Does evolution disprove God?

[gama232]

That’s exactly right. God does not create using existing material but creates out of nothing. Jesus actually multiplied loaves and fishes.

 

[Freddy]

That’s exactly right. God does not create using existing material but creates out of nothing. Jesus actually multiplied loaves and fishes.

So you agree that God makes no decisions as to when a volcano may erupt? He knows it’s going to and it’s what He wants but He doesn’t actively cause it?

 

[rossum]

God does not create using existing material but creates out of nothing.

The Bible disagrees with you here. “Let the waters bring forth…” Water was an “existing material”. God did not make Adam from nothing, but took some existing material to fashion Adam’s body.

Some things that God created were not created ex nihilo.

 

[Vico]

Genesis 1 aside, does that fact that physical systems being able to naturally evolve and adapt on their own without any sort of intervention show that there is no need for a creator or a God? Further does the growing amount of evidence for abiogenesis also lend support to the idea that God is simply not needed for systems to arise and evolve?

The Holy Trinity is the author of life and all laws of Physics. Also, why imply that the Holy Trinity has no intervention? First Vatican Council (1869-70)

“God, in His providence watches over and governs all the things that He made, reaching from end to end with might and disposing all things with gentleness”

 

[IWantGod]

I take the word “natural” to mean a ‘no God involved’ process.

God allows secondary causes to exist, in other-words natural events. They exist because of God; so God is involved in their continued existence. The only difference is God is not designing events, design which you would have us believe is the same thing as divine providence. A natural event is were a nature is acting according to it’s nature and is not a puppet on a string so-to-speak. This doesn’t mean that secondary causes are not a part of God’s plan.

 

[IWantGod]

In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science.

And yet the Catholic perspective doesn’t say that random variation and natural selection is not happening. It doesn’t say that evolution is not a natural process. A guided process (something that hasn’t really been defined) cannot mean here that it is not a completely natural process, so it must mean something else.

 

[IWantGod]

Does evolution disprove God?

The only thing that natural evolution does is make the intelligent design argument redundant. You can no longer look to intelligent design as a rational basis for belief if you respect the theory of evolution.

So if you are looking for rational grounds for belief you may have to think a little bit harder, but what’s wrong with that.

 

[YHWH_Christ]

Would this undermine Aquinas’s fifth proof then?

 

[gama232]

The source material was created from nothing. And was used to create other things. A command from God like “Let the waters bring forth…” is a command from God. Everything shares in Creation.

 

[rossum]

Evolution does not describe the origin of the source material. Evolution looks at the details of “Let the waters bring forth…” and “Let the earth bring forth…” There is no disproof of God in evolution, despite what some claim.

 

[gama232]

Those phrases appear in no scientific paper. Evolution is used by some to disprove God.

 

[IWantGod]

Would this undermine Aquinas’s fifth proof then?

This is referred to as the teleological argument and it is a different kind of argument when compared with what is normally understood to be the intelligent design argument.

Normally the intelligent design argument argues that biological systems are far too complex to be the product of natural processes. Sometimes it’s William Paley’s watchmaker argument. These arguments share no similarity with the fifth way other than to say that an intelligence is the cause. Secondly the fifth way and the natural theory of evolution can both be true. One needn’t compromise one in favour of the other; one needn’t compromise science in favour of God.

 

[Freddy]

Those phrases appear in no scientific paper. Evolution is used by some to disprove God.

You know that it’s impossible to do that and you know that no-one in this forum has or is attempting doing that.

And do you agree that God makes no decisions as to when a volcano may erupt? He knows it’s going to and it’s what He wants but He doesn’t actively cause it?

 

[Dimmesdale]

This question may extend to other scientific theories. As such I think this quotation is applicable to answering your question:

“Science can’t “disprove God.” It isn’t capable of that. What it can do is offer alternative explanations which render traditional religious narratives at best questionable.”

 

[upant]

“Science can’t “disprove God.” It isn’t capable of that. What it can do is offer alternative explanations which render traditional religious narratives at best questionable.”

has science really offered an explanation for the creation of matter? something created matter, it didn’t create itself, it didn’t just pop into existence

 

[Dimmesdale]

has science really offered an explanation for the creation of matter? something created matter, it didn’t create itself, it didn’t just pop into existence

Maybe matter never popped into existence. Maybe it was always existing prior to time. Maybe “time” began and that “time” transformed matter into the changeable state it is now?

I do believe in a personal God, but I don’t see why matter has to be created.

 

[upant]

Maybe it was always existing prior to time. Maybe “time” began and that “time” transformed matter into the changeable state it is now?

IMHO, it is harder to believe that an inanimate object always was instead of something outside our universe creating it.

 

[Dimmesdale]

IMHO, it is harder to believe that an inanimate object always was instead of something outside our universe creating it.

Why? How is it less conceivable?

Well, I suppose if you consider that space didn’t exist, then maybe that matter could never have any room to exist in. But, maybe it could have existed in other string dimensions? Who knows?

There are times that I find it even harder to believe that God himself created something “out of nothing” - which seems to imply that it popped into existence in some sense.

 

[upant]

Well, I suppose if you consider that space didn’t exist, then maybe that matter could never have any room to exist in . But, maybe it could have existed in other string dimensions? Who knows?

I am talking a start from nothing as we know it., an another dimension doesn’t mean matter wasn’t created. science can’t answer how it was created so some will say it always was, but get upset when Christians say God always was,

if matter always was, why can’t God always be?

 

[Dimmesdale]

I am talking a start from nothing as we know it., an another dimension doesn’t mean matter wasn’t created. science can’t answer how it was created so some will say it always was, but get upset when Christians say God always was,

if matter always was, why can’t God always be?

Maybe matter was created. And maybe God always was. Actually, I do believe in an eternal God who always was. I think we need to look at all the possibilities, is all I’m saying.