Evolution and Creation: What to Teach Students?

[Sideline]

The Bible said it was a world wide flood.

No, the Bible said “the whole world”. The Bible also says you must hate your father and mother. There are lots of words in Hebrew that don’t mean the same thing when they are translated into in English.

Diverse cultures across the globe have flood legends. Are we to believe “science” again?

Sorry, are you saying that there are no flood legends across the world? That there are flood legends, so there must have been one and only one flood? And how does that tie into science.

As I pointed out before, true science is based on observation, not speculation.

There is nothing short of a flood that could cause entire trees to be buried. Nothing but a flood could cause a whale (or rather, the fossilized remains of a whale) to be found standing on its head.

Are these your observations, or just speculation? Sounds like speculation to me.

I wonder if evolutionists understand how animals become fossils. For an organism to become fossilized, it needs to be buried very quickly before preditors eat it, or it decomposes. Do evolutionists believe that these creatures were buried over long periods of time?

Well evolutionists aren’t uniformly educated, so I can’t speak for all of them. Most of us who have studied it know a lot about fossilization. Including the fact that fossils can shift their relative positions after deposition.

 

[Chuck_H]

Nah… to tell the troop, it was a soup' of things, according to the theorist guys. I was always partial to nutrino's, myself. They've got a collector for the barely of mass, acts like a wave. might be a particle’ Neutrino in Kamiakondao, Japan…, but they haven’t caught one yet. The thing that makes THEM so much fun is that it is contended they travel faster than light. Though, truth be told, I think its a matter of `it is or becomes faster than anything else’.

My corner of astro-physics was in mass streaming from different mass and size stars, orbiting each other. The neat thing is, we nmever saw the stream or the stars themselves. It was all from spectrographs taken by the IUE Space telescope (now dead and burnied up in the atmosphere.) Even in the lab, I tell you true, looking at all the data and plotting it… I always felt that God was peaking over the shoulder, so to speak. I really thinks he loves it when people go poking at the nature of things. (As long as we don’t blow the lab up!)

Now given that I will be trounced scientifically for this “bold” conjecture.
What if the “myth” (meaning truth kernel) is that God is in the dark matter? The only scientific way we can know about it is that bends light. No collector has caught so much as one particle of it. I have heard physicists claim it is responsible for the clumping of the “plasma” so that the universe wouldn’t end up an expanding ball with no discreet structures. Sounds like a worthy construct. and we can finally say, "yes Richard, yes Sam, God is indeed in the “gaps”.

 

[rossum]

No, it didn’t. The word used was “eretz”, which means “land.” It is for example used to refer to the land of Israel. It can mean any area of land, from the lower forty to an entire country or region.

You just assumed that it was the whole world, but there is no Biblical support for that.

I sometimes use Genesis 12:1 as an example:Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country [erets] and your kindred and your father’s house to the land [erets] that I will show you.
The Hebrew text can be seen here.

If “erets” means a whole planet then Abraham was from another planet! Of course that would explain the absence of any evidence of a global flood on this planet .

rossum

 

[Chuck_H]

School is out for Easter vacation

 

[Chuck_H]

Here is something that everyone can sink their teeth into and hopefully Dr Hess will begin us on since it is"theologicalese" in nature of composition.

Duns Scotis ( a statement from Wikipedia)
The existence of God can be proven only a posteriori, through its effects. The Causal Argument he gives for the existence of God is particularly interesting and precise. It says that an infinity of things that are essentially ordered is impossible, as the totality of caused things that are essentially caused is itself caused, and so it is caused by some cause which is not a part of the totality, for then it would be the cause of itself; for the whole totality of dependent things is dependent, and not on anything belonging to that totality. The argument is relevant for Scotus’ conception of metaphysical inquiry into being by searching the ways into which beings relate to each other.

