Immoral God and Immoral Bible? (Article I): A Look At What Morality Is

[Note: Insulting, Profane and Blasphemous comments will result in the poster being banned without warning.  If you wish to disagree with the materials here, you may do so, provided it is done civilly and respectfully].

What are we to make of the accusations of certain individuals who claim that actions in the Bible are in fact immoral, and therefore negate the claims of goodness?

To me, it seems to be in part a rejection of sola scriptura which gives primacy to the Bible while keeping to the claims that the personal interpretation of the Bible is all that is needed.

Another part of it seems based in seeking to reject the claims of moral authority of the Christians who invoke the Bible.

The problem, of course, is the issue of understanding what Christians hold. An attack on something not understood will generally fail to attack what Christians believe. Thus, in attacks on the Catholic Church for example, we often see attacks on personal conduct of people in authority. This would be valid if we held that being in the Church keeps people from sinning. However, since we do recognize that people can sin if they act against what is required, such an attack is an irrelevant appeal unless it can be demonstrated that immoral actions were done because of Christian teaching, instead of being in opposition to it. Yet most people who make such an attack do not even know what the Church teaches to be able to discern what is a part of teaching and what is against it.

Likewise in the attack of the Bible, we see many accusations made on the individuals in the Old Testament by people who do not have a clear sense of what the Bible teaches and why. Therefore we see these attacks based on what a person thinks it means. Such people do not distinguish between acts of men disobeying God and acts of men obeying God.

However, if they do not understand, how can they critique? The concept is as ludicrous as it would be for me to critique quantum physics based on what I see on Wikipedia, creationist sites and my own interpretation of a textbook of quantum physics.

Atheists may reject the Christian assumptions, but that is irrelevant here. If we wish to know “How can the Christians possibly support this?” we need to understand what Christians understand about morality. That is the focus on this article.

Preliminary: The Limiting of the Boundaries for This Article

This article is intended to be the beginning of a series which looks at certain accusations of atheists which claims that the Bible is an example of wicked deeds and a wicked acting God.  However, before looking of the acts of the men of the Bible (normally the focus is on the Old Testament) and the commands of God, we first must make some considerations of what morality is, as it is senseless to begin a discussion of a topic without setting forth what is meant.

So for those who are waiting for me to delve into the gory details of the Bible will need to wait for me to lay down this framework in this first article. Article II will deal with the acts of men in the Old Testament. Article III will deal with the commands of God, and will also consider acts of men obeying commands of God (as opposed to men who act on their own in Article II).

A Caveat: What Christian Beliefs I Am Acting Under

While I am limiting the intents of this article, let me clarify that I am discussing what the idea of morality means to the Christian in my Catholic faith, to the best of my ability.  Any difference between what I say and what the Church teaches is accidental, as I accept and submit to the teaching of the Catholic Church and do not intend to claim anything in contradiction to it.

There are of course some different theories in varying Christian denominations, and even non-Christian interpretations (Jewish, Muslim for example) of the Bible, but where they run contrary to what my Faith believes, I feel no obligation to defend them.

So please don't point to some obscure sect that holds some idea which contradicts to the Catholic faith and claims it speaks for all Christians.

What Is Morality?

To discuss morality, first we need to understand where the speaker is coming from. So let me start with the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Morality is generally defined as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.” So the idea of morality is based on the premise that there is good and bad behavior to begin with. This implies a sort of standard. Without this sense, there is nothing to appeal to other than personal preference.

Of course, if personal preference is all there is to consider, then charges of an immoral God or an immoral Bible become meaningless, and those charges become nothing more than “I don’t like what I read here.”

So those who deny morality and claim the Bible is immoral (this is a subset of those who attack the Bible, but is not all people who attack the Bible) are right off the bat in self contradiction, and such a view is not worth discussing. Any claim that the Bible is immoral has to recognize that there is moral and immoral behavior.

Morality and Ethics

I think I should start with the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia which begins its entry on Morality this way:

Morality is antecedent to ethics: it denotes those concrete activities of which ethics is the science. It may be defined as human conduct in so far as it is freely subordinated to the ideal of what is right and fitting.

This ideal governing our free actions is common to the race. Though there is wide divergence as to theories of ethics, there is a fundamental agreement among men regarding the general lines of conduct desirable in public and private life.

I think this is a good distinction.  There are certainly differences in the systems of ethics, and not all systems are equally valid. However the underlying concepts call certain things good and other things evil.  Most societies hold that Murder (the unlawful premeditated killing of one person by another) is wrong.  There may be a divergence in deciding what may be considered justifiable killing, but we don't normally see a healthy society which openly accepts the committing of unlawful killings.  Indeed, societies which do tolerate this are generally seen to be grossly disordered. 

So while atheists and theists may disagree on why an act is wrong, generally speaking, certain concepts are held by most people to be wrong and never to be done (rape, murder, slavery etc).  There are a few agnostics and atheists I have encountered who deny this, but it seems this denial is more based on the avoiding the issue of where morality comes from rather than an honest belief that Hitler and the Dalai Lama are the same.

Morality and Natural Law

Natural Law is what members of my faith call this sort of recognition of certain issues of morality. So how do we understand this?  St. Thomas Aquinas discusses this (Summa Theologica I-II Q94 a.2) and believes there to be an underlying principle.  In discussing the idea of apprehension he says there is generally a major overarching principle from which all other principles derive.  St. Thomas reasons that the major apprehension of natural law is as follows:

Now as being is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply, so good is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.

Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance.

…

Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.

(This citation is abbreviated as St. Thomas discusses many things, but follow the link above if you want to see the article in entirety)

Ultimately then, acts of morality are to do good and, as a logical counterpart, avoid evil.  This means to do good and avoid evil both in regards to oneself and to others.  That man has a natural tendency towards self preservation and procreation indicates these things are not evil, though they can be abused by either excessive emphasis or contempt for it or for contempt for others.

However, if God exists (which I believe), then doing good and avoiding evil as the principle of Natural Law must also be extended to God, and doing evil against God is to be held with great severity. Why is this?

The Greater the Existence, The Greater the Wrong Done

Doing wrong is seen as more or less severe depending on the existence of the individual.  If I apply weed killer to a plant, I don't normally suffer consequences.  If I kill a cat (tragically common among teenagers it seems) people may show disgust, but the legal repercussions will be less severe than if I kill a person.  Likewise, while the murder of any human person is wrong, society distinguishes between the accidental killing during the self defense against a vagrant who intended harm, and the deliberate assassination of the president of the United States.  One is self defense.  The other is regicide.

This isn't classism of any sort.  Rather we recognize that there is a difference between the human beings and animals, and we recognize that the unlawful killing of any person is wrong, but also that the unlawful killing of a ruler is also an attack on the state and not just on the individual. In this case, the harm affects more people. Thus the punishment is more severe.

