Christoph Schonborn on evolution

[Matt16_18]

PhilVaz:

Well I can only answer that there were definitely blood sucking insects who died, and who spread death and disease BEFORE the rise of homo sapiens. From a scientific standpoint, that is fact.

That is only a scientific fact about the fallen world. It is not a fact about the world before the Fall.

I have a hunch that many Catholic theologians who dealt with this simply said there was no human death before the Fall of the first truly human beings (before Adam/Eve).

If you look at theologians who wrote before Darwin, you will find that they believed that Paradise was really a Paradise, and not just this miserable fallen world with two immortal human beings living in it. I don’t believe that you will be able to find any Fathers of the Church that support the idea that death had dominion over creation before the Fall.

What I’m trying to do is work with a historical Adam/Eve and these theological objections within our planet earth and universe, not outside it.

I know what you are trying to do, and that is why I think your approach is a dead end. You will have to accept that death has dominion over creation not because of Adam’s sin, but because God is the author of death. You will have to repudiate the Church’s doctrines concerning original sin with your approach.**Catechism of the Catholic Church

400** …Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”.

The lions as we know them on this earth have always killed lambs.

The lions in the fallen world have always killed lambs. That is why the fallen world cannot be the Paradise that our first parents dwelt in. You are denying that God created Adam and Eve in a real Paradise. Your conception of the terrestrial Paradise would have to include things such as cancer, the Ebola virus and tape worms.

If you postulate there were non-carnivore (non-meat eating) lions who did not eat lambs in your paradise outside this universe, then I suppose we can grant there were these kinds of lions who didn’t tear lambs to shreds in this pre-Fall paradise outside this universe.

Lions ( along with all the rest of creation) were transformed by Adam’s sin. Nature became “red in tooth and claw” because of the Fall.

Now you can answer my questions: dinosaurs BEFORE humans or humans BEFORE dinosaurs? T-Rex IMMORTAL? I am talking on this planet earth, not outside it of course.

Was T-Rex ever immortal in the fallen world? Of course not. Nothing is immortal in the fallen world because death has dominion over all of creation in the fallen world. Were there immortal human beings before there was ever a mortal T-Rex? To be a faithful Catholic, one must accept that there was at least one pair of immortal humans in existence before death took dominion over any part of creation.

 

[john_doran]

PhilVaz:

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/TRex2.jpg

wow. that’s an awesome picture.

 

[JCaudle]

I don’t know if this helps or not, but it seems that you all have left out the fall of the angels from your discussion. It seems to help with making evolution make more sense. Why couldn’t Satan and all of his angels have been causing trouble by introducing death and competition into the animal world before the fall of man?

I might be completely off base, but that seems to make sense to me. I read the CCC about Original Sin and the Fall, and the sin of the angels precedes the Fall of man. Hope that helps.

 

[PhilVaz]

JCaudle << Why couldn’t Satan and all of his angels have been causing trouble by introducing death and competition into the animal world before the fall of man? >>

I suppose that’s a possibility, that death and disease, etc was introduced by the sin of Satan. But of course Scripture does seem to say death was introduced by the sin of Adam, not Satan, also that God is not the author of death is taught in the deuteros:

ROMANS 5:12-21 (NIV) – Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned [Latin Vulgate reads -in quo omnes peccaverunt-] (verse 12) [translated: “in whom all have sinned”] …Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many [all] were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Christ] the many [all] will be made righteous. (verses 18-19)

1 CORINTHIANS 15:21-22 (NIV) – For since death came through a man [Adam], the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man [Christ]. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

WISDOM 1:12-13; 2:23-24; SIRACH 25:24 (RSV-CE) – Do not invite death by the error of your life, nor bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living…for God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it…From a woman [Eve] sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.

From my article Original Sin Explained and Defended

So I am well aware of the biblical texts and Catholic teaching on Original Sin.

I’ll type in maybe later some solutions to the theological problems, the Christian geologists who wrote well before Darwin, and who discovered the earth was much older than Genesis implies it is (e.g. 6000 to 10,000 years old) did not have a problem with animal death before the Fall – see Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, the chapters by Conrad Hyers “Comparing Biblical and Scientific Maps of Origins” and Edward Davis “The Word and the Works: Concordism and American Evangelicals”, also chapters by James Hurd “Hominids in the Garden?” and David Wilcox “Finding Adam: The Genetics of Human Origins” are excellent.