 

[drpmjhess]

Here is something that everyone can sink their teeth into and hopefully Dr Hess will begin us on since it is"theologicalese" in nature of composition. Duns Scotis ( a statement from Wikipedia)The existence of God can be proven only a posteriori, through its effects.

Chuck, yes – when I return from my conference on Wednesday!

 

[Chuck_H]

Chuck, yes – when I return from my conference on Wednesday!

We can wait. The world isn’t going anywhere. Have a good conference.

 

[Chuck_H]

I sometimes use Genesis 12:1 as an example:Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country [erets] and your kindred and your father’s house to the land [erets] that I will show you.
The Hebrew text can be seen here.

If “erets” means a whole planet then Abraham was from another planet! Of course that would explain the absence of any evidence of a global flood on this planet .

rossum

He may have been according to the LDS.

 

[drpmjhess]

We can wait. The world isn’t going anywhere. Have a good conference.

Thanks, Chuck. Over and out.

 

[drpmjhess]

Here is something that everyone can sink their teeth into and hopefully Dr Hess will begin us on since it is"theologicalese" in nature of composition.

Duns Scotis ( a statement from Wikipedia)
The existence of God can be proven only a posteriori, through its effects. *The Causal Argument he gives for the existence of God is particularly interesting and precise. *

Chuck, the existence of God can of course never be proven, and the classic proofs have undergone remarkable mutations. My doctoral dissertation was on the transformation during the Scientific Revolution of the ten most popular arguments for God’s existence.

That being said, I do find the Cosmological or First Cause argument to be the least uncompelling one. The ontological argument is, I believe, ultimately vacuous; the “prime mover” is dead in the post-Newtonian water; and the teleological proof was forever changed after the nineteenth century, even with the incorporation of so-called anthropic fine-tuning of constants.

But the First Cause argument will perdure no matter what Dawkins of Hitchens or Harris Sagan say about the universe being all that ever was or is or will be. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there a universe at all? Why a universe where complexity arises out of quarks, where self-consciousness and soulishness evolve, where religion and spirituality and pure altruism emerge from mere energy?

Of course, this argument does not lead us ineluctably to an anthropocentric universe – the History Channel’s recent and sobering “Life After People” puts smug anthropocentrism in stark biological perspective – but it certainly leads to questions that will be forever open to minds open to considering them.

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

 

[abu_kamoon]

drpmjhess said:

“Creationism has a corrosive effect on faith. Children who are raised on a diet of anti-science creationism are forced to make the false choice between (1) atheistic science and (2) primitive, anti-science religion. It’s a tragedy that most people who abandon their faith are abandoning a very immature reading of that faith. I don’t believe in the God atheists don’t believe in either!”

I think that is an incredible statement! For thousands of years, people have believed in Creationism. It’s Modernism which has a corrosive effect on faith. Modernism, which has been condemned by several popes, is the source of many aposticies, including Evolution.

Since the “Enlightenment”, Europeans have rejected faith for “science”. Americans have been affected to a lesser degree.

Evolution does away with the need for God, in it’s explanation of life on Earth by strictly natural means. Theistic Evolution, or Intelligent Design makes a liar out of God. It’s that simple.

Put your faith in God, or put your faith in man.

 

[abu_kamoon]

Barbarian said:

“One who claims that evolution is contrary to Catholic faith is dissenting from the teaching of the Church. Such person is free to deny what the Pope says is “virtually certain,” but he is not free to say that evolution is contrary to our faith.”

Evolution is contrary to what the Bible says. The Catholic Church does not speak with one voice. There are many opinions within the Church. The Pope has not declared ex cathedra with all that entails, that Evolution is true. In my opinion, there are many in the Church who have lost their faith. That is my opinion.

We all know of de Chardin fabricating “missing link” fossils to “prove” Evolution. That is what I am talking about.

There are people in high positions withing the Church who believe that most of the Bible is myth. Certainly, they don’t see any conflict with Evolution. They believe what they want to believe. They don’t speak for me.