Because of this, when we remember that Christians believe that God exists, it is reasonable to suppose that an action against God is even more serious than an act against man or against an animal because of the existence and authority of God.

The flip side of this is that the atheist who denies that God exists disdains punishments for actions against God because they believe nothing is there to offend.

However, since Christians believe God exists, those who want to say “How can you believe in a God who does X?” needs to remember that the Christian view of what the Bible relates is based on the view that God exists and can be sinned against.

If we didn’t believe that, the influence of the Bible would be a moot point… as we wouldn’t be Christians to begin with.

Considerations of Euthyphro and the Origin of Morality

With this in mind, we should ask ourselves about the origin of the Natural Law itself, as opposed to the idea of Natural Law… in other words, where does this natural law come from?

Curiously enough, the questions of this type are quite ancient.  The Ancient Greeks believed in a pantheon of deities, but believed that the idea of what was right and what was wrong went beyond their pantheon.  Since to them, gods were finite (greater than man, but not infinite), we had the dilemma of Socrates to Euthyphro, where Socrates was enquiring about a man attempting to prosecute his father in a court of law, claiming it was the pious thing to do. Socrates’ dilemma was:

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

The dilemma Socrates uses is we have to come to a decision: If a thing is pious because the gods love it, is this not arbitrary? Could they not change their minds?  And if the gods love it because it is pious, does this not mean there is something above the gods?

Some Christians unfortunately, try to answer this by saying that morality is good because God commands it, which opens them up to the charge of the atheist that such a God could change His mind and command evil… and indeed has done so when they point to the commands of the Old Testament.

The common explanation of atheists I have discussed this with or read is: since there is no god, morality comes from ourselves, either biologically or through society.

However, the elimination of the existence of God does not eliminate the dilemma of Socrates' question.  We simply replace "gods" with "man" or "society" and we have the same dilemma.  If morality is ingrained by society, then we have morals which can be changed by society.  If it is outside of us, what is it and why does it bind?

Is Morality From Society?

The problem with this view is, if morality is given to us by society, then those who support the status quo are good and those who oppose it are bad.  This would mean the rebel is a person of evil, and the person who doesn't make waves is good. This would make the Civil Rights movement in America wrong, and would make those opposition groups in Nazi Germany wrong as well.

Yet our experience is the opposite.  We recognize that often it is the person who speaks out against the practices of society that is considered moral.  At other times, a society fights to protect what it considers good against an immoral threat from leaders who act against this good.

Both examples demonstrate a view that morality is seen as being outside of society.

Is Morality From Biology?

The problem with this idea is that, if Morality is from biology, then things which promote life (such as self preservation) are good and things which harm it are bad.  Now this works in cases of society where the immoral act threatens the life of others.  However, it falls short in dealing with issues where the individual sacrifices himself in the name of what is right: That we are to prefer suffering to doing an act of evil.  Consider this example:

Two soldiers are captured and are told that one of them is to be killed.  One of them is told he will go free if he tortures the other man to death.  If he refuses, he will be tortured and killed instead.  Ought he to accept this offer?

Some systems of ethics might say this is a good thing to do, but most of us would consider the person who said "yes" to be a horrible person.  This demonstrates that morality is not the same as a biological instinct to protect the herd.  The soldier, if he accepts, does not harm society.  He protects himself at the cost of another, but if he does not he will die himself.

The Christian idea is that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil, and that the soldier would be doing evil to consent to the dilemma given.  We can see this in Matthew 10:28 which tells us:

^28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Because we believe in an immortal soul, we recognize that death is not the worst thing which can happen, and the repercussions of what we do have an effect on us which exists after death. Because of this, it is not permissible to do evil to spare one’s own life.

We also recognize that it is never permissible to be cowardly. If another person is in danger and I walk away because I do not want to risk harm, I am scorned and not considered moral. However showing the courage to do what ought to be done can put our lives at risk. Because of this, self preservation is not the origin of morality.

The Christian Moral Theology Shows the False Dilemma of Socrates

Neither the idea of Society nor the idea of Biology answers Socrates’ dilemma. However some may wonder how Christians avoid either saying there is something beyond God (if God loves a thing because it is good) or that God is arbitrary (if a thing is good because God loves it). So how does the Christian answer this question?

The error of Socrates was his assumption was an Either-Or error, which he believed was between absolute and opposing premises. What he failed to consider was: That the measure of good and evil was not an arbitrary decision, but the reflection of the nature of what God is.  If God is infinite and the fullness of goodness, then that which is good reflects the nature of God while that which is evil acts in opposition to the nature of God.

In this, we see that the Christian understanding of Natural Law claims it reflects the goodness of God, and says evil acts go against the goodness of God.

The Christian believes God exists, and as a result, believes there is an objective rule as to what is good or evil. Some societies may err through no fault of their own when they try to follow the natural law, while others display contempt for the natural law. How God judges will depend on what the individual or the society could have known, not what was impossible for them to know. We do believe that all people at least know the Natural Law even when they err or sin in following it, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 2:12ff:

^12 All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. ^13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. ^14 When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. ^15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them ^16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

I find this a good thing to remember in the face of those atheists who create a straw man argument that “morality did not come from Christianity.” (I understand Dawkins has made an argument along these lines). We don’t believe it came from Christianity, we believe it came from God, who made it known to the world through Natural Law and through the Jews and Christians by way of Revelation.

Therefore, when we consider Natural Law, it is hardly a quandary that the atheist may deny God exists and still tries to behave in a moral way, but we may challenge him to explain why morality is binding.

Conclusion

I believe this gives us a framework to use in understanding how God judges the nations – not based on the Torah for those who do not know it, but based on what they could know and had an obligation to do. However a nation which knows, for example, murder is evil and refuses to ask the question on whether the abortion of the unborn fetus is murder is in fact guilty of refusing to acknowledge good and evil. Why? Because all people are required to seek the truth, and the refusal to seek the truth makes one culpable.

With this framework in mind, we can move on, in Article II, to looking at some of the accusations made about the Bible and acts done within its pages. Because we believe there is objective truth about right and wrong, and that God exists and is good, we need to look at actions in the Bible through this view in order to understand what the Christians believe, rather than to assume that Christians accept actions from the perspectives atheists assume.

The refusal to do this and to insist on one’s own interpretation is to fall into the error of bigotry which GK Chesterton once described as follows:

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

So it would not be bigotry for the atheist to believe his position is correct. However, it would be bigotry for him to be unable to consider whether there are errors in his assumptions which led to his conclusions.

[Article II in this series will be on the actions of men in the Old Testament].

