Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

[Rau]

So, why aren’t we being instructed about quantum entanglement or dark matter? Why the focus on Biology? Not just this thread but a lot in the past. Why?

Who is we? Biology in the last 2 years of high school is not a required subject where I live. Nor is physics. Quantum entanglement and dark matter are hugely popular in “popular science” books and tv programs - far more so than evolution. You are seeing evolutionary science as a bogey man because you think it is inherently opposed to God. It is not. The speculation of certain scientists may oppose God.

Fact: In science it doesn’t matter if a religious or nonreligious person discovers something. And because that is a fact, why are people constantly bringing this up to us? Why?

Why is there SO MUCH sport on TV?

Fact: Evolution has no practical purpose. You will be able to live your life - unchanged - whether you believe it or not.

I could have lived my whole life happily if I’d never heard of quantum entanglement or trilobites.

Fact: This is about getting 100% acceptance. Why? To convince everyone that ONLY natural, non-God forces created all living things. Especially Christians.

You think Christians are now persuaded God has nothing to do with creation of us? I’m not sure why you think anyone cares about our faith in God, but the next step will be for you to flesh out the conspiracy led by scientists in brilliantly pursuing a fraud on the world.

 

[Glark]

Sponges are alive today, and it is easy to find out what they eat.

Er, aren’t you a tad out of touch here? There are sponges that have evolved to not need to eat anything at all. They are so common you can buy them at any supermarket.

 

[Rau]

It is useful for undermining the authority of Scripture, sowing doubts in the minds of believers, and for promoting atheism.

The beginnings of the conspiracy theory…

 

[Glark]

You think Christians are now persuaded God has nothing to do with creation of us? I’m not sure why you think anyone cares about our faith in God, but the next step will be for you to flesh out the conspiracy led by scientists in brilliantly pursuing a fraud on the world.

I imagine there a quite a few potential Christians who have been convinced that evolution proves the God the Bible is a myth. The delusion of evolution also opens the door to the potential for the existence of “aliens”, a delusion which takes a person even further away from Christian faith (even Dawkins considers ETs to be a seriously possibility).

Evolution also weakens the faith of many Christians, as it undermines the authority of Scripture and introduces doubts. It also produces faulty, confused teachings - for example, Cardinal Pell goes around telling people that Adam and Eve are “terms” and were not real people, which is a blatant contradiction of Humani Generis. Pope Frances goes around telling people that God “is not a magician” - in other words, He is not omnipotent.

 

[Glark]

The beginnings of the conspiracy theory…

So what? A diabolical conspiracy is mentioned in 2Thess 2 - are you saying it is nonsense simply because it is a conspiracy?

 

[Rau]

Evolution also weakens the faith of many Christians, as it undermines the authority of Scripture and introduces doubts.

OMG - so do so many attractions of this earthly world. Should they all be banned?

 

[Rau]

So what? A diabolical conspiracy is mentioned in 2Thess 2 - are you saying it is nonsense simply because it is a conspiracy?

Because there is no evidence. And because I judge it beyond the capacity of those involved to pursue a conspiracy of the scale involved, over the duration involved.

 

[Rau]

Er, aren’t you a tad out of touch here? There are sponges that have evolved to not need to eat anything at all. They are so common you can buy them at any supermarket.

Sounds like you reached the end of your knowledge and have capitulated.

 

[Glark]

Have you heard of “random mutation”. Mutations can be useful or not when they appear. They may, or may not become useful later. Some humans have mutations that partially protect against AIDS. Those mutations were not useful when they appeared. They are useful now.

Random mutations are random.

The ice core bacteria suggest that mutations go round and round like a merry-go-round … there is change and motion, but the whole thing doesn’t actually go anywhere. In other words, bacteria can go through a merry-go-round of mutations for billlions of years, but they will still be the same bacteria that haven’t advanced one iota up Darwin’s mythical Tree of Life.

 

[Glark]

There is a lot of time not shown to the right.

Vast time is evolution’s magical panacea - just wave the magic wand of billlions of years and anything becomes possible.

 

[Glark]

Both ants and wasps were around a long time before pollen. The arrival of pollen opened a new ecological niche, and some wasps evolved to fill that niche and exploit the new food source.

“It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.” (Colin Patterson, in a letter written to Luther Sunderland, 1979)

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

I finish reading the link you gave me, at least it was honest when it used words like may and possibility.:

Yes it does. That is the way science works. If something is 100%, then science says is and must. If it is 99% or less, then it says may and possibly. Look at the referenced papers to find the actual percentages, together with their margins of error.

If you are claiming 100% for your views, then you are going to have to show evidential support for that number, and a zero margin of error.

So, Eukaryotes out of the blue, just morphed into sponges, and also what did the sponges eat?

What part of the word random in “random mutations” do you have a problem with?

Sponges are alive today, and it is easy to find out what they eat. Hint: unicellular organisms were around long before sponges. Was that really so difficult to work out?

rossum

So they ate unicellular organisms that can only be seen through a microscope.They might as well be eating air, sponges eat real food …Plankton.

