I believe polygensim is a problem if it means that other lines of humans developed separately from the line which produced Adam & Eve. In other words, according to Catholic teaching, all existing races must descend from a single pair…Wouldn’t that be polygenism? If there were other beings identical to humans except they had an animal soul instead of a human soul?
Evolution is a scientific understanding of how we , humans got here. The Theory of Evolution is the way in which we got here. It is called natural selection.As I’ve been watching and reading all sorts of Richard Dawkin’s lately (in order to better understand atheistic evolution) I have come up with a few questions. I understand that evolution is not entirely exclusive or contradictory with Theism and that the Church even recognizes its possibility.
I suspect you mean you are comfortable with evolution and it’s theory.The scientific argument for evolution is pretty significant and hard to refute. I am comfortable with atheism except for one very large question.
Original sin, is a concept, not an occurence. There isn’t a “point in time” when it occured. MANY will disagree with me, and to a degree…hehe…I disagree with myself.If Genesis says that all sin (and thus death) entered the world through the original sin of mankind how could natural selection (dependant on death) have taken place before man existed and brought man into existence itself?
I honestly do not see how you think it glorifies death. You’d need to expand on this I think to gain any real response to it.Also, I just can’t shake the idea that evolution and natural selection are dependant on, and in some ways, glorify death. It all just doesn’t seem right, but then again the evidence does seem pretty substantial.
I don’t think so. The other beings were not human. Physically, they could have been identical to Adam and Eve, but they didn’t have immortal souls.Wouldn’t that be polygenism? If there were other beings identical to humans except they had an animal soul instead of a human soul?
The evidence is clear that there were human-like animals prior to the first humans. One thing that the fossil record and genetic studies can’t tell us is when ensoulment took place.While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.
Ed, are we allowed as Catholics to believe in atheistic gravity? How about atheistic calculus?Pick up a biology textbook. You’ll see the Theory of Evolution is self-contained. There was no outside inteference. No God to affect any of it. Catholics are not allowed to believe in atheistic evolution. Second, Human Persons Created in the Image of God (available online) clearly states that divine providence was necessary and that evolution as currently described is impossible without divine providence. Further, that those who claim that everything happened as currently described in biology texts are “going beyond what can be demonstrated by science.”
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
See Part 69.
God bless,
Ed
So, reading between the lines of what you wrote, the Church teachings that evolution is possible with divine providence?Pick up a biology textbook. You’ll see the Theory of Evolution is self-contained. There was no outside inteference. No God to affect any of it. Catholics are not allowed to believe in atheistic evolution. Second, Human Persons Created in the Image of God (available online) clearly states that divine providence was necessary and that evolution as currently described is impossible without divine providence. Further, that those who claim that everything happened as currently described in biology texts are “going beyond what can be demonstrated by science.”
No I’m not, Ed. That document makes it clear that accepting scientific reality is allowed for Catholics. You are trying to get the document to say that science textbooks MUST include God. That is not what the document says and you know it. Your insisting that God be taught in biology class exposes your fear that “The Church teaches that all truth comes from God” is not really true.You are avoiding the answer to the question as it reads in Human Persons Created in the Image of God. That’s all you’re doing. I’ll stick with that as the final and definitive answer.
The Church teaches that all truth comes from God.
Peace,
Ed
If the truths of this paragraph need to be more openly affirmed by the Darwinist-Catholics on the CAF threads, in my opinion.In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.
You do realize that nothing happens without Divine Providence, right? Nature doesn’t operate apart from Divine Providence. Because you seem to be implying that evolution could not have happened according to natural processes, as if acting by natural processes was something opposed to God’s Divine Providence.…To answer your question, if evolution happened it happened because of divine providence, not by purely natural (chance and necessity) mechanisms.
I never insisted on anything. I do not fear the truth. The document is very clear. You are attempting to read my mind. Not possible.No I’m not, Ed. That document makes it clear that accepting scientific reality is allowed for Catholics. You are trying to get the document to say that science textbooks MUST include God. That is not what the document says and you know it. Your insisting that God be taught in biology class exposes your fear that “The Church teaches that all truth comes from God” is not really true.
Peace
Tim
The biology textbook does not include divine providence. It clearly presents evolution as a purely natural, chance and necessity only, theory. That’s not what the Church teaches. That is the whole point of this discussion.You do realize that nothing happens without Divine Providence, right? Nature doesn’t operate apart from Divine Providence. Because you seem to be implying that evolution could not have happened according to natural processes, as if acting by natural processes was something opposed to God’s Divine Providence.
