Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

[Glark]

The Cardinal is correct. Science hasn’t found evidence to support the claim. It is a religious story.

A story that reveals truth about the origin of modern humans. I’m sure the Cardinal believes that.

On second thoughts, what is one to make of this?

In a television debate on April, 2012, an interviewer asks Cardinal George Pell: “So you are talking about a kind of Garden of Eden scenario with an actual Adam and Eve.”
The Cardinal responds, “Well, Adam and Eve are terms - what do they mean: Life and earth. It’s like every man.”

Adam and Eve are “terms”? Do these sound like the words of someone who believes Adam and Eve are literal people? I seriously doubt it.

The Cardinal continues (about the creation account in Genesis) … “It’s not science, but it’s there to tell us two or three things. First of all that God created the world and the universe. Secondly, that the key to the whole of the universe, the really significant thing, is humans. And thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world.”

I suspect that when he says the creation account “is not science”, he means it’s not literal history - meaning Adam and Eve weren’t real people. The rest of his response seems to indicate that the Genesis account is just a story and isn’t to be taken literally.

The interviewer then asks, “But it isn’t a literal truth. You shouldn’t see it in any way as an historical or literal truth?”

Cardinal Pell answers, “It’s certainly not a scientific truth and it’s a religious story told for religious purposes.” Here he seems to be repeating what he said earlier - the account is “not scientific”, and I don’t think he’s talking about genetics or anything like that. I think what he means is it’s not real history - in other words, he doesn’t believe Adam and Eve are real, historical people.

It is not so that all Catholics are obliged to belief that Adam and Eve were indeed real people?

 

[Glark]

evolution is both a theory and a fact. The fact is that the genomes of an interbreeding population changes over time, which is commonly observed. That is evolution as a fact.

Microevolution is not in dispute here (or anywhere) and doesn’t conflict with Scripture, since truth cannot contradict truth. No one doubts, for example, that the ancestors of sausage dogs were wolves or that bacteria develop resistant to antibiotics. These are demonstrable, scientific facts.

What are NOT demonstrable, scientific facts are that all life on earth evolved from some unicellular organism and that humans evolved from some kind of monkey-man. These are theories that cannot ever be tested - so they cannot ever be facts. It is these claims of non-factual macroevolution that conflict with Scripture, imo.

 

[Glark]

If you are a Darwinist I would suggest you go in the back yard and pick up a rock.

In simplistic terms human beings evolved from that rock.

Do you believe that’s possible?

This is categorically incorrect - not to mention just plain silly and ignorant! We evolved from mud! Get it right!

“Everybody (who believes in evolution) knows that organisms … get more complex as they evolve … The only trouble with what everybody knows is that there is no evidence it’s true.” - Dan McDean, Professor of Biology, University of Michigan (“Onward and Upward”, Discover magazine, June 1993).

The theory of Evolution has only one enemy - scientific reality.

 

[Glark]

The devil appearing as serpent is way more plausible than human beings evolving from a rock.

Using the same science that says humans started out as rocks, a solid case can be made for the existnce of the Tooth Fairy. (Althought the colour of her dress will always be contentious.)

 

[Glark]

I think the existence of a certain amount of junk DNA may actually accord with Scripture - the effects of Original Sin may have resulted in DNA degradation and losses in function.

 

[Glark]

You are a conspiracy theorist.

Thank you. I’ve been working hard to be one for years.

 

[Glark]

Why would God wait Billions and Billions and Billions years for man to evolve when he can just make him one in a day ?

Because God isn’t that smart. He relies on trial and error, and he’s a very s-l-o-w learner.

 

[Glark]

So Adam and Eve were both raised by souless monkey creatures ?

Don’t be so small-minded … Romulus and Remus were raised by wolves and they turned out okay.

 

[Glark]

Do you think Adam and Eve’s inlaws were disappointed when they got expelled from the Garden of Eden ?

LOL!!

But on a serious note, I think the in-laws would have been devastated and ashamed - Adam and Eve were raised better than that.

 

[Rau]

to say divine providence does not apply here at all…

To make that statement is a philosophical leap by the scientist concerned.

 

[Glark]

Abiogenesis isn’t hard for a theist to acconut for - God can perform miracles - such as turning inanimate matter into a living organism.

Atheists, on the other hand, are generally very reluctant to address how abiogenesis could have occured, since it presents no end of scientific headaches. Athesits therefore tend to stick to evolution, as they think it’s a scientific goer.

