Do God and evolution agree?

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We believe God created heaven and earth, and all life. Not instantaneously, but according to His plan. As God, he knew what Adam would look like and sent His Son in human form. Considering that He could have made it so that humans could look very different.
 
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True science or scientific facts can never be in conflict with Christianity which is founded on divine revelation, i.e., the revealed and certain Word/word of God contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as God is the author of both. But, naturalistic scientific theories and stories such as big bang cosmology and Darwinian biological evolution are human opinions which may be erroneous as well as contrary to revealed truth which is certain and even philosophical/metaphysical truth. The modern physical and natural sciences do not possess in the least a monopoly on all knowledge, truth, and reality.

The story of the creation of the world and its formation in the Genesis 1-2 creation narratives and many other creation texts of the Bible have God for their author who cannot be in error while the human naturalistic theories of big bang cosmological evolution and Darwinian evolution do not have God for their author and may be in error. Accordingly, IMO, there is no rational or definitive reason to set aside a literal interpretation in some measure of the Genesis 1-2 creation narratives and many other biblical creation texts for big bang cosmological evolution or Darwinian evolution.
 
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True science or scientific facts can never be in conflict with Christianity which is founded on divine revelation, i.e., the revealed and certain Word/word of God contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as God is the author of both.
The reverse is also true, true interpretations of scripture cannot be in conflict with true science. Some people interpreted scripture to say that the earth was static and the sun moved round it. Their interpretation of scripture was wrong, as was shown by the science.

Scripture can be used to help interpret the world, but conversely the world (also made by God) can be used to interpret scripture. Both are from God, so the correct interpretations of both must agree. If interpretations disagree then either interpretation may be wrong, since both are human interpretations and subject to human error.

In the case of Galileo is was the science that was correct and the theologians wrong.
 
The secular saint, Galileo, is not important. What is important is that the Church has the sole authority to interpret Scripture correctly. Regarding evolution, all must be subject to the Church’s interpretation. Science is inadequate.
 
The secular saint, Galileo, is not important. What is important is that the Church has the sole authority to interpret Scripture correctly. Regarding evolution, all must be subject to the Church’s interpretation. Science is inadequate.
If God made the world, then the world is as much from God as the Bible.

The Church does not deny the existence of Australia or of the planet Neptune. Neither are mentioned in the Bible. This shows that the Church accepts the evidence in the world as well as the Bible.

Wisely, the Church allows the acceptance of evolution, with a small caveat about souls. Evolution says nothing about souls, so that is not a problem.
 
The Church accepts only fragments of what some people think it accepts. Pope Benedict:

"In the book, Benedict reflected on a 1996 comment of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were sound, as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution was “more than a hypothesis.”

“The pope (John Paul) had his reasons for saying this,” Benedict said. “But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

“We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said.
 
If that is what Benedict thinks, then he doesn’t understand science either.

And pray tell, what is a “complete scientific theory”? Please give me an example.
 
That’s what I got the last time I posted this. However, Pope John Paul II gets a pass because he said the “right” thing? A clear bias is going on here.
 
That’s what I got the last time I posted this. However, Pope John Paul II gets a pass because he said the “right” thing? A clear bias is going on here.
No, there’s no bias. And I doubt the two men were saying different things, just putting the emphasis on different places. To be blunt, there is no such thing as a complete scientific theory. To criticize evolution for being incomplete without mentioning that every other single theory, due to the provisional nature of science, is also incomplete, is to demonstrate an actual bias.

General Relativity isn’t complete, because the GR version of gravity isn’t renormizable in Quantum Mechanics. That means that we have two incomplete theories; General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and the great quest of physics these days is to come out with a quantum explanation of gravity that syncs with General Relativity. But does that make GR and QM wrong? Of course not, because they are highly successful theories that explain observations exceedingly well. It just means they are incomplete (and once we do have a quantum theory of gravity, they will, delightfully enough, merge into one theory, or so everyone hopes).

This is the unfair hoop that Creationists want evolution to jump through, when every other scientific theory falls into the same category. The computer you use and the transmission lines that exchange the electrons and photons that make up our conversation, are built atop theories that are incomplete. Are you going to call those theories wrong?
 
Do God and evolution agree?
Is a little like asking if I had sexual relations with my wife’s birthday and phone number.
We are talking about knowing a person on the one hand, and knowing information about a person on the other, and whether the information is the fullness of the person, or whether we can make the simple distinction between true factual information and the whole person, who can’t be fully defined by those facts.

My wife is not a birthday and phone number, AND she has them and we can be united in a deeper sense.
(this issue asks for the ability to make simple distinctions between classes of things. If we as Catholics can’t do this, how are we going to make the case for Christian marriage or sexual differentiation?)😉
 
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As long as the theories work, they are good enough. How did anyone know how to use the moon’s gravity to slingshot an Apollo capsule back to Earth? How did the first Apollo mission land a man on the moon and have enough fuel for the upper part of the lander to takeoff and return to lunar orbit in 1969? How can an aircraft traveling at Mach 3.2 (or better) even get built much less get introduced to service in 1966?

Evolution has been discarded by scientists; Bioinformatics is the only way forward.
 
As long as the theories work, they are good enough. How did anyone know how to use the moon’s gravity to slingshot an Apollo capsule back to Earth? How did the first Apollo mission land a man on the moon and have enough fuel for the upper part of the lander to takeoff and return to lunar orbit in 1969? How can an aircraft traveling at Mach 3.2 (or better) even get built much less get introduced to service in 1966?

Evolution has been discarded by scientists; Bioinformatics is the only way forward.
It hasn’t. I’m sorry, but what you just wrote in that bottom part of your post is gibberish. A word salad that is literally content and concept free. You don’t like evolution, fine, but please don’t misrepresent science to make your case.
 
Unfortunate that plain English can be discarded like this.
When you’re intent was to write gibberish, trying to assert a clearly ridiculous claim that somehow scientists don’t accept evolution any more, that’s what you get. I think we both know what you’re saying is nonsense. There is no serious challenge to evolutionary theory. There is continuous refinement, but that’s true of all theories.
 
I agree with Pope Benedict 100%. Lenski’s experiment was criticized by those qualified to do so.
 
Hi everyone. So recently I’ve been hearing some Catholics say that God guided evolution and used evolution to create life. I was wondering if this was true or not.
If you want it to be true, it very much is. It’s almost common sense.

If you don’t want it to be true, it very much isn’t. It’s clearly an attempt to dethrone God.
 
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