creationism and evolution

[john_doran]

oriel36:

I have to press you for an answer on the technical matter I brought up previously,namely that it is really,really bad science to imagine that the Earth rotates through 360 degrees in 23 hours 56 min 04 sec.

oriel, the only reason i haven’t taken you up on this point is that i still just don’t understand it, and i could tell that i was trying your patience by continually asking you to simplify or restate your position…

i understand that you believe that the current value for the period of earth’s rotation on its axis is incorrect, and that the error has its source in some kind of calculational dispute between keplerian and newtonian physical systems…

i still don’t know precisely how the mistake was made (or even clearly just what the error is), or what impact it has on the rest of science.

if you feel like you want to take another kick at the can, i’d love to discuss this stuff with you.

 

[PhilVaz]

Jim D << note that i am not saying they’re wrong, but only that they’re just not very compelling and not even remotely as determinative as you seem to believe them to be. >>

Well, the one poster probably never saw the TalkOrigins article. They were just wondering if there is “another side” to the Bomby Beetle. So I take it you accept the Bomby Beetle was created from scratch, but the elephant and whale evolved?

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/eleph5.jpg

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

Picture of elephant (proboscidean) lineage, and Ambulocetus Natans, the walking whale that swims.

From the Firing Line creation-evolution debate I transcribed

Yes, it would take some time to go through each of our links to our respective favorite evolutionist and creationist sites. I guess the question would be if “God created the Bomby beetle from scratch” or “God created each of the extinct elephant species from scratch” or “God created all the land mammal-to-whale intermediates from scratch” would that be scientific, and would that make sense? Or would it make more sense to conclude, Yes here I see a clear evolutionary sequence of intermediates showing how these things evolved by natural means, not by direct-special creation out of nothing?

Phil P

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

Two years later (September, 1998), writing in the encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (“Faith and Reason”), Pope John Paul II lamented the crisis of meaning in the modern world and condemned the threat of scientism, which had accompanied the spectacular growth in modern scientific achievements. He described scientism as “the philosophical notion which refuses to admit the validity of forms of knowledge other than those of the positive sciences; and it relegates religious, theological, ethical and aesthetic knowledge to the realm of mere fantasy . . . science would thus be poised to dominate all aspects of human life through technological progress.” (Section 88).

John Paul II also wrote in praise of Pius XII, “In his encyclical letter Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII warned against mistaken interpretations linked to Evolutionism, existentialism and historicism. He made it clear that these theories had not been proposed and developed by theologians, but had their origins “outside the sheepfold of Christ.” He added, however, that errors of this kind should not simply be rejected but should be examined critically.” (Section 54).

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

Want some more?:

Many paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church relate to Creation themes, including the following: The existence of God can be known by reason; the Bible is totally free from error; the great trustworthiness of God, who cannot deceive; the very point of creation of the Universe was to create human beings; God did not make death [my emphasis]- which only came into the world because of Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12); human nature is thus wounded in its natural powers and the whole of Creation groans also in result; the importance of secondary causes; the great need to be mindful of Catholic Tradition; the Flood is mentioned in covenant context. A few sections which could vaguely be said to support evolutionary concepts are also explicable by Special Creation beliefs.

God did not make death? Interesting, indeed, since death is the driving force of evolution.

 

[john_doran]

PhilVaz:

Well, the one poster probably never saw the TalkOrigins article. They were just wondering if there is “another side” to the Bomby Beetle. So I take it you accept the Bomby Beetle was created from scratch, but the elephant and whale evolved?

no - i “accept” neither; i am agnostic as to the truth both of neo-darwinian/naturalistic evolution and “creationism”, since the evidence for both strikes me as anything from thin all the way up to enormously speculative and staggeringly counter-intuitive depending on the precise verson of the theory being articulated.

Yes, it would take some time to go through each of our links to our respective favorite evolutionist and creationist sites. I guess the question would be if “God created the Bomby beetle from scratch” or “God created each of the extinct elephant species from scratch” or “God created all the land mammal-to-whale intermediates from scratch” would that be scientific, and would that make sense?

but that’s precisely the thing - they’re only clearly land-mammal-to-whale intermediate species if you already buy into evolutionary theory. and i don’t.

but, to answer your question, it would be “scientific” if that’s the conclusion best supported by the evidence. what’s unscientific is disqualifying an explanatory resource a priori; i mean, if you actually believe in a god who actively participates in his creation, then it makes as much sense to attempt to understand the world without reference to him as it does to believe, say, in the electromagnetic field, and then try to understand the world without reference to it.

Or would it make more sense to conclude, Yes here I see a clear evolutionary sequence of intermediates showing how these things evolved by natural means, not by direct-special creation out of nothing?

as i say - it depends on your epistemological and philosophical convictions.