Matt1618 is under the impression that would imply God is the author of death, but you bring up a good point that, according to Catholic theology, it was Satan and his angels that “sinned” and Fell first, and maybe they introduced death first, and then Adam/Eve (the first truly human beings with souls) introduced a human or “spiritual” death. I don’t know the complete answer to this.

Phil P

 

[Matt16_18]

PhilVaz:

I suppose that’s a possibility, that death and disease, etc was introduced by the sin of Satan.

I don’t see how that is even a possibility that can be entertained since scripture clearly teaches that this is not the case.

… Satan and his angels that “sinned” and Fell first, and maybe they introduced death first, and then Adam/Eve (the first truly human beings with souls) introduced a human or “spiritual” death. I don’t know the complete answer to this.

Satan is a spirit, and angels don’t need the physical world to exist. Scripture clearly teaches that it was Adam’s sin that brought physical death into the physical creation, not Satan’s sin.

The Catechism teaches that Satan fell first, and that Satan was allowed by God to enter into the physical world of the terrestrial Paradise as a fallen angel to test the faith of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve failed their test of faith, and death, disease, and decay came to reign over the physical creation because of the sin of Adam (i.e. “death came through a man” and “through the devil’s envy death entered the world”).

The physical death the Adam brought into the physical creation is the first death. The second death is the eternal death in the lake of fire.

I’ll type in maybe later some solutions to the theological problems, the Christian geologists who wrote well before Darwin, and who discovered the earth was much older than Genesis implies it is (e.g. 6000 to 10,000 years old) did not have a problem with animal death before the Fall …

It is no use quoting these Christian geologists. They still have the same problem as you – i.e. the inability to reconcile Catholic doctrine that God is not the author of death with the evolutionist’s idea that God used a process involving death, disease and decay to create our first parents.

Phil, just what is your concept of the terrestrial Paradise? It seems to me that you deny that it ever really existed.

 

[PhilVaz]

Matt1618 << Phil, just what is your concept of the terrestrial Paradise? It seems to me that you deny that it ever really existed. >>

I already said I can accept your idea of a “heavenly” paradise outside this universe. Therefore, we can agree your theological objection is answered if you postulate this paradise was outside this Fallen universe, and somehow Adam/Eve were then “throw in” this Fallen universe after the first sin.

I do not know anyone though who tries to solve the theological objection this way, and I’ve read quite a lot of folks who deal with these objections. Most if not all of them say the sin of Adam/Eve brought either physical human death, or just spiritual death. And I think that’s acceptable since Romans 5:12 states that. There is nothing said about “animal death” in this verse. Animals do not and cannot sin, and there is no indication in the Bible that anything happened to the animals after the Fall. Bugs were still bugs and could still be stepped on and die.

For example, this article from the Hugh Ross site, dealing with all the biblical evidence

Creature Mortality: from Creation or the Fall?

Also No Death Before the Fall: A Young Earth Heresy

Also Death Before the Fall: The Theology by Glenn Morton

Also Animal Death Before the Fall

Matt1618 << The Catechism teaches that Satan fell first, and that Satan was allowed by God to enter into the physical world of the terrestrial Paradise as a fallen angel to test the faith of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve failed their test of faith, and death, disease, and decay came to reign over the physical creation because of the sin of Adam (i.e. “death came through a man” and “through the devil’s envy death entered the world”). >>

So you are saying this “physical world of the terrestrial Paradise” was not earth? You are saying the pre-Fallen world existed outside this universe? OK, I am fine with that as far as answering the theological objection.

However, I am wondering how Adam/Eve GOT HERE on this Fallen earth, and as you stated since they were indeed our first historical parents in time, did they live BEFORE or AFTER the dinosaurs? To sustain your answer to the theological objection, Adam/Eve must have fallen in time BEFORE the dinosaurs, and BEFORE any animals died on earth.

Again, this has NOTHING to do with the thread title, which is on Cardinal Schonborn and “intelligent design.”

I would however encourage you to write a theological article for my site answering in detail this theological objection. If you can gather together some of your posts on this (or I can do this), and suggest how and why the other answers are not acceptable (see links above), and then give your theological hypothesis that deals with the objection, quoting Catholic sources, etc.

I do need an article for my site dealing with this objection.

Phil P

 

[Steve_Andersen]

…. defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma ….

