Darwin or Design?

[Ender]

The church recenlty recognized Darwinism and stated that evolution was compatiable with its doctrine.

This is not quite true and the difference is significant. The Church recognizes the evidence for “some” form of evolution; this is a long way from endorsing Darwinism. JPII specifically said that: “controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.” Darwinism is a mechanism.

I can perhaps understand why evolution is so stoutly defended; it is more instructive to ask why Darwinism as a mechanism receives such devout defense - and the answer has less to do with the science involved than the philosophy it defends: there is no God.

There is an enormous amount of scientific evidence for evolution but that evidence does not all support Darwinism as its mechanism. If the issue was simply about evolution no one would particularly care whether Darwinism survived or not, but there is much more at stake than mere science. Darwinism is defended by its adherents as stoutly as any other religion.

Ender

 

[AquinaSavio]

I’m not struggling in the least. That was a good resource for you. You don’t have to quickly review it and give your opinion. Take your time and do some research. Read the links I gave you and check out their references. If you have questions based on those, let me know and I will do my best to help you. I am not a paleontologist, but paleontology was my favorite subject while in college.

I don’t have time to do a lot of research…I’m already very busy with other projects in school.

Regarding photographic evidence, do you want photos of the fossils or of the actual animals? If it is of the fossils, you might want to check out the references as you might find photos, but honestly, photographs are not the best way to illustrate a fossil. If you are asking for photos of the actual animal, well…

I don’t know why you continue to undermine the value of photographs.

And no, I don’t expect to see the actual animal.

Of course, if you already have your mind made up, you can skip the research part. Just let me know so I don’t waste my time replying to you with links.

As I said, I don’t have a lot of time to do research. And, since I’m not going in the biology direction any more, I don’t really need the information at this point. If I do have questions, I’ll PM you.

 

[Montalban]

This is not quite true and the difference is significant. The Church recognizes the evidence for “some” form of evolution; this is a long way from endorsing Darwinism. JPII specifically said that: “controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.” Darwinism is a mechanism.

I can perhaps understand why evolution is so stoutly defended; it is more instructive to ask why Darwinism as a mechanism receives such devout defense - and the answer has less to do with the science involved than the philosophy it defends: there is no God.
Indeed, but Darwinists try to pretend that their form of evolution is evolution and also that evolution is not about no God.

Dawkins, a stout defender of Darwinism is also rabidly anti-religious.

He’s also a champion of the ‘teaching tool’ for Darwinism called “Biomorphs” which always has me in stitches, because it’s a very funny teaching tool for demonstrating a supposedly random (or purposeless) system.

 

[Michael_G]

By the way, how do you explain things like light? We know the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, and we know that there are stars that are millions of light years away. If that is true, we could not be seeing their light unless the universe was, in fact, millions of years old. Do geology, astronomy, cosmology, Big Bang theory, and tectonic theory all give you problems as well?

I maintain that all dating mechanism have built in assumptions which cannot be proved with out any doubt, therefore we can not know with absolute certainty how old the earth is. The Catholic Church allows for an either or young or old earth within the parameters, that God Created, Adam and Eve, and Original Sin.

As far as the star light and millions of light years away there are two possibilities or a combination thereof which could point to young earth. One If the genesis account was a six day event, it tells us that God created the stars, sun etc. It also tells us that God created the light, Now He could have created the light between the stars and earth instantanously. Scripture also tells us on at least three occasions, I have heard there are six times, but I can only verify at the moment three times that God “stretched out the heavens” this would in turn naturally create the red shift and move the stars considerbly further from the earth than the original position by which we compute the millions and billions of years.