Big Bang: Base of Evolution

[itinerant1]

Hear, Hear!

Though be careful. There’s a gentlemen by the name of Hovind in Pensacola, Fl, who believes he’s used several parts of the Bible, along with scientific theory, to develop his own 6-day creation and Young Earth theory. I’m nervous about his precise interpretation of the Bible, but others aren’t…

How strict does the exegesis need to be?

John

It is always good to see different opinions than one’s own. However, what we are seeing from fundamentalists is not exegesis, but eisegesis mixed with junk science. They have truth so intertwined with error that rational discussion becomes virtually impossible.

Fundamentalists or literalists are generally good-willed folks who believe they are the guardians of God’s Word. However, they remain oblivious to the narrowness of their own perception. And the narrow-minded are the more prejudiced by very reason of their narrowness. This throws Christianity into a bad light.

(When the literalist read this post they will cry out to heaven for my blood. Ha, ha!)

I have no reason to be concerned much about someone like Hovind. The harm done to Christianity and culture by the fundamentalist is far less than that done by the secular humanist and the atheistic scientist. Specifically, the enemies of Christianity are the real problem.

The problem I have with fundamentalists in forums is their inability to engage in a logical discussion for any length of time. Instead, they resort to a hit-and-run tactic that sounds like they all memorized the same bumper sticker, which says, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Well, I know what the Bible says, too, and I believe the Bible. So why do we have very different interpretations of the same Bible. And this is where we started out. We go full circle. Trying to engage a literalist in a logical discussion can be a wearisome exercise in futility. :banghead:

eisegesis: an interpretation, esp. of Scripture, that expresses the interpreter’s own ideas, bias, or the like, rather than the meaning of the text.

Peace,
itinerant1 :tiphat:

“What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learnt in woods and fields. I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.” ~St. Bernard of Clairvaux

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
It is a bit vague on how He did it. But Genesis clearly rules out the “Life Ex Nihilo” and six day creation week of the YE creationists.

“Genesis clearly rules out” is a false statement.

No, it’s quite true. Augustine, for example points out that it is clearly wrong to talk about mornings and evenings with no sun to have them.

And, of course, God refutes “Life Ex Nihilo” explicitly; he says life was brought forth by pre-existing creation, i.e. the Earth and waters. YE is contradictory to Scripture.

The Church teaches that Genesis records actual history, Your interpretation, or perhaps another interpretation you’ve chosen to agree with, is not consistent with that.

Sorry, your position is not supported by the Church, which does not say Genesis is literal history.

The Church has not ruled infallibly as to the age of the earth

It can’t. Neither tradition nor Scripture show what that age might be.

which is why Catholics are allowed to believe in a literal 6 day creation.

You are allowed to believe that George Washington was an alien from Venus, too.

Religion is more important than science.

For our God, truth is important. And that should remain uppermost in your mind. If you stand by the truth, then you cannot depart from Him.

 

[inthecloud]

As far as Christian fundamentalists’ attempts to prove a “young earth” go, I think their project is about as meaningful as trying to prove the earth is flat. The origin of the problem is that fundamentalists operates from an erroneous concept of Divine Revelation, an inadequate methodology for interpreting Scripture, and ignorance of various literary genres and how they work.

The YEC fundies are telling me that cosmology, geology, biology, history, linguistics and medicine are all wrong becasue the Bayble is infallible in a literal sense.

BTW the Catholic Church was the first Church that endorsed the Big Bang Theory. Even before most scientists.
Have anyone hear about Monsignor Georges Lemaitre?
Does anyone remember Pius XII?

Catholic creationism is like flogging a dead horse.

 

[edwest2]

Barbarian observes:
It is a bit vague on how He did it. But Genesis clearly rules out the “Life Ex Nihilo” and six day creation week of the YE creationists.

No, it’s quite true. Augustine, for example points out that it is clearly wrong to talk about mornings and evenings with no sun to have them.

And, of course, God refutes “Life Ex Nihilo” explicitly; he says life was brought forth by pre-existing creation, i.e. the Earth and waters. YE is contradictory to Scripture.

Sorry, your position is not supported by the Church, which does not say Genesis is literal history.

It can’t. Neither tradition nor Scripture show what that age might be.

You are allowed to believe that George Washington was an alien from Venus, too.

For our God, truth is important. And that should remain uppermost in your mind. If you stand by the truth, then you cannot depart from Him.

