Loading ...
This is pretty astounding, I think. In the June 14th issue of the Catholic Sentinel, Bishop Vasa strongly questioned the “old earth” hypothesis - or, doctrine, dogma, de fide proposition; call it what you will. Abstracting from the particular issue, I’m impressed that a bishop, any bishop, had the courage to say something which was bound to be so controversial. Granted, the Bishop of Baker isn’t exactly a regular in the media spotlight, but still, to call for some open-minded consideration of this particular issue requires fortitude.
Some excerpts:
There is a certain reluctance on my part and, I suspect, on the part of many in our western culture to give any real serious consideration to the possibility that the earth is much younger than the scientific community would have us believe.
The categorical rejection in most circles of anything even faintly resembling a questioning of the doctrine of evolution is met with nothing short of ridicule and scorn. One almost forgets that evolution is still referred to as a theory, not as a doctrine as I have done above. . . .
One could readily wonder, as I am inclined to do, whether the geological information is looked at objectively and then conclusions drawn, or whether the presumption of millions of years of erosion precedes the geological observations and forces the data to fit the predetermined conclusion.
To bolster the young earth proposal I was introduced to a book detailing ancient carved stones from Peru. On these stones, which date back a mere 20 thousand years or less, one finds wonderfully accurate pictures of a variety of dinosaurs which, by present scientific accounts, had been extinct for approximately 65 million years. The clarity of the pictures implies that the human carvers may have actually lived with dinosaurs. If dinosaurs existed as little as 20,000 years ago then the geologic layer in which dinosaur remnants is found is not 65,000,000 years old but rather closer to 20,000 years and if this is true then every dating of geological layers prior to and subsequent to that in which dinosaur remnants is found would need to be questioned.
It is disconcerting to think that due to a determined bias to preserve the more and more untenable claims of evolution, legitimate and objective scientific investigation might be impeded. It was an interesting and a challenging discussion. . . .
I have no difficulty believing that God created it all out of nothing and that He continues to guide its change and its development. I am finding it increasingly difficult, however, to believe that He took 50 or 75 or 114 million years to make it what it is.
When I look at what the people of God at Hermiston [Vasa dedicated a new church there] could do in a few short years, I suspect we seriously underestimate the creative power of God.
I saw this article linked on Jeff Culbreath’s blog; thank you! We’ve also written about Bishop Vasa here.
Interesting. I’d like to know what book he was reading (obviously the Bible will tell you what you need to know). And I’d like to see the cave paintings.
Write to him! I bet that he’d tell you.
Oy,
His excellency is, I’m sure, in earnest, and I’m sure his interlocutors are honest to some extent, but the claims made by various scientific authorities about, inter alia, the age of the Earth and the relative ages of humans and dinosaurs cannot be discarded on the evidence of a few sketched stones from Peru. The concordance of evidence for an ancient Earth is almost shockingly immense; and while it might be possible that the Allah of the Muslims would create a world wherein virtually every piece of evidence in it points to one conclusion based in reason, while the truth itself is different and the facts all staged, it is nearly unthinkable that the Logos of God would be so comprehensively misleading.
Oh, dearest President…
Iosephus, his email just bounced back to me. I’ll find his diocesan email - that one should work.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. While we’re at it, isn’t the world flat? AND the physical center of the universe? Ok, so I’m confirming Bishop Vasa’s stereotype regarding the instant scorn for the misguided young-earth types who believed dinos ate humans. Why are we trusting some dumb most-likely-devil-inspired pagans who made a couple of scratches on rocks anyway? Scorn over.
You mean, the devils inspired them to scratch their deceptive pictures on rocks so that, one day, down the road, a number of gullible persons would be led to fall away from the dogma of an old earth?
Surely better those poor young-earth fanatics were eaten by dinosaurs than even to suggest something so patently unreasonable, so contrary to the nature of God, so utterly impossible, and so blatantly outrageous in our supremely level-headed age.
Who said anything about an old earth “dogma”? It is theologically inconsequential whether the earth is 6000 or 3.5 billion years old. I infer from your usage that theological dogma is the only kind worth calling dogma?
Petty sarcasm aside, I defer to the husband on this one (as on most matters; after all, I *am* a respectable traditionalist). Why would God go through all the trouble of making the radioactive-dating data point to an old earth? The only recourse is to blame the atheist-secularist for inventing a truth of radioactive-dating. Possible. Perhaps, though, you’re too busy rubbing elbows with Sungenis to bother proving it yourselves.
Just as in the humanities there are ways to falsify a “Donation of Constantine,” there are also ways to falsify absurd ideas in the sciences. If you trust them not, investigate for yourself. Otherwise, count on the academic’s avarice for self-glorification to tear down the paradigm. Surely to them, love of self trumps all contempt for Christianity.
I suspect he&#