Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

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rossum said:
Classic God-of-the gaps. A very dangerous position to take. Science works to close gaps, so your God has to get smaller to still fit in the gap. Do you want your God to shrink?

rossum
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Seems to me that you are putting human knowledge in the same jeopardy that the classic god-of-the-gaps claimant places God by insisting that science can, or presumably will, fill all the gaps of human knowledge and understanding.

If we break possible human knowledge into domains, which may or may not completely overlap, we can come up with at least four.
  1. knowledge of the observable world – I.e., the knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, metaphysics, etc., treating observable things in the material world.
  2. knowledge of moral agency – knowledge of how I, as an undeniable subjective agent of my actions, ought to act in the world.
  3. knowledge of value – knowledge of the relative importance or significance (whether relative or absolute) of beings, entities, events, actions, etc., in the realm of being or existence.
  4. knowledge of personal identity and subjectivity – an understanding of my internal subjective world as I experience being, thoughts, ideas, emotions, etc., from a first person perspective as the loci of all experience, along with the ultimate significance of what it means to be in the world that I find myself in.
Certainly you aren’t contending that science, properly understood as the method for testing theories about the physical world, will necessarily and sufficiently explain everything about moral agency, values and the meaning of personal existence, are you?

Seems to me that accepting that science will, by default, accomplish that (i.e., close all the gaps) is no different than applying a god-of-the-gaps. You have just turned science into that god, which you hope will fill those gaps.

In fact, I would argue that it is much worse to have science fill that role because invoking an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God who created the cosmos and all life including us, leaves very open the possibility that – because it is intelligently designed, ordered and purposed – the cosmos and everything in it including moral agency, personal subjective existence and the relative significance or value of things CAN BE fully explained. It leaves open the possibility that not just our seeking 1) knowledge of the observable world can be completely and sufficiently fulfilled, but that 2), 3), and 4) also can be. In short, no areas of wondering or knowing will be left frustrated if we assume a 3-Omni God is fully involved in the created order.

However, if a purely scientific method is stringently assumed for every area of knowledge, then we are left with the possibility of fully addressing 1), but leaving 2), 3) and 4) unresolvable by the restriction of our choice of method.
 
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By the way, this is not to say the scientific method ought to be tossed out or dismissed, but it is to say that the method ought to be seen in proper perspective as one tool in our arsenal to address one specific area of knowing. We ought, however, to be open to the fact that those four areas may, in fact overlap and knowledge from each of them may shed light on the others. Science-of-the-gaps does not seem to permit that because ONLY physical or observable phenomena can count as grounds for knowing anything.

So contrary to your notion that invoking God places those who do into a tenuous position, I would argue that invoking God is shorthand for claiming there is an intelligible or possible answer to every question that can be known, even those outside of what science is restricted to. That is not to say that we ought to restrict what science can say by invoking God to silence science (THAT would be a god-of-the-gaps argument), but that science ought to be given open rein to answer questions within its domain provided it does not engage in overreach and make claims about what all knowledge comprises that it cannot possibly warrant.
 
HarryStotle said:
Certainly you aren’t contending that science, properly understood as the method for testing theories about the physical world, will necessarily and sufficiently explain everything about moral agency, values and the meaning of personal existence, are you?
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No I am not. Science studies the material STEM world. Above @Glark made an assertion about science and abiogenesis. Since abiogenesis is chemistry, it is well within the ambit of science, and hence my point about God of the gaps is valid in that case.

rossum
 
There it is. Let’s turn certain things from literal to symbolic. That way, both sides can be satisfied: those who hold the textbook as secular scripture and those who believe in God who was never involved in anything regarding the development of life. Never. Not once. Because science told them so.

Ed
 
Holding that life on earth changed over time as described in the theory of evolution doesn’t rule God out of the equation.
 
"On the 9th of January in 1997, famous American evolutionary biologist and Harvard professor Richard Lewontin published a review of Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World in The New York Review. Lewontin noted that a number of ideas in science don’t make a great deal of immediate sense. “What seems absurd,” Lewontin wrote, “depends on one’s prejudice.”

"His purpose was to argue that the facts of science appear on the surface to make little sense – but are in fact true. Atoms - “tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them” truly do provide the basic building blocks of matter. Light does present itself as both a wave and a particle. Incredible as these things sound, they are indeed true – that was what Lewontin wanted to say. And yet, as he proceeds, Lewontin makes a startling admission (now widely circulated) that goes far beyond the context of astronomy and the cosmos. He reveals the heart of scientific materialists, not simply to discover the true nature of the universe, but to battle against faith in the supernatural. He wrote:
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"[W]e have a priori commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
“Ah… that Divine Foot. The problem with Lewontin’s position about the universe is not his skepticism. Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit” does have some good rules of thumb for not falling into crazy beliefs that have no basis in reality. Yet! Both Sagan and Lewontin make the assumption that a good scientist must also be a materialist. God gets kicked into the corner with fairies, unicorns and George Foreman’s hair.”
 
