amanda says hi by the way great hi hello to amanda as well so i think we're live uh kevin if you want to say hello to the few listeners that are going to be listening to this sure yes hi everyone pleasure to be here how have you been since we last talked it's been over a year now uh well it's been two years probably since we talked on online in terms of uh an episode but we've chatted back and forth uh occasionally how have you been how we've been dealing with the past year that was challenging in terms of cove and all that stuff yeah um i we're doing uh fairly well i mean i i did find i have found the last year challenging um in terms of just uh you know dealing with all the craziness and whatnot that's been happening um but um no god is good we have a little um baby that's just over two months old and so she's a real blessing so wow congratulations which number is she now uh she is number seven ah that's a i know her her name is uh vera vera maria does that mean truth it does mean truth yes the truth of mary wow right yes and my my grandmother's name was vera so it was kind of doubly appropriate uh did they ever pronounce it vera you know i've had a few people i think they actually it is pronounced vera in latin but everyone called my my grandma vera so we just went with that nice so she's happy and healthy a young beer yes yeah she is she's doing well as long as she's with mom then she's happy no sibling rivalries from numbers one through six it's it's been really good that the kids love holding her and um that's the only rivalry who gets the that's nice you got beautiful kids a beautiful wife a beautiful family proud of you i'm jealous of you i've got a i've got a nice wife but that's where it's the buck stops there but i encourage people to have large families if they can afford it if they can manage it and if they have the generous love that's required i really appreciate it it always warms my heart when i see a large family my parents both come from large families and yeah i think it's important so something is neglected in society but thank you for that so let's jump right in because i do have a limited time today i've got a meeting at church i gotta go do confession nothing too heavy just a regular once every two weeks i go but uh let's jump right into some interesting topics in terms of creationism evolution what's been going on with the colby center uh your involvement with it is it accelerating or have you slowed down because of the so-called pandemic or what uh what's been happening uh so i mean personally i haven't been able to um really get anywhere as far as that goes but um we're doing a bit of online stuff we're having a dialogue that is posted on the colbay center website um that is i think it's colbay center we spelled the american way dot uh o-r-g and um it's a dialogue with the most prominent theistic evolutionist who's a priest and um so it's i was i've been working with hugh owen on this essay talking about how we interpret the adam and eve narrative obviously the kobe center interprets it according to the traditional way that the church fathers did in following the literal sense primarily um so that's been um that's been good been interesting i like doing stuff like that and we were just i just got off the um meeting with um some other kobe leaders where we're trying to come up with a strategic narrative to kind of attempt to be more effective in uh swaying um people towards the truth of the matter so um yeah we've got a few few things on the go i i really appreciate the kolbe center he owen and you yourself and everyone that's involved the generosity and the information you shared some information i got books i got access to some videos early access and it was uh it was amazing one one problem i have with the approach of the colby center it's not it's not an objective critique it's just a subjective preference i really don't like the emphasis that's on the natural sciences i wish there was more emphasis on a top-down approach god almighty said so and this is how it trickles down to theology and philosophy and then maybe you know a light touch of natural science just sort of as icing on the cake that's my sort of predisposition uh but there's a lot of stuff to wade through in terms of the natural sciences so i asked you today if we could just sort of chat about the strongest theological and philosophical arguments ignoring the large emphasis that's placed on the natural sciences and the abundance of evidence for and against this theory that model or whatever whatever else might be involved so what uh what sort of approach would you take with someone like me who really wants to focus on god theology and philosophy sort of at the exclusion of the natural sciences sort of downplaying the importance of the natural sciences sure well first of all i'd say that that is the correct approach to take definitely because theology is the queen of the sciences and um if you have a messed up theology you're almost certainly going to end up with a messed up interpretation of your natural sciences and you as you're saying i mean you you can essentially throw away the natural sciences i mean you can you can obviously get to where you need to be in terms of the truth of the matter of creation uh just following the theology and i mean you can even get to a more basic sense of it even potentially just like um following the philosophy if you don't want to go to uh you know into the christian truths christianity the majority of the world's people had some concept of creation i mean evolution was a little bit of a later addition to things um but um yeah in terms of theology i mean there's one of the interesting things is that um protestants i would say overall tend to be more creationists than catholics and yet this is somewhat uh bizarre because there's so many more reasons for catholics to be creationists than protestants in