he certainly did reveal another way of looking at the scientific problem of human origins that, at base, would require a radical rethinking of what we mean by the term "matter."

In XC,
Alec Lowly, sinner


wda i brought up Teilhard because it seemed clear to me v

[Owen Jones]

Wasn't Teilhard associated with Piltdown Man, later to be revealed as a hoax? The idea of an evolutionary cosmos, with cosmos and God evolving together is a classic gnostic scenario, which allows the sophisticated "thinker" to live outside the normal difficulties that common people have to deal with, like, why am I suffering for no good reason? Or, why do I do the things I do not want to do? For the gnostic thinker has determined that these questions are no longer relevant, because they require living by faith.

As for science, it was founded by the ancient Greeks, and the Ground of scientific investigation was always transcendent. That there can be any true science without a transcendent ground is preposterous, yet, as we see in the above quote from Laplace, it is common place for "scientists" to insist not only that they do not need a transcendent ground for their inquiry, but that it somehow gets in the way of "objective" science. Yet no one acts more purposefully than the modern scientist who is out to save mankind from his ills, help him to overcome his ignorance and his defects, and to transcend his current limitations. In other words, no one acts more like a priest hood, with a universal transcendent purpose, than the modern scientist. And if you ask a scientist why he engages in his work, he will quickly lapse into mystical language to explain why he does what he does, while at the same time absolutely denying that there is anything mystical about it.

As for Darwin's Origin of the Species, it is a classic cosmogonic myth, that conforms to the social ideals of Victorian England, that each and every day, things are getting better and better in each and every way (Mathew Arnold). It conforms in its structure to all of the progressivist ideologies of the 18th and 19th century. Except for Darwin, the ground is biology. For Marx, the ground was class conflict. For Comte the ground was society. For Freud, the ground was an immanentized psyche. For Hitler, it was race (another twist on the ground as biology). Once you dispense with a transcendent ground, you go through all of the various other options, and you get all of the great ideologies. They have all been exhausted and there can be no new ideologies, because all of the options have been explored, defended, fought for, by the great thinkers who orginated them, and now they are defended only by epigenes who spout their slogans. Other than Voegelin and a few others outside of the institutional Church, there have been no thinkers who not only challenged the ground upon which ideologies are formulated, and identified them as pathologies, who doe not simply fall back on other formulas and slogans, but actually recover the actual engendering experiences of transcendence that constitute the life of Reason and Faith. Orthodoxy has a few, but they are largely unknown, and have even so, have not sought to recover classical reason and science as part of their endeavor. Whereas it was implicit in almost all of the Greek Fathers, and sometimes very explicit, that not only could theology not contradict science in the strict sense of the term, but theology was an all encompassing science of the soul and its ovement toward God, that involved mathematics, geometic, cosmology, and the science of aesthetics, that is the science of beauty and its visible forms. There are different methods for each and yet the methodological ground for all scientific inquiry is a properly oriented soul. Even Einstein, or especially Einstein, understood this, and, while not exactly what you would call Orthodox, understood that his theory came as a kind of divine insight into the cosmic order of things, and not a result of what we would call conventional scientific methodology.

The flaw in the claim for modern scientific methodology is that every hypothesis is also a conclusion. Where does the conclusion come from????? A modern scientist not only cannot answer that question, he refuses to even address it.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear brother Alec,

Greetings as we on the New Calendar near the Nativity!

I have not read Teilhard directly, although I own one of his books ("le Milieu Divin", I think), and have frequently come across references to this intellectual giant paleontologist / priest in secondary sources. I therefore do not feel qualified to comment on his ideas, just to express respect for someone who must have been a profound polymath.

Having said that, your last posting has prompted me to return to the debate on "literal/figurative", "symbolic/factual", "subjective/objective" etc. I may say some things that sound bold, but I do not claim knowledge or infallibility, and stand to be corrected.

