Proverbs ch.8 Jerusalem bible

      8:1 Does Wisdom not call meanwhile? Does Discernment not lift up her voice?

8:2 On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand;

8:3 beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates she cries aloud,

8:4 ‘O men! I am calling to you; my cry goes out to the sons of men.

8:5 You ignorant ones! Study discretion; and you fools, come to your senses!

8:6 Listen, I have serious things to tell you, from my lips come honest words.

8:7 My mouth proclaims the truth, wickedness is hateful to my lips.

8:8 All the words I say are right, nothing twisted in them, nothing false,

8:9 all straightforward to him who understands, honest to those who know what knowledge means.

8:10 Accept my discipline rather than silver, knowledge in preference to pure gold.

8:11 For wisdom is more precious than pearls, and nothing else is so worthy of desire.

Wisdom sings her own praises. Wisdom, the guide of kings

8:12 ‘I, Wisdom, am mistress of discretion, the inventor of lucidity of thought.

8:14 Good advice and sound judgement belong to me, perception to me, strength to me.

8:13 (To fear YAHWEH is to hate evil.) I hate pride and arrogance, wicked behaviour and a lying mouth.

8:17 I love those who love me; those who seek me eagerly shall find me.

8:15 By me monarchs rule and princes issue just laws;

8:16 by me rulers govern, and the great impose justice on the world.

8:18 With me are riches and honour, lasting wealth and justice.

8:19 The fruit I give is better than gold, even the finest, the return I make is better than pure silver.

8:20 I walk in the way of virtue, in the paths of justice,

8:21 enriching those who love me, filling their treasuries.

8:22 ‘YAHWEH created me when his purpose first unfolded, before the oldest of his works.

8:23 From everlasting I was firmly set, from the beginning, before earth came into being.

8:24 The deep[*a] was not, when I was born, there were no springs to gush with water.

8:25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth;

8:26 before he made the earth, the countryside, or the first grains of the world’s dust.

8:27 When he fixed the heavens firm, I was there, when he drew a ring on the surface of the deep,

8:28 when he thickened the clouds above, when he fixed fast the springs of the deep,

8:29 when he assigned the sea its boundaries-and the waters will not invade the shore-when he laid down the foundations of the earth,

8:30 I was by his side, a master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence,

8:31 at play everywhere in his world, delighting to be with the sons of men.

8: 32a And now, my sons, listen to me;

8:33 listen to instruction and learn to be wise, do not ignore it.

8:32b Happy those who keep my ways!

8:34 Happy the man who listens to me, who day after day watches at my gates to guard the portals.

8:35 For the man who finds me finds life, he will win favour from Yahweh;

8:36 but he who does injury to me does hurt to his own soul, all who hate me are in love with death

The German synodal path: a brief history.

 Synodal Path 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

The Synodal Path (German: Der Synodale Weg or Synodaler Weg, sometimes translated as Synodal Way) is a series of conferences of the Catholic Church in Germany to discuss a range of contemporary theological and organizational questions concerning the Catholic Church, as well as possible reactions to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in Germany 

Organization 

The Synodal Path's supreme body is the Synodal Assembly. It consists of 230 members, made up of archbishops, bishops and auxiliary bishops, as well as an equal number of lay-members from the Central Committee of German Catholics. This number is further increased by representatives of religious orders or other ecclesial groups.[1]

The Synodal Path is further divided into four Synodal Forums that each focus on a particular topic:[2]

Power and Separation of Powers in the Church - Joint Participation and Involvement in the Mission

Life in succeeding relationships - Living Love in Sexuality and Partnership

Priestly Existence Today

Women in Ministries and Offices in the Church

An ongoing discussion is the relationship or precedence between the German Synodal Path and the international "Synod on Synodality", which was started by Pope Francis in 2021.[3] 

Meetings 

allowed by the Vatican.[10][11][12]

The laity should have more influence on the election of bishops.[13][14]

Homosexual partnerships/unions should get a public blessing ceremony.[15][16]

The Roman Catholic catechism's teachings on sexual ethics should be reformed. Homosexual sexual acts within same-sex unions/partnerships should be theologically accepted and not classified as a sinful behaviour.[17][18][failed verification]

Married priests (viri probati) should be allowed.[19][20]

Changes to the labour laws of the German church to prohibit the firing or refusal to hire of people based on marital status.[21][22] 

Reception 

that they were lacking the Holy Spirit. While not directed officially at the Synodal Path, the statement was widely considered to refer to Germany.[32]

In June 2022 the results of national synodal paths in the Netherlands[33] were nearly the same: women ordination, married priests and reform of world catechism in sexual ethics were supported.

