Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

[Aloysium]

It has to do more with survival of the “fittingest”; i.e. how well, how efficiently an organism participates in its environment. We carry our environment with us, when we go into space, or underwater, or when we clothe ourselves, for that matter. One way to look at life on earth is as an ongoing transformation of the environment, the air, the earth, the water, bacteria, plants, and animals. We are in there too, part of it all, yet something apart.

The idea of “fittest” seemed to always be related to social Darwinism. As the divine right of Kings lost ground, a new natural order had to be determined; they were naturally superior, being royalty, and being the fittest, it made them naturally royal. But, as monarchies fell, and the rich took over. The view would be that their ability to make/take more money from society, attested their fitness; this in turn, entitled them to their power. Something like that, anyway.

Karma, as I understand it, is like justice, the result of our existing in a moral universe where every action has a moral consequence. This is because the Ground of existence is Love. Where an act strays from the good, it is evil. Free will is the means by which we participate in the creation of our eternal soul. The more evil we do, the farther we drift from God. The rewards and pleasures of this temporal world are all fleeting. Clinging to them can only result in suffering. Suffering happens as a consequence of original sin, but through and in Jesus Christ, all of us have the capacity to transcend it. That’s how the reality behind the concept of karma really works. Now, there are many people of every religious affiliation who fall for propserity theology. But, heaven is a state of love, so it’s in giving of oneself for the good of the other that one achieves happiness. It has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

[jcm2017]

Somehow you mistook the meaning of my post?

 

[rossum]

So, they got this information from the immaterial entities by way of interior locution ?

The same way God’s prophets got their information. Do you have a problem with that?

rossum

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

So, they got this information from the immaterial entities by way of interior locution ?

The same way God’s prophets got their information. Do you have a problem with that?

rossum

No…as long as it didn’t come from a Demon.

 

[Bradskii]

Oh, you mean I should be like a gullible, clueless child?

You have the tense wrong,

 

[HarryStotle]

Somehow you mistook the meaning of my post?

Actually, I don’t think I did.

I suspect you may not understand the meaning of literal.

Literal, doesn’t necessarily or only mean reading into the text the most simplistic possible meaning. It means to decipher what the author intended to mean by attempting to take the words at face value first, but also moving beyond that if the author may not have or could not possibly have intended to imply what you suppose they did.

I’m referring to the dome described in Genesis.
Since you are espousing a rigidly literal translation of scripture, you must believe there is a dome up there.
Do you?

What the author of Genesis meant by “dome” may not mean precisely what you mean by dome. You could very well be reading into the text a meaning of dome that was never intended to be the one in use by the author. He may have literally meant something quite different from what you have taken dome to mean depending upon a number of factors. How was “dome” used when Genesis was composed or orally transmitted? I suspect the author didn’t mean precisely what you have taken it to mean, which puts the idea of “literal” beyond what you mean by rigidly literal. I.e., what you have in mind by using the word “dome” is very likely not what the author intended. So the author may have “literally” had something different in mind EVEN IF he intended his words to have been taken literally, even rigidly so.

For one thing, domes, as structures, never existed until Roman times, so it isn’t clear that ancient peoples could conceive of dome in the structural sense that comes immediately to mind for moderns.

 

[rossum]

For one thing, domes, as structures, never existed until Roman times, so it isn’t clear that ancient peoples could conceive of dome in the structural sense that comes immediately to mind for moderns.

Do not read too much into the translation “dome”. I have seen “vault” or “arch” used to describe the heavens/night sky as well, and there were certainly pre-Roman vaults and arches in the ancient world.

The author of Job thought that the dome/vault/arch was solid, like metal:

“can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?” – Job 37:18

A solid hemisphere over the earth was the standard ANE cosmology of the time, seen in Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian texts.

rossum

 

[Glark]

Here’s God, actually defining what “one day” is: “). And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5

Actually, this definition is missing the first part. It should be “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light … And there was evening and there was morning, one day” - Genesis 1:3-5.

 

[Glark]

Second, the smallest number of mutations I am aware of that has cause macroevolution, i.e. a new species, is three. See Tauber and Tauber (1977) Sympatric Speciation Based on Allelic Changes at Three Loci: Evidence from Natural Populations in Two Habitats.

Three mutations can be enough to cause macroevolution, a new species.

And how does this relate to the theory that all life on earth evolved from unicellular organisms?

 

[Glark]

So, that must mean that the laws of Karma and rebirth come from nothing.

No. It means the laws of karma and rebirth came from human imagination.

 

[Glark]

For the same reason most European representations of Jesus look white European and not Middle-Eastern Jewish. It says more about the ethnicity of the artists than of the appearance of the entities.