It seems to me that much that is said in the Bible, beginning with Genesis, is an attempt in human words, to describe an order of things which is not of this world. Adam and Eve, the Tree of Life and that of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Garden of Eden, and much later the references to the invisible realm, heaven and hell in the NT, all of these surely correspond to reality from a Christian perspective; however, what images these words evoke in our limited minds, and much less what can be discovered of these realities by scientific instruments, does not in any way correspond to what these realities may in fact be. I know this is going to sound controversial, but I think one could say that it is as futile to try to translate the Bible narratives into modern scientific terms, as it is to try to arrive at a picture of "objective" reality through the scientific method. I don't think that the perceptions of the Holy Fathers and saints of the Church are "subjective", any more than I find the claims of physicists or chemists or indeed biologists to be "objective".

On reading again what I've written above, I realise that someone may conclude I'm being nihilistic or even arrogantly placing my own beliefs above the painstaking researches of science. What I'm trying to say is that it seems to me to be ultimately a problem of epistemology or gnoseology, what sort of data we take as "knowledge". You have previously said that science is good at answering "how", but not "why". I will agree with this wholeheartedly, but take it one step further: science can answer "how" in scientific terms, but not "how" in ontological terms. Simply put: science answers scientific questions, religion answers religious questions. Like so much else in life, you get out what you've put in.

This obviously doesn't stop there. I'm not "tidying up the universe", just trying to acknowledge in my clumsy way the mystery behind our limited abilities to know.

Feel free to correct me where my reasoning is unsound, brother Alec. And thank you for your interesting contributions to this discussion!

In Christ
Byron

[Daniel Jeandet]

Hey Owen,

The conclusion is reached in the same way in both science and religion, by judgement.

The scientist must, in order to discover the limits of the domain of validity of his overarching paradigm, make judgements between theories according to certain criteria. The criteria are things like - the simplicity of the theory, which model or theory describes the most phenomena with the least explainations, which theory requires the least additional hypotheses to explain unpredicted observations etc.

For example, Newtons theory of gravity is a mathematical model that succesfully predicts the motions of planets and thier moons, around the sun. It is so succesful in modeling the actual movements of celestial bodies, we can calculate (predict) a complex series of very precise manipulations of the gaslight-era combustive locomotion system of a space probe and land it on a moon so far away, so tiny in our ordinary vision, that we cant even see it with our naked eye.

Do you still think the only label we can give to Newtons laws is a "conclusion?"

Now, within the domain of validity of our local solar/planetary system, Newtons laws are predictive enough, they model an invisible reality accurately enough to allow us to explore worlds that the Greek pioneers of science had no idea even existed! Perhaps that is the kind of vision those greeks had in mind when they started this beautiful and truly divine art of inter-creational exploration.

Now here comes the really good bit.

According to Newton's laws, the stars at the outer edges of the galaxy should be spinning more slowly than those towards the centre. The predicted observation of the speed and motion of stars on the edge of the galaxy compared with those in the centre, was completely wrong. The stars at the edge of the galaxy were rotating way to fast, the galaxy should have flung itself apart millions of years ago!

This is when science happens, when the theory is applied outside of its domain of validity, and fails to predict observations or is otherwise unable to sufficiently model a wider set of data. This is called falsification. It doesnt mean the theory is wrong or bad, just limited to modelling less of the phenomena than its technological usefulness has allowed us to now investigate.

It is at these critical junctures that it falls to the scientists who made such spectacular use of Newtons laws of gravity to admit that the limitations of its domain of validity have been revealed, and that there is another force or something as yet unknown about gravity that will explain why the galaxy does not fly apart and behaves in a completely different way on the galactic scale than its does on the solar system scale.

Guess what the clever scientists did? They looked at there calculations and realised that if there was about 90% more mass in the galaxy, then Newtons laws would be saved! Just because the new discovered and vast majority of mass in the galaxy cannot be seen and its existence was never suspected before in the history of astronomy, didnt faze these guys one bit. Now it seems these guys didnt have the imagination of Newton, and werent doing to well with the actual physical experiments or the scientific method applied to observations and telescope data. They made thier fame and fortune on a godlike ability to predict the motions of planets according to mathematical abstractions, and would we even know the name "Einstien" if we werent force fed the myth that he was able to MODEL THE NATURE OF TIME AND SPACE, THE VERY FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF, WITHIN HIS IMAGINATION?

When someone tells me that the secret of time and space just popped into his head because he wanted it to, I Just walk quietly away.