God is uppermost in my mind. Evolution is a theory of no concern to the majority of the population, except for a handful of people on the internet that promote it daily. I’m convinced that it is “ideological evolution” that is being promoted, not scientific evolution. Note the attacks and emotional “I feel sorry for you” comments made to those who do not believe.

The following are all from the Library of this site: catholic.com/library/adam_eve_and_evolution.asp

Under the heading “Real History”

“It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that westerners do not typically use.”

If you look at the last line of the previous paragraph above that heading, you will read: “… it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.”

Scrolling down a little is this heading: “The Time Question”

“… it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.”

To my fellow Catholics, in regard to this issue, always look into Church teaching first.

God bless,
Ed

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I completely disagree with statements that God used evolution since they are conjecture and based on desired interpretations of the Bible. If Genesis is read literally, and records actual history, then, as the Church teaches, we are allowed to believe in a literal 6 day creation. The church has not ruled infallibly as to the age of the earth.

Speaking generally, those who object to religion in their science classes should be aware that the Church rejects so-called science that strays beyond what it can demonstrate. The Bible comes first, science is then interpreted in light of divine revelation.

God bless,
Ed

Ed shame on you…Do we have to retrieve 19 posts you made in which you admitted that some form of evolution was correct? Have you regressed completely again?

 

[rossum]

I am tired of the “ya know, 2,000 years ago, people were just too stoopid to get it, ya know?”

Not stupid, but 2,000 years ago they lacked the background knowledge we have now. Ancient Hebrew did not have the words “Deoxyribonucleic acid” in its vocabulary and without the words how could the Biblical authors have written about it?

rossum

 

[edwest2]

I believe that is part of a deliberate attempt to rewrite history. The comment you made has been repeated all over the internet on Christian and atheist forums. My point is, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, stated “From the beginning, he made them male and female.” He did not refer to a beginning where asexual reproduction was the norm. He also referred to “the days of Noe,” in reference to Noah.

For Christians, the Bible is examined first and then science. I think some people, not you, just speaking generally, are living in a man is too smart for God worldview. Biological evolution has given way to the Evolution of God, apparently decided upon by our genes, which just kept on giving us bigger and bigger brains. As this idea imagines, at one time, man needed some kind of God concept, so we ‘invented’ it. But in actuality, we didn’t, it was our genes just looking out for themselves - making sure that we reproduced successfully. Now, someone (??) has decided: “Hey, OK. Too smart for God, so let’s just throw religion on the trash heap and eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

God bless,
Ed

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I believe that is part of a deliberate attempt to rewrite history. The comment you made has been repeated all over the internet on Christian and atheist forums. My point is, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, stated “From the beginning, he made them male and female.” He did not refer to a beginning where asexual reproduction was the norm. He also referred to “the days of Noe,” in reference to Noah.

For Christians, the Bible is examined first and then science. I think some people, not you, just speaking generally, are living in a man is too smart for God worldview. Biological evolution has given way to the Evolution of God, apparently decided upon by our genes, which just kept on giving us bigger and bigger brains. As this idea imagines, at one time, man needed some kind of God concept, so we ‘invented’ it. But in actuality, we didn’t, it was our genes just looking out for themselves - making sure that we reproduced successfully. Now, someone (??) has decided: “Hey, OK. Too smart for God, so let’s just throw religion on the trash heap and eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
Ed

Ed it would be a lot better if you concentrated on making cogent arguments that don’t cross-thread contradict each other instead of pouting because the world isn’t the way you would like. The whole second paragraph was just a wandering around the areas of brain biology and psychology, blended with some atheist stuff. It has nothing to do with this issue.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Evolution is a theory of no concern to the majority of the population

Unless you eat food, take antibiotics, or undergo surgery. In each case, evolutionary theory has many times permitted these to save lives, improve nutrition, or prevent disease.

I’m convinced that it is “ideological evolution” that is being promoted, not scientific evolution.

You believe a lot of things, most of which seem to be rather imaginary.

The following are all from the Library of this site: catholic.com/library/adam…_evolution.asp

Let’s see what it says…
**So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution. **

So far, entirely consistent with evolutionary theory.

Under the heading “Real History”

Let’s see… it says:

The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.

Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.

The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337)…“The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).

Kinda what we’ve been trying to tell you, ed.

Scrolling down a little is this heading: “The Time Question”

**Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.

Catholics should weigh the evidence for the universe’s age by examining biblical and scientific evidence. **

To my fellow Catholics, in regard to this issue, always look into Church teaching first.

