Darwin's Theory of Evolution is not scientific

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I find thomisticevolution.org a great site for seeing evolution and faith as compatible. There’s a series of four articles on there, starting with the doctrine of original sin, that give a nice summary. (I do recommend reading all the disputed questions in full eventually [I found it fascinating] but thise give a nice start.) Later tonight I couod post a lot more, but I’ve got a test to study for.
 
Uriel1 said:
And you misunderstand the Galileo affair. Scripture never said the earth was made to at the centre - if you think it did then tell us where it says so; that position of Geocentrism was one arrived at by scientists of the era, and one which can still be Mathematically proven
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Proposition:

(1) The sun is the center of the world and wholly immovable from its place.

Assessment: This proposition was unanimously declared “foolish and absurd. philosophically and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.”

So sayeth the Qualifiers of the Holy Office (Rome, on Wednesday, February 24, 1616). geocentrism - What is the biblical basis of the belief that Earth is the center of the universe? - Christianity Stack Exchange

So scripture doesn’t explicitly say heliocentrism is wrong. But it implies it. And your church, back in less enlightened times, preferred a literal interpretation of the bible as opposed to one that aligns with scientific observation. Now you won’t believe this, but some people STILL do that.

And Geocentrism is wrong. Always was and always will be (I’d love to see you prove it). But geocentrism (lower case g) is just using a different reference frame. And for any number of applications, it’s perfectly valid. Such as navigating a boat. But it’s pretty useless for sending a spacecraft to the moon. For that you need a heliocentric frame of reference.

And incidentally, if we get around to sending craft to distant stars, then we need to ditch heliocentrism as well and use a frame of reference which is the centre of the Milky Way.

Science, eh? Gotta love it…
 
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You wrote, “But geocentrism (lower case g) is just using a different reference frame. And for any number of applications, it’s perfectly valid. Such as navigating a boat. But it’s pretty useless for sending a spacecraft to the moon. For that you need a heliocentric frame of reference.”

Wrong: the heliocentric maths works, and geocentric maths works too. Mathematicians could plot a geocentric system and send a rocket to the moon, Mars or the sun.

Don’t misunderstand me; I am not claiming it is that way, just telling you that there is a mathematical proof for it

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buffalo said:
Adam is buried in the Chapel of Adam in Holy Sepulchre Church.
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Please let us know his carbon date and DNA sequence. You have previously made claims about Adam’s DNA; show us the supporting evidence please.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Adam and Eve are humans with souls in a wider population of physically similar apes with compatible DNA. Adam and Eve have children, to whom God gives souls. Those children mate with the surrounding population, Cain’s wife for example. If either parent has a human soul then God gives the child a human soul. Since any grandchildren are descended from both Adam and Eve scriptural descent is correct. Since the compatible genes from the wider population are included in the true human group the problem with no evidence of a genetic bottleneck is avoided.
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Ok, that makes sense and is either the same proposal or near the same proposal as Ed Feser’s. BTW, what religion are you?
 
bobperk said:
What answers will make you happy? There are TONS of evolution and Adam and Eve posts on CAF . . .you’ll save time by reading them (this thread has over 1400 replies) instead of asking questions that have already been answered. Or why don’t you just go to that other church and ask them why they believe what they do?
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So, you can’t answer my questions? Huh.
 
Gorgias said:
Yeah, but I’m a Catholic, and that’s the explanation I would’ve given, too. So… put away the ad hominems, please. 😉

@Hope1960: the Church doesn’t teach a specific scientific theory of evolution. She merely says that we are allowed to investigate it and tells us that it can be accepted, given certain caveats (which are described in Humani Generis, as quoted to you). What you do with these statements is up to you. The Church isn’t going to take a stand on this one, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask what it thinks of various attempts at harmonization.

You can believe in evolution, as long as it doesn’t run afoul of Church teachings. Full stop.
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Thanks!

…
 
Uriel1 said:
The process is dust -> animal -> human body.”

THIS IS NOT BIBLICAL TRUTH, but is UNSCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY
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There is a reasonable point to be made from your objection. (Don’t get too excited yet, though. 😉 )

If we want to get really picky about the Genesis creation narratives – and, please remember, the Church gives us the freedom to treat them in a sense that is not strictly literal/historical – then the best we can say is that the act of creating the animals was distinct from the act of creating humans. However, neither act precludes evolution.

What is significant is that, if we look at each as allegorical, then the distinction being made isn’t “different dust”, but rather, “different result” – humanity proceeded from ‘dust’ into which eternal souls were infused.

It doesn’t help you much. (Well, it might help you save a modicum of face with your ad hominem attack against rossum, but not much more than that… 😉 )
 
Animals and man created through the same source, Jesus, the mighty Lord God who breathed a soul into man.

Rossum is different; he has written in this thread that he made himself
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Uriel1 said:
Wrong: the heliocentric maths works, and geocentric maths works too. Mathematicians could plot a geocentric system and send a rocket to the moon, Mars or the sun.
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Indeed they could. And they could do the maths on an abacus as well. And I could plot a course for my boat using a heliocentric frame of reference. But I wouldn’t recommend any of those options.