terms of just following the magisterium because i mean we believe as catholics in the idea that we hold to the truth that has been hounded handed down to us we can't just completely reinterpret things for ourselves based on um some scriptural passage we take out we rely on the interpretation of the magisterium and on the consensus of the church fathers so from that perspective we have much much less wiggle room so to speak on our theology uh which is it's surprising to me when that with that being the case because i'm a relatively new catholic i've only been catholic for five years but it's surprising to me that more people haven't realized that because that's one of the things that really attracted me to the catholic faith this idea that i need to get back to what christians have always believed and so that um goes part and parcel with creationism because i mean if you look back in history obviously all of the church fathers all the popes in their um authoritative teachings um the councils anything that you can bring up relating to creation um it is um supportive of what we're saying um and you know of course you can potentially bring up a few out of context aberrations um which theistic evolutionists tend to do um but um you know i'll give you some examples of so pope leo the 13th he was a really a wonderful bastion of orthodoxy i mean he wrote uh this encyclical providentic mousse deus where he um is outlining the inerrancy of scripture and i think it's probably the best defensive inerrancy of scripture that we have um and he he went so far as to even say that scripture is so inerrant it is so true it was dictated to the human authors by the holy spirit so if that's the case i mean you certainly have again a lot less wiggle room than those who say oh that it's possible that the um human authors could err on um aspects outside of faith and morals so i you know i do i do think a lot of it comes down to first of all your um how much of a high view of scripture do you have if you're willing to say everything in scripture is inerrant it would be rather difficult i think to um be a theistic evolutionist just on that front alone what are your thoughts on that well first of all i want to just sort of remind you of what the church teaches today i don't know if it's authoritatively or if it's just the general atmosphere in the church but the church teaches that inerrancy does not involve a strict dictation that it that the authors were inspired in such a way that they wrote what they wanted to write but it also happened to be what god wanted them to write and when i say when it happened to be what god wanted to write i don't mean that it just haphazardly happened to be that way that that's what inerrancy is it's an inspiration whereby people uh come in contact with the truth and they put it in their own words and their own cultural uh jargon and all the baggage that comes with being a finite creature on planet earth at a certain place and time but they're writing exactly what god wants them to write and nothing more but it's not dictation so i just wanted to make that point do you want to respond to that um i do yes i think i know what you're talking about and i do think that somehow you have to be able to reconcile that however i do not believe that that teaching can supersede the clear teaching of pope leo the 13th and let me just read a little bit from this encyclical for the sacred scripture is not like other books dictated by the holy ghost it contains things of the deepest importance for all the books which the church receives as sacred and canonical are written holy and entirely with all their parts at the dictation of the holy ghost and so far as it is from being possible that any error can coexist with inspiration that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that god himself the supreme truth can utter that which is not true this is the ancient and unchanging faith of the church solemnly defined in the councils of florence and of trent and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the council of the vatican these are the words of the last the books of the old and new testament whole and entire with all their parts as enumerated in the decree of the same council that is trent and in the ancient latin vulgates are to be received as sacred and canonical and the church holds them as sacred and canonical not because having been confused by composed by human industry they were afterwards approved by her authority nor only because they contained revelation without error but because having been written under the inspiration of the holy ghost they have god for their author and then it even goes on to say on speaking of the human authors of scripture for by the super by for by supernatural power he so moved and impelled them to write he was so present to them that the things which he ordered and those only they first rightly understood then willed faithfully to write down and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth otherwise it could not be said that he was the author of the entire scripture such has always been the persuasion of the fathers therefore says saint augustine since they wrote the things which he showed and uttered to them it cannot be pretended that he is not the writer for his members executed what their head dictated and saint gregory the great thus pronounces most superfluous is it to inquire who wrote these things we loyally believe the holy ghost to be the author of the book he wrote it who dictated it for writing he wrote it who inspired its execution okay the key word i gathered from all of that i agreed with all of that the only question is how do you interpret dictation and the word was used by several saints in that quotation right um the the key word i would pick up on is the word the human will of those human instruments because you mentioned the the will or the document mentions