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drpmjhess
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mulligan59
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ANSWER: I think I left out a word in my last reply…I meant to say YOU understand it. I mean the point I’m making is so basic I can’t believe a guy interested in Theology really doesn’t get it. One more time: you simply cannot, NOT believe in God, unless you have an alternative scenario. Evolution provides that. But if more people would wake up to the facts, understand how unscientific it really is, then atheists will have to look elsewhere. Perhaps more would be open to the truth of Christ.
Finally, I cannot believe that anyone, anyone drawing breath, can honestly say (honest is the key word) that if evolution were universally acknowledged to be false tomorrow, it would have no effect on his faith. Yet I am attacked (I don’t think by you, but on these posts) for needing a crutch. SImilarly, if the earth were proven to have a special position at the center of the universe, what would that do to the faith of your average “Carl Sagan”? Atheism requires us (humans) to be degraded (evolution) and for the univers to be a random accident (modern cosmology).
But forget the merits of the Science, you don’t even accpet that the ramifications are important.
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Chuck_H
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I cannot understand how you can say that evolution provides an alternative scenario for belief in God? The science itself proves nothing either way. It can be likened to a rock, physically real, it can be used to construct or destruct but it has no inherent morality or immorality. Before evolution, catastrophes were the stuff of atheism which will grasp anything to make its feeble claim but they also were not proof of anything other than nature can be violent at times and a storm shelter is a good idea.
I have spent over twenty years researching the genetics of chromosomal evolution and how it pertains to oncology. During those twenty years I have firmly believed the Nicene Creed and worshiped Christ in the holy Sacrifice of the mass. Nothing I have ever seen in evolution has led me to any conclusion spiritually. The Franciscans have had the spiritual impact, not the science. Evolution can be used by atheists to suggest a weak point that cannot stand when faced by serious scientific questioning. It can also be used by theistic scientists like Louie Pasteur, Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to do serious study and advancement of human disease cures. A thing; no moral value, no immoral value in itself but in the use of it.
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mulligan59
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I’m dismayed. The existence of microbes, DNA, an understanding of genetics, using these sciences to fight disease, is NOT equal to evolution. Evolution is not used to fight disease.
But that aside, to your first question, the evolution (the straight up, basic, non-theistic variety) tells us that life was an accident of chemistry, the first simple cell emerged from the primeval muck, and after unimaginable billions of years, through totally natural and random mechanisms, gave us Beethoven. That is an alternative to God. That is all I’m saying. I’m not saying I believe, or that you believe or that one cannot believe in God and evolution at the same time. Evolution merely makes it possible (because it proposes an alternative) to deny God. This cannot be denied in good faith by the meanest intellect. I think I quit. Congratulations, I’m worn down.
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drpmjhess
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Mulligan, I’m sorry you’re worn down, but what you describe in your second paragraph is not how the scientists with whom I work understand evolution. You’re setting up and knocking down a straw person! Evolution does not attack God – it explains a process.
And evolution is used to fight disease – ask a biologist working in a pharmaceutical laboratory. Ask how she anticipates the likely evolutionary trajectory of bacteria that are evolving resistance to a battery of different drugs.
Petrus
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SpiritMeadow
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Why is it that everyone who determines to refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth of evolution always claims that evolution can be used by atheists to be atheists? What difference could that possibly make? It suggests that the real truth which of course would make more sense to most of us, is that you indeed know that evolution is true but lie and claim you do not in that worn out paternalistic mode that its necessary so the masses don’t get deceived and lose faith.
Bottom line, nobody but the mental incapacitated don’t believe in evolution. Most of you just pretend not to because you know what’s best for your poor less intelligent brethren.
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jcrichton
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mulligan59
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Are you that naive or merely stuborn?
Have you read Dawkins; Rivers Out of Eden for example? He is a militant athiest, evolutionist, who even in his book’s title suggests that evolution explains creation. Even the teaching of “intelligent design” has been challenged by the ACLU on religious grounds. Again - it is impossible to be an athiest (and cognizant at the same time) without evolution (or some alternative to Creation not yet proposed). Why do you insist on denying such a self evident premise? I’m not saying you can;t believe in evolution and God, but you can;t deny God without evolution.
