Catholics and evolution

[Vindex_Urvogel]

PhilVaz:

Of course macroevolution is inferred, since there will not be direct observation of a fish turning into an amphibian, or a dinosaur turning into a bird, since these transitions take millions of years.

Ah, but the fossil record is so marvellously cooperative…all the lovely paravian Maniraptora…

You are the one earlier that said in another thread that Archaeopteryx is a “fraud” (or least one of the specimans?)

The late Alan Charig and his associates at the British Museum and Rietschel (1985) rather demolished Hoyle & Wickramasinghe’s work vis-a-vis the validity of the *Archaeopteryx *fossils.

Vindex Urvogel

 

[Jillian]

Intrntsrch:

There are basically 2 theories of evolution, Microevolution and Macroevolution. Microevolution is genetic variation. In simple terms, it’s seen in the immense variety within kinds of animals. It is a fact. It is the variation of genetic material that is present in an organism. It is not evolution. Macroevolution (evolution) is the belief that man evolved over a very long period of time by accidental natural causes from his ancient ancestor, the amoeba. It requires that life forms acquire NEW genetic information that had not previously been present. But where did the amoeba come from?

There aren’t two theories of evolution. Just about every scientist in this day and age is on board with the modern synthesis. “Microevolution” as you are using it is a malapropism; it does not stand in some sort of contrast to “macroevolution”. There is only evolution - the prefixes “micro” and “macro” are sometimes used to clarify a technical point in a discussion, but they both occur by the same processes. There are several methods whereby organisms can gain new genetic information - you aren’t a clone of your parent, are you? It sounds to me like you are proposing some sort of mechanism which would limit the extent to which genetic variation can result in morphological novelties - this would actually produce some interesting research, I’d think. Can you offer a proposal of what this mechanism is, and how it would work?

And you don’t really think evolution teaches that eukaryotes spontaneously appeared ex nihilo, do you?

Cosmologists would have us believe that the universe came to exist out of nothing by purely natural causes. Now some might claim that the Big Bang happened by way of pre-existent matter, which means in essence, that the universe always existed.

What does cosmogony have to do with evolutionary theory?

If the universe always existed, then we ought to be able to trace history infinitely, which means we never would have gotten to the present moment.

Zeno’s paradox was pretty much resolved by Max Planck last century, or so I have been led to believe.

more cosmogony irrelevant to evolutionary theory snipped…

Nevertheless, we are here. According to evolutionists, it rained on the earth for millions of years and a single cell organism somehow came into existence out of nothing in a primordial soup of rainwater.

Millions of years of steady rainfall is even more incredible than forty days of steady rainfall. And I must’ve been absent from class on the day the instructors all decided to start teaching that prokaryotes appeared ex nihilo without any self replicating precursors. Regardless, this concept is outside the bounds of what is covered by evolutionary theory, as was your digression into cosmogony.
continued…

 

[Jillian]

Eventually, the single cell organism manufactured new genetic code for itself (by accident), advanced in complexity, and climbed out of the water. Over the gazillions of years, life forms had been accidentally manufacturing new genetic information for themselves and becoming more and more complex in body and mind until we find highly complex life forms, including human beings.

You seem really uncomfortable with the idea of genetic mutation. Would it make you feel better to know that you probably have a couple of hundred mutations in your own DNA?

Now the reality is that there is not a single shred of scientific finding that shows this actually happened.

No evidence that mutation leads to speciation events? Where to even begin? How about here…

talkorigins.org/pdf/faq-speciation.pdf

In fact, we know that it most probably didn’t happen because there is no evidence for it in the fossil record (among other difficulties).

I’m confused. Are you asking for fossil evidence of “new genetic information”? How exactly would one go about obtaining this?

The hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium (the idea that radical evolutionary events happened in very short bursts separated by eons of time where no evolution took place) was presented as a hypothesis to bypass the reality of the absence of fossil evidence. In other words, “we have no evidence this actually happened, but it must have because we know it did.” Is this science?

