Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Preaches Evolution Heresy

[Matthew]

Please start studying here http://evolutionfacts.com/
A good start would be the Evolution Handbook here http://evolutionfacts.com/Handbook%20TOC.htm
and specially chapter 4, The Age of the Earth here http://evolutionfacts.com/Evolution-handbook/E-H-4a.htm

Once one is shown through science that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, which this chapter does convincingly, then all of Darwinism collapses in one fell swoop.

I have in the previous posts taken aim at the lack of trust and faith in the traditions of the Church that lead one to trust the "Scientific Priesthood" that our society holds in such high, trusting and nearly carte-blanche esteem. But let me also point out another: an additional problem with so many otherwise traditional Orthodox, and among the heterodox Bible believing Christians who accept evolution, is partly also that they are "awed" by science because they don't delve deeply enough into it. Science is not "objective" or "impartial", though it is commonly assumed that it is. However, the truth is that it has been turned into a dishonest tool in the hands of the atheist and agnostic blasphemers.

You can find honest and true science in the above links.

[jgress]

In this post I will make some general points in defense of my views, and later I will respond specifically to points you raised above.

I've looked at that site before and I find it unconvincing. We can discuss exactly what's wrong with young earth creationism on another thread. Here I want to focus on alleged doctrinal implications of accepting the validity of evolutionary theory.

I don't believe the Holy Spirit ever lied; I believe He expressed the Truth to people in a language they could understand. The story of Genesis expresses the truth about our condition in a language that could be understood by the simple Hebrew people. It's analogous to the crudeness of Old Testament morality: "eye for an eye" and so forth. We don't believe that the laws revealed to Moses were wrong, but we understand that they express deeper moral truths in a relatively rough form, truths that are expressed more perfectly in the Gospel. These were a simple, uncivilized people, and they would not be able to understand the true complexity of the universe that even modern science barely understands.

It turns out that reality is extremely complicated, and the picture of the world science gives us is still mysterious and incomplete. I don't believe evolution overturns anything we already believe from studying Scripture and Tradition. At most it gives us a little glimpse into the process underlying our fashioning from clay and dust, but I don't think scientific investigation will ever tell us anything about our purpose in life that we don't already know, in clear, simple language, from the Bible and the Fathers.

The simple fact is that I accept the doctrines that death is the wages of sin, that the world was created by God and did not always exist, and that we have both immaterial souls and material bodies. Attempts to insinuate that I am "un-Orthodox" will fail because you cannot show that I deny these doctrines. All I deny is that my belief in these doctrines entails denying modern scientific discoveries.

[jgress]

I appreciate the points you have made, but you have not actually faced my objections. It is irrelevant that Nestorius was not talking about biology etc. My point was simply that he insisted on his position because his commitment to his personal powers of REASON made him unable to accept the position of the other Church fathers. Whatever the topic is, when the general position of the historic Church says I am wrong, I should set aside my views and submit to the Church's position.

OK, thanks for clarifying. If I believed that a literal interpretation of Genesis per se was a dogma along the lines of the dogma of the single Hypostasis of Christ that Nestorius denied, I would have to agree with you, despite the objections of my reason. But I don't believe it is such a dogma. I believe the dogmas I've outlined above (on sin and death, creation, and the soul) are what are actually at stake, and I don't see it as un-Orthodox of me to reconcile those dogmas, which I believe wholeheartedly, with modern science. What would be un-Orthodox would be if I were to challenge one of those dogmas on the basis of science, but I refuse to do that.

Again, you have not tried to counter my claim that a retroactive backwards in time projection of the effects of the fall goes against the grain of God's ways in response to human sin, and besides it makes gibberish out of the prefall Garden. When God told Adam and Eve that they would die they had never seen death so the keeping of the commandment was an act of faith in God's word which if they had obeyed their eyes would have been opened and their faith would have saved them when by resisting the serpent's temptation they would have experienced the knowledge of Good and Evil making them morally perfect creatures "like God". The very thing Satan said God wanted to keep from us was exactly what God wanted and was trying to give to them, not by committing sin, but by resisting it. But either way their eyes would be opened.

Doesn't it also go against the "grain of God's ways" to punish innocent creatures for another's sin? Why did the whole world have to experience corruption because of what Adam and Eve did? Why, indeed, do all of their descendants experience the same penalty? The problem is there whether you take Genesis' chronology literally or figuratively.

Secondly, you said earlier that my point about thorns on flowers AFTER the fall as proof that no retroactive death happened is wrong because they have found fossilized plants with thorns on them "millions of years old" long before Adam and Eve. However, if that is true you have yet to explain why the Holy Spirit who is the author of inerrant Scripture LIED in Genesis and says they were not produced until after the Fall. This is the point, rather than reflexively assuming there then must be something wrong with modern scientific conclusions, and methods of carbon dating, and other age setting techniques about the age of rocks and fossils, you assume that the fault is with the age of the Earth and the order of events in the biological world as testified in the God-authored Holy Scriptures. Do you not see the dangerous and blasphemous path of unbelief and secular humanist thinking that such ideas put one on? Blasphemous because we quickly and unconsciously blame God rather than fallible secular "scientific" men and their theories that make no account of God (for to them everything should be explainable by naturalistic means and mechanisms which is precisely why they formed the theories now popular and required in schools).

I am not a Protestant Fundamentalist who puts the written word above all else. My faith comes from many sources, but ultimately because I have experienced the Truth for myself. Much as it may bother you, I am actually quite content in accepting both Orthodoxy and modern science. If you personally cannot reconcile them, that is simply your own problem, not mine.