the will so there was a contact such a proximity with god and then the the human will is involved that's the only point i want to emphasize is that the human will is involved so it's it's a dictation in the same way that my wife gives me a grocery list it's like i love her i'm close to her and i want to get exactly from the store exactly what she wants me to get and i'll write it down but i also have free will and i might uh i'm not going to add anything to the list or remove anything from the list but it's a loving free action on my part and i remain human i remain free and rational so there's no i don't think there's any uh difference between uh my point of view from a sort of the catechesis i've received and what you're telling me that's from leo the 13th you're saying yes that's correct seems to be compatible now the next thing i want to talk about if it's alright just as a sort of another little tangent here is the the question of inerrancy uh of ins of the inspired texts yeah we have we we know as catholics we know that the scriptures are inspired uh entirely in all their parts and etc as you as you as you have read but we also know that the living magisterium throughout all ages uh is infallible in a very limited sense and part of the limitation is it only pertains to teachings uh revolving around faith and morals so the question is if the scriptures have truths which do not pertain to faith and morals i don't know if that's the case but if there are any truths in scripture which do not pertain directly at least and explicitly to faith and morals uh how can a magisterium that's limited to talk only and to teach only about faith and morals how can it give us those teachings with confidence or do we have a little bit of uncertainty that's always going to be connected with the teaching of the magisterium on those matters that don't touch directly on faith and morals that was an awkward way of phrasing my question but do you understand the question i do understand yes i and i would say that if the magisterium is teaching on matters that do not pertain to faith and morals then we simply do not have certainty that what they're saying is true okay that's my take anyways okay okay yeah that doesn't provide a major stumbling block for me just as the isn't the limitations on the infallibility the pope isn't a stumbling block for me to give obedience and respect to the pope in those teachings which are not infallible and we know that most of the pope's teachings are not infallible it's not a stumbling block for me if anything it's an encouragement that god is using this human being with all his warts and all his flaws and all his own ideas and if we look at the most recent popes uh as you said the theistic evolutionists like to hold them up as sort of uh examples of how the church has changed the teaching on creation and evolution but uh you and i are free to interpret and i think it's more catholic in fact to interpret all of the teachings even the fallible teachings of the popes and the bishops in recent days especially to interpret those teachings in continuity rather than in rupture with tradition right yeah i mean certainly wherever that's possible it uh i think we are obliged as catholics to um at the very least um i forget that the wording on it but to um sort of do our best to adhere to the teachings of the pope and what he says um in i suppose you could say giving um you know um giving things a fair reading listening to him trying to obey as much as we're able to basically um if the pope or a bishop or a priest was to say something to us obviously that is we can't agree to because we believe it is errant or sinful then we're not under obedience to do so but as much as we're able to yeah we are supposed to adhere i would say yeah one example i can give from my own experience here in montreal i met a priest who was uh well i won't mention the context just in case anyone listening knows the story but i met a priest who just in the middle of a talk mentioned what he took to be a fact that the crustaceans like lobsters crabs and these sorts of things took millions of years to evolve i don't know how it played into his his little uh religious talk but he stated as a fact and he apparently believes it to be true and uh i have to admit i did lose a little bit of respect from but then again i have to understand that we're living in a time that's dominated by a lot of uh i guess what we could call what the colby center would call the errors of russia is that right yeah that's true um i mean russia obviously a communist society it was and um one of the um big errors is atheism but what underpins atheism is evolutionism i mean you can't really have any type of coherent atheism without evolution as a underlying theory one other uh thing i think it's important to mention uh in the context of biblical inerrancy and inspiration something that's been on my mind a lot uh since my conversion to god and to christ and his church is the fact that we don't actually have the original autographs the whatever writing implement was used by the authors of the the secondary authors of scripture uh we don't have those pieces of papyrus or vellum or whatever whatever it was uh we don't have them so uh this strengthens my faith in the catholic church in the living magisterium in the holy spirit guiding guiding us as a church and it it uh it seems like a really damning if you'll pardon the expression a very damning argument against any form of christianity that is not submitting to the pope in the living magistry and because we don't have the original documents so all we have is this living church and the living magisterium that is teaching us what are the contents of the sacred deposit of faith what are those contents really and actually it's coming from god almighty it's it's infallibly given to us the faithful by this church which is human and divine so