If you agree with this, ed, why are you arguing with those of us who also agree with it?

 

[edwest2]

Sad that you should use another appeal to emotion.

The evolution I’m referring to is always that man was once a bit of protoplasm, then something aquatic, then, supposedly, some four legged creature, a ‘homind’ and then homo sapiens sapiens. Now that is unproven. Even Cardinal Schoenborn only goes so far as saying that common descent “might” be true.

The monk, Gregor Mendel, only observed what plants were already doing. Bacteria and viruses have a built-in ability to modify themselves and even exchange bits of genetic material between themselves. This is something they could already do. It has nothing to do with evolution. Further, these viruses and bacteria do not sprout arms and legs and turn into humanoids.

As far as breeding animals, this ability existed before the word ‘evolution’ was used in its modern sense. I have friends who are of mixed race, but there was no evolution involved. This was something the human body could already do.

“Modern” biology has made great strides in understanding what living things can already do. That’s it. Evolution theory is more about spreading a worldview than science.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m not as smart as a lot of folks on here, and I’m not being sarcastic in saying that. There’s some real erudition, and I admire it.

Not being a scholar of either the Bible or science, I keep coming to this in my thinking. All sorts of scientific folk think there might be more intelligent life out in the universe than ourselves. Theoretically, at least, I don’t think there would be many who would say, categorically, that it couldn’t be so.

Now, once you admit of that possibility, you have to admit of the possibility that the intelligence gap could be as great as that between, say, a sea snail and a human. If so, the more intelligent being would have to make adjustments for the less intelligent being in order to tell it anything at all. And if the gap is profound, so would the adjustments be profound.

I don’t know math from the back side of the moon, but I see these physicists on tv with their blackboards full of symbols, and I realize that if you took all the formulas explaining the Big Bang, if indeed, they’re even accessible to human formulation, and tried to make a Bible of them, there wouldn’t be paper enough on a hundred worlds to write them all down. And if somehow one did, who would understand them?

Now, what’s the alternative to that huge Bible with all the formulas in it that the Hebrews (and I) would simply regard in bewilderment? Directly infusing the knowledge? And could we survive that? Instant knowledge of all those formulas and "H"s and "C"s of the periodic chart and the electron dot configurations and all the interactions of the microparticles that quantum mechanics deals with. Could we?
I have sometimes thought that if, indeed, angels do perform the function of maintaining some of the processes of the universe (through the power of God), all of that information, and more, would be the identity of that angel. And if that angel so much as told us its true name, we would have strokes and die. And that’s just an angel.

So, okay, I’m a simple guy, thinking about angels like that. (Yet, the Bible tells us we could not, in this life see the “Face of God” and live, so perhaps much less than seeing the Face of God would be sufficient. Maybe even the face of an angel would do it.) But it intrigues me, anyway.

So we consider whether the Bible was a “cut down” version of what happened. We wonder whether a “day” in the Genesis story was 24 hours as now reckoned. We can wonder whether time was then what it is now. We can wonder whether time is an absolute at all, or whether our notion of it is just a convention we have because we see the sun come up and go down and divide the event into convenient segments. Physicists wonder whether time gets changed around Black Holes, or even somehow arrested in its tracks. And now some physicists posit the interaction of “membranes” and dimensions to explain Big Bangs, and we then might ask “what’s time in between 'branes”?

The one thing, though, I think we can be sure of is this. It is not given to us to know the Mind of God. God told Job that, early on in the Bible. God tells us all we know, and He tells us in lots of ways.

And we don’t know how God performs miracles, or we would be able to perform them ourselves. Could Jesus so align the atoms of His body with those in a wall that He could walk through it? We’re all mostly space, you know. Or did He simply change His rules a bit; alter the formulas on a blackboard, so to speak. Or was the “walking through the wall” formula always on a blackboard in a room we have never visited?

I truly love all of this scientific stuff, as little as I really understand it. And I love the creation stories, and the mental picture of Adam walking through the garden naming the animals, and I even love the arguments people put forth about both. I love the picture of leviathan awakening for the first time in his cold, deep waters, and that of God igniting the Big Bang with a word spoken through all eternity and bubbling for countless eons between the ‘branes’ He also created for the purpose of igniting that spark. But one thing I can never get out of my mind is the staggering gap that exists between my mind and that of God. Nor can I get it out of my mind that He speaks to us when and how He wishes to speak to us, and how he might speak to Steven Hawking and how He might have spoken to some desert shepherds does not make either of the messages incorrect, or, in their own ways, less than necessary.