What is “neo-Darwinian dogma” supposed to be?

Since “Dogma” is something related to authoritative truth usually related to faith and morals, science by definition can’t be dogmatic
You collect your data and try to establish a mechanism that fits it
If new data comes along then you change the mechanism……nothing dogmatic about it at all

…. but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not.

The good Cardinal has apparently missed the point that evolution is a deterministic process. It is not “random” as in a lottery drawing
CHRISTOPH SCHÖNBORN:

Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

Claiming there is “overwhelming evidence” when there is none is ideology

We can choose to believe in a Creator……but it cannot be proven

 

[PhilVaz]

Steve << Claiming there is “overwhelming evidence” when there is none is ideology >>

Yeah I have to agree. The good Cardinal seems to be mixing science with philosophy, and vice versa. To say there is overwhelming evidence for design “in biology” when he himself is not a scientist or biologist, seems out of place.

The Church has already spoken to this in its International Theological Commission statement last year, and suggests God, as the Cause of causes, can work through natural, secondary causes without directly intervening in nature. The document does acknowledge there is some “debate” on design but comes down on the side of “theistic evolution.”

“A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.” (“Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God”, document published July 2004, paragraph 69)

Phil P

 

[Steve_Andersen]

Thanks Phil

I still don’t understand what “neo-Darwinism” is supposed to mean or how it is different from regular, plain-old vanilla biology

 

[Matt16_18]

PhilVaz:

So you are saying this “physical world of the terrestrial Paradise” was not earth? You are saying the pre-Fallen world existed outside this universe?

I am saying exactly what the Bible says, that the terrestrial Paradise where Adam and Eve dwelt before the Fall was a real paradise, not our fallen world where death, disease and decay have dominion over the physical world.

I do not know anyone though who tries to solve the theological objection this way…

Read the Bible! The Bible says Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, it does not say Paradise was destroyed by Adam and Eve’s sin. Many Catholic mystics affirm exactly what it says in Genesis, i.e. that Paradise is a real physical place that still exists. I have given you quotes before from St. Hildegaard, St. Lydwine, St. Colette, the Blessed Catherine Emmerich, ….

Where do you think that Enoch and Elijah went when they ascended from the earth? Both Enoch and Elijah were born conceived in original sin, and it is impossible that they ascended to the Heaven where God dwells while they were still in bondage from the corruption of original sin. Enoch and Elijah were taken from earth before God the Son descended to earth to become incarnate, before Jesus became our expiation for sin. Jesus explicitly says: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)

do not know anyone though who tries to solve the theological objection this way, and I’ve read quite a lot of folks who deal with these objections. Most if not all of them say the sin of Adam/Eve brought either physical human death, or just spiritual death.

Spiritual death alone is out of the question for a Catholic.**Catechism of the Catholic Church

1018** As a consequence of original sin, man must suffer “bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned” (GS § 18).

And I think that’s acceptable since Romans 5:12 states that. There is nothing said about “animal death” in this verse. Animals do not and cannot sin, and there is no indication in the Bible that anything happened to the animals after the Fall. Bugs were still bugs and could still be stepped on and die.

Why do you say that? The Catechism clearly says: 400 …Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”[284]. Footnote [284] is quoting Romans 8:21: For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Romans 8: 19-21 The physical world is now in slavery to corruption, but physical world was not ALWAYS in slavery to corruption. When the children of God receive their glorified bodies after the Final Judgement, the physical creation will be RESTORED to what it once was, a physical creation free from the bondage of disease, death, and decay.**Catechism of the Catholic Church

THE HOPE OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH

1042** At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul. The universe itself will be renewed …

1047 The visible universe, then, is itself destined to be transformed, “so that the world itself, restored to its original state, facing no further obstacles, should be at the service of the just,” sharing their glorification in the risen Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church teaches that the visible universe will be RESTORED to its ORIGINAL state. This is why I say that your version of evolutionary apologetics is leading you down a blind alley. It can only result in a denial of what the Catholic Church teaches about original sin and its consequences.

 

[Matt16_18]

PhilVaz:

However, I am wondering how Adam/Eve GOT HERE on this Fallen earth, and as you stated since they were indeed our first historical parents in time, did they live BEFORE or AFTER the dinosaurs?

