Does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Catholicsm?

[Goya]

1. Sungenis is not an actual authority;
2. You do understand what ‘spontaneous’ means, no?

Now, although he’s not an actual Church authority, he is correct in so far as anyone who maintains that the beginning was ‘spontaneous’–thereby denies an extrinsic first principal–or God.

However, accepting or subscribing to some principles of the Theory of Evolution, does not require that one subscribe to and accept the TOE in its entirety; nor does it require that one thereby subscribe to the notion of everything beginning…spontaneously–and it most certainly does not require the denial of higher intelligence, let alone an omnipotent God.

Some aspects seem rather compelling–like eyes and brains–fish, lizards, monkeys and man, all have 'em (and of course, countless other species)…

Some aspects, leave glaring gaps–like evidence of a species of organism…evolving into another type of organism.

As I suggested above however–the discussion begins with acknowledging superior intelligence at play. If someone can’t meet me that far, then they must, out of necessity (process of deduction) attribute EVERYTHING EVER, to dumb luck.

 

[edwest211]

Bees or Pollen? Which came first?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221300256X

 

[Goya]

The first single celled organism, let’s assume, needed a way to convert light or chemicals into food/energy. So, chemicals contained in a lipid bubble means it can’t do anything. It has no conversion machinery. It has no reproduction machinery. To put it another way, it has no functionality.

…begging the question, to what end, and for what purpose, would any substance need “functionality” at all?

Why?

If it’s all dumb luck happenstance…what the heck did anything require ‘functionality’ for to begin with?

What prompted inanimate matter to assemble, and engage in activity at all, if there was no intelligence in their design? No rhyme, reason or purpose?

Just…happenstance?

So again, negating intelligence in the design at even the simplest levels, presupposes that everything fell into place accidentally, and continued to conveniently, accidentally, “fall into place”, forming ever more complex and sophisticated designs…accidentally.

Talk about faith…

One must have extraordinary faith to believe in such accidental convenience.

 

[edwest211]

Yes. If I dropped all the parts of a bicycle into an ocean, the assumption is that tidal forces, maybe even fish, nudged all the parts together and made them fit. Not likely. And what would it be good for if this could happen? Nothing. Yes, I know, it is not a collection of chemicals that came to order themselves for some unplanned function, but it is a close enough example.

 

[rossum]

I’ll state my take on the matter very succinctly to simply state that anyone who denies intelligence in the creation of our world, while championing evolution, champions the ultimate self-contradiction in pretending the latter could even exist at all, let alone perpetuate itself infinitely, absent the former.

Evolution says nothing at all about “the creation of our world”. That is cosmology, a completely different subject and nothing to do with evolution. Darwin’s book was “On the Origin of Species”, not “On the Origin of the Universe, Life and Species”. It is an error to attempt to extend evolution to cover things that it was never intended to explain.

As to the presence of intelligence. I will just note that you have no explanation for the origin of intelligence. You merely assume its prior existence. Abiogenesis and evolution are less complex, they do not assume the prior existence of intelligence; all they assume is the prior existence of the solar system and of chemistry.

rossum

 

[Glark]

In Genesis 1. “Let there be light…” is God creating light directly using a direct method. “Let the earth bring forth…” and “Let the waters bring forth…” are God creating indirectly, through the intermediates of the waters and the earth. He does not say, “Let there be fish,” which would be direct creation.

I take your point, but to read billions of years of evolution into these verses is a real stretch. Eve was created more “indirectly” than any other creature - she was formed from Adam’s rib, but it was done in an instant - in other words, “indirect” doesn’t imply a slow, gradual process.

The Pope thinks that God is omnipotent.

You could have fooled me. Pope Francis said "“When we read the account of Creation in Genesis we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all powerful magic wand. But that was not so. He created beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws with which He endowed each one, that they might develop, and reach their fullness.”

He seems to be saying that when it came to creating man, since God is not “all powerful” he had no choice but to rely on the secondary cause of billions of years of evolution - therefore God is not omnipotent.