if you don't have that human and divine church if you don't have that infallible church if you're in a protestant denomination or a christian community of whatever other sort it might have all kinds of wonderful means of salvation which the church teaches us come from the catholic church but nonetheless they have those elements of saving truth uh but as wonderful as they are and as enthusiastic and sincere as these protestants or orthodox are if they don't have that god-given truth about the sacred deposit of faith they don't have the original documents either so what what is their what is their religion based on this is not to attack anyone or demean anyone's religion but it's just something that i meditate on and i give thanks to god for the catholic church can you just sort of reflect on that image that i'm giving you sure um yeah i mean it it makes me you know reminds me of the um the argument that um we aren't even given any type of or we were not handed down to us from apostolic times um any type of infallible table of contents of even what is in scripture what scripture is it had to be the church that defined what books are even in it so how are you going to even discern for yourself what is scripture and what isn't unless some authority makes that clear to you um and so for myself that's why i find popes like especially pope leo the 13th very helpful when he's defining this type of thing and going back to um the council of trent um etc when you have these uh decrees that make it clear you know what what do we actually believe and what is in our faith and what isn't because otherwise you're having to become a kind of a pope for yourself in deciding all of these things what's right and what isn't and you don't have that to rely on certainly but if we if we go to the final judgment god is revealing everything about everyone and everything about salvation history to everyone the damned and the saved we're all going to get to see every detail of every mystery and it's going to be very exciting one of the most exciting mysteries will be the sacred scriptures i believe that we're in for a surprise in terms of some of the ambiguities some of the errors that have crept into manuscripts some of these sorts of things i don't think they're major i don't think it's like a complete reversal because we have a living magisterium that's giving us the essential saving truth so i don't think there's a really big surprise in terms of content and direction of the the major uh the essential saving truth i don't think there's any surprise there but what will be a surprise is sort of this supporting scenes and the the secondary players in that narrative maybe just a little word here a little word there um little truths about the scripture that fill fill in the story to complete the puzzle so that it's it will make a lot more sense more easily then right now we're getting sort of piecemeal from the living magisterium some of these saving truths and then critics of the critics of christianity general can come in and say well that doesn't make sense given this other passage over here or whatever but if there's just one little part of a letter that was uh introduced by error that was omitted by error that could introduce all kinds of ambiguities and questions and things like that that will be resolved ultimately i believe at the final judgment when we get to actually see what the scriptures actually said um do you agree with me on that um to some extent yes but on on the other hand um when i look at trent and how they um seemingly infallibly defined the latin vulgate as a source of truth in the scriptures that fully able to be trusted um and i'm not obviously quoting it precisely there but um to me that declaration is so strong that um that's one of the reasons that i um use as my primary reference the dewey reams version of the english because it's such a direct translation of the vulgate so i think that that declaration of the church gives us more of confidence in that than in other sources of scripture like the greek for instance okay okay okay so yeah i i'm less confident than you are that we have uh the perfect original text you would you would be above 99 uh complete perfect text in the vulgate is that safe to say i would say yeah yes okay so uh i have a i leave a little bit more wiggle room so when you talk about the approval of a sample of approval that's given to the vulgate edition to me that's a provisional approval that's given like this is not contrary to the faith you're safe to believe this just as fatima or lord or our lady of guadalupe it's not contrary to the to the faith so you're free to believe it but we're not saying that it's absolutely true it might uh it might not be authentic right it might not be an authentic uh private revelation but the church says there's nothing that we can find wrong with it you're safe to believe it and so on and so forth i think it's the same sort of thing with the with the volcano this i'm we're digressing quite a bit here but i just want to emphasize that i i think it's not a settled question and i think we might be in for a little bit of a surprise at the final judgment when it comes to the contents uh just little little details that thing that make things make a little bit more sense but uh if you have that confidence that i don't have that the vulgate approximates very very closely the original text then i'm happy with that i just don't happen to share that opinion but but uh like i said it doesn't change the substance of our faith and i find it more exciting to have the anticipation for the final judgment where we're going to be surprised by some of those missing little bits and pieces sure yeah it's um you know and sometimes when you read you know uh works from some of the mystics they help to fill in these things too that um yeah can definitely uh clarify some of this stuff for sure that's that