Anyway, I only replied to see how your searches were going. Any luck yet?
 
I’ll need to know which essay the quote is from. (One of the 4-part series I mentioned [and which one and where] or another one.)
 
kind Uriel1,

your dispute then is with the evolutionists not with me. The point I was addressing was whether Darwin’s papers were about science and his theory. They were science as good as it was at the time, and his theory which was what it was, a talking point.

Science has begrudgingly come around to admitting that “lower” species of animals have intelligence. When I studied experimental psychology 50 years ago, we were lectured about how the worms (of some type) could be taught to negotiate a maze to get to a goal. Today, as dimly as I recall that subject, it could have been that the worms were following trails that were left behind by other worms, and not demonstrating intelligence.

Theories persist as long as they are supported by fact. Those who confuse theories and fact are shooting themselves in the foot. When theories are confirmed by an overwhelming amount of evidence, they are laws. But, hypotheses, theories, and even laws are only as good as the paper they are written on and if they support verifiable inferences.

3.5 million years for hominid evolution allows for “nature” to try a lot of experiments. Melting glaciers apparently reveals bacteria that long ago produced antibiotic resistance. There’s a lot out there to learn about the created world.

I’m skeptical about multiverses. If they did exist, we should be being blasted by debris from them from every direction. We don’t know what is beyond the event horizon of our universe. There should be alien visitors all over the place.

I’ve been impressed that space seemingly goes on forever. How can that be? Is that an illusion?
 
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Part 4. How did God create homo sapiens through evolution?
 
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Nobody can to your satisfaction. That’s why you jump from thread to thread asking the same question.
 
So the context is
That is why it is intelligible for the Catholic theologian to claim that God guided the contingent process of evolution to advance living matter until it could be informed by a human soul. He guided biological history in the same way that he guides human history. He does so without undermining the contingent nature of history.
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That’s after a quote from Aquinas about how God can cause things via contingency or necessity. Relevant for answering your question of whether it means “given or created a human soul” I think the immediate paragraph is rather helpful to that answer.
Importantly, only matter can evolve. Because it is immaterial, the human soul has to be created immediately by God. It cannot evolve.
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(quotes from http://www.thomisticevolution.org/d...id-god-create-homo-sapiens-through-evolution/ )

As a side note, this is the essay which is the start of the four that give a decent explanation of things. http://www.thomisticevolution.org/d...city-of-adam-and-eve-part-i-theological-data/

{And yes, Discourse, I do want to post the link again.}
Now in regards to the questions you had initially, in regards to the second question “A poster on that thread said that Catholics aren’t allowed to believe in evoution, and to believe in it is to be “not Catholic.” I thought Catholics are most certainly allowed to believe in evolution. Am I wrong?”

For the most part, he was wrong. If he had limited it to a view that evolution disproves God, that evolution wouldn’t involve God in anyway, or basically any other thing that’s so blatantly obvious in contradicting Catholic belief it really shouldn’t have to be mentioned, he would’ve been okay, but evolution is compatible with Faith.
 
Hope1960 said:
How did Adam and Eve come to be IF evolution occurred?
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The exact details of course have some inherent speculation, but here are some general ideas.
  1. Evolution occurred in non-human species and is the perfect explanation for them. But humans were created independently via a miracle, which is outside the scope of science to prove/disprove and therefore cannot be scientifically proven. And quite possibly looks like evolution from a scientific perspective. (Personally, I don’t subscribe to that idea, but it would be acceptable.)
  2. Throughout the many many many years of earth’s history, you have species such as the Australopithecus and various others until Homo Sapiens arrives. A near-Homo Sapiens pair mates and conceives a true human who is given a human soul by God at conception. (I will be omitting the whole debate that’s been held elsewhere about delayed ensoulment [even with babies conceived today.]) Then either only two of such being are conceived (or miraculous de costa*) and have children. Inbreeding happens, but for whatever reasons (miraculous or unknown natural) it doesn’t have the same effect as today.
    *de costa is Google Translate’s translation of “of the rib” into Latin. Just a phrase I figure is appropriate all considered.
  3. The Edward Fesser idea you’ve mentioned before. Same as two, but now their children also breed with the non-human but biologically compatible proto-humans around. Such an explanation allows for both a form of monogenism and a reason why the genetic data doesn’t fit physical monogenism.
  4. On thomisticevolution.org they also discuss another option. (As a side note, Archbishop J. Augstine Di Noia O.P. from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith praised Thomistic Evolution as a great source for thinking clearly about evolution and theology.) Many point to Humani Generis as having disallowed any possibility of polygenism. However, as they point out, the wording was that it was in no way apparent how polygenism and original sin could be reconciled. And taking into account the historical context, that’s not surprising. Back when Pope Pius XII wrote Humani Generis, the out-of-Africa model was not yet in existence. In other words, polygenism meant groups of humans appearing simultaneously all over the world. So why would an original sin in Australia affect Europeans? Now we have a different model. One that places early humans in the same geographic area. And so it’s much clearer how a communal sin with that group would affect that group’s descendants, who spread all over the world. (They of course do a much more in depth explanation of things.)
 
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