{"id":19526,"date":"2024-02-03T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T19:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/?p=19526"},"modified":"2024-02-02T23:24:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T04:24:26","slug":"kolbe-report-2-3-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/kolbe-report-2-3-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Kolbe Report 2\/3\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"
Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,<\/p>\n
Glory to Jesus Christ!<\/p>\n
One of the tragic consequences of the widespread acceptance of theistic evolution is that it is always accompanied by a loss of faith in the inerrancy of the Bible as defined by the First Vatican Council.\u00a0 According to the Council\u2019s decree on Scriptural inerrancy, the Bible is free from error, not only in regard to matters of faith and morals, but in all that it affirms.\u00a0\u00a0 When Dr. Thomas Seiler and I gave a series of seminars in various parts of the United States several years ago, we were twice confronted by the objection that the Bible contains errors in regard to natural science and that the account of the habits of the ostrich in the Book of Job, Chapter 39, offered a clear example of this.\u00a0 One of the people who raised this objection was actually a retired professor from one of the few Tradition-friendly Catholic universities in the country!<\/p>\n
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Never having heard this objection before, we were not prepared with an immediate response, but we were both quite certain that, rightly understood, God\u2019s description of the ostrich in Job 39 would be proven true.\u00a0 And so it was.\u00a0 Among the many good articles defending the accuracy of God\u2019s account of the ostrich, one of the best is an article by an assistant professor of biology named George F. Howe, published in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation<\/em> in December 1963 under the title \u201cJob and the Ostrich: A Case Study in Biblical Accuracy.\u201d\u00a0 According to Professor Howe:<\/p>\n\n\t\t The wings of the ostrich wave proudly: But are they the pinions and plumage of love?<\/p>\n For she leaveth her eggs on the earth, And warmeth them in the dust,<\/p>\n And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, Or that the wild beast may trample them.<\/p>\n She dealeth hardly with her young ones, as if they were not hers: Though her labor be in vain, she is without fear:<\/p>\n Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, Neither hath he imparted to her understanding.<\/p>\n What time she lifteth up herself on high, She scorneth the horse and his rider (job 39:13-18, ASV).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Certain ornithologists and anthropologists have denied the scientific accuracy of verses 14-16 of this passage. Alice Parmelee has stated that Job is not fair to the ostriches when he judges their behavior by human standards and accuses them of treating their young cruelly:<\/p>\n . . . As parents they are outstanding. \"Cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness\" (Lamentations 4:3) is as mistaken a statement of their paternal behavior as is the statement that they hide their heads in sand to avoid danger. (11, pp. 204 and 207).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She accepts the validity of some portions of the narrative, but rejects the statement concerning ostrich cruelty and attempts to prove the point by a subsequent discussion of ostrich nesting habits.<\/p>\n Although Schreiner accepts the accuracy of the Bible account, he believes that Job 39:14 refers only to an aberrant or abnormal phase of the ostrich story and is not representative (14, p .291). Without definitely mentioning job's errors, Beebe (2, p. 212) believes this passage is incorrect. Laufer discusses the job citation and assumes that the Bible account is erroneous: \"The observation made in the book of job that the ostrich treats her offspring harshly does not conform with the real facts\" (8, p. 12).<\/p>\n In an attempt to clarify the basis of these criticisms and to establish the validity of job 39:13-18, an analysis of the ostrich life history has been made. Since little work is presently being done with this bird, citations come mainly from the writings of zoologists and agriculturalists of a previous generation. Theological publications are consulted concerning Biblical aspects of the problem.<\/p>\n