Immoral God and Immoral Bible? (Article I): A Look At What Morality Is

[Note: Insulting, Profane and Blasphemous comments will result in the poster being banned without warning.  If you wish to disagree with the materials here, you may do so, provided it is done civilly and respectfully].

What are we to make of the accusations of certain individuals who claim that actions in the Bible are in fact immoral, and therefore negate the claims of goodness?

To me, it seems to be in part a rejection of sola scriptura which gives primacy to the Bible while keeping to the claims that the personal interpretation of the Bible is all that is needed.

Another part of it seems based in seeking to reject the claims of moral authority of the Christians who invoke the Bible.

The problem, of course, is the issue of understanding what Christians hold. An attack on something not understood will generally fail to attack what Christians believe. Thus, in attacks on the Catholic Church for example, we often see attacks on personal conduct of people in authority. This would be valid if we held that being in the Church keeps people from sinning. However, since we do recognize that people can sin if they act against what is required, such an attack is an irrelevant appeal unless it can be demonstrated that immoral actions were done because of Christian teaching, instead of being in opposition to it. Yet most people who make such an attack do not even know what the Church teaches to be able to discern what is a part of teaching and what is against it.

Likewise in the attack of the Bible, we see many accusations made on the individuals in the Old Testament by people who do not have a clear sense of what the Bible teaches and why. Therefore we see these attacks based on what a person thinks it means. Such people do not distinguish between acts of men disobeying God and acts of men obeying God.

However, if they do not understand, how can they critique? The concept is as ludicrous as it would be for me to critique quantum physics based on what I see on Wikipedia, creationist sites and my own interpretation of a textbook of quantum physics.

Atheists may reject the Christian assumptions, but that is irrelevant here. If we wish to know “How can the Christians possibly support this?” we need to understand what Christians understand about morality. That is the focus on this article.

Preliminary: The Limiting of the Boundaries for This Article

This article is intended to be the beginning of a series which looks at certain accusations of atheists which claims that the Bible is an example of wicked deeds and a wicked acting God.  However, before looking of the acts of the men of the Bible (normally the focus is on the Old Testament) and the commands of God, we first must make some considerations of what morality is, as it is senseless to begin a discussion of a topic without setting forth what is meant.

So for those who are waiting for me to delve into the gory details of the Bible will need to wait for me to lay down this framework in this first article. Article II will deal with the acts of men in the Old Testament. Article III will deal with the commands of God, and will also consider acts of men obeying commands of God (as opposed to men who act on their own in Article II).

A Caveat: What Christian Beliefs I Am Acting Under

While I am limiting the intents of this article, let me clarify that I am discussing what the idea of morality means to the Christian in my Catholic faith, to the best of my ability.  Any difference between what I say and what the Church teaches is accidental, as I accept and submit to the teaching of the Catholic Church and do not intend to claim anything in contradiction to it.

There are of course some different theories in varying Christian denominations, and even non-Christian interpretations (Jewish, Muslim for example) of the Bible, but where they run contrary to what my Faith believes, I feel no obligation to defend them.

So please don't point to some obscure sect that holds some idea which contradicts to the Catholic faith and claims it speaks for all Christians.

What Is Morality?

To discuss morality, first we need to understand where the speaker is coming from. So let me start with the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Morality is generally defined as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.” So the idea of morality is based on the premise that there is good and bad behavior to begin with. This implies a sort of standard. Without this sense, there is nothing to appeal to other than personal preference.

Of course, if personal preference is all there is to consider, then charges of an immoral God or an immoral Bible become meaningless, and those charges become nothing more than “I don’t like what I read here.”

So those who deny morality and claim the Bible is immoral (this is a subset of those who attack the Bible, but is not all people who attack the Bible) are right off the bat in self contradiction, and such a view is not worth discussing. Any claim that the Bible is immoral has to recognize that there is moral and immoral behavior.

Morality and Ethics

I think I should start with the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia which begins its entry on Morality this way:

Morality is antecedent to ethics: it denotes those concrete activities of which ethics is the science. It may be defined as human conduct in so far as it is freely subordinated to the ideal of what is right and fitting.

This ideal governing our free actions is common to the race. Though there is wide divergence as to theories of ethics, there is a fundamental agreement among men regarding the general lines of conduct desirable in public and private life.

I think this is a good distinction.  There are certainly differences in the systems of ethics, and not all systems are equally valid. However the underlying concepts call certain things good and other things evil.  Most societies hold that Murder (the unlawful premeditated killing of one person by another) is wrong.  There may be a divergence in deciding what may be considered justifiable killing, but we don't normally see a healthy society which openly accepts the committing of unlawful killings.  Indeed, societies which do tolerate this are generally seen to be grossly disordered. 

So while atheists and theists may disagree on why an act is wrong, generally speaking, certain concepts are held by most people to be wrong and never to be done (rape, murder, slavery etc).  There are a few agnostics and atheists I have encountered who deny this, but it seems this denial is more based on the avoiding the issue of where morality comes from rather than an honest belief that Hitler and the Dalai Lama are the same.

Morality and Natural Law

Natural Law is what members of my faith call this sort of recognition of certain issues of morality. So how do we understand this?  St. Thomas Aquinas discusses this (Summa Theologica I-II Q94 a.2) and believes there to be an underlying principle.  In discussing the idea of apprehension he says there is generally a major overarching principle from which all other principles derive.  St. Thomas reasons that the major apprehension of natural law is as follows:

Now as being is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply, so good is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.

Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance.

…

Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.

(This citation is abbreviated as St. Thomas discusses many things, but follow the link above if you want to see the article in entirety)

Ultimately then, acts of morality are to do good and, as a logical counterpart, avoid evil.  This means to do good and avoid evil both in regards to oneself and to others.  That man has a natural tendency towards self preservation and procreation indicates these things are not evil, though they can be abused by either excessive emphasis or contempt for it or for contempt for others.

However, if God exists (which I believe), then doing good and avoiding evil as the principle of Natural Law must also be extended to God, and doing evil against God is to be held with great severity. Why is this?

The Greater the Existence, The Greater the Wrong Done

Doing wrong is seen as more or less severe depending on the existence of the individual.  If I apply weed killer to a plant, I don't normally suffer consequences.  If I kill a cat (tragically common among teenagers it seems) people may show disgust, but the legal repercussions will be less severe than if I kill a person.  Likewise, while the murder of any human person is wrong, society distinguishes between the accidental killing during the self defense against a vagrant who intended harm, and the deliberate assassination of the president of the United States.  One is self defense.  The other is regicide.

This isn't classism of any sort.  Rather we recognize that there is a difference between the human beings and animals, and we recognize that the unlawful killing of any person is wrong, but also that the unlawful killing of a ruler is also an attack on the state and not just on the individual. In this case, the harm affects more people. Thus the punishment is more severe.