Our first parents were living with immortal bodies in a Paradise where all plants and animals were also immortal. There was no death in Paradise before the Fall! Time, as we know it in the fallen world, would be different than time as Adam and Eve knew it in Paradise. Time, in the fallen world, is related to entropy, the physical law that reflects the decay into corruption of our dying universe. For all we know, Adam and Eve spent hundred of billions of years in Paradise if we measure time by the standards of the fallen world.

How did Adam and Eve translate between Paradise and our corrupted universe? This is a mystery to which the Bible does speak. The Bible just says it happened.

Did Adam and Eve live before or after the dinosaurs? Suppose there were dinosaurs in Paradise (why not?). If there were, they would have been in Paradise before Adam and Eve, since God made all the animals before he created Adam and Eve.

 

[Philip_P]

I think its a mistak to attempt to correlate spiritual events to the physical universe. For instance, iIs Moses in hell since Christ’s salvific action took place at a much later historical date? Hard to believe (though in the Middle Ages many did worry about this, see for instance Dante).

If Moses was saved by Christ’s sacrifice, then surely the world can can have been corrupted by Adam and Eve’s fall, even if the Fall occured ages after the beginning of the world.

 

[Lazerlike42]

Philip P:

I think its a mistak to attempt to correlate spiritual events to the physical universe. For instance, iIs Moses in hell since Christ’s salvific action took place at a much later historical date? Hard to believe (though in the Middle Ages many did worry about this, see for instance Dante).

If Moses was saved by Christ’s sacrifice, then surely the world can can have been corrupted by Adam and Eve’s fall, even if the Fall occured ages after the beginning of the world.

Jewish tradition holds the assumption of Moses. This is theologically awkward given that he was neither free of Original sin nor any other kind. However, we know that Enoch and Elijah were assumed, and they were not free of these things either. This is a side note to the thread but worth noting.

 

[Steve_Andersen]

Genesis is a great allegorical work describing the creation of the world, the existence of evil, the differences between the sexes, the existence of other cultures, etc. etc.

But to claim that it has any scientific validity does it a great disservice.

That is not what it was written for.

To hold that it does sets us up for the classic “God of the gaps” dilemma

How does the old joke go?

“the word is 6,000 years old but **SOMEBODY **went through a lot of trouble to set the geological strata, burry fossils, red shift light, and fix the rate of radioactive decay to make it look like the world is 4.5 billion years old so we better believe it if we know what’s good for us.”

 

[Matt16_18]

Philip P:

I think its a mistak to attempt to correlate spiritual events to the physical universe.

It is a mistake NOT to understand that the physical universe is affected by the spiritual.

If Moses was saved by Christ’s sacrifice, then surely the world can can have been corrupted by Adam and Eve’s fall, even if the Fall occured ages after the beginning of the world.

Moses was saved by Christ’s sacrifice, but Moses didn’t go to Heaven when he died, because the gates of heaven had not yet been opened by the atoning sacrifice for sin.

The point I am making is that both scriptures and the Catholic Church teaches that Adam’s sin brought about the fall of creation. The Fall could not have occurred after death took dominion over the physical universe. The corruption of the physical universe is a consequence of Adam’s sin, and that is what PhilVaz’s evolutionary apologetics is denying.

 

[Matt16_18]

Lazerlike42:

Jewish tradition holds the assumption of Moses. This is theologically awkward given that he was neither free of Original sin nor any other kind. However, we know that Enoch and Elijah were assumed, and they were not free of these things either. This is a side note to the thread but worth noting.

Enoch and Elijah were not assumed into heaven where God dwells. Jesus explicitly says: “NO ONE has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.” (John 3:13)

 

[PhilVaz]

Wanted to bring this thread back to the first page, and point out that prominent scientists (Kenneth Miller, Lawrence Krauss, and Francisco Ayala) are asking the Pope for some clarification on this.

A recent article in New Scientist magazine on this and William Dembski and others (including me) comment.

Phil P

 

[Diddi]

PhilVaz:

Matt1618 << Phil, I am still waiting for your reply as to how the Catholic Church can reconcile Catholic doctrine with an evolutionary theory that requires death to have dominion over creation before the Fall of Adam. >>

So you are saying millions of dinosaurs and other of God’s creatures did not DIE before the rise of mankind. I think its pretty safe to say this is a scientific fact. There was plenty of death before the rise of humanity.

