Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

[Aloysium]

1 + 1 = 2, 2 - 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, 2 - 2 = 0, 2 - 1 = 1, 1 - 2 = -1, 0 - 2 = -2

completely circular; which ever way one says it, it’s the same thing; that’s the way it is; it either has meaning or it doesn’t.

 

[niceatheist]

1 + 1 = 2, 2 - 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, 2 - 2 = 0, 2 - 1 = 1, 1 - 2 = -1, 0 - 2 = -2

completely circular; which ever way one says it, it’s the same thing; that’s the way it is; it either has meaning or it doesn’t.

How is Common Descent circular? It makes a specific set of predictions; and those predictions either end up being confirmed or falsified. That’s the exact opposite of circular.

 

[edwest211]

Based on all the posts here and other threads like it, the goal is to get Catholics who don’t accept purely materialistic evolution which is contrary to the faith. So, to all Catholics reading: this is all about accepting materialistic causes without God. God which means nothing.

Be aware, the Biology textbook version of evolution is inadequate and unacceptable as is. So, don’t be fooled or misled. Evolution has no scientific usefulness. It is also unnecessary for the average person to know. For Catholics, you should know the theory can’t be verified.

 

[niceatheist]

Based on all the posts here and other threads like it, the goal is to get Catholics who don’t accept purely materialistic evolution which is contrary to the faith. So, to all Catholics reading: this is all about accepting materialistic causes without God. God which means nothing.

How is that my goal? I’ve never said evolution somehow disproves God. In fact, I’ve said the exact opposite.

Be aware, the Biology textbook version of evolution is inadequate and unacceptable as is. So, don’t be fooled or misled. Evolution has no scientific usefulness. It is also unnecessary for the average person to know. For Catholics, you should know the theory can’t be verified.

Evolution is used every day. It’s critical in epidemiology, for instance. Perhaps you just don’t really understand it enough to make these sorts of grand proclamations.

 

[edwest211]

Oh, I understand it well enough thanks to the kindness of many here over the years. It has no practical scientific value at all. As far as I can tell, it is a belief system. I’m not accusing anyone in particular. This subject has come up in the past and always ends up making the same statements - with slightly different wording in some cases.

 

[niceatheist]

If you understands it, how can you say it has no application? For instance, it explains bacteria evolving resistance to bacteria, and statistical methods can even be used to predict how quickly that can happen.

I’d suggest you don’t actually understand it at all

 

[niceatheist]

Oh, and need I mention the single most important application of evolution, that people have been using for thousands of years, long before they even understood evolution at all; selective breeding. The only difference between artificial and natural selection is that the environmental pressures being put on a population are being applied by humans, to the point where populations have been bred with traits that would be positively deleterious in a natural setting; like breeds of dog that don’t shed. But the genes involved have no way of knowing it’s a farmer that is selectively breeding for traits or a natural environment.

 

[Aloysium]

How is Common Descent circular? It makes a specific set of predictions; and those predictions either end up being confirmed or falsified. That’s the exact opposite of circular.

My post to which you responded had nothing to do with common descent and everything to do with God. My initial post was in response to yours claiming that common descent had been confirmed. I addressed the matter as a way in to address two issues. The first would be that there is not only one way to determine what is the data nor only one way in which it can be interpreted. I offered an alternative view which you disagree with or perhaps misunderstood. The second aim was the main one, to get the reader to think outside the box of condition views propagated by modern society, which are ultimately illusory. This isn’t to say they are delusions, but they are mistaken, distortions of what really is all around us. The truth is living and tangible, accessible to all who seek. The main point of everything I have written is about God. I naturally responded as I did since I could care not much less about theories involving common descent or otherwise, and believing you were referencing God, especially given that you are an atheist.

Reality is such that we see what we want. This is especially true in the sciences where materialism has taken hold. If you don’t see the circularity of approaching reality as if it is purely material and then confirming to you are correct because all you find is matter, well there’s not much I can say to dissuade you of that view.

It is very interesting that the focus has been on something totally unimportant to what I had intended, mentioned only to find some common ground, to elicit some curiosity about what is outside the box, and ultimately to bridge the chasm that exists between people. Even the self-proclaimed Buddhist got stuck on the same point. Very, very interesting.

This is a Catholic site; you are going to hear about God until you surrender to His grace. And, then you will be lapping it up; you won’t get enough.

 

[Jamie5]

DAWKINS: Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God’s existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection. Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it.

COLLINS: I don’t see that Professor Dawkins’ basic account of evolution is incompatible with God’s having designed it.

TIME: When would this have occurred?

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

DAWKINS: I think that’s a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.

COLLINS: Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don’t think that it is God’s purpose to make his intention absolutely obvious to us. If it suits him to be a deity that we must seek without being forced to, would it not have been sensible for him to use the mechanism of evolution without posting obvious road signs to reveal his role in creation?

 

[niceatheist]

Reality is such that we see what we want. This is especially true in the sciences where materialism has taken hold. If you don’t see the circularity of approaching reality as if it is purely material and then confirming to you are correct because all you find is matter, well there’s not much I can say to dissuade you of that view.

Science, properly speaking, is methodological naturalism. How could it function any other way? Can you actually count the number of angels that sit on the head of a pin?

Science deals in the material world. That’s it’s function. It’s like complaining that a hammer makes a poor screwdriver.

 

[Aloysium]

Cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, the amount of melanin in the skin, child onset diabetes mellitus, resistance to tuberculosis or small pox, a person’s height, the shape of the face, these are among the million or so traits that are inherited. They have nothing to do with the creation of mankind. They are traits that are genetically passed on as the individual person is brought into existence, the soul incorporating matter including the DNA it has been given, in its formation.

