Expert: Marco - 8/13/2007

Question
Hello:

I don’t know if this is going to make any sense to you so please forgive me if it gets confusing. It is a bit long.

I am 37 years old and was raised Catholic.  I was an Altar Boy, attended Catholic school for 10 years and went to Church every week.  When I went to college I took many different courses such as English, History etc, but the courses that affected me the most were ones such as Philosophy, Death and Dying etc.  These courses opened my eyes to subjects such as Evolution vs. Creation and the more I read the more unanswered questions I had and still have.  Hopefully you can shed a little bit of your knowledge into my confused brain.

O.K…First I learned about creation and Adam and Eve and that God spat on the ground and made them from the earth.  That creation took 6 days and on the 7th God rested.  If God is all powerful, almighty, omnipotent etc, why would he need to rest on the 7th day?  Why would he need to rest at all?  He’s God.  He can’t get tired.

Science and scientists have proven that the galaxy has been in existence for billions and billions of years, yet it is taught (at least to me) that Jesus was born about 2000 years ago, did his preaching and died on the cross at the age of 33.  That takes place in the New Testament.  When exactly do scholars think that the Old Testament took place?  For argument sake lets say that everything in the Old Testament took place 20 Million years before Jesus was born.  If that is so, what was there before the Old Testament? Dinosaurs, etc?  And lets say that that is true.  Science and scientists have proven that Dinosaurs roamed the earth Billions of years ago and there were “cavemen” living among them.  I thought Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on earth?

So, because I can type hundreds of pages on this topic lets jump back to the beginning of time.  The so-called “Big Bang Theory”.  Supposedly before the “Big Bang” there was nothing.  Just darkness.  But wait, that can’t be, because God always was and always will be…right?  Again, that is what I was always taught.  And if God always was and always will be, were we with him in “Heaven”?  And if we were, why did he feel the need to put into motion all of these things that would eventually lead to the birth of the human race?

(Now, I do not mean to be disrespectful in anything I have said in this e-mail or will say so please don’t take offense.  I just don’t know how else to express myself and get these questions out).

Did God get bored and just make us to see what we would do if he put us in human form?  I know that the human mind is completely incapable of understanding the concept of eternity but we do know that it is a very long time.  Sometimes it really bothers me that I took the classes that I did because before them I was happy just thinking that I was a good Catholic.  I would go to Church every week.  Say my Rosary every night and when I died I would go to a place filled with flowers and clouds and meet up with everyone who had died before me and I would be able to fly and have no more pain etc but actually, evolution makes more sense to me then creation and that scares the hell out of me!!  What if this is all for nothing.  What if there is no God or afterlife?  I mean, if it was proven that there was no God or afterlife I wouldn’t start killing people and breaking the 10 commandments.  I would still live my life the way I am living it now because I like who I am and what I do.  I love helping people who need help. I don’t do it for “brownie points” with the “big guy” upstairs…  J My Grandmother died recently after being married to my Grandfather for 65 years.  65 years is a long time to spend with someone and it breaks my heart every time I stop at his house to visit because all he does is cry.  How could an all loving and forgiving God want one of his own children to suffer such pain and grief?….and that brings me to one last topic.

They say that God gave the life of his only son for the salvation of mankind.  That Jesus suffered pain that was unimaginable… being whipped and nailed to a cross for three hours.  Again, I mean no disrespect to you or your beliefs but I have to say this.  I know people in my life that battled cancer on and off for 10 plus years and the pain they suffered was so bad that the strongest pain medications known to man didn’t even help them.  How can anyone compare the pain that Jesus suffered to the pain that these cancer patients suffer day in and day out for years?  I don’t think you can.

I don’t know.  I don’t want to be the doubting Thomas and only believe if God shows me a “miracle” but at the same time my mind is so confused and the more research I do the more confused I get.
So, what do I do?  I still say my Rosary every night and I still believe in God….I think.  I just think there has to be something out there greater than ourselves.  For evolution to be real, so many billions of variables would have had to take place at just the right times over the course of billions of years that it seems unlikely and more likely that someone put those variables into place.

Your thoughts?

Sincerely,

Paul


Answer
Dear Paul,

the genesis is only a symbolic book. You cannot take it literally.
The Bible was written to give us spiritual and moral teachings. The Bible was not written to teach us history, science or geography.
You must try to learn the spiritual teachings contained in the Bible.
God did not need to rest on the seventh day; the meaning of such sentence is only to teach us that we need rest.

Your question about dinosaurs; according to scientists, dinosaurs lived many millions of years before the appeareance of humans, so you are wrong when you say that there were humans living together dinosaurs.
Anyway this is an irrelevant detail.
The point is that what makes humans human, is not their biological body, but their soul. Without a soul, man would be only a biological robot. What the Bible teaches is that God Himself creates the first human beings, giving them a soul. Actually, God creates the soul of each of us..

I think that faith cannot come only from logic, because to have faith in God means to trust and love God.
I think however that logics and science prove the existence of our soul and the existence of  God and that there are many rational arguments strongly supporting the christian faith.
The explanation of these aguments is rather long and Allexperts allows only to give short answers. You can find such arguments  in the following site

http://xoomer.alice.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html

where  I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.
This analysis points out how the laws of physics  prove that the   brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies  the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.
In the first article entitled “Mind and brain...” you can find a general discussion of the mind and brain problem from a scientific point of view.
In the second article entitled “Scientific contraddictions in materialism”
you  can find an explanation of the fundamental inconsistencies of  the  typical arguments used by materialists, such as the concept of emergent, macroscopic or holist property, complexity, information, etc.
In the section called “FAQ: answers to  visitors' questions” you can find the answer to many typical questions, such as "Are there any scientifically proved miracles?", "Does the existence of the universe imply the existence of God?", "Can science explain God?", "Can science establish which is the true religion?", "Can science explain consciousness in the future?", and many others.

A fundamental question:

Why did Jesus have to suffer on the Cross?

I believe that each of us needed know that God was willing to accept such a terrible suffering for us, in order to really trust God. Every man needed that proof of love, and God, who knew this, has accepted to give him what man consciously or unconsciously asked to Him. Jesus had to suffer and die that way to convince us about God's goodness and God's love towards us. It is man's obstinate distrust against God that has forced God to give man that proof of love, the proof he needed to trust God. By His death on the cross, Jesus destroys our distrust and our doubts, and He gives us the strength to believe in Him and trust Him. This means that each of us is personally responsible of Jesus ' sufferings and death. This distrust, this lack of faith in God is just the essence of the original sin. Christ's Passion has reconciled us to God because it has uprooted from our heart, our distrust and doubts about God; it has satisfied our (conscious or unconscious) desire and need of a proof of love, so that it has given us the strength to trust God and feel loved by Him. I can summarize my thoughts as follows: Salvation implies a deep change of ourselves. God has the power to change us but He wants to do that with our consent. Man cannot really accept to be changed by God and he cannot be in comunion with God as long as even a shadow of doubt and distrust remains in his heart ( it must be stressed that such a distrust may exist even without the man is aware of it, at the unconscious level). God had to destroy every shadow of doubt and distrust in our heart and He has chosen to give us the greatest proof of love that may exist: Christ's Passion.


I hope this may hekp you.
Please, ask again if you should need some clarifications.

your brother in Christ,

Marco