Evolution and Darwin against Religion and God

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MysticalMiracle said:
There is no known relationship between macroevolution and microevolution. How do you know that these small changes we see today lead to drastic changes that have never been observed?
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Evolution theories do not explain drastic changes.

Evolution theory claims that LUCA – the last universal common ancestor, is the ancestor of all current life on Earth. So far the evidence shows the LUCA theory plausible from bacteria to the giant sequoia. It’s possible, vegetative life could have a LUCA.

But animal life evolving from vegetative life and human life from animal life by gradual steps has not only not been evidenced, it’s illogical. How does life gradually become conscious? Ditto intelligence. Do instincts in animals occur gradually? How do those turtle eggs know, let alone know which direction to go to the ocean, that survival depends on getting there quickly? How does the mother turtle pass on this existential memory? Do we note a dim rational intelligence in apes as evidenced by their actively improving their habitats? Or do they live exactly as they have for eons? These properties of living beings – consciousness, instincts, intelligence, rationality – while materially dependent, are not fully explained by materials alone.
 
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According to evolution, man was the end result of constant upgrades - for no particular reason. We just happen to be like we are because it just happened. A mindless process, we are told, ended up producing men. I challenge anyone to construct a bird’s nest from scratch.
 
Then we’ll have to agree to disagree. Besides immediate utility of any scientific theory is not a metric of its ability to explain natural phenomena…
 
I don’t believe in unilateral disagreement. Either something is true or it isn’t.
 
Oh, well… That uh… that uh… doesn’t tell me anything. Probably a couple uh guys in costumes. Or photoshop.
 
edwest211 said:
According to evolution, man was the end result of constant upgrades - for no particular reason.
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You are misinformed. Those updates were because the changes made the organism better suited to its environment. That is how natural selection works; it spreads the updates that work better in the environment.

One mutation happens in one organism. It takes natural selection to spread that update through a whole population.
 
If you go back over this whole conversation the point is that Darwin’s theory is against God and religion yet the whole question and answers of this is majority about the theory of evolution what a complete waste of time if they have discovered the theory to be true in years what makes people think that they can prove it on this site in a few day its embarrassing the point is it’s against God and religion because a lot of people use it to back up that we were created randomly by a Big Bang
 
edwest211 said:
According to evolution, man was the end result of constant upgrades - for no particular reason. We just happen to be like we are because it just happened. A mindless process, we are told, ended up producing men. I challenge anyone to construct a bird’s nest from scratch.
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Right, how did dinosaurs learn how to do this …
 
This is a fallacious appeal to consequences. Something isn’t demonstrated to be false because it leads to less religiosity.
 
edwest211 said:
I’m not signing anything. I don’t accept the version being peddled here. The totally atheist version. Science is not god - any god. Science - as currently constituted - cannot include anything supernatural. Catholics should recognize that. It is incomplete.
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Straw man. Evolution does not deny God.
 
edwest211 said:
According to evolution, man was the end result of constant upgrades - for no particular reason. We just happen to be like we are because it just happened. A mindless process, we are told, ended up producing men.
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It seems you are interested in “why” evolution led to men. Is this a question science can answer? No. Science doesn’t even address “why” questions. It addresses “how” questions. “Why” is a metaphysical / religious question. They are separate things.
 
Gorgias said:
Apparently, your “Great Courses Plus” experience hasn’t taught you not to selectively quote and not to mischaracterize others. In fact, I’ve explicitly said that this isn’t what I’m saying:
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You yourself are mischaracterizing what I have said.
Gorgias said:
See what I mean? You’re not only using that credential as if it establishes his credibility – you’re actually wielding it as if he has a Ph.D. in the field in which he’s teaching. Tsk tsk tsk… 😉
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You may have taken it that way, but that is not the way I intended it. I am not “wielding it as if he has a Ph.D. in the field which he is teaching.” (You mischaracterized what I was saying.) They way I see it, someone who has the intelligence to graduate from M.I.T. in any scientific field, has sufficient intelligence to learn about other scientific disciplines, whether he learns about them on his own, or in a university.
Gorgias said:
That’s not at all what I’m claiming: what I’m claiming is that a person can’t present themselves as a credentialed authority unless he is a credentialed authority.
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Credentials (university degrees), while laudable, should not be used as the final criteria to determine whether or not someone knows what they’re talking about. Every heard of Thomas Edison? Nikola Tesla? George Westinghouse? The Wright Brothers? And Sir Isaac Newton, while he had a degree in mathematics, did not have a degree in calculus. He (and Leibniz) INVENTED it.

And just for the record, I don’t know how others feel about your emoticons, your sarcasm, and your “tsk, tsk, tsk’s”, but to me it is very rude and uncalled for.
 
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I’ve been on other threads like this. Around in circles. Let me ask some simple questions to those who deny the theory of evolution:
  1. What, in your opinion, would constitute “proof” of the theory of evolution? Is it possible to “prove” it? And please define what you mean by “prove” since this term has changed meanings in the last few years.
  2. What exactly are the Catholic Church’s objections to the theory of evolution? (Not to this and that sub-theory or some random scientist in Houston, but the basic theory of evolution and the idea that some mutations lead to beneficial changes, and these beneficial changes lead to different types of life.)
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
I’ve been on other threads like this. Around in circles. Let me ask some simple questions to those who deny the theory of evolution:
  1. What, in your opinion, would constitute “proof” of the theory of evolution? Is it possible to “prove” it? And please define what you mean by “prove” since this term has changed meanings in the last few years.
  2. What exactly are the Catholic Church’s objections to the theory of evolution? (Not to this and that sub-theory or some random scientist in Houston, but the basic theory of evolution and the idea that some mutations lead to beneficial changes, and these beneficial changes lead to different types of life.)
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The Catholic Church’s objection is not to the theory of evolution generally, but those theories that propose the absence of God (which is impossible for science anyway), or that propose polygenism, which is the idea that multiple first humans (unity of body AND soul) arose, rather than two first human parents ensouled by God.

I am a degreed scientist, and I know of absolutely not one scientist that uses his/her science to make theological pronouncements. So the issue is kind of moot from that point of view.
Some draw personal conclusions for or against the idea of God, but they don’t conflate hard science and theology (the way some Christians do, unfortunately)
 
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