Catholics: (POLL) Do you accept evolution?

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Dan123 said:
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Gorgias:
For some definitions of “evolution”, yes, they’re mutually exclusive. (Those would be the ones that assert that there is no God, and that creation has no creator, and that there’s no meaning or goal-directedness to our lives.)
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Evolution studies the genetic changes in populations of creatures over time, it doesn’t say anything about the existence of God. You’re mixing a lot of different ideas and trying to label it all as evolution.
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I’m not saying that my viewpoint is what I described, but simply that there are people who define it in that way… 😉
 
UPDATE.

We are nearly at 100 VOTES, and so far a little more than 80% accept some form of evolution.

Of course, those who personally prefer creationism (literal [literalistic] Genesis account) may also acknowledge that a Catholic can accept evolution.

SO it seems so far, the vast majority of Catholics at least acknowledge that you can be a faithful Catholic and accept evolution — even of the body.

This is a relief to me. Thanks for the participants (so far).

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Presumably you also listen to those very smart geologists when they say things like “Previously found collagen fragments dated back 75 million or 80 million years ago.” so I’m not sure how any of these discoveries refute evolution. You’re assertion such things could only last 10,000 years is clearly incorrect, since as YOU pointed out they found preserved structures older than that.
 
You are assuming that the radiometric dating method is correct. When someone says something is millions of years old, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically correct. There are mountains of issues with the current method of dating, which scientists of all beliefs are now beginning to realize.

I look at both sides of the issue. I don’t refute evolutionists unless there is something I see as inaccurate. I do believe in adaptation, but I do not believe that adaptation goes so far that plants evolve into animals and animals evolve into people. Way too out there and is not backed by anything really besides unfounded assumptions.
 
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I tend to go back and forth with literal creation, evolution and a mixture of both.

However, your points on geologic dating are some of the same points that have made me question the currently accepted huge time scales of millions of years. We have no way to test those numbers for obvious reasons. Sure an isotope of a radioactive substance may partially decay after x thousands of years, but we haven’t been around long enough to test that idea, it’s all just extrapolated out.
 
I don’t think anyone in this thread is arguing whether or not God created man.
 
Scientists are extremely aware of the limits and conditions under which radiometric dating can be done and the varying degrees of confidence they provide. In another evolution thread someone made a claim about Carbon14 in dinosaur fossils and I linked an article from 1982 explaining why that was incorrect. 30+ years and the same claims are touted out with no new information.
 
catholic1seeks said:
I’m not sure what response 13 is.

But, my question is Do you ACCEPT evolution. If you neither Accept nor reject, you don’t have to participate in the thread.
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It is the 13th response.

Your response to me was the 97th response. The numbered responses are at the bottom of the screen.

Your poll question lacks the nuance necessary for a serious discussion, in my opinion.

It appears that your poll is simplistically designed to prove a point that you believe.

If that is the case, there really is no point to your poll other than a desire to make other people feel less than.

Next time, you should try making a poll that will actually shed light on an issue instead of shedding light on your opinion.
 
Yes, they put out that something is say, 40 million years old but don’t say how confident they are in that claim. It’s known that it isn’t entirely accurate, but people have this idea that what they say is absolute, concrete proof. It’s misinformation.
 
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It decays constantly, we measure that rate, we test to see what might alter that rate and deliberately try to alter the rate to see how confident we can be.

Imagine a giant hourglass with 100,000 cubic centimeters of sand in it and it’s falling through at a rate of 1 cubic centimeter per minute. You could work out that it would take 50,000 minutes or roughly 35 days for it to empty. This of course depends on your initial measurements, maybe it’s 38 days or 32. But now suppose someone says “oh yeah that thing will be empty by lunch time” and when you tell them it’s far too slow to empty that fast they steadfastly refuse to look at your data and insist that since you haven’t had lunch yet you can’t possibly know it’s going to take longer than that to empty.

Are they following the evidence or are they bringing predetermined conclusions into play?

Can we determine Pluto has an orbital period of 248 years when we’ve only known it was out there since 1909? Should we listen to people who claim Pluto is going to do a double somersault and add a few years to it’s journey?
 
Read the science papers, there are ALWAYS margins of error calculated and noted. If you only read news summaries of science you’ll miss them.
 
It is the 13th response.

Your response to me was the 97th response. The numbered responses are at the bottom of the screen.

Your poll question lacks the nuance necessary for a serious discussion, in my opinion.

It appears that your poll is simplistically designed to prove a point that you believe.

If that is the case, there really is no point to your poll other than a desire to make other people feel less than.

Next time, you should try making a poll that will actually shed light on an issue instead of shedding light on your opinion.
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My desktop version of CAF does not show the response number.

You can critique my motives all you want. Meanwhile, I think the poll was clear enough.

Oh, but I do want to shed light on my opinion. For, as I said in the OP, I was disturbed to find out what Catholics were saying in the other thread — some saying it was heretical to accept evolution. I don’t want an opinion that suggests Catholics are anti-science, for that shakes me. Thankfully, this thread/poll so far as helped me see that, no, most Catholics aren’t like that — at least on this forum, at least not so far. 😉
 
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Only response I could see adding is “I’m a creationist, but evolution is permissible.” That would allow analysis of what percent of creationists still recognize evolution as acceptable. (For that matter, “I’m accept evolution and a literal interpretation if Genesis is not okay” would also help analysis.

And like others, I’m a bit relieved that most Catholics recognize you can be faithful and hold evolution as true.
 
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misstherese said:
You are assuming that the radiometric dating method is correct. When someone says something is millions of years old, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically correct. There are mountains of issues with the current method of dating, which scientists of all beliefs are now beginning to realize.

I look at both sides of the issue. I don’t refute evolutionists unless there is something I see as inaccurate. I do believe in adaptation, but I do not believe that adaptation goes so far that plants evolve into animals and animals evolve into people. Way too out there and is not backed by anything really besides unfounded assumptions.
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They don’t use radiometric dating independently and they do not use decay of one isotope as a gauge.

Where did you ever see plants evolving into animals? I’ve never seen an evolutionary tree that says that.

Right now, evolution is the best explanation of the fossil evidence, the anatomical and physical evidence, the DNA evidence and so on. Even Newton’s Laws, however, although correct as far as they go, do not capture the entirety of the phenomenon of gravity. That doesn’t mean the physicists are getting rid of Newtonian physics. It does mean that anyone interested in science should always stay tuned. There is more ahead.
 
PetraG said:
Where did you ever see plants evolving into animals? I’ve never seen an evolutionary tree that says that
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It was an exaggeration.
PetraG said:
Right now, evolution is the best explanation of the fossil evidence
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The large gaps in the fossil record show otherwise.

I never said we should throw out evolution as a whole. I do think Darwin was correct in what he saw and observed as far as adaptation. He just took it too far and created a theory that is given way too much credence in schools.
 
PetraG said:
Right now, evolution is the best explanation of the fossil evidence
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misstherese said:
The large gaps in the fossil record show otherwise.

I never said we should throw out evolution as a whole. I do think Darwin was correct in what he saw and observed as far as adaptation. He just took it too far and created a theory that is given way too much credence in schools.
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OK, I’ll bite. What is the better explanation?

Maybe it exists. If so, though, I don’t think anyone has been advertising it much.
 
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This is NOT true.

Catholics CAN believe in macro-evolution.

I recommend this book to whomever is conflicted about the Catholic position on faith and science, especially on Genesis and evolution:

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I also recommend this website: http://www.thomisticevolution.org/
 
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