that is some of it is a mystery for sure yeah and that brings to mind another sort of contradiction or ambiguity uh that i'm comfortable with maybe more comfortable than you are with which is the contradictions among the pious teachings of the saints over the centuries saints and mystics there are apparent contradictions and i'm comfortable with that because i know that god is giving the church the essential saving truths and when it approves of this saint and that saint even though they taught differently either there's a way of explaining those differences away or it's simply the fact that uh saints can be wrong about certain things and still be saints so that's all going to be revealed at the the final judgment and it doesn't take away from the holiness of these men that said yes to god's grace but it it leaves me again with that anticipation well i wonder uh with this particular apparent contradiction between these two great saints that i love it admire uh if it could be resolved or if it can't be resolved and there's uh one of them is in in error in a certain way but again these are minor minor points that don't affect faith generally right yes so uh in terms of the arguments of the theistic evolutionists that you're sort of preparing a strategy or tactics against um is there any emphasis on theology or is it mainly down in the lower sciences with the natural science arguments in terms of your what you're preparing to counter those uh those arguments um virtually almost everything that we're countering it with is theology because the theology is all on our side well alternatively almost everything they're trying to use is natural science and and so um in in actually attempting to formulate a good response um my um original um uh the words that i kind of compiled together um it was a hundred percent theology and i was thinking okay i should probably throw in natural science here um but yeah for them it's kind of the opposite and i'll give you an example um actually of that um sure can you name the priest or is that too uh yeah it's from father uh nikenor is it greek he is um i think he's filipino actually okay um i think his name is um his first name is austria or something like that um i might be getting that wrong but it's you can on the kobe website you can find the first answer to the first two questions in this dialogue okay um but um you know one of the um really to me powerful statements um magisterial uh that is used in this response um is is again from pope leo the 13th and one of the interesting things about this guy too is that pope leo is that he wrote only about two decades after uh the publication of darwin's origin of species and so he's kind of living in the midst of this evolution revolution um and i don't think that that is um irrelevant that connection there but he he was writing in this encyclical um called arkhanum divine in the year 1880 and um i'm just gonna quote from him what he wrote and he's writing on marriage here the true origin of marriage venerable brothers is well known to all though revilers of the christian faith refused to acknowledge the never interrupted doctrine of the church on this subject and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth but even to lessen it we record what is known to all and cannot be doubted by any that god on the sixth day of creation having made man from the slime of the earth and having breathed into his face the breath of life gave him a companion whom he miraculously took from the side of adam when he was locked in sleep god thus in his most far-reaching foresight decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time so i mean to me that's pretty clear you can't really get any more clear than that um it's from an encyclical right in the midst of the discussions that happened after darwin so even if i we had nothing else on that one statement alone the fact that no pope has ever attempted to refute it you would have the confidence to say this is entirely true we have to believe that this is the case i mean he says um what is known to all and cannot be doubted by any um so that's pretty powerful but i mean you look through the the statements um that have come out from the church and i mean while that is probably one of the most powerful ones i mean you can you can go back and pull out some statement after statement on the truth of creation so what what is a question that one might ask is what type of theology are the theistic evolutionists using to counteract this because they cannot deny that there is strong um support for what uh what we're saying here um well one of the things that they do is they are using um non-magisterial statements they'll say oh well pope john paul ii or pope francis or um pope benedict said such and such and they'll pull out a statement out of a speech he gave that was certainly not an encyclical and there is not an aura of infallibility attached to what they said and they'll say well look this is what he believed so that's good enough for us um and again when you're when i wasn't a catholic i didn't really it didn't matter to me what level of authority a statement had it didn't even make it not only didn't matter to me it didn't make sense to me i didn't even know anything about it actually but when you are comparing the authority of various statements you have to rank those authorities and you can't attempt to take some lower authority statement and suggest that it usurps a previous authoritative statement yeah and if you picture the scales you've got a couple of feathers over here of private opinion of some recent popes maybe maybe just their their their speech writers more likely sure and then on this side you've got literally a mountain of very very dense heavy authoritative statements a mountain right versus a couple of feather light feathers would you say that's an exaggeration what i just portrayed no it's not