I have quoted Genesis, showing God’s use of both direct and indirect methods. God created the world, so by studying the world scientists are studying the work of God. By denying the evidence of the world God created, you are denying that the work of God is true and not misleading.

In that case, God is denying his own work in his own Bible - instead of describing billions of years of evolution, he comes up with a fairy take about “six days” of creation. There is not the slightest little hint of billions of years of evolution in the Scriptures.
Indeed, the Bible describes human beings devolving genetically - some early humans lived for more than 900 years, but their life spans reduced to “three score and ten”. (Dr. John Sanford wrote a book called Genetic Entropy, which describes how human beings are accumulating more genetic defects as time advances. I should think this is hardly “evolution”!)

 

[Rau]

He seems to be saying that when it came to creating man, since God is not “all powerful” he had no choice but to rely on the secondary cause of billions of years of evolution - therefore God is not omnipotent.

Not how I read it. The magic wand is not in debate - Christ rose from the dead. The wand works. The Pope is referring to his view on how God chose to create; he’s not now proposing there’s no wand - that there is is a given. [And it is kind of absurd to postulate that the Pope would be preaching God lacks abilities…)]

 

[Glark]

“Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.”

This sentence from Humani Generis sums up the entire raison d’être of the theory of evolution - to provide a “scientific” excuse to get rid of the Creator.

 

[Glark]

The magic wand is not in debate - Christ rose from the dead. The wand works.

Exactly … which makes it all the more absurd to suggest that God can’t create instantly, but needs to rely on billions of years of evolution.

 

[Glark]

That’s kinda like growing a Monster from your own body… only to have it eat you. And still that is only food source 3. it would have to keep mutating and eat itself… but how long could this go on ?

You seem to be having trouble grasping the concept of a creature eating its own flesh.

 

[Glark]

Took a quick look at the Kolbe site, in particular the article on theistic evolution. It’s a big stretch to say such views are Albigensian.

I agree, but that article was written by a sixteen year-old. Still, the article wasn’t worthy of publication and was not up to their usual standard.

 

[Glark]

Ribozymes? I honestly don’t think so.

“Ribozymes are RNA molecules that are capable of catalyzing specific biochemical reactions, similar to the action of protein enzymes.”

Ribozymes + Tooth Fairy sounds much more plausible.

 

[rossum]

You could have fooled me. Pope Francis said "“When we read the account of Creation in Genesis we risk imagining that God was a magician, complete with an all powerful magic wand. But that was not so. He created beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws with which He endowed each one, that they might develop, and reach their fullness.”

I think you are misinterpreting the Pope here. God could have used any one of a thousand different methods, being omnipotent gives Him a lot of different possible methods. However, God actually chose to use only one of those many methods. The Pope is talking about the method God did choose, not the 999 methods He did not choose.

In that case, God is denying his own work in his own Bible

No, He is denying your particular interpretation of the Bible. There are different interpretations of the Bible within the Catholic Church, and even more interpretations outside it. To ask “What does the Bible say about …” is to get a thousand different answers from a thousand different Christian groups, fifty of them Catholic.

The Bible can be interpreted in many different ways, so in many cases it is impossible to precisely determine what the Bible says. All we have are different interpretations of what the text means. Are the days in Genesis 24 hours long or does 2 Peter’s “a day is like a thousand years” apply to Genesis? Different Catholics and different Christians will give different answers.

rossum

 

[Rau]

which makes it all the more absurd to suggest that God can’t create instantly, but needs to rely on billions of years of evolution.

You distort what was said out of mischief I assume. To “choose” is not to be “compelled”. That you cannot imagine why God might choose something is of no note at all.

 

[Goya]

Evolution says nothing at all about “the creation of our world”. That is cosmology, a completely different subject and nothing to do with evolution. Darwin’s book was “On the Origin of Species”, not “On the Origin of the Universe, Life and Species”. It is an error to attempt to extend evolution to cover things that it was never intended to explain.