Gould has much to answer for, I’m afraid. If you think there’s a paucity of evidence in the fossil record, you’ve been deceived. Feel free to start here: talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Now, Before science discovered the DNA molecule, some Christians sought to reconcile the tension between creation and evolution. So, they claimed that God created everything and He used evolution to complete His task. Theistic Evolution, as with the scientific hypothesis of evolution cannot explain the mechanism of evolution. DNA is designed so that only variation can occur. The characteristic of DNA is that it does not make new genetic information for itself in order to drastically improve present performance. (Down’s Syndrome is an example of a genetic mutation. Is that beneficial?)

Please, please, please stop abusing genetics. What did genetics ever do to you?

A group of scientists zapping fruit flies with high doses of radiation does not constitute proof of evolution, it just makes mutated fruit flies.

What did poor Dobzhansky ever do to you?

And, bacteria that has immunized itself from certain vaccines is still bacteria.

You do realize that “bacteria” constitute an entire kingdom, don’t you? That this is analagous to saying that if, say a population of mosquitoes gave rise to a population of tigers that it’s nothing remarkable, because after all, they’re still just animals?

It is true that God can do anything. If He used evolution to create everything, there is no evidence for it

Mind telling us what you’d consider “evidence”?

If one believes in evolution simply because some scientists in ivory towers keep telling us it’s true, then do your own honest examination of the evidence. Don’t just take their word for it. Find out how Irreducible Complexity and Haldane’s Dilemma absolutely expose evolution for what it is…an unscientific belief that has never been quantified, publicly observable, or repeatable. Keep in mind that these so called scientists have careers to preserve and need enormous amounts of grant money to feed the beast. My dog digs for bones in my back yard, but sadly, I don’t get a cent.

Please, feel free to fill us in on the the utility of irreducible complexity. I’m sure I’d enjoy it.

You’re awfully dismissive of a discipline about which you don’t seem to know very much at all. I’m but the humblest of laypersons in my studies in this field, and I would’ve been embarrassed to have said some of the things you’ve said in here. And tarring a bunch of people you’ve never met with the brush of pecuniary motivations is far from charitable on your part.

If people with degrees in their respective fields, who publish in peer reviewed journals, write textbooks, and teach thousands of students the fundamentals of biology and geology every year are “so-called scientists”, what does that make you?

 

[twf]

Demerzel: You are looking at death from a modern biological perspective. When a creationist says there was no death prior to the Fall, we are referring to the death of nephesh chayyah. Plants, unicellular organisms, and even insects (and I imagine other more primitive organisms) are not alive in the sense of the Hebrew term nephesh chayyah. Nephesh chayyah translates as ‘living soul’ or ‘living creature’. God breathed on Adam to make him such. The Old Testament uses this term to refer to the higher forms of life…basically vertebrates, but never to more primitive animals, and certainly not to non-animals; thus, it is only the death of ‘living souls’ that we are concerned with in this case, not biological death in general.

Many of you (including those who support recent special creation) seem to assume that speciation is rejected by creationism. This is simply not true. It is, in fact, a very IMPORTANT component of the creation model. How do you think we can talk of a world flood and the Ark with any plausibility if there has been no speciation since that point? In fact, the creation model requires rapid adaptation. Many genera would be represented by a single species on the Ark, and even, in some cases, entire modern families may have descended from a single common “Noahite” ancestor. I recommend this section answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/speciation.asp, if you’re interested. There you will find articles on examples of rapid adaptation, and others explaining, from a creationist point of view, why we embrace speciation yet reject the notion of evolution beyond genus (or perhaps family) bounds.

 

[Matt16_18]

twf

Demerzel: You are looking at death from a modern biological perspective. When a creationist says there was no death prior to the Fall, we are referring to the death of nephesh chayyah. Plants, unicellular organisms, and even insects (and I imagine other more primitive organisms) are not alive in the sense of the Hebrew term nephesh chayyah. Nephesh chayyah translates as ‘living soul’ or ‘living creature’.

You explanation of death is not really compatible with Catholic doctrine. It denies that Adam and Eve had the preternatural gift of bodily immortality before the Fall. It also denies that plants and animals became subject to death and decay because of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Adam and Eve were created with immortal souls, and their immortal soul did not die because of their sin. The death that Adam and Eve suffered because of their sin was the death of their bodies.

Basically, you are making God the author of death, and that is bad theology indeed.

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

twf:

There you will find articles on examples of rapid adaptation, and others explaining, from a creationist point of view, why we embrace speciation yet reject the notion of evolution beyond genus (or perhaps family) bounds.