Phil P

When my high school students bring up this type of argument, my reply to them is, “What part of ‘all-powerful’ as in ‘all-powerful creator God’ do you not understand?” (Remember, any argument that infers a limit to the power of God is an equivocation, and thus invalid.)

God is not a wimp. God is outside of time. God created time. Therefore, there does not have to be a conflict between the two statements: 1) there was no death on earth before the fall of man and 2) death occurred on earth before the fall of man. An all powerful God could make them both true. No problem.

Let me give you just one example of how the above two numbered statements could both be true. I am not saying that this example is true. I am merely using it to illustrate.

There are only a handful of people alive today that are in a position to claim to know what modern physics means by the statement that ‘time is another dimension of space,’ but let us imagine time is not just an abstract mathematical dimension but is an actual physical dimension of space just like the three dimensions (height, width, depth) we are fully aware of.

Now imagine “the letter people,” living on a sheet of paper, who can only see in (be fully aware of) two dimensions, that is, the two dimensions that make up the plane they live on. Now imagine the paper they live on slowly moving at right angles to the paper through a third dimension they not (fully) aware of (but we are). Their slow movement through this third dimension would be, for them, time. The direction they came from would be their past and the direction the paper is moving will be their future. They can only influence the present which is the plane they live on.

This imaginary scenario allows us to visualize the vantage point of God in that we can see the letterman past, present and future. But note also, our God-like vantage point allows us to see that there can be “two” pasts. We can reach out and move or otherwise modify something that the sheet of paper has already passed by and thus change their physical past, the past that would then physically exists, to be different from their mythical/remembered past which is the past their ancestors actually experienced.

A similar scenario was proposed, by J. R. R. Tolkien in the Silmarillion where, if you remember, Middle-earth was originally flat. Middle-earth was disc-shaped with oceans on the perimeter and connected with Valinor, their “paradise,” in the west. This is how Middle-earth remained until the Fall of Numenor, where the Numenoreans, out of pride, attempted to sail west to reach Valinor, thus violating their one prohibition. At this point, Middle-earth became round (spherical) for man so that they could sail west all they wanted and never reach Valinor. The flat path however remained (simultaneously) for the elves so that they could sail west and thus return to Valinor (see “The Lord of the Rings”), never to return to Middle-earth.

Now if we just tweak the letter-people scenario a bit, an all-powerful God could simultaneously change the physical evidence on their sheet of paper so that it matched the new physical past created due to their fall. The fallen letter-man would thus be cut off from God scientifically and would be dependent on revelation for his knowledge of God and the events that led to the fall.

In our own universe, our paradise (the Garden of Eden) might have been exchanged for an earth where life evolved, where women must give childbirth in pain and men must scratch out a living amidst thorns. We are thus cut off from God scientifically (which shows our evolved past) and thus dependent on revelation for our knowledge of God and for the events that preceded the fall.

Now I must repeat. The above scenario is just an illustration, not a belief. What I believe in is God created everything and this fact cannot conflict with anything that science can discover that is true.

 

[Diddi]

PhilVaz:

Matt1618 << Phil, I am still waiting for your reply as to how the Catholic Church can reconcile Catholic doctrine with an evolutionary theory that requires death to have dominion over creation before the Fall of Adam. >>

So you are saying millions of dinosaurs and other of God’s creatures did not DIE before the rise of mankind. I think its pretty safe to say this is a scientific fact. There was plenty of death before the rise of humanity.

Phil P

When my high school students bring up this type of argument, my reply to them is, “What part of ‘all-powerful’ as in ‘all-powerful creator God’ do you not understand?” (Remember, any argument that infers a limit to the power of God is an equivocation, and thus invalid.)

God is not a wimp. God is outside of time. God created time. Therefore, there does not have to be a conflict between the two statements: 1) there was no death on earth before the fall of man and 2) death occurred on earth before the fall of man. An all powerful God could make them both true. No problem.

Let me give you just one example of how the above two numbered statements could both be true. I am not saying that this example is true. I am merely using it to illustrate.

There are only a handful of people alive today that are in a position to claim to know what modern physics means by the statement that ‘time is another dimension of space,’ but let us imagine time is not just an abstract mathematical dimension but is an actual physical dimension of space just like the three dimensions (height, width, depth) we are fully aware of.