As to the presence of intelligence. I will just note that you have no explanation for the origin of intelligence. You merely assume its prior existence. Abiogenesis and evolution are less complex, they do not assume the prior existence of intelligence; all they assume is the prior existence of the solar system and of chemistry.

rossum

Correct, I make no assumptions as to the origin of intelligence–I only deduce that intelligence necessarily precedes evolution (and creation, but we’ll limit it for now, to evolution, since that’s what I said in my post, and what you seem to take exception with).

I simply deduce the obvious, and that is that the processes described as evolution, are the product of intelligence, and not happenstance, or self-perpetuating infinitely convenient accidents…

My Faith instructs me that the source of that intelligence, is God–but faith aside, it remains irrefutable, according to the most elementary of reasoning, that intelligence guided inanimate matter, to gather, assemble, organize, and become more and more complex, more sophisticated, and more efficient…over and over again, indefinitely moving ‘forward’…

The simplest of deductive reasoning, effectively rules out the occurrence of same, as being product of mere happenstance, or convenient accidents…

As for what evolution represents–if I take it a step further (to discuss God), it is simply to address those who have taken their observations of ‘evolution’, and inexplicably, ruled out intelligence (and by extension, God).

That is of course because, if they do so, they must, out of necessity (although they will never admit to it)–proclaim that the product of evolution, including evolution itself, came about…accidentally.

Sorry, but it is utterly, patently, non-sense, and deserves to be called out as such.

 

[Rau]

As for what evolution represents–if I take it a step further (to discuss God), it is simply to address those who have taken their observations of ‘evolution’, and inexplicably, ruled out intelligence (and by extension, God).

The presence of God acting in a manner we cannot necessarily understand or observe is not really the issue. Are our observations of evolutionary change able to distinguish it from what it appears to be - random changes subject to the ordering process of natural selection?

 

[rossum]

it remains irrefutable, according to the most elementary of reasoning, that intelligence guided inanimate matter, to gather, assemble, organize, and become more and more complex, more sophisticated, and more efficient…over and over again, indefinitely moving ‘forward’…

How complex is your guiding intelligence? You attempt to explain the origin of complex arrangements of inanimate matter by assuming the existence of an even more complex intelligence. That does not fly for me. In order to explain the existence of complexity you assume the existence of … complexity. That is not an explanation, it is assuming your conclusion. I can explain the origin of anything by assuming that it already exists.

You have not provided a satisfactory explanation here. How did the complexity implicit in your guiding intelligence originate?

Your proposal is eminently refutable. We can see that simple evolutionary processes can increase complexity. GATTACA is less complex than GATTACAGATCACA, and that is just a duplication mutation followed by a point mutation. Duplication mutations have been observed. Point mutations have been observed. Your assumption is refutable I’m afraid.

rossum

 

[Glark]

Another worthwhile site for Catholic anti-evolution articles is the Living Tradition index under rtforum.org (Roman Theological Forum).

The late Catholic intellectual, Paula Haigh, also had some interesting things to say about theistic evolution.

 

[Glark]

I think you are misinterpreting the Pope here. God could have used any one of a thousand different methods, being omnipotent gives Him a lot of different possible methods. However, God actually chose to use only one of those many methods. The Pope is talking about the method God did choose, not the 999 methods He did not choose.

I’m not disputing the fact that God can create via any means he wants to. My beef is what Pope Francis said re evolution.

Pope Francis said Almighty God does not have “an all powerful wand”. How is that not a declaration against God’s omnipotence?

Furthermore, in the same passage, the Pope also said “But that was not so. He created beings and he let them develop according to the internal laws …” Notice how he doesn’t say “He may have created beings” that way - no, he declares that God did in fact create beings that way, ie, via evolution. Not even evolutionary biologists claim that micro-man evolution is a fact, yet this Pope declares that it is!

 

[kinghenry17]

Brilliant point and this completely destroys the evolution bull. It is called an ecosystem and it needs life on the bottom and top. Crocs eat meat like zebras. Sharks eat meat. When will this evolution myth die already?