Evolution: Is There Any Good Reason To Reject The Abiogenesis Hypothesis?

[Hobgoblin]

It is reasonable if one believes in evolution, that all this diversity, including our own existence happened by itself. It didn’t. It was designed and formed to be this way. That particles came together in just the right way is what we are told happened.

It didn’t happen by itself. God is the ulitimate source of everything. I think you’d agree that an original spark of microscopic organic matter (through whatever natural conditions brought it about), is different from a whirlwind of dust bringing together a fully formed Adam. One is consistent with what we’d expect looking backwards at the history of life on earth. It could also be anticipated from a universe that began with an explosion and has been forming ever more complex structures since, eventually getting to life and us. A pretty spectacular feat to create something like that. We understand a scratch of the universe we live in. It’s totally imaginable that it’s engineered in such a way that life was guaranteed to develop. And that’s totally compatible with Christianity.

I’ve not as yet encountered a scientific explanation as to how Adam could have been the result of evolution

rossum produced a couple of fantastic posts today that address this far better than I could have. Thanks for those posts rossum!

 

[Hobgoblin]

We have been told through Revelation. Science is pending. I have confidence that science will be able to soon confirm. BTW, science, empirically does not rule it out.

So you’re basing everything on personal revelation? Because the Church does not rule out evolution. But you do. You’re absolutely certain it’s false.

Can you at least share what the personal revelation tells you?

Humani Generis rules out polygenism.

Ok, I’ve read all of today’s posts and it’s pretty clear to me that you and Ed don’t understand what the Catholic Church teaches. That’s ok, I don’t understand it all either. But you guys need to back up and reread today’s posts until they sink in.

 

[edwest211]

No, I don’t. Pope Benedict:

In the book, Benedict reflected on a 1996 comment of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were sound, as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution was “more than a hypothesis.”

“The pope (John Paul) had his reasons for saying this,” Benedict said. “But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

“We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said.

 

[thistle]

What Pope Benedict (while still Cardinal Ratzinger) said:

“What response shall we make to this view [evolution]? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow, and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. … More reflective spirits have long been aware that there is no either-or here. We cannot say: ‘creation or evolution’, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary - rather than mutually exclusive - realities.”

 

[buffalo]

So you’re basing everything on personal revelation?

Scripture and Tradition are not personal Revelation.

 

[buffalo]

Ok, I’ve read all of today’s posts and it’s pretty clear to me that you and Ed don’t understand what the Catholic Church teaches.

Humani Generis does not rule out polygenism? Is that your claim?

 

[rossum]

when we see the breaking of genes and natural selection is a conservative process?

We also see the making of new genes and random mutation is the opposite of a conservative process. If you only consider natural selection then you are not considering evolution.

Random mutation introduces new elements into the genome. Natural selection weeds out the deleterious changes and promotes the beneficial changes. By only looking at half the process you are getting a distorted view of evolution.

 

[Hobgoblin]

Scripture and Tradition are not personal Revelation.

The Church is open to evolution. You are certain it’s false. So, whatever revelation of Scripture and Tradition you have isn’t from the Church.

I’m still interested in what your revelation tells you about how we got Adam. Can you share that?

Humani Generis does not rule out polygenism? Is that your claim?

It doesn’t rule out evolution though. Do you understand the difference?

 

[Hobgoblin]

Ed, the excerpts you’ve posted are very nuanced. You need to read them closely. They don’t say what you’re trying to say they say.

 

[Aloysium]

Everything could be supernatural.

Everything could be said to be supernatural in the sense that everything is brought into existence, from the beginning to the end of time, from eternity. This does not imply pantheism, in the sense that the universe is Divine, but that it arises through a Divine Act of creation, from what is Existence itself. That existence is within and encompasses everything while remaining outside creation, relating to it as Father.

Nobody is being tricky, we are doing it to ourselves, trying to find answers neglecting the Truth itself.

 

[Aloysium]

God is the ulitimate source of everything.

Yes, he created atoms, and in a similar fashion brought cells into existence utilizing what He had previously created. From there, He, from nothing, utilized those cells to bring about plants and animals, and ultimately we ourselves. Atoms did not, as they do not now, form all this diversity based on their inherent, necessary traits.

It could also be anticipated from a universe that began with an explosion and has been forming ever more complex structures since, eventually getting to life and us.

Before time existed, nothing could be anticipated. God spans the breadth and beyond the the symphony of space-time that is the universe. He is here right now, the Ground of all this.

It’s totally imaginable that it’s engineered in such a way that life was guaranteed to develop.

Clearly you imagine that. Consider that the inevitability represents His will and creative power in the moment things happen. The engineering always takes place in the here and now, integral to what is. Every hair, the smallest thing that could be perceived at the time it was revealed, is counted; every atom is counted, because without Him it would not exist. Every thing follows His command as it was created; we cannot help but choose with our free will. What has been created re new forms of being, of relational capacities, be they molecules, single cells, plants, animals, or we ourselves.

 

[Aloysium]

Thank you for this concise synopsis of the evolutionary myth.

Palaeontologists cannot tell which of these various species had souls – souls do not fossilise and do not have a particular DNA sequence.