These naturalistic explanations that remove against the flow of scripture and God's just manner of dealing with us (not punishing retroactively because "He knows we are going to sin in the future" are unacceptable and counter to how a compassionate, merciful and just God deals with His creatures. Yes there are mysteries about why do people suffer, why does all of creation suffer because of one couple's sin, and so on. But theistic evolution adds yet more such things to the list, even though a great many things about God show that these are exceptions, for usually as with ananias and sapphira and a host of other examples down through history, God's punishments overwhelmingly FOLLOW and do not precede sins.

So you concede that Scripture as it is written has innocent people punished for other people's sins. My attempt to reconcile faith and reason does not solve this problem, but your denial of reason does not solve it either, so it's not as if you have any satisfactory solution to the problem that could convince me you're right.

[Matthew]

Dear Jonathan, thank you for taking the time to consider what I have said and to put together a good response. I do believe that you are not fully appreciating the value of my points, and also you are misunderstanding me.

1. I DO believe in the abilities of modern science to explain HOW things happen, by what physical processes things can happen. They can quantify things for us, too. Your idea is that YOU accept modern science, but I do NOT because I believe in Intelligent Design theory, on one hand, and also in a literal 6 day creation. This assertion that our respective views require and demonstrate the conclusion that you accept science but that I do not is simply not true, and a gross distortion. There is not only one of two choices here as you suggest. You do not seem to appreciate that the advocates of Intelligent Design and Creation Science (again these are two different categories) on one hand and the agnostic secular humanist Evolutionary Theorists on the other are all using the same facts to support their theories. The difference is in their interpretation. They come to different conclusions using the same observable facts. Hence, I believe in modern science (which is not a monolithic united choir as you suppose) and the interpretations of modern world-class scientists who see the data as supporting, not evolution, but Intelligent Design Theory and Biblical Creation.

2. You do not seem to appreciate that Orthodoxy has gone into great lengths to explain why the "innocent" suffer. So, I won't go into that here. But the point you miss, it seems, is that even in that case there is an order to the events that make suffering to some degree comprehensible and it is always linear and chronological. The sin or fallen condition first, the effects follow after. That way, to the simple ancient world people who cannot understand things like people of more advanced times (an idea that you posit which I do not accept, but let's just grant it here for sake of argument) it makes all the more reason why God makes us understand NOT to sin by making the evil of sin comprehensible by making suffering etc. FOLLOW the sin, not precede it by millions of years, or by even 1 year. Suffering, death, disease, violence, would have no moral value to the ancient world people if it was in existence billions of years before God gave the commandment and sin ever happened. So, the lesson of "Don't sin or you will die" would be meaningless. The theodicy of the innocent of post-fall humanity's suffering (since all have sinned, or possess a fallen nature) is entirely different than saying billions of years before all the way up to Adam pre-humanoids and nature was subject to thorns and death and disease and violence. Your views throw the Genesis account and soteriology in general into chaos and put it at odds with reality, if Evolution is true. I do not say you are a heretic, because you accept the dogmas as you say. I understand this. However, the consequences of your adherence to Evolution creates a "split personality" doctrinally and dogmatically speaking. Down the road they cannot co-exist as reconcilable beliefs. Eventually you will have to choose between the two or be increasingly liberal in your views, and eventually fall from the Orthodox Faith entirely, if you insist on clinging to the heresy of biological Evolution.

3. Finally, you STILL do not handle with ANY adequacy the problem you create for the inerrancy of Scripture (which belief is the Signature of the Holy Spirit and divine origin of the Scripture) when you place thorns on plants billions of years before hand, when the Bible says clearly by the Holy Spirit that they only grew on plants after Adam's Fall.

4. The fault lies not with the order in Scripture, but with the dating methods of the secular humanist atheists and agnostics. Why do you assume so ably and comfortably that the problem lies with the Inerrant Holy Bible, and not with the fallible scientists? Do you not see your unbelief? You assume more competence and truth in the unbeliever scientists, than in the truth recorded by Moses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of TRUTH. Your idea that the physical science field is purely objective, dispassionate, and above suspicion of being prone to error and able to be crippled by presumptions demonstrates how little you fathom the very great problems and weaknesses of modern secular Science's ability to arrive at the truth, due to their exclusion of Divine Revelation as a scientific starting point. The assumptions a person begins his scientific study with determines to a great degree his ability to arrive at the truth -- this is so in the Physical Sciences as much as it is in Theology and spiritual and moral areas.

Question: Do you believe Moses account of the thorns appearing AFTER the fall of Adam and Eve is incorrect because there are fossils of thorny plants that the modern dating techniques say are Millions of years old?

[jgress]

I wrote a long response, but I'm replacing it with this one. I realize that this discussion is becoming spiritually unprofitable, so I will bow out. Forgive me for bending the rules slightly; I just don't want to continue scandalizing anyone.

[Maria]

deleted

The debate between faith and reason has always been a problem in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism since the Renaissance, and I think more of those people became atheists or agnostics as a result. As a result of Roman Catholic teachings, my own father struggled with agnosticism as a young man until he was in his early 40s. He was delighted that I found Orthodoxy as Orthodox Christianity practiced as right worship and correct beliefs leads to wholeness, not split personalities, scrupulosity, Jansenism, German Rationalism, agnosticism, or atheism as is found in the West.

I agree with Jonathan. It is time to bow out of these discussions.

[jgress]

I see you have decided to keep a record of my offending post.

Again, I don't wish to cause any more scandal, so I won't say anything more here.