 

[Glark]

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.

You’re comparing snowflakes and crystals to a living organism? I don’t think that’s a good idea. The former don’t even perform any functions; they just sit around and look pretty. A living organism is a complex machine that must - for starters - find food and reproduce. They must also perform Lord-knows-how-many other very complex internal functions that are all interdependent and must all work in unison.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam must be your family motto.

This is a bit below the belt. You can criticise me, but kindly leave my family out of it.

 

[Glark]

That’s all very well and good, but it doesn’t explain why God would 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 six days of creation were literal days.

 

[niceatheist]

Cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, the amount of melanin in the skin, child onset diabetes mellitus, resistance to tuberculosis or small pox, a person’s height, the shape of the face, these are among the million or so traits that are inherited. They have nothing to do with the creation of mankind. They are traits that are genetically passed on as the individual person is brought into existence, the soul incorporating matter including the DNA it has been given, in its formation.

The simplest definition of evolution is “the genetic makeup of a population changes over time”. You are aware that in any species, traits will tend to change over time. That is evolution.

 

[Rau]

DAWKINS: Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God’s existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer.

Is that the reason people believed? News to me.

 

[Glark]

How does Common Descent in any way say anything about God’s existence or involvement?

No. But that’s not the point, which is that atheists start off with the assumption that life evolved from single cells. This belief in Common Descent isn’t dependant on Darwinsm; it’s taken for granted - a fact, in fact.

Early mammals like all other mammals. You understand that the theories on mammal evolution state that mammals evolved from reptile or reptile-like animals (hence the platypus’s egg laying).

There are over 5,000 species of mammals that supposedly evolved from reptiles, but only two of them “still” lay eggs?

Which ancestor of the playpus had a bill like a duck?

 

[edwest211]

No. I worked in a hospital for nearly 10 years. Bacteria and viruses have built-in, pre-existing, mechanisms for dealing with harmful substances. Through horizontal gene transfer, they can exchange gene fragments with other bacteria until the right combination is found to prevent them from dying. In the case of viruses, they can change, through a built-in mechanism, their outer protein coat. And drug discovery is entirely trial and error. Hundreds of small containers with a sample of the illness causing material are exposed to many different chemical combinations. Then they are scanned for results. That’s why drug development is so expensive. So, X number of sample chemical combinations did nothing to harm the sample, a number did a little harm, and a number did a lot of harm or killed the sample. Now, the problem becomes, how will it affect a living animal that has the disease? They don’t know. If the trials on animals for X number of chemicals kill the animal and the disease, that group is out. If the disease is harmed but the animal experiences too many harmful side effects, then that group is out. Only the remaining chemicals that produced the least number of harmful side effects are candidates. And even after a drug is approved and it works, on TV, they will tell you the list of possible side effects which, in all cases, sound worse than the cure! Would I ask my doctor about that drug? No. Of course not. But there it is, if you’re willing to take a chance on not getting the worst side effects. There is no guide - no cookbook - no predictive manual.

 

[niceatheist]

That’s all very well and good, but it doesn’t explain why God would 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 six days of creation were literal days.

That’s your problem. You choose to interpret Genesis literally, it conflicts with absolutely everything we’ve learned about the natural world over the last 250 years, and yet you seem to want the entire scientific community to abandon a whole series of well-tested theories in favor of what amounts to your own private interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis.

 

[niceatheist]

No. I worked in a hospital for nearly 10 years. Bacteria and viruses have built-in, pre-existing, mechanisms for dealing with harmful substances.

Yes, it’s called mutation.

Through horizontal gene transfer, they can exchange gene fragments with other bacteria until the right combination is found to prevent them from dying. In the case of viruses, they can change, through a built-in mechanism, their outer protein coat. And drug discovery is entirely trial and error. Hundreds of small containers with a sample of the illness causing material are exposed to many different chemical combinations. Then they are scanned for results. That’s why drug development is so expensive. So, X number of sample chemical combinations did nothing to harm the sample, a number did a little harm, and a number did a lot of harm or killed the sample. Now, the problem becomes, how will it affect a living animal that has the disease? They don’t know. If the trials on animals for X number of chemicals kill the animal and the disease, that group is out. If the disease is harmed but the animal experiences too many harmful side effects, then that group is out. Only the remaining chemicals that produced the least number of harmful side effects are candidates. And even after a drug is approved and it works, on TV, they will tell you the list of possible side effects which, in all cases, sound worse than the cure! Would I ask my doctor about that drug? No. Of course not. But there it is, if you’re willing to take a chance on not getting the worst side effects. There is no guide - no cookbook - no predictive manual.

So in other words, evolution.

And no, working in a hospital does not in even the tiniest way make you an authority on biology.

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

How does Common Descent in any way say anything about God’s existence or involvement?

No. But that’s not the point, which is that atheists start off with the assumption that life evolved from single cells. This belief in Common Descent isn’t dependant on Darwinsm; it’s taken for granted - a fact, in fact.

Because every observation we have so far shows there was a LUCA. This has absolutely nothing to with God or atheism.

Early mammals like all other mammals. You understand that the theories on mammal evolution state that mammals evolved from reptile or reptile-like animals (hence the platypus’s egg laying).

There are over 5,000 species of mammals that supposedly evolved from reptiles, but only two of them “still” lay eggs?

Which ancestor of the playpus had a bill like a duck?

The bill of a platypus has virtually nothing in common with a bird’s beak (of which a duck’s bill is simply a specialized form). Perhaps you should learn a little about platypus physiology before you make any more silly statements.