I think abiogenesis is a from of evolution - chemicals that form rocks get rearranged to form a different structure - a biological machine we call a cell. That’s evolution, isn’t it?

Atheist also need to explain why a mindless collection of atoms that accidentally formed the first cell also happened to reproduce. Since when do mindless machines reproduce?

 

[rossum]

Microevolution is not in dispute here (or anywhere) and doesn’t conflict with Scripture, since truth cannot contradict truth. No one doubts, for example, that the ancestors of sausage dogs were wolves or that bacteria develop resistant to antibiotics. These are demonstrable, scientific facts.

Macroevoluiton – that is evolution between species – has also been observed. That is also a demonstrable scientific fact.

Glark:

What are NOT demonstrable, scientific facts are that all life on earth evolved from some unicellular organism and that humans evolved from some kind of monkey-man. These are theories that cannot ever be tested - so they cannot ever be facts. It is these claims of non-factual macroevolution that conflict with Scripture, imo.

The evolution of humans from earlier hominids is an established scientific fact. The only objections are based on interpretations of various non-scientific religious texts. In Catholic terms, this only refers to the human body, not to the human soul of course.

As to the origin of life, all life shares essentially the same genetic code, all life has amino acids with the same handedness and all life shares RNA (there are a few organisms which do not use DNA). If you have evidence for multiple different origins of life, then I would be glad of a reference. If all you have is your own personal opinion, then…

rossum

 

[IWantGod]

The Scientists are out to systematically destroy your faith Glark. Run while you still have a chance.

 

[Gorgias]

The word ‘dust’ is used in the bible to mean a large human population. In this case a collective Adam.

No, this really does contradict Church teaching. As @Techno2000 points out, Humani generis teaches that “the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that … Adam represents a certain number of first parents.” If you’re suggesting that the “dust” represents a body of humans, you’re doing exactly what HG tells us not to do.

God calls them male and female at their genesis. He doesn’t name them.

Actually, that’s not true. In Genesis 1:26, we see that God created הָֽאָדָם֙ (‘ha-adam’). Your translation of the Bible might translate this as “human beings” or “man”, but it’s right there: “Adam”. (It’s only used as a “proper name” in Genesis twice – in Gen 4 and Gen 5.)

 

[Benadam]

No, this really does contradict Church teaching. As @Techno2000 points out, Humani generis teaches that “the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that … Adam represents a certain number of first parents.” If you’re suggesting that the “dust” represents a body of humans, you’re doing exactly what HG tells us not to do.

There will be two parents.

Actually, that’s not true. In Genesis 1:26, we see that God created הָֽאָדָם֙ (‘ha-adam’). Your translation of the Bible might translate this as “human beings” or “man”, but it’s right there: “Adam”. (It’s only used as a “proper name” in Genesis twice – in Gen 4 and Gen 5.)
Male and female hmmmm looking for a name,nope it isn’t there. I looked beyond the paragraph I read the chapter again. Nothing. Check it out below.

Gen 1-26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind[c] in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,[d] and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

 

[Benadam]

Adam instead of humankind. That works real well. Thanks:grinning:

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

Do you think Adam and Eve’s inlaws were disappointed when they got expelled from the Garden of Eden ?

LOL!!

But on a serious note, I think the in-laws would have been devastated and ashamed - Adam and Eve were raised better than that.

I bet Adam’s mother warn him about what would happen if he started dating humans.

 

[Aloysium]

edwest21:

It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.”

What is being referred to here are certain “leaps” of a philosophical kind that assert science has something to say about the existence of God.

If science is to tell us anything of meaning about the nature of the world, it cannot ignore the existence of God.

As today’s reading from Isaiah proclaims:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.

While the message is directed to the nature of justice, it would also apply to the reality of His creation, to be truly known when we come face to face with Him. And I believe, we can know it now, seeking to understand nature through love. The world reveals itself to us, but it’s form is distorted through our intrusions, always motivated by sin - for wealth, pleasure, power and fame. This earth and the cosmos in which it dwells ever open themselves with growing wonder as we gaze deeper into its mysteries brought into being by God.

 

[edwest21]

Definitely not.

"Real History

"The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.

"Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.

"The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).

"It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

"Adam and Eve: Real People

"It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

"In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).

“The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).”

 

[edwest21]

You are mistaken and perhaps engaging in wishful thinking.

We can see this in current biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. Natural selection is totally blind to the future. “Humans are fundamentally not exceptional because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in Biology by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

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