Age of the Earth and Evolution

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Pope Pius XII - Humani Generis

and

St. John Paul II’s -
MESSAGE TO THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: ON EVOLUTION

Are Source Docs - necessary for Understanding the Stance of the Church
 
peopel have to take in to account while evolution is a fact now, there are many types of thoeries of evolution proproposed
example
darwinian evolution
neo darwinian evolution
lamarckian evolution
niche construction
evo devo etc
example in neo darwinian evolution everyhting is left to chance in the alteration of the genes.
stephen jay gould said:
if you where to rewind the tape of life back to 0 , and start evolution all over , you would not get human life or what exist now.

darwin did belive in randoness but also belived in a natural law that limited it .
while niche construction says organisim do not only adapt to their enviorment but they shape their enviorments as well
like the beaver making a dam or a bird making a nest, epigeneticis has in a sense proven that is not all random and species will adapt to their enviorment via evolution
this and some other things have challenged the neo darwinian to the core
simon morris has said that if we restart evolution you would get human life again , and if you do it again you will get it again.
this is called process structuralisim
 
Dan123 said:
all random. Mutations yes, selection no.
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eh , half half it states that trough random mututations if that mutation is beneficial then that a species survives
so in a sense mutuations not natural selction drives evolution
at least many people agree rigth now there is a debate on this in neo darwinian evolution
 
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A key issue is how we come to all have descended from just 2 first persons.
 
historyfan81 said:
eh , half half it states that trough random mututations if that mutation is beneficial then that a species survives
so in a sense mutuations not natural selction drives evolution
at least many people agree rigth now there is a debate on this in neo darwinian evolution
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If a mutation is beneficial then it will be favored for selection, and become more prevalent in the population. Mutations and selection pressures work together, neither works alone so I’m not sure what the debate would be.
 
Why? this possibility is certainly not rules out by science. We all know we have common ancestors at multiple times in the past. All it would take is for one of them to have been monogamous.
 
Rau said:
You and I might have a common ancestor, but it’s not likely that you and I share that ancestor with everyone else.
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It is certain that we all share a common ancestor. You have two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 … 32 … 64 and so on back into the past, increasing with each generation. At the same time as you go back into the past, the human population is getting smaller. Even if you allow for 7th cousins marrying, eventually the number of your ancestors will reach the limit of the human population at that time. That far back the whole then-living human population can be divided into two categories: ancestors of every human alive today and those with no currently living descendants.

Looking at it another way, we know that every living human is descended from Mitochondrial Eve. Hence her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. are also common ancestors to all living humans. The same applies to Y-chromosome Adam’s forebears.

There were many universal common ancestors, the difficulty is identifying them if we find their fossil remains.
 
Dan123 said:
If a mutation is beneficial then it will be favored for selection, and become more prevalent in the population. Mutations and selection pressures work together,
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the debate is that is it natural selection that is the driving force of evolution of mutuations rigth now the normal position is
mutuations are the most important, driving force of evolution. Natural selection occurs sometimes, , because some types of variations are better than others, but mutation created the different types. Natural selection is secondary.
so yes they do agree they work together but natural selection is secondary to random mutuations according to these neo darwinians
 
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historyfan81 said:
Natural selection is secondary.
so yes they do agree they work together but natural selection is secondary to random mutuations according to these neo darwinians
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Can you cite any of this? It sounds like saying “chefs are debating whether crust or cheese is more important to pizza”. You need both. I really don’t imagine scientists sitting around debating what’s ‘secondary’ when both are necessary. Would just love some context.
 
http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/PH/DNA-Genetics/DNA-Genetics6.html

the biggest proponet of this mutuasanisim is Masatoshi Nei

he argues that the production of more efficient genotypes by mutation is fundamental for evolution, and that evolution is often mutation-limited

still he agrees of course that these mutuations are random so he is arguing like the neo darwinist that evolution was always random but that natural selection plays a smaller role that mutueations
 
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Much of this topic is a discussion about whether evolution of one kind or another is or is not a valid explanation for the development and proliferation of life on earth. For the purposes of the original post, that doesn’t really matter. The Catholic Church accepts that it is, and that a literal reading of Genesis is incorrect.

The only detailed “Church” comment on one particular aspect of evolution is that in Pope Pius XII’s Humanis Generis encyclical of 1950: “The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.”

Since 1950, evidence increasingly suggests that the human race did not descend exclusively from two individuals, and that Pope Pius’s injunction is no longer applicable. I don’t think that ‘the Church’ will defend it, and indeed the International Theological Commission’s 2005 report entitled Communion and Stewardship said: “While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage.”

Whether evolution is true or not, a good Catholic can believe it to be so without any logical conflict with the bible.
 
That is true, I should have added in my comment about the earlier dates for the most recent common ancestors that they do account for all humans, not just the living.
 
tafan2 said:
That is true, I should have added in my comment about the earlier dates for the most recent common ancestors that they do account for all humans, not just the living.
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I don’t see how that can be unless you assert that the claimed common ancestor - just a few thousand years back - were the only humans on the planet at the time, which is clearly not the case.
 
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