Sorry, off topic. So the astronomers added the right amount of mass to the galaxy in the mathematical form by, well, writing bigger numbers, called the artificial construct "dark matter" and then expected everyone to simply accept that there is actually 90% more hard reality, that follows the laws of gravitation and must be in the form of some kind of sensible matter, that, for some reason, we will never be able to see, or prove exists. And they did! Try not to cry on your keyboards people, I know it is very funny!

Unbelievably, I had to try and wrap my head around this joke of a stupid myth for most of my concsious life. Good thing Im only thirty.

Happily, while all this was going on, and we pretended we just "knew" dark matter was there and affirmed the dogma amongst ourselves, (to stay out of crackpot territory in the eyes of our peers) a group of guys who were into electrical engineering, Comparative mythology, actual observational astronomy and many other interesting and immediately accesible joys of the scientific endevour and worked together over many years to reach a unifying theory of an ELECTRICALLY ACTIVE COSMOS. The electric force is thousands of times more powerful that the gravitational force, its what keeps the galaxy in one piece without requiring a persistent void in the form of a black hole, infinitely sucking light into other dimensions, whatever b.s. they talk these days.

I am not giving any more of this story away. Its better to discover the truth about these things for yourself. And if you dont want to take me up on this science challenge, well Ill just find you in 20 years time and make fun of you and say I told you so, and we will laugh together at how self evident the denial of ridicule is.

Owen, I loved your post above, it fired me up and inspired me. They are the same thoughts I was forced to hold when I finaly gave up on my love for science a few years ago, admitted I never understood relativity (joining some pretty illustrious company, although it took me years to learn that) and gave in to my distrust of quantumn physics and its lovely imaginative mathematical fantasies that pretend sub-atomic particles are infinitaly small.

True Science is the religion of knowing the creation.
True Religion is the science of knowing the Creator

Both require unremitting effort and years of uncovering ignorance and assumptions that obscure reality. Both must be practised strictly according to the tradition handed down, (the scientific method is the only unchangeable dogma of science, like the Revealed Trinity is the only real dogma of Chritianity. One was discovered by man, and one was revealed by God. If you dont know these helpful dogmas, you might still learn alot about God or nature, but its going to take you ages and you will suffer the manipulations of those who try to hide these truths.)

Owen, I love you, and if you die without knowing what science can really be like and how, like the light of Christ, can and will enlighten all, I will cry for a bit and then get over it. Do yourself a favor, read "Thunderbolts of the Gods", and if you think there are no clear thinkers left in science, lift that stubborn mouse finger and INVESTIGATE! Start with Mel Acheson. I know its a common assumption among educated Christians that there is nothing of worth left in the scientific/intelectual world, but these guys like Thornhill, Talbot, Acheson and heaps of other great minds have stopped complaining and decided they are going to do something about it. Havent heard of them? They dont care. Check it out.

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Owen,

You wrote


Once you dispense with a transcendent ground, you go through all of the various other options, and you get all of the great ideologies.

Thank you again for pointing out the obvious which we cannot see because it lies at the end of our noses! I enjoy your postings very much, Owen. Have you written a book? I would like to read it.

Also, can you say a bit more about the following:


For the gnostic thinker has determined that these questions are no longer relevant, because they require living by faith.

Surely one of the characteristics of gnostic thought is its very attempt to explain precisely these questions in a way which satisfies the carnal or psychological intellect?

In Christ
Byron

[M A Jackson-Roberts]

Yes, Owen: Teilhard certainly got it wrong there, as a scientist, but the Piltdown saga of ?1912 accorded to a prevailing "wished-for" missing link theory very much current at the time, which was only disproved some years later. Credulity versus credibility; a metaphor for religious belief?

anchorite

[Olympiada]

It conforms in its structure to all of the progressivist ideologies of the 18th and 19th century. Except for Darwin, the ground is biology. For Marx, the ground was class conflict. For Comte the ground was society. For Freud, th e ground was an immanentized psyche. For Hitler, it was race (another twist o n the ground as biology). Once you dispense with a transcendent ground, you go through all of the various other options, and you get all of the great ideologies. They have all been exhausted and there can be no new ideologies , because all of the options have been explored, defended, fought for, by the great thinkers who orginated them, and now they are defended only by epigenes who spout their slogans. Other than Voegelin and a few others outside of the institutional Church, there have been no thinkers who not only challenged the ground upon which ideologies are formulated, and identified them as pathologies, who does not simply fall back on other formulas and slogans, but actually recover the actual engendering experiences of transcendence that constitute the life of Reason and Faith.