On 21 July 2022, the Holy See released a statement in which it stated that "The 'Synodal Way' in Germany does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals".[34]

In August 2022, the results of nationals synodal paths in Switzerland[35] and in Austria were nearly the same: women ordination, married priests and reform of world catechism in sexual ethics were supported. 

Plenty of guilt to go around III

 History & Memory : The Making of an Atlantic World : Pre-colonial Africa.

By the fifteenth century, Africa was home to hundreds of vibrant, dynamic cultures populating all parts of the vast continent. Within those regions we today call West or Central Africa, for example, diverse groups distinguished themselves from one another through a complex range and combination of languages, religions, arts, technologies, and evolving worldviews.

Ancient trade routes crisscrossed the continent, many of them pathways for the movement of local and international commerce and enslaved people. African traders linked routes from the west coast to distant communities of the Nile and the Red Sea. Similarly, trade routes traversed north and south, linking the Sahara with the savanna to the south, as well as to the forested regions of the continent.

The best known of these ancient trade routes were those crossing the Sahara. For centuries, caravans of Arab and Berber traders transported African captives from sub-Saharan Africa, trekking along a series of arduous stages to the slave markets of North Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia, and Europe. From the eighth century, demand for African slaves was accentuated by the spread of Islam. The vast networks of trade routes controlled by muslims were used to capture people and transport African captives far from their homelands.

Islamic religion penetrated ever farther south, deep into West Africa, along the East African coast, and far into the African interior. Thus, its traders forged new trading links, providing goods from Europe and the East, which Africans exchanged for their exports, including slaves. North African muslims created networks of trade that spanned a vast area of sub-Saharan Africa. African societies were ensnared by foreign slavers on the trading routes and forcibly marched in camel caravans across the Sahara Desert, often enormous distances, to markets in the north.

The trans-Saharan routes were broken into small sectors, with goods and people bartered and sold multiple times to new traders en route. The end result was that African captives were transported from deep in the continent to the edge of the Mediterranean, and even onward to Europe and to the empires of the Eastern Mediterranean. Berber and Arab trading routes created noticeable African ethnic groups in many major towns around the Mediterranean, from Cairo to Istanbul.

Traders moved African captives north along the trade routes of the Nile and sold them in Cairo’s slave markets (both to local slave owners and for onward sale). Many were women, destined for lives as domestic slaves and concubines. These internal trading routes were not devoted solely to the movement of slaves: they were trade routes along which a host of African commodities, ivory, for example, were transported north from Africa. Enslaved Africans were often forced to work as porters, carrying other goods being transported north. This trading system survived into the twentieth century.

European traders and sailors benefitted from these links when they began to trade along the coast in the fifteenth century, acquiring goods—and people—who were captured from the interior and brought to the Atlantic coast via the African traders’ inland trading systems. The Portuguese were originally attracted by the possibility of trading with coastal peoples for gold. In time, the desire for labor in the colonies caused Europeans to demand African laborers to work on their plantations in the Americas and Caribbean. The Atlantic slave trade lasted 366 years, but many Saharan trade routes survived for the better part of a millennium. 

Game over? Really? II

 Theory in Crisis? Redefining Science 

Jonathan Wells 

Editor’s note: We are a delighted to present a new series by biologist Jonathan Wells asking, “Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis?” This is the second post in the series, which is adapted from the recent book, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Find the full series here. 