Consider that everything has a soul. My cat is itself, an expression of catness, w2hich ultimately would exist not as some thing, but as an archetype in the mind of God. That idea organizes the matter, that constitutes the individual creature’s body into what it is in itself, providing it with capacities to relate to me that are different than the geraniums in my garden. It is created, as was the first of its feline ancestor, before which there were none.

The problem is with a materialistic interpretation, that sees such phenomena as eminating from matter itself. We can understand the soul of all organisms as being one with its constituent matter. Except for mankind, when the organism dies, we can reasonably be certain that it does so in its totality.

Studying the remnants of what was it is important to think about what was, and those creatures that existed did so as themselves. This is what was created in the first of their kind, and has been totally ignored.

From the widespread erectus population, different groups emerged, for example Homo neanderthalensis in Europe, Homo denisova in the Urals and Homo sapiens in Africa.

Whether those individual creatures we label Homo erectus were human or not, we cannot know. If they were not, their kind obviously died off. The other three, to the best of my knowledge were human. They would not have emerged from previous nonhumans, and human beings do not mate with animals. Thdere was one first man, who became two, from whom we all emerged as offspring. Before Adam there was only God as Father. That’s the way it was and is; science may or may not catch up.

 

[Techno2000]

Then around six million years ago the climate changed and the trees began to die back, leaving more savannah grasslands with isolated trees.

So, the climate change only affected the trees , and not the grass? I know it couldn’t have been a drought , because the grass is first to go in a drought …so what kind of climate change was this ?

 

[Techno2000]

Thank you for this concise synopsis of the evolutionary myth.

Exactly…overly simplified, with no details…pure speculation .

 

[rossum]

Thank you for this concise synopsis of the evolutionary myth.

Your thanks are rejected. I did not post “myth”. I posted a short summary of a small aspect of the evolution of primates. Merely because you do not like some aspect of science does not make it a “myth”.

Consider that everything has a soul. My cat is itself, an expression of catness, which ultimately would exist not as some thing, but as an archetype in the mind of God.

If God exists, then where does the archetype of God reside? In what supra-God-being’s mind does that God-archetype exist? If God does not have an archetype, then an archetype is not necessary. Similarly, if a cat-archetype exists, then where does the meta-archetype of the cat-archetype exist? If archetypes are required for existence, then you have an infinite regress of archetypes.

We can understand the soul of all organisms as being one with its constituent matter.

Or we can read Buddhist scripture and reject the concept of a soul entirely. You are assuming the existence of something you have not proved. Souls are commonly assumed in Western philosophy; not so in Buddhist philosophy.

In Hindu philosophy the same soul (atman) can be either human or animal in different lifetimes, depending on the particular reincarnation: if a human is reborn as a cat then is the soul a human soul or a cat soul? Christianity puts a big gulf between human and animal. Some other religions, and biology, have a much smaller difference.

They would not have emerged from previous nonhumans, and human beings do not mate with animals.

Biologically, those unsouled primates were human and would have been able to interbreed with their contemporary closely related species, as can lions and tigers today. The presence or not of a soul has no biological effect on breeding.

There was one first man, who became two, from whom we all emerged as offspring.

The evidence of human DNA shows that there has not been a population bottleneck as narrow as a single couple since before our ancestors split from our LCA with the chimpanzees. Our DNA shows that our ancestral population has not dropped below about 10,000 breeding pairs since that separation from the chimpanzee line. DNA cannot show how many of those ancestors had souls.

There is no problem with a single pair being ancestral to all humans: M-Eve’s parents are just one among many options. However, there is enough genetic variation in our population to show that other sources of variation are required. A single couple has at most four alleles at any one locus between them. Some loci in our DNA have thousands of alleles, hundreds of which we share with chimpanzees. That many alleles cannot have originated in a single couple; they must have originated in an interbreeding population.

 

[rossum]

So, the climate change only affected the trees , and not the grass?

Have you ever tried to grow grass under 100% tree cover? Grass needs direct sunlight; trees block direct sunlight. Why do you think that there is minimal, if any, grass underfoot in woods. The grass only grows in the clearings. Are you really so unobservant?

I know it couldn’t have been a drought , because the grass is first to go in a drought …so what kind of climate change was this ?

You are right, it wasn’t drought: Browsing antelope turned ancient African forests into grassy savanna ecosystems.

 

[buffalo]

The Church is open to evolution. You are certain it’s false. So, whatever revelation of Scripture and Tradition you have isn’t from the Church.

Catholics understand faith and reason cannot be opposed. The Church and just about everyone else accepts what science has shown regarding micro-evolution. Molecules to man, macro-evolution is the issue. And no, the Church does not accept it because it is not empirically proven.

I do not have a personal revelation. I quote what the Church has taught for centuries.

Do you understand the difference between micro and macro?

 

[buffalo]

Random mutation introduces new elements into the genome. Natural selection weeds out the deleterious changes and promotes the beneficial changes. By only looking at half the process you are getting a distorted view of evolution.

It is the complete look at both that has resulted in the push for EES.

 

[buffalo]

It’s totally imaginable that it’s engineered in such a way that life was guaranteed to develop.

That, ahem, would be called intelligent design. Are you now a subscriber?

 

[rossum]

It is the complete look at both that has resulted in the push for EES.

So, you agree that evolution does not solely consist of devolution, but can introduce new functions or improved versions of old functions. That is progress indeed.

I have no problem with punctuated equilibrium if that is what you mean by EES.