 

[masterjedi747]

Evolution does away with the need for God, in it’s explanation of life on Earth by strictly natural means.

sigh …case in point.
That claim is EXACTLY the sort of misunderstanding that drpmjhess was talking about.

Theistic Evolution, or Intelligent Design makes a liar out of God. It’s that simple.

Intelligent Design, yes… Theistic Evolution, no.

 

[masterjedi747]

Evolution is contrary to what the Bible says.

No, it’s contrary to what your interpretation of the Bible says.

 

[edwest2]

The Catholic Church teaches that man can come to a knowledge of God through natural reason.

God bless,
Ed

 

[drpmjhess]

I think that is an incredible statement! For thousands of years, people have believed in Creationism. It’s Modernism which has a corrosive effect on faith. Modernism, which has been condemned by several popes, is the source of many aposticies, including Evolution. /QUOTE]

Abu, you are right that for thousands of years Cathollics have believed in Creationism, as do I and any other Catholic today. Creation is a metaphysical claim about the ontological dependence of the universe on a source outside itself. Creationism as a religious belief makes no claims about how or when the universe came to be. It’s the Young Earthers who have hijacked this beautiful and ancient doctrine of Creation to twist it to suit their own anti-scientific purposes.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
One who claims that evolution is contrary to Catholic faith is dissenting from the teaching of the Church. Such person is free to deny what the Pope says is “virtually certain,” but he is not free to say that evolution is contrary to our faith.

Evolution is contrary to what the Bible says.

You are adding doctrines to the Bible, if you believe that. Pope Benedict has said that evolution is virtually certain. Do you think the Pope doesn’t understand Scripture?

The Catholic Church does not speak with one voice. There are many opinions within the Church. The Pope has not declared ex cathedra with all that entails, that Evolution is true.

What the Pope (and the previous one, and one earlier) has said, is that evolution is consistent with our faith, so long as people don’t try to twist it into an unscientific denial of God.

If the Pope doesn’t speak for you in matters of faith, why even bother being a Catholic?

 

[Chuck_H]

sorry gang, at the Texas genetics meeting and battery is running low. I will be back Saturday.

Kenneth Miller has some VERY good stuff in “Finding Darwin’s God” I will share when I get back to Houston

Chuck

 

[Camron]

Abu, you are right that for thousands of years Cathollics have believed in Creationism, as do I and any other Catholic today. Creation is a metaphysical claim about the ontological dependence of the universe on a source outside itself. Creationism as a religious belief makes no claims about how or when the universe came to be. It’s the Young Earthers who have hijacked this beautiful and ancient doctrine of Creation to twist it to suit their own anti-scientific purposes.

Although I would be more sympathetic toward YECs in the same manner as Romans 14:1-3 suggests, and I think Catholic teachings do infer a creation ex nihilo, I think what you have said was beautifully stated.

 

[drpmjhess]

Although I would be more sympathetic toward YECs in the same manner as Romans 14:1-3 suggests, and I think Catholic teachings do infer a creation ex nihilo, I think what you have said was beautifully stated.

Thank you, Camron. I agree with you in principle, and up to a point. But my work involves me (inter alia) in both (1) helping children toward careers in science, if they are so gifted and inclined, and (2) helping preserve the religious faith of Catholic sand non-Catholics alike When YECs shove a scientifically ignorant doctrine down kids throats and represent it as consistent with Christianity – or more specifically with Catholicism (as the Kolbe Center does) – and then when kids mature in scientific understanding and draw the false conclusion that Christianity is nonsense fit only for simpletons, that I regard as a serious problem.

Young Earth Creationism not only deprives children of potential careers in science, and deprives the scientific world of authentic Christian voices to speak out against abuses of science and technology, but it can lead to utterly unnecessary crises of faith and falling away from religious belief. For these reasons I regard YEC as a serious evil in society, and the anti-scientific work of the Kolbe Center and other YEC organizations as heinous, if not deliberately diabolical.

Petrus