Owen, I have to say I am quite impressed with your brilliance. I know I was at odds with you earlier but now I see your mind and I like it. So forgive me for my boldness earlier. I am interested in your bringing up Voegelin. He was introduced to me in relation to Eliot. Later I was introduced to Weber so now I see a *big* gestalt. I am wondering what is going on here. How did Voegelin challenge the ground upon which ideologies are formulated and identify them as pathologies? What are the engendering experiences of transcendence that constitute the life of Reason and Faith? In Christ Olympiada

[Olympiada]

Surely one of the characteristics of gnostic thought is its very attempt to explain precisely these questions in a way which satisfies the carnal or psychological intellect? In Christ Byron

What is the carnal or psychological intellect? In Christ Olympiada

[Owen Jones]

Dear Fr. V.,

Voegelin, as you suggest, is concerned with how "modern" western societies developed into totalitarian states, not unlike Plato's concern that the learned of Athens could put to death its most virtuous man. To better understand how this could happen, he looks at the development of ideas primarily since Aquinas, since totalitarianism is a French/German intellectual phenomenon. While I think he had a decent grounding in Patristics, his primary discovery was the deformation of classical reason. He thought this was far more significant than the theological tradition per se. He also did not want to engage in anything that might be perceived as sectarian disputes. But most importantly, he wanted to recover the life of Reason as a science, and the inquiry into the relationship between soul and political society as a science, as it was originally formulated by Plato and Aristotle, while not simply mimicking their thought.

But he abandoned the idea of a history of ideas after already writing many unpublished volumes, because he discovered that there are no ideas with a separate existence of their own, but only symbols representing experiences. So he examined how experiential reality can be eclipsed by a thinker who is pathologically motivated, as well as other classical mistakes regarding ideas, such as treating them as things, or the subject of ideas as things. Part of the problem for Voegelin is the way in which both theological and philosophical symbols become "reified" by later followers, so that dogma becomes a substitute for faith.

As Orthodox, we might draw different conclusions than he, such as the importance we not only make in maintaining the relationships between symbol and experience, (I note my Divine Liturgy book in my church defines the Nicene Creed as our "symbol of faith," for example)
but the Orthodox goal is also more the transformation of perception than on the development of understanding, whereas Voegelin is more in the tradition of Anselm.

However, the fact remains that the philosophical tradition in Orthodoxy is minimal, vs. what he saw as philosophical aberrations in the West since at least Decartes, and to some degree Aquinas (with the emphasis on intellectual proofs).

The most important classical experience that he discovered, which he believed was at the root of philosophical deformation, was the experience of existence in the "metaxy," as discovered and explicated by Plato, especially in the Symposium, but which we certainly find as a kind of core thought in Orthodox theology (although so deeply embedded and implicit that it is not debated, and therefore not noticed -- IMHO).

Studying Voegelin is like climbing Everest, but his "Autobiographical Reflections" is short, concise, easy, and pretty much sums it up.

[Alec Lowly]

"Wasn't Teilhard associated with Piltdown Man, later to be revealed as a hoax? The idea of an evolutionary cosmos, with cosmos and God evolving together is a classic gnostic scenario, which allows the sophisticated "thinker" to live outside the normal difficulties that common people have to deal with, like, why am I suffering for no good reason? Or, why do I do the things I do not want to do? For the gnostic thinker has determined that these questions are no longer relevant, because they require living by faith."

I'm shocked that you would so glibly repeat a slander, brother Owen. There's not one shred of proof connecting Teilhard to the Piltdown hoax. Shame on you. In point of fact, Teilhard was the the paleontologist who discovered the skull of Peking man, a discovery that remains a verified and authenticated contribution to the study of human origins to this very day.

Teilhard was a gnostic? So you say, but I certainly have not carried away that view from my study of his writings. Incidentally, have you actually read Teilhard, or are you regurgitating "hand-me-down" criticisms?

In XC,
Alec Lowly

[Alec Lowly]

"Simply put: science answers scientific questions, religion answers religious questions. Like so much else in life, you get out what you've put in."