at all an exaggeration i mean you you have the fact that the church has existed for 2000 years and even beyond that let's go even before christ we can go all the way back to adam all of this old testament scriptures um clearly support an unambiguous literal creation so you would have to make the argument that the people of god have been duped for all of creation until the last say hundred or so years and that it was some godless scientists that hated the church that are setting the church right which is obviously entirely unfitting yeah uh one of my favorite uh notions or uh truths i think it's an infallible truth you can tell me uh i think it's an infallible truth uh which is not been dogmatically defined as far as i'm as far as i know but you can clarify this for me uh was mentioned in your quote there by leo the 13th which is the notion that eve was taken from the rib or the side of adam i mean that's that's like a linchpin for me that's a lynchpin doctrine it is a doctrine it is a doctrine of the church my claim is that it's an infallible doctrine uh but it's not dogmatically explicitly dogmatically defined the way that some dogmas are explicitly defined it just has the weight of the ordinary magisterium behind it and again a mountain of a mountain of teachings right i yes i fully agree it it is um is it infallibly because of the ordinary magister i don't think that i i think that how you described it is correct that we don't actually have you know it's not like the pope x cathedra has defined that however um there is definitely enough magisterial weight behind it that i mean i i would doubt that it's not um infallible and has anyone challenged it uh in terms of popes or bishops or ecumenical councils has anyone suggested that well let's pump the brakes on eve being made from the side of adam let's just see what natural science says or has there been anything to that effect no there has never as far as i'm aware there's never been even the slightest suggestion in any authoritative teaching that that is did not happen but if i go to my parish priest today and i say uh you know if i ask the simple question where did eve come from and his answer doesn't involve the rib or the side of adam and then i press him on the issue and he flat out denies it and just starts talking about modern science and all this sort of thing um how did he get where he is and why is it necessarily the case that he's seen the traditional teaching and just thinks it's old-fashioned and outdated or is it is it possible that he's never encountered the teaching it seems like it would be impossible to not to have encountered the teaching that eve was created from the sidebar i think that it is very likely that he has never encountered any one of his superiors that ever taught him that that truth is to be um held to um i you know the seminaries now as far as i'm aware all teach theistic evolution so um when you go into seminary even if you happen to be more on the side of the literal interpretation by the time you come out you're probably going to be indoctrinated into thinking that everything is allegorical and that's kind of due to the um fact that modernism is so prevalent today unfortunately so if you had a son that was called the priesthood where would you send them to seminary uh that's a good question um to be honest i haven't really um looked into it enough to be able to answer that question um you could send them to the colby center seminary uh what about uh sorry did you have something to add to that no just um i i would say it's interesting that um the um heterodoxy on this issue is not um the same everywhere exactly in terms of we have found that um uganda is one country that is actually very orthodox and is is you know very willing and glad to um hold to the traditional tenets of the faith so you know maybe i'd have to look into is it possible that my son would have to go to another continent perhaps what's your eldest son's name silas silas how old is he he is just about 12 years old sounds like he's just about ready to go off to seminary i don't know if they do that i don't know if they do that anymore but they used to have high school seminaries and uh do they still have i am not aware of of such things at least around here no i haven't heard it do you know they used to have even primary school seminaries did you know that no i didn't yeah yeah i listened to a talk by a priest on ewtn and uh he said as far as he knows he was one of the last genera like his generation was the last generation to have in the united states of america seminary uh primary schools um yeah it's it's fascinating i do want to touch before before we wrap up in about 10-15 minutes i do want to get your opinion on and the colby center's official stance on geocentrism it was mentioned in a book that you sent me uh by father warklewitz uh it's the yellow book the first 11 chapters of genesis i don't remember the exact title i'm reading it right now yeah it very briefly touches on geocentrism and just seems to affirm it in a rather offhand way not a lot of attention given to it i've heard a couple of people mention to me that the colby center is not to be taken seriously because they promote or believe in or condone geocentrism i'm not a geocentrist but i would prefer to be a genius interest i just don't have a really strong motivation to be a geocentrist can you just sort of talk to me about your own personal view maybe who owns you or the colby center's view and how it fits in with the creationism from a catholic traditional catholic perspective please sure um so as far as i'm aware the colby center does not have an official position on this issue um however i would say that um the majority of people that are uh more seriously involved with the kobe center do uh lean towards geocentrism including myself um and um in in terms of uh hue owen it's the same thing but in terms of