I do not deny that there is a process of natural selection that occurs within species and within discrete populations. We all don’t have the same traits. The environment can influence which traits (be it brown moths or resistant bacteria) become prevalent. This is sometimes referred to as micro-evolution. It is how we breed Beagles and Norwegian Wolf Hounds from the same stock of basically wolves. But all of them: wolf hound, wolf, beagle are still “dogs” and can still breed with each other and if all selective breeding ceased in a few generations they’d all be wolves again. This phenomenon and a chimp’s being the ancestor of Beethoven are completely different propositions.
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mulligan59
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SpiritMeadow.
Touche’. You’re half right in that you confessed an insight that seems lost on the Theologian (do we both fight with him?). You h pose the question “what difference could that possibly make?” and then you answer it correctly “so that the masses don’t get deceived and lose faith”. Interesting choice of words as well from a defender of evolution, you said “deceived”. I’d call it a Freudian slip but I don’t believe in Freud either. The half in which you’re wrong is that you don’t seem to think it is a bad thing that the masses should lose their faith. You’re really hung up on “paternalism” too. You don’t like men do you.
I guess you also think I’m either dishonest (in denying evolution) or mentally incapacitated. I’d say that I’m neither, but if I had to chose one, I’d rather be incapacitated than dishonest.
You really should reconsider your view of evolution, God and or men. I think you’d be much happier.
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buffalo
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What joins faith and science together? The desire for truth. We can only desire what we know.
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drpmjhess
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(1) You set up a straw man again: Dawkins the atheist is speaking not for evolutionary biology – which has nothing to do with explaining away God – but rather for his own atheist philosophy. Don’t keep on confusing the two! Evolution does not lead to atheism, as the Barbarian, Chuck, SpiritMeadow and many others have been trying to make clear to you. You might learn something about biology if you listen carefully to what they have to say.
(2) Intelligent Design does not belong in the science classroom, because it has nothing to do with scientific method, and has no explanatory value. It may be appropriate in a religion class.
(3) You set up more straw people (you’ll have enough for a village soon!) by suggesting that dog breeding disproves evolution, and that evolutionists claim a chimp as Beethoven’s ancestor, which no evolutionary biologist has ever claimed. You need to learn what is meant by “descent with modification from a common ancestor.”
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drpmjhess
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mmortal03
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If you had been reading my posts, you would have understood that the theory of evolution does not deal with this part.
Yep, that’s what evolution says happens. It isn’t all due to randomness, though. That is a misnomer that people who are against evolution often bring up, generally when they don’t really understand how it works.
Again, evolution is not an alternative to God. People can believe that it is what God used to create the species on Earth along with humans.
This is wrong. As was said earlier in this thread, there have been atheistic arguments long before the theory of evolution. And the default position is not “belief in God”. I doubt you have ever investigated the history or the arguments of atheists.
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mulligan59
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- This is just ridiculous. Dawkins wants to make reliogion illegal so convinced is he that it makes us stupid, he thinks it should be a crime to teach it to kids. If you don’ think that his philosophy is common and another manifiestation of the same spirit that gave us the French Revolution, 1917 and legalized abortion for that matter, then you are either hopelessly brainwashed or working for the enemy. A professor of Theology should be able to connect these dots.
- Intelligent Design is a cop-out because it concedes that evolution has some merit, however to say that it has no “explanatory value” is also ridiculous because it seeks to explain precisely what evolution alone cannot. How did it start, where are the transitions, what about the second law of thermodynamics?
- The dog example is clearly not meant to “disprove evolution” but rather to explain to you that what you keep referring to as practical uses of “evolution” science is not the same mechanism that allegedly took us from microbe to man, or at least it is not a “proof”.
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Chuck_H
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Sadly, it is Dawkins who is the fool. He understands nothing about evolution, or at least he understands only enough to come to false conclusions. If one does a search through the publication record; the refereed publication record, you can find almost nothing published by Dawkins. He shows a complete lack of understanding of the principle of uncertainty and what power that principle gives God in nudging evolution in the paths He wishes it go. The physicists have complained that they have made it all the way back to the beginning only to find theologians sitting at the starting point. Neither the atheist nor the ID advocate takes into account that evolution allows God to have a means of creation that leaves our free will completely intact.
