"No length of time causes the specific characteristics of the animals to be corrupted or extinct, but, as if established just recently, nature, ever fresh, moves along with time." (Hexaemeron, IX, 2.)
Dear Joanna, Angela, Cyprian, C.V., et. al.;
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So, if we accept St. Basil's [i]Hexaemeron[/i] as literally infallible--somewhat like the Roman Catholic concept of the Papacy--then the above text obviously indicates that no animal species have become extinct during the past 3.5 billion years of earth history. Do any of you believe that any animal species have ever become extinct--e.g., Brontosaurae, Wolly Mammoths, etc.?How literally infallible are the writings of St. Basil, including those that St. Augustine disagreed with?
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The issue is not whether [b]you[/b] are truly Orthodox, or whether [b]I [/b]am truly Orthodox. I will do you the courtesy of assuming, for the sake of argument, that you are truly Orthodox, like me. It is whether Orthodox Christians can accept the truths of science--including those of paleobiology and geology-- as true, or whether they must accept the Protestant Fundamentalist misinterpretations of science and [i]Genesis[/i], as you do, in order to be considered truly Orthodox. My position is that one can be fully Orthodox, and also accept the truths of science, since truth is an intercalated whole.
There are clearly aspects of truth that are not delineated in Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Church Fathers. For example, the Church does not tell me whether mitochondrial DNA comes from the maternal or paternal DNA in humans--such truth comes to us through scientific observation and study. Joanna has asserted, earlier, that [b]all [/b]truth comes from scripture or the hagiography of the Church. This is simply not true. As for the Big Bang theory of cosmogeny--it is consistent with Orthodox theology, which asserts that God created the universe [i]ex nihilo[/i]. An Orthodox Christian can surely believe that God created the universe through the Big Bang, and also created complex life forms on earth through evolutionary mechanisms, which elegantly explain the paleobiological data.
I will reiterate. The so-called conflict between science and Christianity is a fictitious creation of two narrow-minded groups; [i]some[/i] arrogant, atheistic scientists, like Stephen Jay Gould, and [i]some [/i]Fundamentalist Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Both of these groups have rigid, inaccurate perceptions of either science or true Christianity. People in both groups are very resistant to learning and changing their paradigms to incorporate other aspects of truth.