Dear Byron,

Far be it from me to "correct" a brother who speaks in humility, as you have. What you have written, above, is the meat of the matter. Reading the entire post, I would have to say that we see pretty much eye-to-eye.

Permit me one comment, on this:

"I know this is going to sound controversial, but I think one could say that it is as futile to try to translate the Bible narratives into modern scientific terms, as it is to try to arrive at a picture of "objective" reality through the scientific method. I don't think that the perceptions of the Holy Fathers and saints of the Church are "subjective", any more than I find the claims of physicists or chemists or indeed biologists to be "objective"."

It seems to me that you're coming perilously close here to emptying the words "objective" and "subjective" of any meaning. That's all I'd like to say. I've been trying to back out of this topic, with mixed success so far <grin>!

Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!
Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Alec Lowly, sinner

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks for that Owen. This is a subject that has interested me for a long time now specifically as you say, "how experiential reality can be eclipsed by a thinker who is pathologically motivated, as well as other classical mistakes regarding ideas, such as treating them as things, or the subject of ideas as things."
Taking the totalitarian regimes as models of what can happen it seems there always needs to be the right mix of pathology between leader and led. Looked at below the surface the messages these totalitarian leaders give play on people's resentments & passions. But these were passions are (or were) of a very specific type that always focused on seeing oneself as living in a world of victim & enemy. This I think relates to what you are saying about degeneration of thinking. Without this (as in Great Britain & America and in fact all countries with a philosophical heritage of Britain) such passions just fizzled out for the most part.
For example it is noticable how the leaders of all such totalitarian movements were deeply strategic and tactical thinkers. In other ways such leaders could hardly be called thinkers at all due to their degeneracy but the mistake always made by other 'normal leaders' was to constantly under rate their powerful impact. This influence of those who in other circumstance would have been quite unremarkable is still a puzzle to all who study this subject. Historians and others keep returning to this because they correctly sense that there is a deep lesson- and warning- about our society in this which is difficult to grasp.
I think what you point to Owen (also referring to Voegelin) is along the right path as it is consistent with historical reality but points to the deeper causes. The irony though is that this degeneracy in our modern way of perceiving reality is so subtle in a way. Again I think this relates back to how the 'enemy' in the past was not at all recognised since people were expecting something much more obvious. This is perhaps still a sign of where the danger signs for the future are.
By the way the books by Gertrude Himmelfarb also compliment what we are talking about- especially The Roads to Modernity-The British, French and American Enlightenments. She points to the real difference between the two Enlightenments- French & British (she puts America into the British influence) in a way I had never thought about before.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Byron Jack Gaist]

Dear Olympiada,

Regarding your post above #121, I was referring to the division between carnal (sarkikos), psychological (psychikos) and spiritual (pnevmatikos) which is found in Scripture (St Paul) and in the Fathers. Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos refers to it here (http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b15.en.orthodox_spirituality.01.htm).

Dear Alec,

I don't want to keep you in a conversation you are choosing not to continue, but re your post #46 above, I apologise if I've given the impression that the words "subjective" and "objective" have no meaning for me. To be honest, I'm not sure what they do mean, but I trust that any well-meaning scientist or theologian or even artist is trying to achieve some form of objectivity in their work, and that this is a very worthwhile endeavour. I guess for me the emphasis is on the word "honest", which allows for diverse and divergent viewpoints as well as for the possibility that universal Truth exists.

Merry Christmas to all on the New Calendar!

In Christ,
Byron

[Eric Waltemate D.C., L.Ac]

Name three "here today, gone tomorrow" scientific theories of modern times, say, from 1850 on ...


In XC,
Alec, sinner

Diagnosis and treatment of "hysteria."

The controversy surrounding Semmelweiss.

Check the 1899 Merck Manual for more ;)

[Herman Blaydoe]

1903 René Blondlot discovers N-rays, a "new" form of electromagnetic radiation

1920s had mitochondrial radiation and meno-toxin, based on the believe that menstrual women would cause bread dough not to rise, food to spoil if they came near, and flowers to wilt in their hands.

The concept of "poly water" that would allow raincoats to be rain-proofed with "water" in the late '60s and early '70s.

[Anthony]

Just from Astronomy: (1) ether, (2) canals on Mars (3) Planet X.