the weight we would put on that um i i would not say we would put the same weight on it that we would in terms of the more standard uh traditional doctrine of creationists to just put it in a broad context however it seems to me that at least from what the research i've done there's a surprisingly large body of weight in for instance the church fathers talking about this concept of geocentrism and even from scripture so i do think it's something that um the more one study seriously especially if one is a uh a strict um believer in biblical inerrancy it becomes more and more difficult to not move towards geocentrism and in large part at least for myself beyond the scripture just the philosophical aspect of it i mean it certainly seems to be highly fitting that the earth would be in the center of the universe if god exists it would it seems to be somewhat of a bizarre thought that all of the people of god thought for millennia that we were in the center of the universe and they believed that scripture supported them in this and this is um essentially what the church taught and then all of a sudden same sort of thing as i said before that someone comes along oh no that you guys are completely wrong on this we're just out in um a corner of a forgotten corner of the universe spinning around um and flying through space at 100 000 kilometers per hour um is that um is it possible that the that we're just getting the philosophy wrong on that oh yeah i suppose it's possible but it seems um it seems likely to me that that's just right because there's no um when you look into the science of it there is no um science that has been able to um discern this i mean the the experiments that they did can be interpreted um and just as well from a um modified geocentric uh viewpoint yeah yeah um there are a couple of components to geocentrism and some of them i like some i don't like the one that is most obvious and is absolutely true if catholicism is true is that uh god made the universe for man not man for the universe and that we are the pinnacle of creation and that god died for for man to save us from our sins and to redeem our fallen nature and this sort of thing these are these are things we can't doubt as catholics right um so we are we are at the center of the universe in that way in that particular way now are we geometrically in the center my knee-jerk reaction is who cares right who cares but it is more fitting that we would be at the center now in terms of that geometry or that geography geographical center there are some problems you know in terms of uh maintaining uh that centrality when everything's in in motion unless as the ancients thought everything is perfect spheres that's that's the cleanest model i i wish we would go back to that but it doesn't look like it's going to happen because there's too much eccentric motion in the heavenly bodies but that for sure is the most exciting model where it's perfect uh circular motion and spheres and stuff like that that's the most exciting but i don't think we can go back to that right we have too much information no um however there was um this uh this russian mathematician that um he actually did a scientific model on working out the math on a geocentric universe and he uh came to the conclusion that it was possible and i don't believe that this is a guy that is a geocentrist he just did it to see if it was possible and he found that it was in terms of um if like you can't envision it starting up in some sort of evolutionary sequence that much is true that would be ridiculous but in terms of just this idea that if it was started perfectly and put like this then everything all of the movements just balance out the earth exactly in the middle uh because it was designed that way yeah yeah we're at the center of gravity of the entire universe yeah i understand that there's still there's still motions involved and so unless there are concentric spheres uh that it it's like my my pencil here the center of gravity is always in the center um but if there were little independent uh bodies moving in erratic ways and that center will inevitably shift now it might shift negligibly right um even when we say the earth rotates around the sun we're speaking roughly because it's we're not rotating around the center of the sun we're just rotating at the point that's near the center of the sun even according to mainstream atheist scientists so uh that's one thing the other thing i wanted to mention about geocentrism is just the incredible speeds and accelerations of the most distant parts of the universe if we are at the center and if the heavens are revolving around a stationary earth uh rather than having a relatively stationary universe and the earth spinning on its axis for example uh that would involve if the entire universe is rotating around the earth those distant most distant parts of the universe would be traveling beyond the speed of light that is very true yes um and that however is only a problem if you are a um 100 convinced that all of relativity theory is true um and so to me um when i look at the answer to the question how do we how are we able to see distant starlight um i to me the most logical answer is that um when god created it he allowed that light to move instantaneously therefore it did not adhere to the principles of relativity theory and so um i don't uh i don't necessarily think that we need to um hold to uh to that theory which uh has been argued by robert sungenus um and potentially others that um relativity theory was in fact invented in order to explain away geocentrism yeah yeah yeah um do you admire and respect the work that uh son genus is doing uh yeah i think he's done uh good work yes i'm a little bit cautious about him i don't know that much about him i'm i have a friend that's uh goading me into looking into his work a little bit i've never been terribly interested but