Now imagine “the letter people,” living on a sheet of paper, who can only see in (be fully aware of) two dimensions, that is, the two dimensions that make up the plane they live on. Now imagine the paper they live on slowly moving at right angles (to the paper) through a third dimension they not (fully) aware of (but we are). Their slow movement through this third dimension would be, for them, time. The direction they came from would be their past and the direction the paper is moving will be their future. They can only influence the present which is the plane they live on.

This imaginary scenario allows us to visualize the vantage point of God in that we can see the letterman past, present and future. But note also, our God-like vantage point allows us to see that there can be “two” pasts. We can reach out and move or otherwise modify something that the sheet of paper has already passed by and thus change their physical past, the past that would then physically exists, to be different from their mythical/remembered past which is the past their ancestors actually experienced.

A similar scenario was proposed by J. R. R. Tolkien in the Silmarillion where, if you remember, Middle-earth was originally flat. Middle-earth was disc-shaped with oceans on the perimeter and connected with Valinor, their “paradise,” in the west. This is how Middle-earth remained until the Fall of Numenor, where the Numenoreans, out of pride, attempted to sail west to reach Valinor, thus violating their one prohibition. At this point, Middle-earth became round (spherical) for man so that they could sail west all they wanted and never reach Valinor. The flat path however remained (simultaneously) for the elves so that they could sail west and thus return to Valinor (see “The Lord of the Rings”), never to return to Middle-earth.

Now if we just tweak the letter-people scenario a bit, an all-powerful God could simultaneously change the physical evidence on their sheet of paper so that it matched the new physical past created due to their fall. The fallen letter-man would thus be cut off from God scientifically and would be dependent on revelation for his knowledge of God and the events that led to the fall.

In our own universe, our paradise (the Garden of Eden) might have been exchanged for an earth where life evolved, where women must give childbirth in pain and men must scratch out a living amidst thorns. We are thus cut off from God scientifically (which shows our evolved past) and thus dependent on revelation for our knowledge of God and for the events that preceded the fall.

Now I must repeat. The above scenario is just an illustration, not a belief. What I believe in is God created everything and this fact cannot conflict with anything that science can discover that is true.

 

[buffalo]

PhilVaz:

Matt1618 << Phil, I am still waiting for your reply as to how the Catholic Church can reconcile Catholic doctrine with an evolutionary theory that requires death to have dominion over creation before the Fall of Adam. >>

So you are saying millions of dinosaurs and other of God’s creatures did not DIE before the rise of mankind. I think its pretty safe to say this is a scientific fact. There was plenty of death before the rise of humanity.

I admit it is a “theological” problem (that has nothing to do with science) if you interpret Scripture or Church dogma as literally teaching that No creature whatsoever, NO ant, NO cockroach, NO leaf on a tree, no CELL, NOTHING on planet earth can DIE before the first sin of the first human being (or first homo sapiens, however you interpret that).

The question is whether that is indeed Catholic teaching, that no death whatsoever is allowed before the Fall. One way to resolve this is to say there was no human death before the Fall of the first truly human being (Romans 5:12), and much of Genesis 1-3 should be interpreted figuratively. Beyond that, I can type in some information I have from Glenn Morton, Hugh Ross, and Keith Miller’s book, that do deal with some of this. Its a theological problem for evangelical scientists as well.

So let’s lay them all out once again some of the theological objections (which have nothing to do with the science, mind you) are these:

(1) placing a literal/historical Adam/Eve within human evolution
(2) death before sin, or death before the Fall
(3) polygenism vs. monogenism

But of course the International Theological Commission (along with all the Popes since at least Pius XII) has already agreed with the science that there was indeed billions of years of death before the rise of mankind. Anyone who accepts an old earth agrees with that. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, modern homo sapiens arose about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. Do the math.

Now if I remember your position from way back, you postulate a “Garden of Eden” in a “parallel universe” where sin did not reign, and that’s perfectly acceptable theologically it seems to me. And that can solve the theological difficulty. But of course it has nothing to do with the scientific fact that dinosaurs lived, died, and went extinct on this planet earth 65 million years ago (not to mention zillions of insects, etc) before the rise of mankind. I don’t throw these scientific facts out, neither does the Church.

On the history of how geology discovered the earth was old well before Darwin, see this article I compiled based on Davis Young’s book on "Flood Geology"

BTW, this thread is about Cardinal Schonborn and “intelligent design” you got me off track and flustered now.

Phil P

Vaz,

All the time we perceive is based on light speed being constant throughout time. Perhaps it was not.

I