Dragons and Dinosaurs

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Pius XII, in Humani Generis, declared that children of the Church were free to investigate scientific theories of evolution, including the biological emergence of the human body.
St. John Paul II addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences saying:
In his encyclical Humani generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points. … Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.
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In July 2004, under then Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict), the International Theological Commission wrote:
According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the ‘Big Bang’ and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5–4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.
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More to follow…
 
Both the Council of Trent and Vatican Council I taught that no one is permitted to interpret Sacred Scripture “contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.”1 In the words of Fr. Victor Warkulwiz:

The Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously agreed that Genesis 1-11 is an inerrant literal historical account of the beginning of the world and the human species as related by the prophet Moses under divine inspiration. This does not mean that they agreed on every point in its interpretation, but their differences were accidental and not essential. Pope Leo XIII, following St. Augustine, affirmed the Catholic rule for interpreting Sacred Scripture, “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires.”

All the Church Fathers believed in a young earth.

I also suggest for those who might be interested, to read Blessed Anne Emmerich’s Biblical Revelations. She describes in depth what took place when God created the earth.
 
Another good quote from the future Pope Benedict:
We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary—rather than mutually exclusive—realities.

— Cardinal Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Eerdmans, 1995), p. 50.
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In October 2014, Pope Francis addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences reiterating that modern theories of biological evolution do not contradict the faith:
[God] created beings and allowed them to develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one, so that they were able to develop and to arrive at their fullness of being. He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality. And so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became what we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the creator who gives being to all things. …The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.
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Biological evolution is not disputed by leading Churchmen…whatsoever.
 
One final comment…Pope Benedict, one of the most conservative popes of recent decades, declared this whole debate “absurd”…
Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called “creationism” and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? I believe this is of the utmost importance. (Meeting with the clergy of the Dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso in Auronzo di Cadore (July 24, 2007) | BENEDICT XVI)
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Yeah…they weren’t speaking infallibly though. All popes are entitled to their own opinion.

I still would like to know (if evolution is true) how, when we apparently started transforming from apes into humans, we suddenly had souls? Because animals don’t have souls, right?

Many seem to think the creation idea from the Bible is outdated…yet the evolution theory was first proposed in the early 1800’s and for some reason so many people still cling onto it even though there is a vast amount of evidence countering it in our modern times.
 
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misstherese said:
I still would like to know (if evolution is true) how, when we apparently started transforming from apes into humans, we suddenly had souls? Because animals don’t have souls, right?
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I still would like to know (if a literalist reading of Genesis is true) how, when we apparently started transforming from a pile of inanimate mud, we suddenly had souls? Because mud doesn’t have a soul, right? 🙂

Spiritually speaking, the two narratives do not diverge. At some point God intervened and breathed life (the soul) into an near-human animal and that animal became the first true man…our first father Adam.
 
Of course animals have souls. They have natural souls.

There have been other humans, we are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Homo Sapiens Sapiens was given the gift of an immortal soul, they are unique in planet earth for that reason.
 
Blood typing was discovered around 1900 and we stupidly cling onto it, right?

No, wait, scientific progress moves forward.
 
Techno2000 said:
And that means Adam and Eve parents were soulless creatures.
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Is that worse than Adam’s father being a pile of dirt? God works through natural processes. When I was conceived, a cell from my dad and a cell from my mom came together through a natural process…yet God intervened and gave me the gift of an eternal soul. He did the same for our First Parents… exactly when and how we can’t be certain.
 
Pope Benedict:

"In the book, Benedict reflected on a 1996 comment of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were sound, as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution was “more than a hypothesis.”

“The pope (John Paul) had his reasons for saying this,” Benedict said. “But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

"Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

“We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said."
 
What quotes?

And yep, scientific progress moves forward. That’s why those gaps in the fossil record aren’t really helping with that.

Animals do not have souls as humans do. Only humans can live immortally.
 
I saw Adam created, not in Paradise, but in the region
in which Jerusalem was subsequently situated. I saw him
come forth glittering and white from a mound of yellow
earth, as if out of a mold. The sun was shining and I
thought (I was only a child when I saw it) that the sun-
beams drew Adam out of the hillock. He was, as it were,
born of the virgin earth. God blessed the earth, and it
became his mother.
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This was taken from Blessed Anne Emmerich’s Biblical Revelations. Blessed Anne Emmerich lived on only the eucharist for 12 years and bore the stigmata. The way she describes the creation of the earth is beautiful; the earth had been much holier and perfect then because it had not been destroyed by sin.
 
We are not bound by private revelation. Even so, that doesn’t mean we have to dismiss it. Visions are mystical experiences and often rich with symbolism. I wouldn’t understand all of her visions in a literalistic fashion. Take the Book of Revelation. The Church understands that much of what St. John records includes layers upon layers of rich symbolism expressing deeper truths.
 
I don’t disagree with His Eminence. Even if man’s present form evolved over a period of millions of years through natural processes doesn’t mean that God’s hand didn’t guide that process… whatever we understand that to mean. Scripture says that God fashions us in the depths of the earth before we are born… is that literally true? No… our bodies are formed through natural, biological processes, but of course God is still the author of each of us.
 
Revelation is entirely different; it can be seen clearly that it is symbolic because it just…doesn’t make sense.

Of course we are not bound by private revelation. I do think it is important, however, when a victim soul has such visions because it can lead to a deeper understanding of the faith.

The Biblical revelations of Blessed Anne are pretty much entirely literal, as she saw it. She describes Mary’s life and Jesus’s life and His passion in depth, without much symbolism.
 
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twf said:
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Techno2000:
And that means Adam and Eve parents were soulless creatures.
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Is that worse than Adam’s father being a pile of dirt? God works through natural processes. When I was conceived, a cell from my dad and a cell from my mom came together through a natural process…yet God intervened and gave me the gift of an eternal soul. He did the same for our First Parents… exactly when and how we can’t be certain.
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So how could God hold them responsible for sin when they were raised by soulless animals ?
 
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