Because of this, when we remember that Christians believe that God exists, it is reasonable to suppose that an action against God is even more serious than an act against man or against an animal because of the existence and authority of God.

The flip side of this is that the atheist who denies that God exists disdains punishments for actions against God because they believe nothing is there to offend.

However, since Christians believe God exists, those who want to say “How can you believe in a God who does X?” needs to remember that the Christian view of what the Bible relates is based on the view that God exists and can be sinned against.

If we didn’t believe that, the influence of the Bible would be a moot point… as we wouldn’t be Christians to begin with.

Considerations of Euthyphro and the Origin of Morality

With this in mind, we should ask ourselves about the origin of the Natural Law itself, as opposed to the idea of Natural Law… in other words, where does this natural law come from?

Curiously enough, the questions of this type are quite ancient.  The Ancient Greeks believed in a pantheon of deities, but believed that the idea of what was right and what was wrong went beyond their pantheon.  Since to them, gods were finite (greater than man, but not infinite), we had the dilemma of Socrates to Euthyphro, where Socrates was enquiring about a man attempting to prosecute his father in a court of law, claiming it was the pious thing to do. Socrates’ dilemma was:

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

The dilemma Socrates uses is we have to come to a decision: If a thing is pious because the gods love it, is this not arbitrary? Could they not change their minds?  And if the gods love it because it is pious, does this not mean there is something above the gods?

Some Christians unfortunately, try to answer this by saying that morality is good because God commands it, which opens them up to the charge of the atheist that such a God could change His mind and command evil… and indeed has done so when they point to the commands of the Old Testament.

The common explanation of atheists I have discussed this with or read is: since there is no god, morality comes from ourselves, either biologically or through society.

However, the elimination of the existence of God does not eliminate the dilemma of Socrates' question.  We simply replace "gods" with "man" or "society" and we have the same dilemma.  If morality is ingrained by society, then we have morals which can be changed by society.  If it is outside of us, what is it and why does it bind?

Is Morality From Society?

The problem with this view is, if morality is given to us by society, then those who support the status quo are good and those who oppose it are bad.  This would mean the rebel is a person of evil, and the person who doesn't make waves is good. This would make the Civil Rights movement in America wrong, and would make those opposition groups in Nazi Germany wrong as well.

Yet our experience is the opposite.  We recognize that often it is the person who speaks out against the practices of society that is considered moral.  At other times, a society fights to protect what it considers good against an immoral threat from leaders who act against this good.

Both examples demonstrate a view that morality is seen as being outside of society.

Is Morality From Biology?

The problem with this idea is that, if Morality is from biology, then things which promote life (such as self preservation) are good and things which harm it are bad.  Now this works in cases of society where the immoral act threatens the life of others.  However, it falls short in dealing with issues where the individual sacrifices himself in the name of what is right: That we are to prefer suffering to doing an act of evil.  Consider this example:

Two soldiers are captured and are told that one of them is to be killed.  One of them is told he will go free if he tortures the other man to death.  If he refuses, he will be tortured and killed instead.  Ought he to accept this offer?

Some systems of ethics might say this is a good thing to do, but most of us would consider the person who said "yes" to be a horrible person.  This demonstrates that morality is not the same as a biological instinct to protect the herd.  The soldier, if he accepts, does not harm society.  He protects himself at the cost of another, but if he does not he will die himself.

The Christian idea is that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil, and that the soldier would be doing evil to consent to the dilemma given.  We can see this in Matthew 10:28 which tells us:

^28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Because we believe in an immortal soul, we recognize that death is not the worst thing which can happen, and the repercussions of what we do have an effect on us which exists after death. Because of this, it is not permissible to do evil to spare one’s own life.

We also recognize that it is never permissible to be cowardly. If another person is in danger and I walk away because I do not want to risk harm, I am scorned and not considered moral. However showing the courage to do what ought to be done can put our lives at risk. Because of this, self preservation is not the origin of morality.

The Christian Moral Theology Shows the False Dilemma of Socrates

Neither the idea of Society nor the idea of Biology answers Socrates’ dilemma. However some may wonder how Christians avoid either saying there is something beyond God (if God loves a thing because it is good) or that God is arbitrary (if a thing is good because God loves it). So how does the Christian answer this question?

The error of Socrates was his assumption was an Either-Or error, which he believed was between absolute and opposing premises. What he failed to consider was: That the measure of good and evil was not an arbitrary decision, but the reflection of the nature of what God is.  If God is infinite and the fullness of goodness, then that which is good reflects the nature of God while that which is evil acts in opposition to the nature of God.

In this, we see that the Christian understanding of Natural Law claims it reflects the goodness of God, and says evil acts go against the goodness of God.

The Christian believes God exists, and as a result, believes there is an objective rule as to what is good or evil. Some societies may err through no fault of their own when they try to follow the natural law, while others display contempt for the natural law. How God judges will depend on what the individual or the society could have known, not what was impossible for them to know. We do believe that all people at least know the Natural Law even when they err or sin in following it, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 2:12ff:

^12 All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. ^13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. ^14 When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. ^15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them ^16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

I find this a good thing to remember in the face of those atheists who create a straw man argument that “morality did not come from Christianity.” (I understand Dawkins has made an argument along these lines). We don’t believe it came from Christianity, we believe it came from God, who made it known to the world through Natural Law and through the Jews and Christians by way of Revelation.

Therefore, when we consider Natural Law, it is hardly a quandary that the atheist may deny God exists and still tries to behave in a moral way, but we may challenge him to explain why morality is binding.

Conclusion

I believe this gives us a framework to use in understanding how God judges the nations – not based on the Torah for those who do not know it, but based on what they could know and had an obligation to do. However a nation which knows, for example, murder is evil and refuses to ask the question on whether the abortion of the unborn fetus is murder is in fact guilty of refusing to acknowledge good and evil. Why? Because all people are required to seek the truth, and the refusal to seek the truth makes one culpable.

With this framework in mind, we can move on, in Article II, to looking at some of the accusations made about the Bible and acts done within its pages. Because we believe there is objective truth about right and wrong, and that God exists and is good, we need to look at actions in the Bible through this view in order to understand what the Christians believe, rather than to assume that Christians accept actions from the perspectives atheists assume.

The refusal to do this and to insist on one’s own interpretation is to fall into the error of bigotry which GK Chesterton once described as follows:

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

So it would not be bigotry for the atheist to believe his position is correct. However, it would be bigotry for him to be unable to consider whether there are errors in his assumptions which led to his conclusions.

[Article II in this series will be on the actions of men in the Old Testament].

