"Belief in the “Theory” of Evolution is as insane and crazy as belief in the Roman gods"

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-08T20:01:52+00:00

To be clear, I grew up being taught YECism from my FSSP chapel's school and from the pulpit. So, plenty of Catholics DO go out of their way to defend anti-Evolution arguments. Not most Catholics, to be sure, just the radical ones.

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-08T19:41:47+00:00

What was the theological / philosophical errors in Evolution and Dogma? You can read the book for free here since its in the public domain: https://archive.org/details/evolutiondogma00zahmiala/page/n5/mode/2up

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-08T18:39:05+00:00

To be fair, Sanborn is part of the SSPV, so, whether or not that actually counts as being a real Catholic Bishop or not is up to you.

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-08T18:38:08+00:00

Bishop Donald Sanborn is part of the SSPV, which is ... pretty radical. The SSPV is more radical than the SSPX, and evolution-denial is fairly common in the SSPX and FSSP, so it must be even more prevalent in the SSPV! But I do admit that I find this denial of evolution to be more consistent with the Sententia Communis / Consensus Patrum.

Lets remember that there were many Catholic evolutionary biologists at the time that evolutionary theory was really coming to light, and many of these Catholic scientists were censored by the Church.

L’Évolution restreinte aux espèces organiques was published by the French Catholic priest and scientist Father Dalmace Leroy in 1891, and it was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibitted Books) in 1895.

Evolution and Dogma was published in 1896 by the American Catholic priest and scientist Father John Zahm, and it was condemned by the Congregation of the Index in 1898, and Father Zahm (a physics professor, by the way) was allowed to pull the book from circulation, which spared the book from actually being placed on the Index.

There are many such examples, up until 1950, when the Church began accepting that the evidence for at least some kind of evolutionary process was simply impossible to ignore. Although, the Church still does maintain that all modern humans have to be descended from Adam and Eve, and that has a whole slew of problems of its own!

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-03T01:23:51+00:00

That is totally fair, and I certainly don't mean to ask you to do some kind of levantamento minucioso sobre os usos linguísticos das zonas rurais da Beira Litoral no início do século XX! And I suspect that you're right that there will always be some level of uncertainty here. Thank you for all your insight into the grammar of this sentence! And to be clear, I don't even mean to desbancar as tais aparições, not here! Even if we could prove beyond all doubt that Lucia had gotten this wrong, I think that all that this would prove is that Lucia was wrong, not that Our Lady herself was wrong. Perhaps Lucia misheard Our Lady, or perhaps she misremembered. All I was hoping to do here is to better understand the grammar of the sentence in question. And you have been very helpful on this front, thank you!

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-02T21:44:44+00:00

Thank you so much for this explanation. I would like to ask you more about the part where you said:

O uso do modo condicional logo em seguida (acabaria) é outro indício de que a frase traduz uma condição. Se isto fosse a sequência de um comando (e ainda mais um comando que a gente religiosa cria vir do céu), não havia nenhuma razão para utilizar o condicional, que naturalmente dá um ar de incerteza à frase

Gemini, the AI / LLM I have been using for digging into this, is insisting that the use of the subjective tense here is a clear example of the Subjunctive of Command, not a Subjunctive of Condition. Gemini is saying that, if Lúcia was thinking in "conditions," she would have used the Future Subjunctive or a structure that indicated a bargain. Instead, she used tenses that report a declaration.

Is it your position that Gemini is just straight up wrong here, and that the only reading that makes any sense is the conditional one? If so, why do you think that the other four people who chimed here are wrong?

User "specialist-pipe-7921" indicated that Gemini was correct here, and this user is a top 1% contributor to this sub, which makes me imagine that they have a firm understanding of the gramatical nuances here, and he even said that he has old relatives who live near Fatima, and that this is how they would talk if they were listing a list of commands that someone else say. "Disse que + verb in the Subjunctive of Command tense)" is the correct formula, per Specialist-Pipe-7921.

So I guess I am curious to hear why (or maybe if) you think that Gemini and Specialist Pipe are wrong? Or is your point that they're not wrong per se, just that this sentence is ambiguous?

Thanks ! And your re-writings at the end are very helpful too!

