Evolution and Darwin against Religion and God

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I’m reading a lot of crazy talk. In the meantime, scientists know how much excess CO2 is in the air and how to get rid of it. As always, it’s about investors and money.
 
edwest211 said:
I’m reading a lot of crazy talk. In the meantime, scientists know how much excess CO2 is in the air and how to get rid of it. As always, it’s about investors and money.
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I alway thought CO2 was a good thing.People who grow Medical Marijuana pump CO2 into there indoor grow room to produce big, lush plants.
 
They are doing that but I’m talking about a global project. The technology is there.
 
Yes, and Communion and Stewardship goes on to explain that, even if atheists view evolution as atheistic, Catholics need not view evolution as atheistic as it does not contradict the faith (all bolding is mine):
The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” ( Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). 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. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so.
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It sure does. You can’t have it both ways. There is no way to shoehorn scientific evolution into the faith when it excludes God. No way.

“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.”
 
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edwest211 said:
It sure does. You can’t have it both ways. There is no way to shoehorn scientific evolution into the faith when it excludes God. No way.
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You say it does, but the Church says it does not. Communion and Stewardship (which you are quoting) says plainly that evolution is not incompatible with the Catholic faith.
 
You have posted it before, but go ahead. The fact remains that Communion and Stewardship goes on to conclude that, regardless of whether atheists assert that evolution is atheistic, Catholics do not believe that evolution is atheistic, and Catholics are free to believe in evolution. You have not denied that or refuted it.
 
TMC said:
You have posted it before, but go ahead. The fact remains that Communion and Stewardship goes on to conclude that, regardless of whether atheists assert that evolution is atheistic, Catholics do not believe that evolution is atheistic, and Catholics are free to believe in evolution. You have not denied that or refuted it.
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You’ve nearly got it right. Most Catholics know that evolution is not atheistic (clumsy term as it is). But what gets Ed all flustered is that evolution contradicts his personal and fundamentalist views.

That some people might want to use evolution to deny God is probably true. There aren’t any on this forum but I’m sure we could find some. But evolution itself doesn’t deny God.

Ed thinks the world is very young (although he won’t tell us how old) and that presumably dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man. Evolution obviously contradicts that. So rather than alter his fundamentallst views, he attacks the science.

If someone say that there’s nothing wrong with evolution, then Ed believes that they are wrong. That they have been misled. That it’s all a great conspiracy like vaccinations and global warming. I think he thinks atheists have something to do with those as well. An atheist probably shot JFK…
 
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rossum said:
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Bradskii:
An atheist probably shot JFK…
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No, it was a ten foot tall alien lizard in disguise, part of a hidden conspiracy between the Queen of England and Area 51. 😃
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No doubt that Ed will be Googling ‘Ten foot alien lizards’ very shortly.

Stop press. It was the Archons! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_IckeE
 
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He was an altar server until the day he died for th preceding 1.0 years prior to his death, as often as he could. I heard it from my mother.
 
buffalo said:
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niceatheist:
In other words, God put a lot of work into making us look like we evolved from common ancestor shared with other primates.
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We know that there are 500 or so conserved core genetic components of life of which every body plan can be built. Common design is a better explanation, Convergent “evolution” is support for this.
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Umm… hang on a second. Am I reading you right? Did you just make the claim that God designed the flu into every animal? Deliberately? Prior to the fall of Man (Genesis 3)?!? 🤔
 
edwest211 said:
Science explicitly denies God a truly causal role.
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Of course–within science! Not within theology! It’s super obvious, but I’ll say it: As soon as you introduce God into the equation of science (any science that is trying to explain HOW things work) you have an equation something like this: “A causes B because of X, and then ‘Poof! God appears and does Y’ and then…” In its effect, it’s no different than believing in magic or myths. (Lightning is Zeus throwing lightning bolts from Mt. Olympus…) It’s like the football player who scores a touchdown and attributes it to God (because of course God clearly favors Clemson over Alabama).

And yes, if you believe in God, of course God is ultimately the cause of everything, and yes, there are some pretty strident atheists who advocate a God-free evolution (Dawkins, et al.). But the only reason Western science has advanced the way it has is because it removed the “Poof! And then God…” from the equation. And you want to put the “Poof!” back into science. Theology is not science.
 
buffalo said:
Most viruses and bacteria are beneficial.
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Yes, but you’re claiming that not only these, but also the ones that aren’t beneficial, were in fact designed by God. Before the fall. For all animals.

You can see how that’s problematic – from a theological perspective – for your assertions, can’t you?
 
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buffalo said:
Why are they bad before the fall?
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These are markers of retroviruses. Specifically, of viruses which had attacked a person and subsequently inserted its genetic code into its host. Retroviruses are not good.

Now, what the science is observing isn’t merely that these sequences (which represent remnants of infection) exist in many species – what they’re noting is that they exist in the exact same location in the genetic code of these various species!

In other words, this demonstrates not just that retroviruses attack us all, but that there are the remnants of one particular infection, buried deep in our genetic code (and in the code of other species). For your argument to hold water, we’d have to buy the claim that not only did a particular retrovirus hit us (and other species) identically and independently, but that they left the exact same remnant in the exact same location in our genetic codes!

Now – either you’re claiming that God placed those remnants in all animals at the time of their creation, or that the immensely improbable “identical infection and identical remnants of infection” occurred in the wild, following the fall.

If you claim the former, then God created us with illness in us, prior to the fall. That’s a non-starter.

If you claim the latter, then you’re claiming – as @niceatheist put it – that God put an awful lot of work designing us in a way that fools us and contradicts the rationality that He gave us. A “deceiver God” is also something that’s anathema to Catholic thought.

So, which is it? Did God create illness prior to the fall, or is He trying – by way of divine sleight-of-hand – to trick us?

(Or, perhaps, maybe there’s a third – and more theologically palatable! – possibility: that God allowed for evolution to occur, and we’re seeing the footprints of that process in our very genetic code… 🤔 )
 
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