In the scientific age, people believe themselves to be the center of the universe.

Hm.

“If you remove the evolutionary framework, get rid of the millions of years, and then take the Bible seriously, you will find an explanation that fits the facts and makes perfect sense.”

Many Christians make similar errors when trying to understand how Science and Theology are complimentary aspects of Truth, and thus “divorce the Word from the empirical world”.

And you can’t use the fallibility of Science to justify a belief in Creationism, any more than you can you use the fallibility of Theology to justify a belief in Segregation. It’s not a loophole that Christians may use to be suspicious of Science.

You not saying that disagreeing with current scientific consensus is necessarily “divorcing the Word from the empirical world”, then? Not in general?

You’re saying specifically, “The empirical evidence against a young earth is so strong that believing in a young earth divorces the Word from the empirical world”?

TUAD,
Be it the Magisterium, Scripture, or the Periodic Table, nothing can guarantee us Truth — such is faith. But by using Science and Theology as our means to understand Creation and Scripture, we are led to the unity of Truth as it is fully embodied in Christ.

Was this a typo? Did you mean to write this instead:

“Nothing can guarantee us Truth, not even the Magisterium.

“This truth, which God reveals to us in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to the truths which philosophy perceives. On the contrary, the two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness.”

The mistake you are making is in equating the changing conclusions of science with the Truth of nature and treating as on a par with divine revelation. Science does not even claim that for itself. And I do not believe the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church treat scientific consensus on that level. Science is not some sort of infallible magisterium on nature, and its conclusions, by the limited nature and scope of its methodology, do not constitute some sort of ex cathedra pronouncements. It can never guarantee us Truth.

Please…what difference does Pope John Paul II’s view of science make?

Even if someone ignores legitimate science or logic, if it is because that science or logic contradicts Scripture, what of it?

I don’t think the issue is that we’re misunderstanding how the Roman and EO churches see our understanding of Scripture.

And what difference should it make to see how that group sees the Protestant view of Scripture?

Also, most of what is taught today as evolutionary science would be almost nonsensical or at least unrecognizable to Darwin and his contemporaries. What makes you think that what will be taught in 100 years (or less) won’t be equally puzzling to today’s “scientists”.
Because science is essentially observation, as our mindset changes, or our tools change, so changes the observation, and so changes science.

34. This truth, which God reveals to us in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to the truths which philosophy perceives. On the contrary, the two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness. The unity of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of non-contradiction makes clear. Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the God of creation is also the God of salvation history. It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend, and who reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This unity of truth, natural and revealed, is embodied in a living and personal way in Christ, as the Apostle reminds us: “Truth is in Jesus” (cf. Eph 4:21; Col 1:15-20). He is the eternal Word in whom all things were created, and he is the incarnate Word who in his entire person (30) reveals the Father (cf. Jn 1:14, 18). What human reason seeks “without knowing it” (cf. Acts 17:23) can be found only through Christ: what is revealed in him is “the full truth” (cf. Jn 1:14-16) of everything which was created in him and through him and which therefore in him finds its fulfilment (cf. Col 1:17).

79. Developing further what the Magisterium before me has taught, I intend in this final section to point out certain requirements which theology—and more fundamentally still, the word of God itself—makes today of philosophical thinking and contemporary philosophies. As I have already noted, philosophy must obey its own rules and be based upon its own principles; truth, however, can only be one. The content of Revelation can never debase the discoveries and legitimate autonomy of reason. Yet, conscious that it cannot set itself up as an absolute and exclusive value, reason on its part must never lose its capacity to question and to be questioned. By virtue of the splendour emanating from subsistent Being itself, revealed truth offers the fullness of light and will therefore illumine the path of philosophical enquiry. In short, Christian Revelation becomes the true point of encounter and engagement between philosophical and theological thinking in their reciprocal relationship.

R Hampton,

That’s pretty puzzling.

When we seek truth by looking at both natural revelation and special revelation, we can’t avoid interpretation, right? And our interpretation is fallible. We can be wrong in our interpretation of Scripture, and we can be wrong in our interpretation of physical data.

It’s obviously not true that “If you disagree with the current majority scientific consensus, you are rejecting the Truth of Natural Revelation,” because the scientific community does get things wrong. It’s also not true that “If you disagree with the common interpretation of the Bible, then you are rejecting the Truth of Special Revelation”, because people misunderstand Scripture.

We have to say a lot more than that, to figure out what to do with apparent conflicts. But can you agree with that much?

If so, do you see how that should stop you from saying “yes, it is the same as divorcing the Word from the empirical world”?

When you deny the Truths that science discovers, you reject half of God’s revelation (Natural Revelation). So yes, it is the same as divorcing the Word from the empirical world. Please understand that is how the Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches perceive your well-intentioned by misdirected understanding of Scripture.

Neither the theory of evolution nor a millions of years old earth are facts — they are interpretations of data through the lens of certain presuppositions. Neither those interpretations nor the assumptions upon which they are based are infallible or unassailable (to hold them as such, well, that would be cultic). They cannot be equated with reality, not even with empirical reality, merely a particular view of empirical reality.

So to hold an interpretation of the Genesis creation account that differs from the current scientific consensus is not at all the same as divorcing the Word from the empirical world.

The “appearance” of age is only a problem if one has made certain unwarranted assumptions about the way a thing must have originated and the date of that origination. For example, if God made man fully formed and mature in one day then the age of that man on that day would be one day. Normally, the process requires 9-month gestation and a certain number of years for a man to reach maturity. And if we could somehow go back and see Adam on the day of his creation, we might assume that he was a certain number of years old, if we made assumptions about how he was created. But we would be wrong, and our error would not be in his appearance but in our perceptions based on our assumptions. But if we let go of our assumption that everything has ever and always happened at the same rate, then we will not be fooled by our perception about appearance. So, the world appears old only to those who have made certain assumptions.

BTW, I don’t know of any YECs (Young Earth Creationists) who have denied the actually bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. All the ones I have seen defend it quite vigorously. OTOH, I have seen some OECs who denied it.