Evolution is contradictory?

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“If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.”
— Vatican Council I
 
Where is @pickypicky?
Lying abed, taking his tablets like a good boy, and thinking that these conversations need a new dynamic.

Buffalo roaming, Aloysium weaving impenetrable webs of metaphysics, and occasionally one of their less sophisticated companions saying something like “Show me an elephant that’s turning into a cockroach! Ho! Ho!”

It ain’t enough, I tell you.
 
“If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.”
— Vatican Council I
Then we can know “with certainty” that the literal interpretation of Genesis is wrong. The world tells us that birds appeared after land animals, not before, and that there was no worldwide flood which killed the vast majority of land animals in the last few thousand years.

rossum
 
It ain’t enough, I tell you.
I guess if the message doesn’t get through, or rather if people can’t get through to the message, just keep repeating it, or maybe say it louder?

Sorry to hear about you lying in bed.

Some of us already know how the tablets can work, and sometimes they don’t; sometimes unfortunately, they make everything worse. It can get very bad, and part of the pain is knowing it can get even worse. This is the human condition, a good part of what makes us all, one. We can distract ourselves, especially when things go our way. We can cut ourselves off from what we are, pretending bad things happen to them; until that turns into “Why me?!”

There is something called humanity, and what is clear if not in the moment, definitely historically, is that we suffer. Who is it that suffers? Why “me” of course; let’s call that the self. That self does not exist in isolation, but is connected to everything that it is not. There isn’t one cosmic soup of consciousness; rather the universe is composed of more or less an infinite number of “selves” connected to other “selves”. The reader and I are engaged in this moment, bridging time and space, in a simple dialogue, that staggers the mind in its complexity and sophistication. This is amazing! This is a “connection” that is characteristic of being human.

We can think of there being all kinds of different “selves” populating the cosmos, i.e. things as they are, being themselves. What we have is a hierarchy of systems, each of which is a whole in itself - those which have a physical nature in addition to a growing degree of the psychological, as well as the spiritual which is their being, include atoms, vegetative organisms, animals, and human beings. All relate as unities composed of parts, the type of relationships they form being an aspect of what they are. Each, an expression of its kind of being, may also be seen as a component of some greater whole. We, in Love, in Christ, form one church, the Body of Christ, having fallen as one humanity in Adam.

These different kinds of being can be understood as brought into existence in their moment; like right now, this is. And, we are atoms and feelings and ideas, more than interwoven, but actually one person as an individual and unique expression of the kind of creation we are. In time, humanity had a beginning; there was a first person, a first couple of persons. Before that, there were animals and plants and lesser living forms. Before that there was simple matter. Before that - light.

The focus on matter and its interactions leads us astray when trying to understand who we are and how we got here. With evolution, we have an illusion that contradicts the reality of what we are - creatures intimately invovled in a relationship with the Source of our being.
 
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The world tells us that birds appeared after land animals, not before, and that there was no worldwide flood which killed the vast majority of land animals in the last few thousand years.
Revelation truth vs provisional science with so many assumptions.
 
Revelation truth vs provisional science with so many assumptions.
One of many different versions of “revelation truth” which also involves so many assumptions. The Catholic Church does not mandate a belief in literal six-day Genesis. Anyone who believes that is choosing an interpretation for themselves.

rossum
 
Evolution from Apes is contradictory to the Historic Christian faith. However, it is possible that we evolved from Neanderthals. Inb4 “The Magisterium endorses evolution.” They do not. It is optional to endorse it yourself. If I were you, I’d oppose it, as it is contradictory to the Holy Scriptures. Science itself isn’t wrong, unless it contradicts the Scriptures. If you endorse the Historic Christian faith, then you should have no business believing that we evolved from apes. We were never animals. Also, there are many holes in the theory of evolution. For example, the first animals with shells, the trilobites, appeared without any predecessor. There was no animal with a shell before the trilobites. If evolution was correct, the trilobite would have evolved over millions of years to slowly gain it’s shell, but the very first trilobite born had a solid shell. Thus, evolution is simply false.
 
Philosophical Objections to Theistic Evolution

Reason 2.​

Any and all changes observed in the process of evolution are merely accidental, which means they affect only the accidental form. But the emergence of a new species entails the production of a new substantial form. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how long evolution works and how many accidental changes it accumulates over time; it will never produce a new species. It doesn’t even matter whether the accidental changes are random or guided by an intellect, they will never produce the substantial change. The grand claim of transformation of species due to the accumulation of accidental changes contradicts the fundamental metaphysical division of being into substance and accidents.

There are two possible errors in the understanding of this argument. The first thrives on confusion between the substantial and the individual form. Someone could say that killing a chicken brings about substantial change, but the act of killing the chicken is an accidental change. Hence, the accidental change results in the substantial change. But in this example, killing this particular chicken annihilates the substantial form of this particular chicken which is nothing else but the individual form of this chicken. The substantial form (or a species) of chicken as such is neither annihilated nor altered by this accidental change. Moreover, no accidental change could ever produce a totally new substantial form (species), one that has never existed, which would be the case if theistic evolution were true. Thus, even though an accidental change may substantially change an individual it cannot change the species of a thing or produce a new nature.

The second error thrives on the misunderstanding of what substance is. Someone could say, if I take hydrogen and oxygen and combine them I make water which is a different substance from hydrogen or oxygen. The act of blending hydrogen and oxygen is an accidental change, therefore the accidental change of one substance brings about another substance. Hence, the accidental change results in the substantial change. In this example, however, we do not deal with substances but with merely elements and compounds. Substance is an analogous term, which means that it is predicated about different things with regard to one. Substance is something that is the most self-contained, separated, unified and distinct. Hence, the only true substance is God, because He is the most individual, the most indivisible, and simply the most “Is”. Everything else is a substance only by participation. Living beings constitute substances in a much stronger sense than non-living beings, to the point that the latter should not even be called substances but elements and compounds. And if we consider a true substance there is no way to transform it into another substance by an accidental change.