i i'm gonna delve into it a little bit it's not as exciting to me uh geocentrism is not as exciting to me as what uh for lack of a better term we could call young earth creationism or traditional catholic creationism um yeah but i will look into it um there was something i wanted to mention about geocentrism also just let me see if i can come up with this yeah it's not coming to me i'll get back to you on it sure but uh anything else we have we have about five minutes left before i have to leave uh is there anything else you want to just sort of wrap up your talk today about uh theology ah good question um let me just see exciting points that you wanna oh yeah i know something that you would be interested in so um so one of the the reasons for believing in uh creation from a literal perspective is the um connection between eve and mary and it seems that if you reject the traditional doctrine of creation you are really destroying um a large part of the foundation of the marian dogmas like for instance um eve was a sinless creation um in in an original state of grace in her pre-fall sinlessness and this is of course how we view mary in her immaculate conception and this original state of grace and sinless life um eve this scriptures calls the mother of all living and mary of course is the mother of god and the mother of the church eve was if adam and eve would never have died sorry adam and eve would never have died if they had not and this i believe is actually an infallible teaching of the church what i just said there um and of course this supports the idea that mary was assumed into heaven body and soul god saving her from corruption due to her sinlessness eve was a virgin while in paradise mary is a perpetual virgin now and then we can even go into some of the undefined dogmas that may one day get defined co-redemptrix eve was the forfeitor of the human race with adam as the forfeiter mary is the co-redeemer of the human the mediatrix of all grace eve was the mediatrix of all death and evil upon the human race by her cooperation with satan mary is the mediatrix of all grace because of her cooperation with christ the mediator and the as advocate eve was the co-adversary of the human race with adam when they disobeyed god and came under the influence of satan mary is the advocate of the human race with christ because of her obedience to god so to me that again if you throw away eve and just pretend like she never existed or you downplay her or you suggest that she evolved from some sort of beast it is obviously causing uh a great amount of issue with any type of these analogies that you're trying to make with mary and and these aren't just purely analogies they are um aspects of our faith that are logical they make sense this is why this is if you just rip that to shreds what is it going to do to the marian dogmas yeah and the other image of course uh the church being born from the side of christ i think that's one of the most powerful arguments for for uh the creation of eve from the side of adam i think that's pretty much irrefutable if you're gonna go against that you may as well just uh chuck out christianity i i did as you were talking i was listening but i was also searching in my mind for the question about geocentrism that i wanted to ask you that i forgot and it was it was about the firmament uh some flat earthers um i doubt i'm gonna be converted into a flat earther but some people have tried but some flat earthers believe that the permanent firmament is a solid uh dome above the earth and sort of thing and there seems to be some biblical evidence for that if you take a strict literal interpretation of some of the some of the words in genesis uh is that easy to refute the firmament argument of some flat earthers or yeah i mean i personally i have never been convinced by any biblical argument that the firmament must mean a hard dome um so i i mean you don't see the appeal of that uh i don't know i think flat earthism is insane i mean it's it's like it would require so much of a conspiracy theory now of course people will say that of geocentrism but what they don't realize is that geocentric the geocentric model you couldn't tell the difference between anything you just don't you can't tell what's going around what because it's kind of all relative so um it's um it's not throwing away the science which obviously uh flat earthism is yeah yeah yeah another quick question that i'm going to let you go a quick question about and um he was very skeptical when i started talking about this stuff and now he says it's made a huge difference for him he said suddenly things started making sense for him in his faith um once he accepted this and realized that it's true so i it yeah i can see the difference that it makes in people for sure wow and that's someone you've known how long um so i've known him um not for a super long time but maybe um um four years or something like that so yeah i've i do have to let you go but i really appreciate your time i want to give a quick shout out to v for veritas uh on the live chat there thanks for being here and i'll read through your chat thereafter but i have to run right now uh kevin always a pleasure to talk to you always nice to see your face you're looking uh younger than the last time i saw you i don't know what you're eating what you're eating but it's agreeing with you so uh your lack of sleep hasn't hurt your health at all yeah okay looking good give my love to your wife and your kids and take care of your newest little child there and we'll definitely be in touch we'll be nice to have you back again uh in the future we can chat some more about this stuff sounds great yes let's uh keep each other in prayer for sure yeah the union of prayer appreciate it god bless you and yours and we'll talk soon okay thanks david god bless a lot god bless thanks david god bless a lot god bless all right