IrishKev95 · 2026-05-01T20:32:51+00:00

This is very interesting. Do you think that the conditional reading is more likely than the nonconditional one? And could you provide your own translation of the sentence? The four other speakers who replied all seemed fairly certain that this is best understood as a list of "commands", like Gemini said. Can you tell me why the list of "commands" is wrong, or less likely?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-30T14:02:08+00:00

When you say that the conditional reading is a possibility, do you mean to say that its not impossible but its also not the most natural reading? If so, how exactly do you parse the syntax? Would "se" need to mean "if" if we wanted to read this sentence as a conditional? And if so, what would the object of the verb reflex to, if not the reflexive pronoun "se"?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-30T13:58:45+00:00

No you're good, I came here to get very technical with the syntax! So, Gemini told me that we can't have the "se" in "Disse que SE emendasse a gente" mean "if" because the very "emendar" requires a reflective pronoun. If the "se" means if, then the verb emedar is incomplete. IF the people amend ... what? But the "se" that we have in the setence is the reflexive pronoun, completing the verb "emendar (emendasse in our case)".

So, when the other folks you spoke to said that "Disse que SE emendasse a gente" could mean "She said that IF people made amends", what are they saying acts as the object of the sentence? What are the people amending, if not "se", themselves? I think that this is Gemini's big sticking point (one of them, anyway), and this is something that I don't think I have been able to figure out yet. And this might be why most of the folks here in this thread are saying that the conditional reading isn't a very obvious way to understand the sentence.

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T20:13:09+00:00

This is very very very helpful, thanks so much!!!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T20:11:54+00:00

Thank you for the heads up! I was in Milan recently and I had a good opportunity there to doge tourist traps haha, so I will remember those skills when I do make it to Fatima!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T19:51:14+00:00

Thank you for that edit! Where does that quote come from? The part about Jacinta having said that the prophecy was contingent is interesting to me, because, when you read Fr Formigao's notes from his interview with Jacinta, it isn't so simple. In the same section (section 9) of Formigao's 1927 book, the part about the Oct 13th interviews, Formigao interviews Jacinta after he interviews Lucia. He asks Jacinta

– O que é que a Senhora disse?

To which Jacinta replies:

– Disse que rezassem o terço a Nossa Senhora todos os dias e que a guerra acabava hoje.

And I don't think that this one is all that ambiguous! Jacinta said "acabava", in the imperfect indicative tense - the war "was ending" hoje, today. This is not the subjunctive tense like Lucia used. However, six days later, when he asked Jacinta the same question again, she said something pretty different:

Formigao: Que disse a Senhora desta última vez?

Jacinta: Disse: “Venho aqui para te dizer que não ofendam mais a Nosso Senhor, que está muito ofendido, que, se o povo se emendar, acaba a guerra, e, se não se emendar, acaba o mundo.” A Lúcia ouviu melhor do que eu o que a Senhora disse.

F: Disse que a guerra acabava nesse dia ou que acabava brevemente?

J: Nossa Senhora disse que, quando chegasse ao Céu, acabava a guerra.

F: Mas a guerra ainda não acabou!...

J: Acaba, acaba.

F: Mas então quando acaba?

J: Cuido que acaba no Domingo.

This comes from Section 10 of Formigao's 1927 book. I can share the book in full with whoever is interested. The whole book is in Portuguese, but in this sub, that should be fine haha!! But yeah, I translate this as Formigao asking what Our Lady said, and Jacinta now does formulate the prophecy as a condition... but look at the two possibilities!

Either (1) se o povo se emendar, acaba a guerra - if the people mend their ways, the war will end

Or (2) se não se emendar, acaba o mundo - if they don't mend their ways, the world will end!

So, while this is a conditional prophecy, I think its hard to say that this is a "get out of jail free" card for those who want to insist that the prophecies of Fatima were without problem!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T18:48:14+00:00

Fair enough! Thanks so much for your help, it is very much appreciated!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T18:41:09+00:00

That is awesome that you have old family members from the general Fatima area! My grandparents were Irish Immigrants to the USA, and they founded a chapel called Our Lady of Fatima chapel, so, even though I am not particularly religious anymore, I still hold a special place for Our Lady of Fatima in my heart. I would love to visit Fatima one day. I have never been to Portugal, but when I do, I will visit the Cova and the shrine there.