“Bishop” Spong and the Episcopal Church like to think Jesus was a black woman.

 

[Glark]

So, God’s evening and morning would not mean what immediately comes to mind,

God doesn’t need the Sun to provide light - as is evident in Gen 1:3 ("… and there was light"). Jewish scholars generally regarded the definition of “one day” in Gen 1:3-5 as 24 hours, even though the Sun wasn’t created until Day 4. And notice how the first day is not called “the first day”, but “one day” - this is different to the remaining days, which are referred to as “the second day … the third day … the sixth day”.

Why would God directly compare six literal days of human work to the six days of creation (Exodus 20:11) if he didn’t want us to believe that the length of the six days of creation were literally 24 hours each?

 

[Aloysium]

You can believe what you want.
It doesn’t matter to your salvation.
God created light first because everything is made of light.
It’s the primordial material substance.
In creating subatomic particles, God used light.
The formation of the sun happened after atoms were created and then formed the sun.
That we are created in His image does not mean we are identical to Him.
He worked six of His days straight; we should do our share in accordance with our place in the universe.
Again, that’s how I see it, you see it different.
The Church says it doesn’t matter, and that makes sense to me.

 

[Glark]

Here is something I don’t understand: If an atheist were walking along the beach and came across his name written in the sand, he would not conclude that is was the result of a fluke of nature. He would instead conclude that it was the result of intelligent design (to wit: a human being). But when it comes an infinitely more complex feat that writing a name in the sand - namely putting together even the simplest living organism - an atheist will claim is wasn’t the result of intelligent design, but the result of a fluke of nature!

What can account for this strange reversal of logic? To make things even more bizarre, the atheist will also claim that his back-to-front reasoning is “scientific”.

 

[Techno2000]

namely putting together even the simplest living organism - an atheist will claim is wasn’t the result of intelligent design, but the result of a fluke of nature!

Maybe Brahma did it?

 

[Glark]

If human animals evolved and then God came down and injected one them - Adam - with Soul Juice, what happened to the all those other non-soul humans?

 

[Bradskii]

But when it comes an infinitely more complex feat that writing a name in the sand - namely A SNOWFLAKE - an atheist will claim is wasn’t the result of intelligent design, but the result of a fluke of nature!

Ipso facto, all snowflakes are designed. I would have thought that rather than God designing individual snowflakes, He would have set up some sort of system so that they formed…what’s the word I’m looking for…? Ah yes. Naturally.

But then, maybe you have a good understanding of how crystals form so you’ll accept that snow is natural. As opposed to evolution where it appears you have no idea at all. Argumentum ad ignorantiam must be your family motto.

 

[Techno2000]

As opposed to evolution where it appears you have no idea at all.

Here we go again…but you can never tell us exactly how it works …can you?

Argumentum ad ignorantiam

Oh please how pretentious.

 

[Bradskii]

Here we go again…but you can never tell us exactly how that works …can you?

On the contrary. I would gladly give my time up to anyone who wanted to understand evolution. I can list all the books that you would need to read (that I already have). I could link to all the Youtube videos that you would need to watch (which I already have). I could give you dozens of web pages that cover all aspects of evolution right from basic principles to the more esoteric matters such as molecular biology (which I have read). I could also give you all the arguments against evolution that really need to be answered. And I can give you all the answers.

But really, you have to ask yourself how much time you would spend trying to teach someone about a matter that they were not the slightest bit interested in learning. And had in fact, with no real knowledge of the matter at hand, had already that decided that information about which they show every indication of being in ignorance, was wrong.

That’s the bit that has me shaking my head reading threads like this. The arguments from ignorance (maybe you skipped Latin so it might sound less pretentious in English).

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

Here we go again…but you can never tell us exactly how that works …can you?

On the contrary. I would gladly give my time up to anyone who wanted to understand evolution. I can list all the books that you would need to read (that I already have). I could link to all the Youtube videos that you would need to watch (which I already have). I could give you dozens of web pages that cover all aspects of evolution right from basic principles to the more esoteric matters such as molecular biology (which I have read). I could also give you all the arguments against evolution that really need to be answered. And I can give you all the answers.

But really, you have to ask yourself how much time you would spend trying to teach someone about a matter that they were not the slightest bit interested in learning. And had in fact, with no real knowledge of the matter at hand, had already that decided that information about which they show every indication of being in ignorance, was wrong.

That’s the bit that has me shaking my head reading threads like this. The arguments from ignorance (maybe you skipped Latin so it might sound less pretentious in English).

How do you get something, from nothing ?