Bad arguments redux

I suppose this is an equal time moment as I have been writing about the logical and philosophical gaps that exist in contemporary atheist thought.  But today I will be going over a rather unpleasant encounter I had from what I can only assume is a "Traditionalist" Catholic.

On Stacy's blog she wrote a post asking if science can deal theology a blow. It was an interesting discussion sadly marred by an encounter when I proposed that the Church has not, in dogmatic and definitive terms, defined that there was in fact a literal Garden of Eden.  In other words, that the Scriptural description of the garden that Adam and Eve tended could be figurative, in the same sense as the "days" described in the order of creation.

Now aside from accusing me of being a heretic and other bluster my accuser used the following for evidence of his position:

First the citation from the council of Trent:

"If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God *in Paradise*, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema."

And the second from the Bible:

"And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed. [9] And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [10] And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise, which from thence is divided into four heads.
[11] The name of the one is Phison: that is it which compasseth all the land of Hevilath, where gold groweth. [12] And the gold of that land is very good: there is found bdellium, and the onyx stone. [13] And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia. [14] And the name of the third river is Tigris: the same passeth along by the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates. [15] And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it."

 Now for the observant we see a problem with this evidence.  In fact the problem is that there is no evidence.  The Council of Trent citation does not prove that Paradise cited here actually refers to the space-time location where the action occured.  In fact the citation does not define Paradise at all. 

Now this is not to say Trent could not have defined Paradise elsewhere in the documents.  But as it stands Paradise is not defined anywhere in the citation, which makes the citation next to useless.  In fact as I point out:

Let's try a thought experiment:
""If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God ****in the physical location known as Paradise****, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema."

This is the essence of what you [ed. my accuser] are saying.

My turn:
"If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God ****in state of Original Innocence known as Paradise****, immediately lost the holiness and justice wherein he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of that prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema."

If anything interpretation of Paradise as the state of Original Innocence actually makes the statement flow more concisely, whereas yours almost is a tangent, a triviality that detracts from the overall flow of what the Council Fathers are trying to point out.

Now for the other citation.  In essense what I found odd was quoting Scripture in the first palce beyond establishing what text we were referring to.  The whole point of the discussion was if the Scriptural passage was in fact trying to convey a physical location of the Garden OR is Scripture using figurative language to describe the idyllic state of Man, the Original Innocence of Man at the beginning.

Now in no way do my points prove me right.  For all I know I could be dead wrong about the literal interpretation when it comes to Paradise, but my reading of the Catechism and the Pontifical Council in 1909 defines what we need to believe as Catholics:

"...the creation of all things which was accomplished by God at the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from man; the unity of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in a state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the divine command laid upon man to prove his obedience; the transgression of that divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent; the fall of our first parents from their primitive state of innocence; and the promise of a future Redeemer." (from Acta apostolis sedis, 1 [1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission], pages 567-69, translated in Rome and the Study of Scripture, 7th edition, and cited from Origin of the Human Species by Dennis Bonnette, page 145)

 indicates to me that this is still an open question. 

The point of all this is my accuser makes the classic mistake of assuming what he is trying to prove.  The only way any of these texts "prove" that Paradise or Eden is in fact a literal location is if one assumes that the Council Fathers and Scripture are talking about a literal place.  But if one does not assume that, then the citations don't prove anything.

All this goes to show that one has to be careful about one's assumptions.  That my accuser couldn't see that he assumed his own defintion of Paradise was primarily the sticking point in the whole discussion.