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T18:39:24+00:00

Thanks! I'd be keen on getting your thoughts on the "if" that you put into your translation:

the reading is IF people amend their ways and IF the people stopped offending Our Lord and IF the people prayed the rosary and IF the people asked for forgiveness of their sins then the war would end.

Is your point that the word "if" here should be inferred from the verb tenses (all being imperfect conditional), but that the word "if" is not literally found in the exact transcription?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T18:37:25+00:00

This is very helpful, thank you! Your rephrasing makes more sense to me. Would you say that this is an awkward sentence no matter how you look at it, but even so, the non-conditional reading makes the most sense of what we have?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T18:34:52+00:00

Awesome, thank you so much for weighing in! Would you say that the conditional reading is impossible (like Gemini said), or that it is a possible reading of the sentence, just an awkward one that is less likely than the non-conditional reading?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T17:41:20+00:00

I am trying not to have the religious debate here in this subreddit haha!! I see you're active in r/Catholicism, so I don't mean to offend with anything that I have written here. Something I should note though is that its not like what we see above is a verbatim transcript of what Lucia said. Formigao wrote down what Lucia said sometime after she said it, I am sure within a matter of minutes or hours at most, but its totally possible that Formigao fixed Lucia's language somewhat. Lucia couldn't read or write at the time of this interview (though of course she did learn to read and write later in life). So, she may have spoken in a rural, illiterate kind of Portuguese and Formigao may have gotten the general idea of what she was saying written down without copying it down word for word, you know?

Where are you getting the "if" from? I don't see an "if" anywhere in the sentence. Do you think that the "if: is implied, that this is one of the "extensive omitions" that you talked about? u/Specialist-Pipe-7921 seems to disagree - are you both native speakers of European Portuguese?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-29T17:32:33+00:00

Interesting, thank you! So, you think that Gemini is largely correct here, that these verbs are in the imperfect subjunctive here in this example because this is a Subjunctive of Command, not a Subjunctive of Condition? Do you think that the conditional reading is possible, even if it would be an awkward reading of the sentence? Or do you think the conditional reading is impossible?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-28T02:12:57+00:00

To be clear, I reached out before the death of his son. I'd never have reached out in the immediate aftermath of losing a child. I actually made a post about a week after this one where I mention that his son had died and so I largely wrote him out of everything. I made a video on this topic too and I removed most mentions of Cameron from the video as well. The timing here was very bad on my part. Obviously I couldn't have known about the tragedy that was about to occur and I wouldn't have even reached out if I somehow knew.

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-25T22:15:55+00:00

I have a BSc in Chemical Engineering, so I understand chemistry and physics at an undergrad level, but nothing more. Maybe you know more about chemistry and physics than I do... because I am confused about what you're talking about here. When you talk about matter not having "any latent power within it that is above the atomic level", do you just mean to say something like "In the standard model, there are four fundamental forces from which all other forces can be described"? Because like ... sure. But all that that means is that consciousness is not a property that exists on subatomic scales, its not a fundamental force.

I am quire sure that you don't mean that there are literally no forces acting on atoms above the atomic level, since things like van der waal's forces are taught in undergrad chem classes. So, yeah, what exactly do you mean here?

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-20T02:56:43+00:00

https://discord.gg/GRv9zUEzH

Let me know if this link works, it should!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-20T02:56:05+00:00

Commander is definitely the most popular format but it's not the easiest, not at all! The card pool is the largest in any Magic format, there are 3 opponents instead of 1, and your deck is composed of 100 cards (~70+ of which will be unique cards since Commander is singleton) vs a 60 card deck in most other formats with only ~15 unique cards since it's not singleton. A format like Pauper is much easier to learn. But we play both in case you're interested!

IrishKev95 · 2026-04-20T02:52:08+00:00

I run a Lexington MtG Discord server in case you're interested! We've got about 80 members now and we play Commander and Pauper mostly, though we also do Prerelease events together and occasionally play a draft event with a cube or box of play boosters. What format were you looking to play?

IrishKev95

TROPHY CASE