And God Said..........

I checked out a book from our parish library last Sunday that is giving me a lot to think about.  The title is Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament, Genesis 1-11.   One of a whole series of books, it is a collection of writings from early Church fathers and saints.  The quotes are included in this book in order that the subjects of the quotes appear in The Bible.  It is or could be an excellent companion guide along side Holy Scripture.  Each of the quotes below corresponds to specific verses which are noted in the book. 

Below are just a few that I found especially astonishing, when you consider the time these men lived, which was way long before Charles Darwin ever raised his nutty head.  I am astonished to discover how many Catholics today want to infuse evolution into their religion to prove to their friends, and perhaps to themselves, that they are intelligent enough to believe science will always be the arbiter of facts.  

The problem, however, with science and evolution is the fact evolution is not a fact anymore than is man made global warming or climate change.   Some have the idea that if you let go of Santa coming down the chimney, then you have to let go of every other thing in your life that depends on faith and has no concrete explanation that can be replicated in a laboratory, or as we have seen, can be claimed by those who receive hefty sums of grant money to make scientific sounding declarations that support the agenda of intelligentsia who want to control the world.  

If you have never read G.K. Chesterton's book, The Everlasting Man, you should consider doing so.  His wit and sense of humor put levity in a subject that could normally bore the horns off a goat.  Chesterton said, "But this notion of something smooth and slow, like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion.  It is an illogicality as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question.  An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves.  For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one."  

But getting back to the quotes,  read below and when you are done, praise God that the whole subject is as simple as this:  "And God said....."

Of Its Own Kind, Basil The Great:

There is nothing truer than this, that either each plant has seed or there exists in it some generative power.  And this accounts for the expression ‘of its own kind.’  For the shoot of the reed is not productive of an olive tree, but from the reed comes another reed, and from seeds spring plants related to the seeds sown.  Thus what was put forth by the earth in its first generation has been preserved until the present time, since the kinds persisted through constant reproduction. 

Succession Preserved, Basil the Great:

The nature of existing objects, set in motion by one command, passes through creation without change, by generation and destruction, preserving the succession of the kinds through resemblance until it reaches the very end.  It begets a horse as the successor of a horse, a lion of a lion and an eagle of an eagle.  It continues to preserve each of the animals by uninterrupted successions until the consummation of the universe.  No length of time causes the specific characteristics of the animals to be corrupted or extinct, but, as if established just recently, nature, ever fresh, moves along with time.  

Species Peculiar Properties Received from God, Ambrose:

In the pine cone nature seems to express an image of itself.  It preserves its peculiar properties which it received from that divine and celestial command, and it repeats in the succession and order of the years its generation until the end of time is fulfilled. 

Differences Sustained, Ambrose:

Word of God permeates every creature in the constitution of the world.  Hence, as God had ordained, all kinds of living creatures were quickly produced from the earth.  In compliance with a fixed law they all succeed each other from age to age according to their aspect and kind.  The lion generates a lion; the tiger, a tiger; the ox, an ox; the swan, a swan; and the eagle, an eagle.  What was once enjoined became in nature a habit for all time.  Hence the earth has not ceased to offer the homage of its service.  The original species of living creatures is reproduced for future ages by successive generations of its kind. 

The lesson I take from this is that all things were created quickly by command and they continue as they were originally intended, reproducing themselves in kind to preserve their original nature.  This means there has never been any evolution of species, nor will there ever be, since all creatures obey.  To do otherwise would be to defy God.  Even the stars hold their positions in the heavens as they were instructed at the moment they were ordered to exist.  Constellations in the sky are as they were from the beginning.  They have not moved.    

Simultaneous Creation of Many Living Beings, Ambrose:

The rivers were in labor.  The lakes produced their quota of life.  The sea itself began to bear all manner of reptiles…. We are unable to record the multiplicity of the names of all those species which by divine command were brought to life in a moment of time.  At the same instant substantial form and the principle of life were brought into existence…  The whale, as well as the frog, came into existence at the same time by the same creative power.

The take away is:  NOTHING EVOLVED FROM ANYTHING ELSE.  Creation required only “a moment of time.”

Whereas “modern man” has seen fit to invent wild theories of how else things may have come to be that do not involve God, none of those ideas can be proven and none of them can explain simple things such as which came first, the chicken or the egg, or the fruit bearing the seed, or the fruit tree that produces the seed.  In a human being, which came first, the heartbeat or the circulatory system?  The fact is systems in the body are each dependent  on other systems that must have been created at the same time for the creature to survive.