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

He quotes Cardinal Ruffini, “The Theory of Evolution”:

“If, in the question of man’s creation, the obvious meaning of the Bible is abandoned, a meaning which has been received and confirmed by constant Catholic Tradition, what attempt can be made to defend the account of the earthly Paradise, of the fall of Adam and its consequences? If it be admitted that the body of an animal became fit in the course of centuries to be informed by the human soul, will the unity of the human race remain sufficiently established against polygenism? And if this unity collapses, what will be the fate of the doctrine of original justice and original sin which constitutes the foundation of our sacred religion?”

“To these authorities - Holy Scripture, the Holy Fathers, major and minor theologians - we must add the Christian sense (sensus fidelium, the faithful echo of the Church’s teaching), so universal on this question and so certain that almost no member of the faithful would be free from surprise and scandal if he heard the teaching that Adam was born of beasts, that the blood in his veins was the blood of animals, that the human race, as regards the flesh, is related to the brute beasts.”

“If it is true that the body of woman was formed directly by God and thus does not come by way of evolution, who will be persuaded that man’s body comes from the brute beast? What an absurdity! . . . If we wish to stand by Holy Scripture we must accept it in its entirety. . . . She gets the name Virago (ishah: woman) because she is taken from the vir (ish: man); likewise the man is called Adam (=homo) because, as Genesis says, he is taken from the adamah (=humus). Whenever Holy Scripture speaks of the origin of the human body, it always names the Earth and only the Earth.”

 

[SydLake]

There are similarities between creationism and evolution in our faith and perhaps that is the cause of much of the angst revolving around the conflicting theories.

The static nature of creationism can be comforting as can static concepts like the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Concepts like evolution that not only concern where we have been, but where we are going are at times unsettling.

So where does the nature of Jesus fit in this range? Was He about status or possibilities? Was His message the same as Geneisis or Leviticus or as the church teaches a development that realizes a greater possibility in men to better understand God’s message?

Evolution is about possibilities, and certainly the possibility that one day this planet will be much better off if we evolve to the point that Jesus’ message is put into action more universally.

Creationism, on the other hand, has a very dark side. The fatalistic nature of the dictated development of our world has God intimately involved in not only every good, but even in every evil.

It is as if God predicated a system that would have his hand in the holocaust or the Tsunami. That really doesn’t fit with the word or the spirit of Jesus’ teachings. So from a Jesus centered standing, creationism doesn’t make sense.

Peace

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

He quotes Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner:

“Evolutionary theories stress the continuity of development between the species from the lower to the higher, as well as a sufficient duration to permit the operation of natural or artificial causes according to the laws governing these. Catholic teaching stresses an essential discontinuity in the case of those essences, whose limits were fixed by the Creator and which cannot be modified by the intervention of natural or artificial agents of a finite power. [The Church] has never pretended in any instance of observable species, on the basis of revelation, to know what those limits are. But that there are such limits, even at the level of inanimate existence, sound science as well as philosophy has tended to confirm.”

"Good arguments can actually be adduced in fact to show that evolution is simply not a scientific hypothesis. It is a dogma providing the context for all scientific endeavors. And it is just this assumption of evolutionism as the universal paradigm that directly conflicts with the teaching of the Church . . .

“The doctrine of creation, in general and in all its detail, is intimately bound up with the mystery of salvation. That is why no Catholic may call into question any aspect of the doctrine of creation which in fact the Church believes related to the mystery of salvation without also doubting that latter mystery.”

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

He quotes Pope Leo XIII:

“We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated, and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.”

 

[buffalo]

SydLake:

Evolution is about possibilities, and certainly the possibility that one day this planet will be much better off if we evolve to the point that Jesus’ message is put into action more universally.

Creationism, on the other hand, has a very dark side. The fatalistic nature of the dictated development of our world has God intimately involved in not only every good, but even in every evil.

It is as if God predicated a system that would have his hand in the holocaust or the Tsunami. That really doesn’t fit with the word or the spirit of Jesus’ teachings. So from a Jesus centered standing, creationism doesn’t make sense.

Peace

WOW! This just isn’t Catholic teaching. God permits evil as a consequence of free will. He gave us free will because of His love for us.

 

[Stevereeno]

PhilVaz:

I’d be interested in what you find in the Keane book that you think is intriguing. He is a young earther in case you didn’t know.

He quotes Pope Pelagius I:

“For I confess that all men from Adam, even to the consummation of the world, having been born and having died with Adam himself and his wife, who were not born of other parents, but were created, the one from the earth, the other [al.: altera], however, from the rib of man [cf. Gen. 2:7, 22].”