You have made the point over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over that biology textbooks don’t include God as part of the discussion about evolution (although I note that you don’t seem to have a problem with the lack of God as part of the discussion of cell walls or photosynthesis). That takes out the necessity of reading your mind. I just have to read your posts.I never insisted on anything. I do not fear the truth. The document is very clear. You are attempting to read my mind. Not possible.
Peace,
Ed
I’m not missing the point at all, Ed.Tim,
Why are you still missing the point?
No kidding.Catholics don’t go to Church buildings and pray to nobody. We don’t perform our rituals to nobody. The miracles that the Church recognizes today in order to canonize saints actually happen.
Yes it is.This is a Catholic forum.
Catholics are not allowed to believe in ANYTHING athiestic. That, however, doesn’t exclude evolution or biology textbooks that don’t list God as a cause.
- Catholics are never allowed to believe in atheistic evolution. I didn’t write that.
No, it says that a scientific theory that explicitly denies the role of God is incompatible with the Church. There is a big difference between what the document says and what you are insisting on. NO science can explicitly deny God because God is outside the realm of science. Any science that does is no longer science but is philosophy. Period. Your insinuation that God must be included in the science is flat out wrong.
- Human Persons Created in the Image of God, a Church document, clearly states that an evolutionary process that does not include God is not acceptable. It further states that chance and necessity alone are insufficient.
Nor are they statements from the document you reference.These are not my statements.
And you have yet to do so. You have railed against evolution and ignored the exact same requirement for gravity or exothermic chemical reactions. Why is that, Ed?I bring up the biology textbook not to demand that it include a statement about God but to point out to my fellow Catholics, and anyone else who cares to read what I write, that God’s role is not included as part of “biology textbook” evolution. It is ommitted. And since science supposedly is barred permanently and forever from mentioning God or supernatural events in any way, shape or form, then someone like the Catholic Church has to make the critically important statement, at least to members of the Catholic Church, that divine providence acts in processes that are necessary and contingent.
So why do you deny the science part of the equation?That’s it. The biology text alone is not the whole answer. And Pope Benedict has made the comment that faith and reason are not opposeed but complementary, including in this case.
That is so totally irrelevant to this discussion. I accept that with my entire soul, Ed. We still have bodies that evolved.To put it another way, we do not believe a symbolic Jesus died on a symbolic cross for all men, but a real, actual flesh and blood being who was true God and true man.
So just to clarify, Ed, do you want God in biology textbooks or not? If not, do you want to continue teaching biology?Now we are getting somewhere. Jesus Christ is the core of the equation. You calling it irrelevant underscores everything I’ve been writing.
The primary mission of the Catholic Church is getting out the Gospel message to the entire world. Not a mythology but the Truth. Not A truth, but THE TRUTH.
You can say, yeah, yeah, whatever, all you want. You can call it “philosophy” all you want. It doesn’t change the fact. Yes, fact. Of Jesus Christ. It reminds me of a statement made by a man after hearing Billy Graham speak: “If what this man is saying isn’t true, then it doesn’t matter. But if what this man is saying is true, then nothing else matters.”
That’s the point Tim. The Catholic Church’s point.
God bless,
Ed
And that is not in contrast to the science of evolution. Evolution does not exclude divine providence.From Human Persons Created in the Image of God, part 69:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
“An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist…”
Do you want biology taught?To review:
- No. I do not want a statement in biology textbooks saying God Did It or the equivalent.
- No. I’m not interested in joining the local theocracy conspiracy and infiltrating some school boards.
Fine. Quit requiring that God be taught as a mechanism then.
- Yes. I want the Church’s position on evolutionary theory made widely known to my fellow Catholics.
A position which I don’t remember you affirming.
- You, and others, point out that I seem to have no problem with atheistic plumbing or atheistic cell biology.
Of couse not. Why would we? Of course, that is a straw man when injected into this discussion.But here’s my question to you and everyone else reading: Don’t you have a problem with Catholics literally believing that the bread and wine turns into the body and blood of Christ?
It isn’t, but it is the topic of this thread. Why is it that you deny science? Remember, faith and reason are compatable.Or that the Pope himself affirms real miracles that elevate people to sainthood? Why is it that theistic evolution is your only point of concern?