Reflections on Biblical Literalism and Truth

We cannot say: creation or evolution.  The proper way of putting it is: creation and evolution, inasmuch as these two things correspond to two different realities.  The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not explain how a human person comes to be but rather what he is.  It explains his inmost origin and casts light on the project that he is.  And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments.  But in so doing it cannot explain where the "project" of the human person comes from, nor his  inner origin, nor his particular nature.  To that extent we are faced with two complementary — rather than mutually exclusive — realities.

—Pope Benedict XVI

In The Beginning (1986) page 65

I've spent the last few articles speaking of attacks on Christianity from without.  Now I see I need to deal with one one of the attacks from within.  This is the area of Biblical Literalism which is being brought to my attention. It normally shows up under the topic of Creation vs. Evolution but the problem actually runs deeper than just the meaning of Genesis in the account of creation of the universe.

The approaches I have heard tend to be under the assumption that a literal reading of a Bible passage must be taken literally (often the Creation accounts of Genesis are literally true), and anyone who says otherwise is denying the teachings of the Bible or the Church.  This leaves people with the dilemma of either denying science or God… and it doesn't even have to be such a dilemma.

It is because of this sort of accusation that I am writing on the issue and not letting it lapse into obscurity.

The Problem With Literalism

To be blunt, this is a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be true, and tends to be brought on by a reading of the Scripture in English without an understanding of the nuances of the original languages combined with the personal interpretation of Scriptures.

Biblical Literalism tends to make personal interpretation of what is literally true the over-all authority, and tends to be threatened by views which attack this personal interpretation, confusing the attack on this personal interpretation with an attack on the Bible.

Some Boundaries to Keep In Mind

What we first have to distinguish is the difference between truth and genre which truth appears in.  The Bible has books of history, books of law, books of prophecy, books of praise, moral discussions and other genres as well.  We need to know the genre of the book in Scripture in order to understand how to read it.  A book of the prophets is not written with the same intent as, say, 2 Samuel.  The Book of Lamentations is not written with the same intent as the Book of Leviticus.

You read History as history, Law as law and so on, not Law as history or History as poetry.

This requires study of course, though this study needs to respect the fact that we believe the Books of Scripture to be Divinely inspired and Inerrant.  This means we don't say, for example, that the Psalms are inaccurate because the stylized writing does not measure up to what happened to King David when he was pursued by foes.

Unfortunately most Literalists tend to forget this.

The Problem With Literalism

Imagine if you will, a society which decides to live accordance with a certain book of law which is discovered, but does not have an understanding of the background and meaning and context at the time when the book was originally written.  How probable is it that such an application of this theoretical book of law will match up with what those who wrote the laws in it intended?  The book still has to be interpreted as to what it means, and disagreements come from those who interpret differently.

This is the problem with Biblical Literalism.  If it is based on the interpretation of the reader who takes it literally, the conclusions drawn will be flawed if the original understanding is flawed, and a challenge to the interpretation is seen as a challenge to the Scripture itself.

Catholic and Non-Catholic Literalists

Non Catholic Literalists tend to deny any sort of authority outside of the Bible, and try to interpret it literally to the best of their understanding.  Catholic literalists tend to take the Bible literally as well, and to take Church documents literally as well… to the best of their understanding.  The problem is, if there is an error in what one thinks is the meaning, the conclusions will be thrown off.

The Problems: False Dilemma and the Lack of an Exclusionary Premise

There are two forms of argument the Literalist uses.  One is logically invalid.  The other is valid but begs the question

The common invalid form runs along these lines

1. If you are a [Literalist] you [Believe the Bible is Inerrant] (If [P] then [Q])
2. You are not a [Literalist] (Not [P])
3. Therefore you do not [believe the Bible is Inerrant] (Therefore Not [Q])

The problem is, people can [believe the Bible is inerrant] and not believe everything in it was intended to have a [literal meaning] (for a silly example, Jesus saying "I am the Vine" does not mean we need to mulch Him).

The valid form some Literalists use often runs along these lines:

1. The Bible is either [Literal] or [Allegorical] (Either [P] or [Q])
2. My Opponent does not believe the Bible is to be taken [Literally] (Not [P])
3. Therefore my opponent believes the Bible is [Allegorical] (Therefore [Q])

Even though valid in form, the argument has a problem.  It assumes that the situations can only be [P] or [Q], with no other choice.  If another option is available (Option [R] for example) or it is not an "All or nothing" situation in "Some [P] or Some [Q]" or even "Some [P] and Some [Q]"  (that is, some parts of the Bible are reporting history and others using symbolic language) then the first premise is false and the conclusion is not proven.

These are conditions the Literalist does not consider.

The Unproven Assumption

What is assumed with the Literalist perspective is that their reading of the Bible is correct and any other perspective on reading the Bible is wrong.  It would be a harmless thing for the most part, except it strays into categories the Literalist is not qualified to make judgment on.  Whether it is a Young Earth Creationist arguing that the Earth must be 6,000 years old more or less or whether it Robert Sungenis arguing that the Earth must be in the center of the universe, the assumption is when the Literalistic reading of the Bible appears to be contradicted by science, then Science must be wrong because Scripture cannot be wrong.

The argument possesses the error of Affirming the Disjunct:

1. Either [The Bible] is true or [Science] is true (Either [P] or [Q])
2. [The Bible] is true ([P])
3. Therefore [Science] is not true (Therefore Not [Q])

However it confuses the interpretation of the Bible with the Bible itself.  The Interpretation is the Bible intended to formally teach the Earth is the center of the universe (As Sungenis holds) or that the Earth is 6,000 years old (as Young Earth Creationists hold).

Sure, Scientists can Err, but is it Reasonable to Say They Got it Entirely Wrong?

[Now for some boring technical discussions of science.  Please bear with me, because one of the problems with Literalism is a tendency not to understand science.  (The other is, ironically, not understanding scripture either).]

Now that we looked at the problems with the logic of the Literalist arguments, we need to also ask questions about whether their allegations are true but just not expressed logically (as an invalid syllogism doesn't mean the conclusion is necessarily false, but it means the syllogism cannot prove it true).

So what are we to say about people who insist on Young Earth Creationism or Geocentrism?

The problem is, in order for their interpretations of Scripture to be correct, it's not just that Science made an error in calculation or in an assumption.  It means that Science has to be dead wrong in things it has observed. 

Geocentrism, to be true means, that light has to either move faster than the 186,000 miles/second or that Stars are closer to us than we think.  The problem is we have references in our own solar system.  We know what the distances are from other planets to earth.  We know the speed it takes for radio messages to reach probes from Earth (I seem to recall that for the outer planets some probes took two hours to respond to changes, and data sent from the probes took two hours to reach Earth).  If we know the speed of light and we know how long it takes to receive and send data to a probe out near Neptune, we can reason how far away this probe is.  If it took Voyager 2 twelve years to reach Neptune (Launched 1977, reached Neptune in 1989), it stands to reason that Science could not be wildly inaccurate to plot a course to anticipate where Neptune would be twelve years after launch… especially if the Scientists were supposed to be wrong in assuming Heliocentrism.