What mechanisms prevent morphological change to a degree such that the derivation of “families” is prohibited whereas sub-familial evolution occurs?

Vindex Urvogel

 

[twf]

Matt16_18: No, death is because of sin. Adam and Eve, and all nephesh chayyah would have been immortal if not for sin. I said that the Hebrew term *nephesh chayyah * (living soul) does not apply to plants and primitive animals, so their death may be not be a true ‘death’ in the theological sense. (All vertebrates are nephesh chayyah, though, so there would be no death of such creatures prior to the Fall).

Vindex Urvogel: I’m sorry, I don’t have much time at the moment, and may not be able to post at length again for a couple weeks (but hopefully sooner). I invite you to look around the links I provided. In a nutshell it has to do with our premise that mutations simply a) reshuffle genetic data b) degrade genetic data or c) replicate existing genetic data. This allows for a great range of adaptation, but is limited by the genetic information that is present in the genome…it can only be re-arranged in so many ways. A moneran could evolve to produce dozens (or hundreds?) of species of other similar monerans, but would never produce a nuclear membrane because the genetic potential for such is simply not there.

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

twf:

Vindex Urvogel: I’m sorry, I don’t have much time at the moment, and may not be able to post at length again for a couple weeks (but hopefully sooner). I invite you to look around the links I provided. In a nutshell it has to do with our premise that mutations simply a) reshuffle genetic data b) degrade genetic data or c) replicate existing genetic data. This allows for a great range of adaptation, but is limited by the genetic information that is present in the genome…it can only be re-arranged in so many ways. A moneran could evolve to produce dozens (or hundreds?) of species of other similar monerans, but would never produce a nuclear membrane because the genetic potential for such is simply not there.

The genetic potential does not exist to derive families from genera? This supposes, if I have understood you correctly, some inherently Platonic essence which defines families in all cases. What might that be?

Vindex Urvogel

 

[Les_Richardson]

Mjohn1453:

There is no conflict with believing in evolution and being Catholic. Provided that you believe that God was the one driving evolution. Unlike the fundmentalist baptists and similar religions the Catholic Church believes that the stories of creation in Genesis reveal truths about our relationship to God rather than historical facts, there are after all two conflicting reports of creation. It is how they wrote 3,000 years ago. Genesis reveals that God was the creator, that he did it out of love, he could have not created, that man is given a place of prominence in creation due to being made in the image and likeness of God, and that creation is good. Going back to our Jewish roots Catholics also believe that creation is an ongoing process. God did not just create the world and then let it go…the clockmaker theory. He has been an active part of creation since…well…creation.

All of this being said. Evolution is a thoery. I don’t believe it has been disproved or proved. It is compatible with Catholic teaching however.

I would say, just beware the Trojan horse, or in modern terms, the worm in the E-mail.

Catholic theology provides that we as human beings are unique and “in the image of God” or as I’ve heard recently, I think it was Scott Hahn, we image God.

There is then a fundamental issue with our own origins and to synthesize creation and evolution that issue must be dealt with somehow. That is to say, we as human beings are not just the product of random natural selection, through mutation.

You have to accept the direct intelligent intervention of God specifically in our case as human beings. Otherwise you have a conflict with a fundamental tenet of our Catholic faith.

And, of course, there are other moral issues that flow from scientific materialism, the philosophy arising from the Darwinian error and selection model that essentially equates us morally with animals.

 

[Les_Richardson]

Vindex Urvogel:

Extremes? Only that of evidentiary support and reason, they can be quite pesky. Would you be so kind to illustrate where in any major work on the structure of evolutionary theory (e.g., Mayr 1942, Williams 1966, Maynard Smith 1975) it states as a central assertion (or even any assertion) of evolutionary biology that a god does not exist, and that evolution can prove this? i checked my copies of all three of those texts and found no reference to any such statement, but perhaps you have better access to the literature than I do.

Vindex Urvogel

Vindex Urvogel,
I’m sure I speak for others when I say your knowledge of the subject of evolution is impressive.
But here you are either being facetious or disingenuous, or you have spent your life incommunicado. Evolutionary theory, has been and is contiuously used as a hammer against Christians in particular and mono-theists generally in the public forum.