 

[SydLake]

buffalo:

WOW! This just isn’t Catholic teaching. God permits evil as a consequence of free will. He gave us free will because of His love for us.

Creationism implies that the design was complete and if all the other aspects of Genesis are taken into account then there is no reason to expect that God didn’t know exactly what the results of His work would be. I agree that free will is a gift of God’s love and if things were ordained so to speak, then free will doesn’t really exist.

Peace

 

[Stevereeno]

buffalo:

WOW! This just isn’t Catholic teaching. God permits evil as a consequence of free will. He gave us free will because of His love for us.

You’re correct Buff. Evolutionists often scoff at Creationists for being unintelligent and unlearned, while it is the truth that Evolutionists are being led by the nose into pantheism and scientism.

 

[buffalo]

Stevereeno:

You’re correct Buff. Evolutionists often scoff at Creationists for being unintelligent and unlearned, while it is the truth that Evolutionists are being led by the nose into pantheism and scientism.

I have stated this before. Science by its own definition is limited and admits it cannot explain the supernatural. Scientists are curious by nature and limiting themselves to science only, is a huge disadvantage to knowledge. How they can accept this is beyond me.

 

[SydLake]

buffalo:

I have stated this before. Science by its own definition is limited and admits it cannot explain the supernatural. Scientists are curious by nature and limiting themselves to science only, is a huge disadvantage to knowledge. How they can accept this is beyond me.

Your conclusions seem to ignore scientists like Einstein who saw the folly in both science without beliefs and beliefs without science.

The saddest aspect of creationism is those that believe it in its most basic literal descriptions, conversely the saddest aspects of evolution involve those that have no explanantion for the beginning.

The church knows that Geneisis shouldn’t be taken literally as it is so far fetched that it would open the rest of its doctrine and dogma to serious ridicule.

Peace

 

[buffalo]

SACRED SCRIPTURE

I. CHRIST - THE UNIQUE WORD OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

101 In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness God speaks to them in human words: "Indeed the words of God, expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on himself the flesh of human weakness, became like men."63

[102](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/102.htm’) Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely:64

You recall that one and the same Word of God extends throughout Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers, since he who was in the beginning God with God has no need of separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.65
[103](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/103.htm’) For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord’s Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God’s Word and Christ’s Body.66

104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God”.67 "In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them."68

II. INSPIRATION AND TRUTH OF SACRED SCRIPTURE

105 God is the author of Sacred Scripture. "The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."69

"For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself."70

106 God inspired the human authors of the sacred books. "To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more."71

[107](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/107.htm’) The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."72

108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."74

III. THE HOLY SPIRIT, INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.75

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. "Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."77

89

 

[buffalo]

The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting Scripture in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.78

[112](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/112.htm’) 1. Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole Scripture”. Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.79

The phrase “heart of Christ” can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure. But the Scripture has been opened since the Passion; since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted.80
[113](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/113.htm’) 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).

[114](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/114.htm’) 3. Be attentive to the analogy of faith.82 By “analogy of faith” we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.

The senses of Scripture

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two *senses *of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

[116](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/116.htm’) The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83

[117](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/117.htm’) The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.84
2. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.85
3. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.86

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses: The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.87 [119](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/119.htm’) "It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God."88

But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me.

 

[buffalo]

III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

[36](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/36.htm’) "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

[37](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/37.htm’) In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13
[38](javascriptpenWindow(‘cr/38.htm’) This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”. 14

 

[SydLake]

Buff, exactly, the church has put together a list ,thanks for posting it, of how some things in the Bible must be read .

Thanks for helping me make my point.

Peace

 

[Stevereeno]

SydLake:

Your conclusions seem to ignore scientists like Einstein who saw the folly in both science without beliefs and beliefs without science.

Were the beliefs of the writers of scripture and the Church Fathers folly, for they had no science. Which encyclical did Pope Einstein declare that my faith requires science, lest it be folly?

SydLake:

The saddest aspect of creationism is those that believe it in its most basic literal descriptions, conversely the saddest aspects of evolution involve those that have no explanantion for the beginning.

Why does this bring you to tears? Please elaborate.

SydLake:

The church knows that Geneisis shouldn’t be taken literally as it is so far fetched that it would open the rest of its doctrine and dogma to serious ridicule.

Of the Church Fathers that mention creation, 28 of the 30 hold fast to the “far-fetched” literal interpretation of Genesis. So does that mean the rest of the teachings and dogma, that they developed through the Holy Spirit, are subject to ridicule? The two Fathers that deviated from the literal interpretation were Origen, who was proclaimed a heretic by JPII, and St. Augustine, who ever-so-slightly deviated so as to fit the creation of the Angels into the story.