With all due respect - honest questions: What did God do? When? Where? To what?
 
And just to add, HG only explicitly cited problems and concerns with polygenism accounts of evolution. It expresses no issue with monogenism accounts of the evolution of man. Before stating that modern evolutionary science doesn’t present monogenism accounts, that’s not the point. Obviously there’s some degree of symbolism that can be accepted in the Genesis account if human evolution from other species in a monogenism fashion isn’t ruled out side-by-side with certain features of a polygenism account.
 
With all due respect, why speak of God so anthropomorphically? As if He is some clockmaker who creates, steps away, and then needs to come back to intercede His hand again. He is not some greatest being who is a tinkerer, He’s the underlying cause of all reality, exercising His creating power and authority from all eternity outside of time and space. He has done everything at all times in every place to every thing, whether we poofed into existence in a moment or we evolved according to natural and seemingly random processes over hundreds of millions of years. As if God acted and without knowing how His creative act would and is and will proceed even if said direction is not empirically observable… He’s the first cause of it all. I feel like your objection is rooted in some false conception of what God is and how He acts.

Your objection is that such things are not consistent with God, but your objection seems rooted in a conception of God that’s inconsistent with the conceptions of God the greatest theologians of the Catholic faith have put forward.
 
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That’s a total misconception of what is being discussed here, so allow me to be blunt:

Atheist/materialist evolution is all that natters. God needs to be kicked out. That book of fairy tales called the Bible was written by men. Men. And what man - not some stupid religion - thinks is ALL that matters.

There is NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING else.
 
Science can’t measure God. It can’t measure purpose. It can’t measure intent. In any discussion of strict empiricism, you can’t measure these things. And there’s no reason to keep trying to plug God into scientific holes such as abiogenesis, as if lightning needs to be thrown by God rather than resulting from the interaction of natural objects that God sustain’s in existence. Science might very well observe non-living chemicals combining into living things, it doesn’t mean that what is observed through that science is the whole story either, but there’s no point in staking God on a scientific point like that. We know God because He is necessary by the metaphysical assumptions that any good science itself is based on, not because there are scientific gaps that need to be filled.
 
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setarcos said:
It would seem not much has been advanced here in this thread. It is coming pretty close to being little more than sophistry denigrating the opposing sides views.
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LOL! By Jove, I think you’ve hit upon it! That could be the tag line for all internet fora: “Sophistry denigrating the opposing side’s views.”

🤣
 
edwest21 said:
That’s a total misconception of what is being discussed here, so allow me to be blunt:

Atheist/materialist evolution is all that natters. God needs to be kicked out. That book of fairy tales called the Bible was written by men. Men. And what man - not some stupid religion - thinks is ALL that matters.

There is NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING else.
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Good post. You’ve hit on it, but I’m not certain you see what you’ve claimed. I’m guessing that @Glark doesn’t see it, either.

You name your beef well: it’s not against “evolution”… not “Darwinism”… but rather, “atheist/materialist evolution”. That’s what Christians take fault with – that is, the amalgam of scientific theory and atheist philosophy that turns “science” into “theology”.

If you want to tilt at that, well… have at it. On the other hand, if you want to claim that you’re arguing against Darwinism, well… have fun tilting at that windmill. It ain’t the dragon that you make it out to be…
 
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rossum said:
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Gorgias:
that is, the amalgam of scientific theory and atheist philosophy that turns “science” into “theology”.
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s/theology/atheology ? 😀
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u

I’ll stick with it as I wrote it. An empty set is still governed by set theory, after all, isn’t it?

Just because the particular theology is “no God created the universe” doesn’t change it from being a theology, with theological assertions… 😉
 
As marketed here, it is the whole story. The ONLY story and you better believe it or you’ll be called names - some not so subtle. Science is not the whole story??? That’s secular blasphemy.
 
I think I’ll copy this entire thread so I can stop typing the same answers every time a new thread on this subject comes up. Which covers years. Years. No converts yet.
 
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I’ll likely be reading this again the next time this subject is brought up. There are no two right answers here.
 
Techno2000 said:
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Gorgias:
It ain’t the dragon that you make it out to be…
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Ever hear of the "Darwin Awards "this whole idea is completely saturated in today’s culture.
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The ‘Darwin Awards’ have nothing to do with the claim that there is no universe-creator-God. They’re merely a snide way of pointing out stupid, life-ending actions that people have taken (i.e., acts that, by their very nature, scream out that they aren’t the ‘fittest’ in the “survival of the fittist”).

Darwin’s theory of evolution isn’t the ‘adversary’ here. 😉
 
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