In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn noted that scientific revolutions are often marked by disputes over the “standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from a mere metaphysical speculation.” Newton’s theory of gravity was resisted because “gravity, interpreted as an innate attraction between every pair of particles of matter, was an occult quality” like the medieval “tendency to fall.” Critics of Newtonianism claimed that it was not science and “its reliance upon innate forces would return science to the Dark Ages.”1

Centuries later, some scientists claimed that the big bang was not science. In 1938, German physicist Carl F. von Weizsäcker gave a lecture in which he referred to the relatively new idea that our universe had originated in a big bang. Renowned physical chemist Walther Nernst, who was in the audience, became very angry. Weizsäcker later wrote 

He said, the view that there might be an age of the universe was not science. At first I did not understand him. He explained that the infinite duration of time was a basic element of all scientific thought, and to deny this would mean to betray the very foundations of science. I was quite surprised by this idea and I ventured the objection that it was scientific to form hypotheses according to the hints given by experience, and that the idea of an age of the universe was such a hypothesis. He retorted that we could not form a scientific hypothesis which contradicted the very foundations of science. 

Weizsäcker concluded that Nernst’s reaction revealed “a deeply irrational” conviction that “the world had taken the place of God, and it was blasphemy to deny it God’s attributes.”2 

Is Intelligent Design Science? 

Similarly, intelligent design has been criticized for not being science. In 2004, American Society for Cell Biology president Harvey Lodish wrote that intelligent design is “not science” because “the ideas that form the basis” of it “have never been tested by any scientific peer-scrutiny or peer-review.”3 In 2005, the American Astronomical Society declared, “Intelligent Design fails to meet the basic definition of a scientific idea: its proponents do not present testable hypotheses and do not provide evidence for their views.”4 And the Biophysical Society adopted a policy stating, “What distinguishes scientific theories” from intelligent design “is the scientific method, which is driven by observations and deductions.” Since intelligent design is “not based on the scientific method,” it is “not in the realm of science.”5

The claims about evidence and peer review in the statements quoted above are false. Nevertheless, the statements illustrate that critics of intelligent design, like the critics of Newtonianism and the big bang, claim that the new paradigm does not qualify as science.

Some pro-Darwin writers have argued that intelligent design is even anti-science. In 2006, philosopher Niall Shanks wrote that “a culture war is currently being waged in the United States by religious extremists who hope to turn the clock of science back to medieval times.” The “chief weapon in this war is…intelligent design theory.”6 In 2008, biologist and textbook writer Kenneth Miller claimed that “to the ID movement the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment, which gave rise to science as we know it, is the true enemy.” If intelligent design prevails, he wrote, “the modern age will be brought to an end.” For Miller, what is at stake “is nothing less than America’s scientific soul.”6 

A Different Definition of Science 

It’s true that intelligent design operates with a definition of science that differs from the definition used by pro-Darwin scientists. For the latter, science is the enterprise of seeking natural explanations for everything. Only material objects and the forces among them are real; entities such as a nonhuman mind (which would have to be the source of any intelligent design in nature) are unreal. In Darwinian science, any evidence that seems to suggest intelligent design is ignored or ruled out. In 1999, a biologist wrote in Nature that “even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”7 But in an intelligent design paradigm, science seeks to follow the evidence wherever it leads. According to Kuhn, disputes such as this over the nature of science are common in scientific revolutions. 

Notes 

1)Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed., 103-105, 163.

2)Carl F. von Weizsäcker, The Relevance of Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 151-153.

3)Letter from Harvey F. Lodish to Ohio Governor Bob Taft (February 24, 2004). https://www.newswise.com/articles/ascb-president-says-creationism-does-not-belong-in-ohios-classrooms (accessed August 22, 2020).

4)Statement on the Teaching of Evolution, American Astronomical Society (September 20, 2005). https://aas.org/press/aas-supports-teaching-evolution (accessed August 22, 2020).

5)Statement on Teaching Alternatives to Evolution, Biophysical Society (November 2005). https://www.biophysics.org/policy-advocacy/stay-informed/policy-issues/evolution-1 (accessed August 22, 2020).

6)Niall Shanks, God, the Devil, and Darwin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), xi–xii.

7)Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul (New York: Viking Press, 2008), 16, 190-191.

8)Scott Todd, “A view from Kansas on that evolution debate,” Nature 401 (1999), 423.