Guess I’m kind of grateful that He cares enough to speak to us at all.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Evolution theory is more about spreading a worldview than science.

Ed, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you have no idea what evolutionary theory says.

If you had any idea, you’d know there is nothing at all about “worldviews.”

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Sad that you should use another appeal to emotion.

The evolution I’m referring to is always that man was once a bit of protoplasm, then something aquatic, then, supposedly, some four legged creature, a ‘homind’ and then homo sapiens sapiens. Now that is unproven. Even Cardinal Schoenborn only goes so far as saying that common descent “might” be true.

The monk, Gregor Mendel, only observed what plants were already doing. Bacteria and viruses have a built-in ability to modify themselves and even exchange bits of genetic material between themselves. This is something they could already do. It has nothing to do with evolution. Further, these viruses and bacteria do not sprout arms and legs and turn into humanoids.

As far as breeding animals, this ability existed before the word ‘evolution’ was used in its modern sense. I have friends who are of mixed race, but there was no evolution involved. This was something the human body could already do.

“Modern” biology has made great strides in understanding what living things can already do. That’s it. Evolution theory is more about spreading a worldview than science.
Ed

Then given the above please explain why 19 times you have agreed that you believe in some form of evolution and directed us to Benedict’s statement in support? Now you have reverted to claiming that evolution is not even science but what? some philosophical meandering?

 

[itinerant1]

We agree that God cannot lie. We seem to disagree over the use of the word “limit”. If God cannot do something then I see that as a limit. You are free to disagree.

It’s good that said “You are free to disagee”, because disagee is who I am. It’s what I do. lol

You see it as a limit if there is something that God cannot do. That sounds reasonable on the surface. But when the problem is looked at more deeply, it is not so simple. For instance, God cannot do what is logical contradictory, such as create a square circle. According to the definitions of the terms “square” and “circle” it is self-evident that the notion of a square circle is a contradiction. A square circle cannot exits. We cannot even conceive or imagine a square. But then do we say that God is limited because he cannot create a square circle?

Not too long ago some teens asked me questions about the infinite power of God. The discussion proceeded rather smoothly until one teen asked tongue-in-cheek, “Can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?” I had to laugh.

God has free will but some things He wills necesarily. God wills His own Goodness necessarily. We do not realize the logical contradiction involved in asserting that God should be able to not will His own Goodness. The contradiction is not as obvious to us as is that of a square circle.

Now if any rational being wills evil, such as choosing to lie, then he is the worse for it. If God were able to will evil such as a lie, then He would be the worse for it. The idea itself is a contradiction, as it would degrade from His Goodness. But since God is infinitely Good, He is incapable of degrading His absolute Goodness by willing evil.

Okay, I’m done disagreeing. The Nagarjuna scenario is interesting. I would like to give a response to it from the point of view of Thomistic epistemology, but this is a Big Bang-Cosmic Evolution-Old-Earth vs. Fundamentalism-ID-Young-Earth-Made-To-Look-Like-Old-Earth-Creationism-Literalism knock-down, drag-out, fist-fight thread.

Cheerio,

itinerant1:tiphat:

 

[Deacon_Ed_B]

Yes, the big bang did happen. God spoke and BANG, there it was.
Deacon Ed B

 

[Uncle_Norbert]

I use this line on Big Bang theorists…

Ponder for a minute all the noise and racket associated with building the home you live in…

Now, ponder all the noise and racket associated with the creation of everything on earth in six days…

All that racket must have been on heck of a bang !

 

[The_Barbarian]

Actually, “Big Bang” is a misnomer. It was coined by a critic of the theory to disparage it. And ironically, it caught everyone’s imagination.

 

[inthecloud]

Actuallly the fact that the Big Bang Theory came form a Catholic Priest and looked a lot like the creation but in a much larger time scale spooked out many scientists. That came with the Big Bang as a way to discretit him.

 

[mschrank]

How on earth is the big bang (creation ex-nihilo) against the existance of God?

 

[inthecloud]

Pius XII was enthusiastic about the Big Bang and making Fr Lemaitre nervous, he approved it in 1950 when the data had not proved it yet. And Fr Lemaitre became Monsignor Lemaitre.
It makes nervous the Bible literalists because disproves their interpretation of six literal days.
And some atheist that saw Creation Ex nihilo proved. They coined the Big Bang term to mock Fr Lemaitre.