 

[rossum]

Unless a lung system is 100% intact, it is useless, so a partially-evolved lung system wouldn’t confer any survival advantage.

Your sources’ ignorance of biology is showing. Lungfish and some amphibians have both lungs and gills. Initially the lungs only needed to be good enough to supplement the gills is situations like stagnant water, where the oxygen content of the water was low and there was an advantage to getting a little extra oxygen from the air as well.

You are looking at a big cliff and saying “that is impossible to climb”. You are missing the gently sloping path round the back of the cliff which takes a longer roundabout way, but still gets to the top.

rossum

 

[rossum]

“It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.” (Colin Patterson, in a letter written to Luther Sunderland, 1979)

I too can quote Dr. Patterson:

“In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil ‘missing links’, such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . .”

Patterson, “Evolution” p131-133

Do you accept what Dr. Patterson is saying there? Do you not trust what your own quoted source is saying?

rossum

 

[rossum]

So they ate unicellular organisms that can only be seen through a microscope.They might as well be eating air, sponges eat real food …Plankton.

Have a look at what organisms constitute Plankton. There are a number of unicellular organisms, algae, bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes included in plankton. Early sponges ate early plankton, just as modern sponges eat modern plankton. Just because we cannot see a single cell without a microscope, does not mean that a sponge won’t be able to eat it.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

Glark:

It is useful for undermining the authority of Scripture, sowing doubts in the minds of believers, and for promoting atheism.

The beginnings of the conspiracy theory…

The problem with interpreting what people are asserting as a pathological diagnosis of paranoia is that it avoids addressing what they are saying, discounting the argument and calling it absurd.

Some vocal promoters of Atheism do actually come together to go against the Church, its teachings and what is ultimately the living Truth. There are also a number of well-frequented atheist sites that provide arguments and information to combat evangelization. That sounds like a conspiracy in broad terms.

I don’t know if you ever attended political science or women’s study university classes; I didn’t but I know many people who did. I don’t think things have changed. My impression has been that they were used for indoctrination purposes. People came out of them with a heightened “consciousness”, which does not equate with greater compassion. They were transformed, seeing and interpreting the world in a new powerful way, many trying to change society to suit that vision. I’m not arguing as to the correctness, whatever that might mean, of those views, nor the benefits and harm that has resulted as a consequence, both of which I believe there have been many. But, that same process is happening in biology classes, as well as philosophy from what I have read, at every level. It’s been my observation that people who have a love for life, inspired by a sense of wonder, either give up because if anything, school sterilizes and robs them of that connection, or they keep it to themselves. Conspiracy or education - I suppose it depends on which side one agrees with.

I don’t know if you are Catholic, or Christian for that matter. I can understand if you are atheist or deist, and merely trying to shore up another argument against God. It’s a personal question to which I don’t want a reply, but you might want to ask yourself, especially if you are Catholic, why it matters to you what others think when the Church has clearly stated that the faithful can believe what makes sense to them, within the limits of its teachings on creation. Their salvation is not at stake, that of atheists posting here may be.

 

[Techno2000]

Early sponges ate early plankton

But, they are a much more advanced life form and according the theory would have had to evolve (from God knows what) millions of years after the sponges. There’s no way sponges could live off something that can only be seen in a microscope.

Plankton… real food, for real sponges :

 

[rossum]

But, they are a much more advanced life form

Your lying sources are lying to you, again. Plankton includes many unicellular organisms, whose ancestors existed a long time before sponges.

There’s no way sponges could live off something that can only be seen in a microscope.

False. Your lying sources are lying to you, again. They need to learn how sponges feed.

Remember, sponges live attached to the seafloor. Because they are attached, they are called sessile. In order obtain food, sponges pass water through their bodies in a process known as filter-feeding. Water is drawn into the sponge through tiny holes called incurrent pores. Sponges create the current that draws water into the pores using many collar cells, each cell with a whip-like structure called a flagellum and a collar. The collar cells line the channels and chambers found inside the sponge and by waving their flagella back and forth in unison, they create a current that draws the water into the sponge. The collar cells are specialized for carrying out this function of creating a current.

Water exits through larger pores called excurrent pores. As it passes through the channels and chambers inside the sponge, bacteria and tiny particles are taken up from the water as food. The circulating seawater contains oxygen that passes into the sponge cells by simple diffusion. Waste products like carbon dioxide gas and nitrogen and ammonia exit with the water leaving the sponge. Although other animals at the reef are said to filter-feed, the method used by sponges is unique to this simple group of animals. In fact, sponges are named because of the many pores covering their bodies. They belong to the Phylum Porifera and may be called poriferans.

Source: Filter-Feeding in Reef Sponges

Your questions are only showing the ignorance or falsity of your sources. You need to find better sources.

 

[Techno2000]

The source is me.

 

[rossum]

The source is me.

Then you need to learn more about the subject before you spout off about things you do not know. “An intelligent mind acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” - Proverbs 18:15.

rossum