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Originally Posted by Clutch Munny
But it's certainly correct that one can strictly and literally be a creationist while accepting the science of the day at face value. Presumably whatever our best theory T tell us, there is a theistic story that goes, "God brought it about that T would apply". That seems more or less what Chesterson is saying.
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Chesterton is saying basically just what I have said.
He is saying that we're watching both Fundamentalists fighting and the Evolutionists, or whatever they're called, and we're standing at a distance saying, you guys are fighting over nothing and you're missing the real question. It's like quibbling over whether 6+3=9 if you can't say there is anything before 6, including 3. 6 just Is. (Granted, 6 in that case just becomes one and 9 becomes 3 but that's entirely the problem. You never escape the necessity of starting at 0 and 1, what we may call Nothing and First Thing)
Catholicism stands outside the fight because she recognizes firstly, that the two theories are not incompatible in their essence. He is saying that Catholicism need not accept an exacting six day Creationism theory because that is strict literalistic interpretation by the Fundamentalist who doesn't even have the Bible he is trying to interpret grounded in anything.
The Catholic Church has for two thousand years seen philsophical and scientific theories rise and fall, and any at any time on the "verge" of declaring theism or Catholicism false.
Catholicism notices that you have a theory, but that theory is in a box. If you haven't been able to explain what's outside that box, you can't accurately interpret that information for parts taken out of context of the whole can be greatly misunderstood and can be used to say anything. Information is way too maleable. What is an eye without a face?
And no, he's not suggesting that Catholicism is unfalsifiable. He's more than not saying that Catholicism has already beaten you guys to the punch.
He expressed in "Orthodoxy", "Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself....it does not destroy religion, it destroys rationalism," and prior, "The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; they cannot even see the riddle."
Granted, I question part of the point of the first thought or rather, the conclusion as applied but, in context and that's his thought.