Ultimately evolution joins a long list of things that we have to have faith to understand. One cannot prove that Jesus is Lord. We believe it. One cannot prove that the Church has the truth. We believe it. We can find the archaeological ruins of Jericho but will never be able to prove they fell to trumpet blasts. Again, we believe it. In all of these cases God has allowed that we can reject everything and can walk our own way. We are not puppets. We are called, but not driven to believe. When it is seriously thought about, evolution makes perfect sense in the grand plan of free will. God has made it so we can go two ways. We can look at the world and come to the conclusion that this is all there is, no more; or we can look from the world into our hearts and know there is more. As CS Lewis says, once we give up ourselves we finally get ourselves back, for it is only in God that we can be totally ourselves. Each step of the cosmos from the first light to me standing here today has God at the heart of it. He created a perfect process, a perfect way to get from the starting point to me. It allows change, it allows bios to respond to change and to increase complexity in its armament against challenge. When I study evolution I see the process and give glory to God. When Dawkins looks across his word processor He only sees nothingness. Like Pontius Pilate he asks what is truth in a completely self centered and blind way.
Richard Rohr OFM says that Faith is like walking out over a chasm on a plank and, once you reach what you perceive as the end, God takes the plank away. As man progresses scientifically the old myths (planks) are being pulled out from under us.If a man so choses, he can use science to kill his tiny flawed personal god but science itself will never kill God since that is where it gets its validity from.
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Chuck_H
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You know, that is not something I have ever really investigated. That would be interesting to learn about. I guess I always just assumed that people were idiots on that score and let it slide. It sounds like you have done some study. Either here or in another thread it would interesting to go into.
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mulligan59
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Chuck,
As to your proposition regarding needing “faith” to understand evolution: You ain’t kidding! Therefore I prefer Genesis, much more sensible.
As for “the old myths being pulled out”… hopeless. I think 2nd Thessolonians has an answer for you. Something about the prideful being sent an “operation of error”. Still no one has countered a single challenge to evolution on the facts on the “science”. It truly is a religion.
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SeekingCatholic
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I challenge you to a debate on the “Evidence for Evolution” thread in “Apologetics” then.
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Chuck_H
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I give up. You don’t want to understand, you want to preach. You know full well the faith I speak of is not in evolution but where God is in the process. All in all, it is to be expected. Jesus explains the rain falls on both the just and the unjust. If that is so, then it follows that the process would produce brains that deny the process as well as brains that understand it.
Go in peace, I will trouble you no more.
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davidgaither
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This was such a wonderful thread. So much has been said and this question goes on as it has for much of recorded history, but I wonder if we are looking too deep might be restated as. “Do we now have all the information we need to answer the question.” When I think about knowledge, what I see is a learning experience from the time of the first writings we have found so far to today. As we gain more information we revise what or even how we think about something. If we were given free will by God along with a mind that is always curious in the beginning of time, even with the Holy Spirit to guide us can we not still come up with the wrong answer? Maybe we should not even call it a wrong answer but maybe call it a misunderstanding of fact as we have observed it at this point in time. I think that most educated people would say that we still have more questions than we have answers in any area I can think of. If this was not the case why would we still be doing research? Maybe as God said to Job. “Where were you when I created the earth.” Most of the time we try to make God think like us or make him do something like we would have done it.
When I observe the universe or learn or how the human body works I am in awe of how it seems to functioned, and so well too.
I think that at this time and with the knowledge that we have now, our mind is like one grain of sand mixed with all of the sand, on all the beaches of the world in comparison to Gods intellect.
I just keep learning and keep being in awe.
When I observe the universe or learn or how the human body works I am in awe of how it seems to functioned, and so well too.
I think that at this time and with the knowledge that we have now, our mind is like one grain of sand mixed with all of the sand, on all the beaches of the world in comparison to Gods intellect.
I just keep learning and keep being in awe.
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