At any time in the last fifty years you need only pick up a newspaper, magazine or listen to the radio or watch TV. Moreover, the child of evolution, scientific materialism, has reached its maturity in North American society with distinct, observable moral consequences.

If you wish to make a distinction between *pure theory *and the practical application or use of that theory it may be of academic interest, but the same criticisms that have been directed at the Church in history as the representatives of God here on earth, can be quite generously applied to the purveyors of Darwinism in the public education system and beyond.

Ronnie Hawkins once said (I am paraphrasing) when asked a question about God, “I have no problem with God, its his ground-crew I’m leary of.” I would say that sentiment applies very well to the Darwinists as well.

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

Les Richardson:

But here you are either being facetious or disingenuous, or you have spent your life incommunicado. Evolutionary theory, has been and is contiuously used as a hammer against Christians in particular and mono-theists generally in the public forum.

At any time in the last fifty years you need only pick up a newspaper, magazine or listen to the radio or watch TV. Moreover, the child of evolution, scientific materialism, has reached its maturity in North American society with distinct, observable moral consequences.

Lovely! Since they are so obvious, might you be good enough to provide me an example of where within evolutionary theory the non-existence of God is a nomological statement underlying this theory? It’s really very simple. It has been repeatedly asserted that atheism is central to evolutionary theory, apparently an assertion that it is an nomological statement underlying the evolutionary historical narrative. I merely asked for this statement to be supported by references to the literature wherein we might find such argumentation presented. If the best you can do is wave your hands and refer me to supposed moral decay and MTV (no doubt the two are correlated, given the wickedness of MTV), then I should think the claim as credible as if I were to say that New Age mysticism is essential to Quantum Physics because New Age mystics invoke a strange, nebulous thing called the “new physics” in defense of their odd views. In other words, while some may use evolutionary biology or any other scientific theory as a platform for other motives, it does not demonstrate anywhere but in the worried faithful’s minds that evolutionary biology in actuality has any stance on the existence of God or not. And indeed, the vast majority of evolutionary biologists really do not care one bit about your faith, until creationists start advancing it as science which can more accurately model biodiversity and the origin of morphological novelties. When one tries to turn faith into science, scientists take notice.

Vindex Urvogel

 

[twf]

Vindex Urvogel: Sorry that it’s taken me so long to post again. AiG maintains that there is no discernable mechanism (thus far) that adds new, previously non-existing genetic information to the genome. In every observed mutation, information has been either
reshuffled, existing data replicated (ex. extra limb), or degraded…never something new, simply new arrangements of what is already there. That’s it in a nut shell.

 

[pwilders]

How is it that there are so many forum exchanges on creation with virtually no reference to the principal teaching on Creation by Lateran IV?

Peter

 

[twf]

I’ll try to post more later this week…
To say that Adam and Eve did not have immortal bodies before the Fall seems to be an extreme distortion of Catholic teaching. Is it not quite obvious from Scripture and Tradition that our bodies are to be RESTORED? Christ had to die physically…so if physical death is not the penalty for sin that Paul speaks of, then why did Christ die? He wouldn’t have needed to…a spiritual death/sacrifice would have sufficed.
As well, this stood out at me a while a go. If physical death is not the penalty for sin, then the reasoning behind the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary is irrelevant. There is no way to defend this doctrine, and no reason for it to be true. The dogma tells us that she was assumed BODILY into heaven, so that she would not decay, since PHYSICAL decay is the penalty for sin (together with spiritual death of course). By saying that physical death was part of God’s original creation (of Man) is to undermine the Gospel itself which depends upon the fact that Christ had to die PHYSICALLY to satisfy the penalty of our sin. Romans 8:11 speaks of life being given to our mortal bodies…this is as a result of Christ’s work, but if physical death was never a problem to begin with, then why would Christ conquer physical death? (And if you suggest that it was spiritual death alone that he was victorious over, I remind you that He conquered death by PHYSICALLY dieing and raising from the dead PHYSICALLY).

Now is it possible that God intervened in the evolutionary process (if it had happened, I’m not sold) and breathed both physical and spiritual life into Adam and Eve.

Sorry for the ‘shouting’, but I felt I needed to emphasize those key words…

I’m posting now from 1 Cor. 15. The context makes it very clear that Paul is speaking of physical death…only a great distortion and twisting of the context and language could produce any other interpretation (IMHO).