Now I like to quote St. Thomas Aquinas' maxim and will do so again here… "Parvus error in initio magnus erit in fine" (“Small error in the beginning; large [error] will be in the end”).  Errors in assumptions with astronomical distances tend to mean that if you are a few degrees off in your calculations, it may not be much deviation in travelling 20 feet, but if you are off a few degrees and the distance of travel is 2,829,691,159.88 miles (the distance to Neptune), such a difference becomes a vast distance.

Let's not even get started on how fast the outer universe would have to move to orbit the earth.  Occam's Razor is a good tool here.  We ought not to multiply causes unnecessarily.  When geocentrism has to explain retrograde movement, and why we can't detect the shifts which indicate the direction and speed a star is moving, the theory needs to be evaluated.

[The Geocentrism example may seem like a joke but it is not.  Robert Sungenis tries to argue Copernicus and Galileo were wrong about Heliocentrism, and some people actually believe this.  In his attempt to defend the Church at the time of Galileo, he puts himself in conflict with the Church today]

Likewise, in evolution, we are able to learn about things like the formation of rock, about the decay of carbon 14 in living things and so on.  Now of course it is limited in what it can do (it can't tell us the skeleton was of a man who died on June 6th 1426 at 10:17 am) but it can give us a general idea of how long it has been.  In a living creature the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14, the ratio stays stable.  Once the creature dies, the carbon 14 begins to decay and by comparing ratios, we can get a sense of how old a thing can be. This doesn't work on things never alive to begin with, and there has to be some matter to work with.  It is also only effective up to 60,000 years of age (though other isotopes can take us beyond this).

Literalists tend to object to the Carbon 14 dating because they claim "we can't know if the rate of decay is constant or not." The problem with such an objection is that we would need to investigate whether such a variability is so drastic as to throw off accuracy by ten thousand years or more.  However the argument of the Literalist is an Argument from Silence: There is no proof it stays constant, so it means it doesn't prove anything.

Again, if science so completely missed the boat as the Literalists claim, to be off by a magnitude of 1000 times, then it is not unreasonable to ask for the proof that such a variation of decay exists, because if such a variation could be established, it would make the method worthless.

The Dangers of Literalism

Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that "Truth cannot contradict truth."  However the Literalist has to essentially assert that Science must be entirely false when it dates the world to 4.7 billion years of age and says the Earth orbits the Sun.

The literalist argues he is protecting the "inerrancy" of the Bible, but in fact he is holding it up to ridicule.  Skeptics who take the literalist at its word point to the Bible and point to Science and says the Bible cannot be at all true.  The Literalist says the skeptic does not have faith (which is true), but the faith the Literalist demands is faith in their own interpretation of Scripture.  A look at St. Augustine's City of God (See books 15-16) takes the genealogies of Scripture prior to the Flood and points out that it does not follow that these ancient lines were talking about all the children born, or even first born children born, to a mentioned man, when it could mean that the Scriptures were talking about prominent children.

Because of this, the Literalist view provides a stumbling block for someone who understands science and thinks Christianity must be in contradiction to it.  Atheists assume we are fools, and intellectuals think they have to stop thinking to become Christians.

In a sense, the Literalists become a stumbling block when it comes to bringing the faith to the world.

The Wisdom of St. Robert Bellarmine

St. Robert Bellarmine was a cardinal at the time of the Galileo controversy.  He admitted he did not believe the earth orbited the sun (at the time it was a theory and not yet established as more than that), but he also realized that if it were proven so and because Scripture were inerrant, it would mean a misunderstanding of what Scripture meant, not that Scripture erred.  He wrote:

…I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand them than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated.

The Church recognizes that the idea of the Earth orbiting the sun has been demonstrated, but Sungenis and followers (as well as Young Earth Creationists) ignore Bellarmine's wisdom.  Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have expressed a belief in evolution… guided by God… and Pope Pius XII had laid down the differences between what one could believe in regards to evolution to what one could not believe.

Yet the Literalists insist that what was demonstrated was false and refuse to consider the possibility that they do not understand what Scripture means.  They insist all Christians accept their views or they are no Christians at all.

That takes a special kind of arrogance.

It Comes Down to Pride… or Lack of Faith

What are we to make of those who insist that dinosaurs coexisted with human beings and those that say that dinosaurs skeletons are here to test faith (and how do they reconcile that claim with Numbers 23:19)?   How do we assess those who believe that the universe must revolve around the Earth?  What do we think of those who claim that Science must be wrong because it goes against their view of the Bible?

Especially what are we to think of a view which calls those who disagree with them "heretics"?

Ultimately their view is one of either pride, in refusing to consider they are the ones who err, or else in a lack of faith which assumes that if the Bible does not match up to their understanding, it must be wrong.

Ironically such people are the opposite side of the coin from the so-called "New Atheists."  Both tend to assume a literal meaning of the Bible.  The Biblical Literalists accept the Bible as literally true and accept it.  The New Atheist assumes it is to be understood as literally true and rejects it.

Neither considers the possibility of their own error in understanding Scripture.

A Personal Example

Back in the early 1990s, I assumed cloning would never happen (I was dabbling around with the idea of doing a sort of Science Fiction novel in case you are wondering why I was assuming this) because all life was from God, and life would not be created apart from God.  Then in 1996, we got news of Dolly the Sheep, and this caused me to think.  Clearly Dolly was not fraudulent.  So was the Christian faith fraudulent?  I had not yet read St. Robert Bellarmine, but the answer I reached was close to what he said: I recognized that it was quite possible I misunderstood what God would do.

Fourteen years and a degree later I now know I made two errors back then.  First, the belief that cloning was the creation of life out of non-living matter.  Second, that I had a false idea about God's permissive will versus the free will of man.  These two errors of mine led me to believe cloning would be impossible.  If I hadn't considered the possibility I misunderstood the nature of God I would either have had to deny the existence of Dolly or deny the existence of God.

Recognizing the possibility of my own error saved me from making a greater one.

Conclusion

Not all people who believe in Creationism are Literalists in the negative sense.  However, many forget the Church does not insist we only accept Creationism or only accept Evolution.  The Church does require us to believe all creation comes from God and rejects the idea that anything exists apart from God.  We are required to believe God creates the soul directly (it does not "evolve.")

However, Biblical Literalism is a belief which mistakes a personal interpretation of the Bible for the Bible.

We would all be wise to remember that while the Bible is inerrant, personal interpretations are not.