 
… but the very first trilobite born had a solid shell.
So its parents had no shell?
Evolution from Apes is contradictory to the Historic Christian faith.
So I guess it’s lucky that we didn’t.

Really, who is going to take any notice of what you say about evolution if you don’t know anything about it.

And I look forward to further proof of that statement in your next few posts.
 
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If evolution was correct, the trilobite would have evolved over millions of years to slowly gain it’s shell, but the very first trilobite born had a solid shell. Thus, evolution is simply false.
You are misinformed. The very earliest Precambrian trilobites did not have a hard shell. They are rarer as fossils because hard shells fossilise more easily than a soft body.

rossum
 
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PastorJames:
If evolution was correct, the trilobite would have evolved over millions of years to slowly gain it’s shell, but the very first trilobite born had a solid shell. Thus, evolution is simply false.
You are misinformed. The very earliest Precambrian trilobites did not have a hard shell. They are rarer as fossils because hard shells fossilise more easily than a soft body.

rossum
Tadpoles Fossils
 
Tadpoles Fossils
Lagerstätten do exist and do contain fossilised soft parts and whole soft animals. Unfortunately they are rare, as I said. I am sure palaeontologists would like to find more of them.

One of the reason that trilobite fossils are so common is that they shed their shells as they grew, and a lot of the fossils we see are the shed shells, rather than the whole animal. The hard shells fossilised reasonably well, so we have a great many of them. Soft bodied trilobite fossils are much rarer because they did not need to shed their shells to grow.

rossum
 
@PastorJames This is a question I’m asking just to get a general idea of your position overall. You mentioned that the magesterium doesn’t endorse evolution, but that it’s optional to endorse it yourself. I know from your post that you don’t personally accept evolution, but would you say that a faithful Catholic can accept evolution? I ask the question to see if the debate will be focused more on if evolution is scientific while agreeing that both evolution and literal 6-day creationism are theologically permitted, or based on whether a faithful Catholic could ever accept evolution. I’m assuming it’s the former, but I just want to double check to get the right frame of reference going.
Evolution from Apes is contradictory to the Historic Christian faith. However, it is possible that we evolved from Neanderthals.
The scientific evidence isn’t there to be honest. We habe evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans, but both came from a common ancestor, not humans from Neanderthals.
I’ll also say that if you accept that humans could emerge from another species, the arguments “humans could have evolved from X by not Y” is somewhat illogical. As analogy, it would be likr someone saying, “It is utterly impossible to make a sandwich with this flour, milk, and uncooled meat. But I could make a sanwich with bread, cheese, and lunch meat.” In the sandwich example, the ingredients that could make a sandwich proceed from the “utterly impossible” pile. Evolution is change over time. It’s impossible for a land mammal to ckme directly from a fish. But if the fish population changes over time giving rise to amphibians, giving rise to reptiles, giving rise to warm-blooded reptiles, giving rise to mammals, thay’s possible.
 
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if the fish population changes over time giving rise to amphibians, giving rise to reptiles, giving rise to warm-blooded reptiles, giving rise to mammals, thay’s possible.
IOW - If evoution is possible, then it is possible.

Putting God at the centre of how everything came to be, a very different picture presents itself, filled with beauty, power and truth, revealing His glory.
 
Putting God at the centre of how everything came to be, a very different picture presents itself, filled with beauty, power and truth, revealing His glory.
This attitude puzzles me. How do malaria, gangrene and HIV reveal his glory? Seriously.

rossum
 
Putting God at the centre of how everything came to be, a very different picture presents itself, filled with beauty, power and truth, revealing His glory.
One doesn’t need to dismantle evolution to do that.
 
He did not create the universe in a fallen state.
So, His inability to create a universe that was not fail-safe and did not anticipate a foreseen problem shows His “glory”? A designer who does not anticipate a foreseen problem, or design in fail-safe mechanisms, is hardly a glorious designer.

As I said, this attitude to God puzzles me.

rossum
 
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Aloysium:
Putting God at the centre of how everything came to be, a very different picture presents itself, filled with beauty, power and truth, revealing His glory.
This attitude puzzles me. How do malaria, gangrene and HIV reveal his glory? Seriously.

rossum
After all the time you’ve spent on these forums, one would think you’d have picked up what Catholicism reveals.

As a self-proclaimed Buddhist, you should be aware that all suffering, in the words of your faith, stems from ignorance and craving. Well you see, there is an explanation as to how this came to be.

I’m not sure how you get around your stated belief, it could be a joke, that there is no absolute truth. If you were to suspend your disbelief and gaze into your self, you’d see that there is where the problem lies. We suffer because we are in a state of ignorance chasing illusions and transitory goods, the yearning of which only grows as we attempt to satisfy that ever growing want.

The way things got this way goes back to the beginning of our kind. There was a first man and first couple, who in that moment were all mankind. What we possess in our free will is the capacity to participate in our creation. What we do determines who we become in this one life that defines us (aka, your karma). Humanity chose at its creation to make itself a god, without God. In doing so we turned from that relationship and its healing graces. And thus, mankind finds itself here, subject to the ills that reveal and press home the stark reality of our creatureliness. As expressions of human being, individual and unique, persons each of us, we in and through Christ die to sinfulness to be reborn in joyous communion with the Truth itself.

Eden, a fallen world, heaven - all parts of the great scheme of things.
 
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