12 Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised:
14 and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.
15 Yea, we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised.
16 For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised:
17 and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
18 Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
19 If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
20 But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep.
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ’s, at his coming.
24 Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power.
25 For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.

(verses 12:26). Notice that the context is the PHYSICAL resurrection of the dead. Paul is speaking about how we literally will be physically immortal. He is speaking of how Christ died physically, and rose again physically, to defeat the last enemy, which is death. How can this death not be physical when the entire context of the passage is the physical resurrection and death of Christ?

God bless,
Tyler

 

[pwilders]

It is amazing that in the numerous forum exchanges on Creation little or no reference is made to the Catholic Church’s strongest doctrinal teaching on the subject at the Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215. The dogmatic definition of this Council positively excludes any form of evolution theory whether progressive or theistic. It is infallible teaching and therefore made to guide the faithful from error which would endanger their salvation. Yet to read the various questions and answers one would think the Church had never spoken and, therefore, the matter is of no great importance. In fact there is an associated forum entitled “Evolution: much ado about nothing”!

 

[PilgrimJWT]

Glancing through this thread illustrates how really tangled the responses are. Without being an expert either on religion or science I will try to say what I think.

First, an all-powerful God created the universe the way he wanted to do it. He did not have to give us all the details. That’s why he gave us brains!

I doubt that the story of Adam and Eve was a literal event (God could have done it that way but it sure doesn’t cue with what we have been able to observe). The story is meant to teach us an unmistakeable lession. What IS important is that we are sinners (however we came to be sinners) and that God has said He will redeem us if we turn to Him.

 

[amarkich]

The Church has always taught Genesis as a literal, historical document. The following is a post from Hananiah (not with his permission, so I hope he will notify me if he does not wish that this be used):

In 1909 the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which at that time had the power to bind the conscience of Catholics, decreed that it could not be taught that the first three chapters of Genesis were not true in the literal historical sense. Moreover, the Commission emphasized especially that the literal historical sense could not be impugned regarding Adam’s transgression of the divine commandment “through the devil’s persuasion under the guise of a serpent.” Also, in 1950 Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical entitled Humani Generis which denounces the ideas that Adam and Eve were not real, individual people, that there has ever existed any true human who was not descended from them, and that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not history in a literal sense.

Quote:
When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For 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. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own… [T]he first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters… in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 37f) (emphasis mine)

The Modernist belief that macro-evolution (or the big bang theory) can be held by faithful Catholics is absolutely foreign to anything the Church has authoritatively spoken or taught. This belief not only contradicts Sacred Scripture but also Sacred Tradition as well as the teachings of the Fathers, the Saints, and Popes throughout history.

 

[pwilders]

When are Catholics going to realise that a lifeline has been thrown them by the invalidation of the stratigraphic principles underpinning the geological time-scale? They go on as if they just have to believe that the fossils in rocks prove evolution has taken place. Recent laboratory experiments provide empirical proof that this is false. Publications by the French Geological Society in 1993 and the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002 geology.ref.ac/berthault

show that the principle of superposition of strata is incorrect. Strata are shown not to form one on top of the other in succession over millions of years. They form (in days) laterally and vertically at the same time. The fossils buried in the rocks give no indication of age or evolution. The experimental research shows that fossils in lower strata could be younger than those in higher strata. No longer can evolutionists appeal to the fossil record and rocks to support multi-million year ages.

Catholics liberated from the constraints of geology can and must believe the Church’s infallible teaching (Lateran IV) that the prototype of every kind of living thing was created out of nothing by a direct act of God alone at the beginning of time (i.e. during a period of creation of not more than six days) without productive secondary causes.

This new knowledge of geology makes all the evolution including the cosmological theories fall into desuetude. Lateran IV reaches out through the entire cosmos. God created all visible and invisible things without limit in time or space. St. Thomas comments that after creation was done nothing new was created (ST.1. Q. 74 A. 1 r. 5).

Peter

 

[mjdonnelly]

So please explain the radiological half life of Carbon-14 and other such methods used to determine that man did not exist alongside dinosaurs.

 

[Orogeny]

Peter,

The experiment you cite does not, in any way, invalidate the law of superposition. If you would like to debate the scientific merits of your argument, why don’t you take it over to talk origins?

Tim