Reflections on Biblical Literalism and Truth

We cannot say: creation or evolution.  The proper way of putting it is: creation and evolution, inasmuch as these two things correspond to two different realities.  The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not explain how a human person comes to be but rather what he is.  It explains his inmost origin and casts light on the project that he is.  And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments.  But in so doing it cannot explain where the "project" of the human person comes from, nor his  inner origin, nor his particular nature.  To that extent we are faced with two complementary — rather than mutually exclusive — realities.

—Pope Benedict XVI

In The Beginning (1986) page 65

I've spent the last few articles speaking of attacks on Christianity from without.  Now I see I need to deal with one one of the attacks from within.  This is the area of Biblical Literalism which is being brought to my attention. It normally shows up under the topic of Creation vs. Evolution but the problem actually runs deeper than just the meaning of Genesis in the account of creation of the universe.

The approaches I have heard tend to be under the assumption that a literal reading of a Bible passage must be taken literally (often the Creation accounts of Genesis are literally true), and anyone who says otherwise is denying the teachings of the Bible or the Church.  This leaves people with the dilemma of either denying science or God… and it doesn't even have to be such a dilemma.

It is because of this sort of accusation that I am writing on the issue and not letting it lapse into obscurity.

The Problem With Literalism

To be blunt, this is a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be true, and tends to be brought on by a reading of the Scripture in English without an understanding of the nuances of the original languages combined with the personal interpretation of Scriptures.

Biblical Literalism tends to make personal interpretation of what is literally true the over-all authority, and tends to be threatened by views which attack this personal interpretation, confusing the attack on this personal interpretation with an attack on the Bible.

Some Boundaries to Keep In Mind

What we first have to distinguish is the difference between truth and genre which truth appears in.  The Bible has books of history, books of law, books of prophecy, books of praise, moral discussions and other genres as well.  We need to know the genre of the book in Scripture in order to understand how to read it.  A book of the prophets is not written with the same intent as, say, 2 Samuel.  The Book of Lamentations is not written with the same intent as the Book of Leviticus.

You read History as history, Law as law and so on, not Law as history or History as poetry.

This requires study of course, though this study needs to respect the fact that we believe the Books of Scripture to be Divinely inspired and Inerrant.  This means we don't say, for example, that the Psalms are inaccurate because the stylized writing does not measure up to what happened to King David when he was pursued by foes.

Unfortunately most Literalists tend to forget this.

The Problem With Literalism

Imagine if you will, a society which decides to live accordance with a certain book of law which is discovered, but does not have an understanding of the background and meaning and context at the time when the book was originally written.  How probable is it that such an application of this theoretical book of law will match up with what those who wrote the laws in it intended?  The book still has to be interpreted as to what it means, and disagreements come from those who interpret differently.

This is the problem with Biblical Literalism.  If it is based on the interpretation of the reader who takes it literally, the conclusions drawn will be flawed if the original understanding is flawed, and a challenge to the interpretation is seen as a challenge to the Scripture itself.

Catholic and Non-Catholic Literalists

Non Catholic Literalists tend to deny any sort of authority outside of the Bible, and try to interpret it literally to the best of their understanding.  Catholic literalists tend to take the Bible literally as well, and to take Church documents literally as well… to the best of their understanding.  The problem is, if there is an error in what one thinks is the meaning, the conclusions will be thrown off.

The Problems: False Dilemma and the Lack of an Exclusionary Premise

There are two forms of argument the Literalist uses.  One is logically invalid.  The other is valid but begs the question

The common invalid form runs along these lines

1. If you are a [Literalist] you [Believe the Bible is Inerrant] (If [P] then [Q])
2. You are not a [Literalist] (Not [P])
3. Therefore you do not [believe the Bible is Inerrant] (Therefore Not [Q])

The problem is, people can [believe the Bible is inerrant] and not believe everything in it was intended to have a [literal meaning] (for a silly example, Jesus saying "I am the Vine" does not mean we need to mulch Him).

The valid form some Literalists use often runs along these lines:

1. The Bible is either [Literal] or [Allegorical] (Either [P] or [Q])
2. My Opponent does not believe the Bible is to be taken [Literally] (Not [P])
3. Therefore my opponent believes the Bible is [Allegorical] (Therefore [Q])

Even though valid in form, the argument has a problem.  It assumes that the situations can only be [P] or [Q], with no other choice.  If another option is available (Option [R] for example) or it is not an "All or nothing" situation in "Some [P] or Some [Q]" or even "Some [P] and Some [Q]"  (that is, some parts of the Bible are reporting history and others using symbolic language) then the first premise is false and the conclusion is not proven.

These are conditions the Literalist does not consider.

The Unproven Assumption

What is assumed with the Literalist perspective is that their reading of the Bible is correct and any other perspective on reading the Bible is wrong.  It would be a harmless thing for the most part, except it strays into categories the Literalist is not qualified to make judgment on.  Whether it is a Young Earth Creationist arguing that the Earth must be 6,000 years old more or less or whether it Robert Sungenis arguing that the Earth must be in the center of the universe, the assumption is when the Literalistic reading of the Bible appears to be contradicted by science, then Science must be wrong because Scripture cannot be wrong.

The argument possesses the error of Affirming the Disjunct:

1. Either [The Bible] is true or [Science] is true (Either [P] or [Q])
2. [The Bible] is true ([P])
3. Therefore [Science] is not true (Therefore Not [Q])

However it confuses the interpretation of the Bible with the Bible itself.  The Interpretation is the Bible intended to formally teach the Earth is the center of the universe (As Sungenis holds) or that the Earth is 6,000 years old (as Young Earth Creationists hold).

Sure, Scientists can Err, but is it Reasonable to Say They Got it Entirely Wrong?

[Now for some boring technical discussions of science.  Please bear with me, because one of the problems with Literalism is a tendency not to understand science.  (The other is, ironically, not understanding scripture either).]

Now that we looked at the problems with the logic of the Literalist arguments, we need to also ask questions about whether their allegations are true but just not expressed logically (as an invalid syllogism doesn't mean the conclusion is necessarily false, but it means the syllogism cannot prove it true).

So what are we to say about people who insist on Young Earth Creationism or Geocentrism?

The problem is, in order for their interpretations of Scripture to be correct, it's not just that Science made an error in calculation or in an assumption.  It means that Science has to be dead wrong in things it has observed. 

Geocentrism, to be true means, that light has to either move faster than the 186,000 miles/second or that Stars are closer to us than we think.  The problem is we have references in our own solar system.  We know what the distances are from other planets to earth.  We know the speed it takes for radio messages to reach probes from Earth (I seem to recall that for the outer planets some probes took two hours to respond to changes, and data sent from the probes took two hours to reach Earth).  If we know the speed of light and we know how long it takes to receive and send data to a probe out near Neptune, we can reason how far away this probe is.  If it took Voyager 2 twelve years to reach Neptune (Launched 1977, reached Neptune in 1989), it stands to reason that Science could not be wildly inaccurate to plot a course to anticipate where Neptune would be twelve years after launch… especially if the Scientists were supposed to be wrong in assuming Heliocentrism.