I can't find the original context for the question, but it looks fun anyway.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Originally Posted by Alec Lowly

Name three "here today, gone tomorrow" scientific theories of modern times, say, from 1850 on ...


In XC,
Alec, sinner

The idea that man can live without God.

Sorry, that sums up the other 40,00 theories also!

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Alexander Vernet]

Just as a side note, I thought it important to mention that there is a practice amongst the Alaskan Orthodox to eat meat during Lent and to abstain from other types of foods since the bulk of their nutrition and diet depends on meat. Not that this takes away from the other meanings and explanations put forth, but I do think it illustrates the pastoral nature of the decisions regarding which foods we should and should not eat.

[Owen]

Shellfish do have blood; it just isn't our kind of blood. In particular, crustaceans (and, I think, oysters as well) have blue blood because oxygen is conveyed in them by hemocyanin (copper-based), rather than hemoglobulin (iron-based). If the ancients believed that blood was, necessarily, red, they'd be thrown off by observation of blood of any other color.

Similarly, animals were taken by the ancients to include what we today would describe as members of the Phylum Chordata (having an endoskeleton with a backbone). Living things which were not endoskeletal and not plants fell into a grey area for which there was no name.

The realm of the microscopic was, to them, part of the invisible creation, something beyond their capacity to understand correctly. They did the best they could with what they had. We should not fault them for that; nor should we mistake fact as being always and everywhere truth.

[Father David Moser]

Shellfish do have blood; it just isn't our kind of blood.
...
Similarly, animals were taken by the ancients to include what we today would describe as members of the Phylum Chordata (having an endoskeleton with a backbone).
...
They did the best they could with what they had. We should not fault them for that; nor should we mistake fact as being always and everywhere truth.

However we should take all this into account when trying to understand the instructions of the Church and the writings of the Fathers. Scientifically, certainly one would want to take advantage of the greater wealth of data that modern science has given us, however, for spiritual purposes, we need to keep in mind what truths the Church and the Fathers are attempting to communicate using the understanding that they had. Blood - that red stuff that flows in a structured closed system in the body - is the organ of the soul in their understanding. Thus to partake of blood is to partake of the soul of the owner of that blood. Hence, when we fast, we abstain from the meat and blood of animals so that we do not partake of their passionate bestiality. Fish and other cold blooded animals have an inferior soul (their blood is "cold") and thus partaking of them is less passionate and so permissible at times during the fast. "Non-blooded" creatures a plants have no soul since they have no discernible blood and so we can partake of them without incuring the passionate bestiality of animals.

This is not a scientific statement but a spiritual lesson using (admittedly out-dated) scientific knowledge. Just because the science changes does not affect the truth that it was used to communicate. So true, we should not mistake facts/data for truth.

Fr David Moser

[Paul Cowan]

Shellfish do have blood; it just isn't our kind of blood. In particular, crustaceans (and, I think, oysters as well) have blue blood because oxygen is conveyed in them by hemocyanin (copper-based), rather than hemoglobulin (iron-based).

With all due respect Dr. Owen; since they are unable to breath, crustaceans have blue blood because they must filter all their life supporting needs through their (what ever you call them). They live in the ocean. The ocean is blue. Just look at any map. So their blood is blue because of their intake of the water throughout their bodies. Basically, they are stained blue.

Paul the Andorian marine biologist. ^;^

[Kosta]

In fasting, we abstain from anything which has blood, and a heart to circulate it. But it also means we abstain from everything that is derived from such an animal. So no cheese, or eggs or milk etc. We also fast from certain foods that are also considered as luxury items such as olive oil and wine.

I noticed that this thread is a few years old, but i wanted to comment on the earlier posts about jehovahs witness and their refusal of blood transfusions. It seems that some of the posters are under the impression that JW refuse blood transfusions because it is where the life of the human is, or that anothers life will be fused together with you, or that they consider blood to have some kind of spiritual properties. This is false.
JW refuse blood transfusions simply because they consider it cannibalism,. They take God's command not to eat the blood of any animal and apply it to modern medicine. Since a patient can be 'fed' and nourished thru an IV, they conclude a blood transfusion is the eating of blood for being injected in a similar manner. For a JW, a blood transfusion amounts to being a vampire!