Now I like to quote St. Thomas Aquinas' maxim and will do so again here… "Parvus error in initio magnus erit in fine" (“Small error in the beginning; large [error] will be in the end”).  Errors in assumptions with astronomical distances tend to mean that if you are a few degrees off in your calculations, it may not be much deviation in travelling 20 feet, but if you are off a few degrees and the distance of travel is 2,829,691,159.88 miles (the distance to Neptune), such a difference becomes a vast distance.

Let's not even get started on how fast the outer universe would have to move to orbit the earth.  Occam's Razor is a good tool here.  We ought not to multiply causes unnecessarily.  When geocentrism has to explain retrograde movement, and why we can't detect the shifts which indicate the direction and speed a star is moving, the theory needs to be evaluated.

[The Geocentrism example may seem like a joke but it is not.  Robert Sungenis tries to argue Copernicus and Galileo were wrong about Heliocentrism, and some people actually believe this.  In his attempt to defend the Church at the time of Galileo, he puts himself in conflict with the Church today]

Likewise, in evolution, we are able to learn about things like the formation of rock, about the decay of carbon 14 in living things and so on.  Now of course it is limited in what it can do (it can't tell us the skeleton was of a man who died on June 6th 1426 at 10:17 am) but it can give us a general idea of how long it has been.  In a living creature the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14, the ratio stays stable.  Once the creature dies, the carbon 14 begins to decay and by comparing ratios, we can get a sense of how old a thing can be. This doesn't work on things never alive to begin with, and there has to be some matter to work with.  It is also only effective up to 60,000 years of age (though other isotopes can take us beyond this).

Literalists tend to object to the Carbon 14 dating because they claim "we can't know if the rate of decay is constant or not." The problem with such an objection is that we would need to investigate whether such a variability is so drastic as to throw off accuracy by ten thousand years or more.  However the argument of the Literalist is an Argument from Silence: There is no proof it stays constant, so it means it doesn't prove anything.

Again, if science so completely missed the boat as the Literalists claim, to be off by a magnitude of 1000 times, then it is not unreasonable to ask for the proof that such a variation of decay exists, because if such a variation could be established, it would make the method worthless.

The Dangers of Literalism

Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that "Truth cannot contradict truth."  However the Literalist has to essentially assert that Science must be entirely false when it dates the world to 4.7 billion years of age and says the Earth orbits the Sun.

The literalist argues he is protecting the "inerrancy" of the Bible, but in fact he is holding it up to ridicule.  Skeptics who take the literalist at its word point to the Bible and point to Science and says the Bible cannot be at all true.  The Literalist says the skeptic does not have faith (which is true), but the faith the Literalist demands is faith in their own interpretation of Scripture.  A look at St. Augustine's City of God (See books 15-16) takes the genealogies of Scripture prior to the Flood and points out that it does not follow that these ancient lines were talking about all the children born, or even first born children born, to a mentioned man, when it could mean that the Scriptures were talking about prominent children.

Because of this, the Literalist view provides a stumbling block for someone who understands science and thinks Christianity must be in contradiction to it.  Atheists assume we are fools, and intellectuals think they have to stop thinking to become Christians.

In a sense, the Literalists become a stumbling block when it comes to bringing the faith to the world.

The Wisdom of St. Robert Bellarmine

St. Robert Bellarmine was a cardinal at the time of the Galileo controversy.  He admitted he did not believe the earth orbited the sun (at the time it was a theory and not yet established as more than that), but he also realized that if it were proven so and because Scripture were inerrant, it would mean a misunderstanding of what Scripture meant, not that Scripture erred.  He wrote:

…I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand them than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated.

The Church recognizes that the idea of the Earth orbiting the sun has been demonstrated, but Sungenis and followers (as well as Young Earth Creationists) ignore Bellarmine's wisdom.  Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have expressed a belief in evolution… guided by God… and Pope Pius XII had laid down the differences between what one could believe in regards to evolution to what one could not believe.

Yet the Literalists insist that what was demonstrated was false and refuse to consider the possibility that they do not understand what Scripture means.  They insist all Christians accept their views or they are no Christians at all.

That takes a special kind of arrogance.

It Comes Down to Pride… or Lack of Faith

What are we to make of those who insist that dinosaurs coexisted with human beings and those that say that dinosaurs skeletons are here to test faith (and how do they reconcile that claim with Numbers 23:19)?   How do we assess those who believe that the universe must revolve around the Earth?  What do we think of those who claim that Science must be wrong because it goes against their view of the Bible?

Especially what are we to think of a view which calls those who disagree with them "heretics"?

Ultimately their view is one of either pride, in refusing to consider they are the ones who err, or else in a lack of faith which assumes that if the Bible does not match up to their understanding, it must be wrong.

Ironically such people are the opposite side of the coin from the so-called "New Atheists."  Both tend to assume a literal meaning of the Bible.  The Biblical Literalists accept the Bible as literally true and accept it.  The New Atheist assumes it is to be understood as literally true and rejects it.

Neither considers the possibility of their own error in understanding Scripture.

A Personal Example

Back in the early 1990s, I assumed cloning would never happen (I was dabbling around with the idea of doing a sort of Science Fiction novel in case you are wondering why I was assuming this) because all life was from God, and life would not be created apart from God.  Then in 1996, we got news of Dolly the Sheep, and this caused me to think.  Clearly Dolly was not fraudulent.  So was the Christian faith fraudulent?  I had not yet read St. Robert Bellarmine, but the answer I reached was close to what he said: I recognized that it was quite possible I misunderstood what God would do.

Fourteen years and a degree later I now know I made two errors back then.  First, the belief that cloning was the creation of life out of non-living matter.  Second, that I had a false idea about God's permissive will versus the free will of man.  These two errors of mine led me to believe cloning would be impossible.  If I hadn't considered the possibility I misunderstood the nature of God I would either have had to deny the existence of Dolly or deny the existence of God.

Recognizing the possibility of my own error saved me from making a greater one.

Conclusion

Not all people who believe in Creationism are Literalists in the negative sense.  However, many forget the Church does not insist we only accept Creationism or only accept Evolution.  The Church does require us to believe all creation comes from God and rejects the idea that anything exists apart from God.  We are required to believe God creates the soul directly (it does not "evolve.")

However, Biblical Literalism is a belief which mistakes a personal interpretation of the Bible for the Bible.

We would all be wise to remember that while the Bible is inerrant, personal interpretations are not.