Evolution: much ado about nothing

[georgeaquinas]

jjanderson:

I need some advice on this subject from someone out there. I homeschool and am uncertain how to approach this subject with my elementary aged children.

jjanderson,

I would not worry about. Teach your children about the diveristy of life on the planet. Teach them how everything is related together–how habitats work, how species depend upon each other for their survival. Teach them how to identify the animals and plants they see and create in them a awe for the majesty of Creation.

Science and religion do not conflict, I cannot emphasize that enough. Science deals with facts and things (and theories developed from them). Religion is about man’s relationship to God and God’s relationship to man.

I am not a teacher, but that is how I explain it to my seven year old. She loves animals and natures and I wish my faith was half as strong as hers. Science is not the problem, our culture is.

…on the other hand, growing numbers of people are abandoning religion in pratice. Unlike former days, the denial of God or of religion, or the abandonment of them, are no longer unusual and individual occurrences. For today it is not rare for such things to be presented as requirements of scientific progress or of a certain humanism. In numerous places these views are voiced not only in the teachings of philosophers, but on every side they influence literature, the arts, the interpretation of the humanities and of history and civil laws themselves. As a consequence, many people are shaken. Vatican II, Gaudium et spes 7

That was written in 1965—it has certainly gotten worse!!! My whole point in all of this is to not blame evolution, blame the mindset the uses evolution as a tool to deny God. We need to meet them head on and take that tool away from them. We do that not by proving evolutionary theory wrong, rather we do that by showing them there are making invalid inferences.

PS I would stay away from Protestant material. Their Christianity may not be reconcilable with your Catholicism. Just my opinion. I do not homeschool so take this opinion with a grain of salt if you wish (just this opinion though

 

[DuMaurier]

George I agree completely. Here’s a site with a good primer on evolution and christianity:

bede.org.uk/Evolution.htm#introduction

Some of our opponents are happy to encourage us to reject science but they cannot be allowed to set the agenda.

I think its time for a quote from the great theologian St. Augustine:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

 

[Lorarose]

I too wonder what to teach my children.
I have just read Behe’s book - and was very impressed by it.
Another poster alluded to the fact that Behe as been discredited?
How so? On what premise?

I suspect the answer is somewhere between the two camps.
Evolution exists - and God may have also guided it during crucial periods of time.
Of course…how exactly could that be proven?

So when I read about certain theories like punctuated equilibrium - or that scientists don’t agree on the vast amount of time that would be required for all these random mutations to take place - I often wonder if maybe that wasn’t the part where God stepped in and guided the process. Gave it design and purpose.
How DO irreducibly complex systems come into being without someone guiding the necessary components?

 

[marciadietrich]

PhilVaz:

Evangelicals are more free to accept whatever interpretation they can come up with to reconcile evolution and Genesis, the Catholic is more limited I suppose, since some things have been made dogma by the Church that the orthodox Catholic is required to believe. A book like Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott spells out those “De Fide” dogmas explicitly.

It is a bit ironic that even though in theory Catholics a great deal of freedom to choose to believe a theistic evolution viewpoint they have some of the greatest restrictions in original sin, a literal Adam and Eve (as opposed to evolving from populations) and now possibily the restriction of bodily immortality of Adam and Eve before the fall. I’m up to three problems resolving this now! lol

Even more ironically the conflict is so great, IMO, that until I get a good explanation that resolves the conflict I might have to change my viewpoint away from theistic evolution. I’m not going 6 day literal. But I almost might as well believe in a literal creation of the first humans directly from dust put in among an evolved environment.

I’d like to see a good explanation that can resolve original sin and a literal Adam and Eve to the natural elements involved in evolution. I haven’t yet seen a decent attempt outside of Morton as you mentioned. His is incomplete too as I recall, I don’t think his idea resolves the problem of having all living people today being descended from a single pair. That has been ruled out from a scientific point-of-view but seems to be a de fide belief.

Marcia - - - no longer a theistic evolutionist… so what now? intelligent designer? … old earth creationist? … just plain stumped right now…

 

[georgeaquinas]

DuMaurier, can you give a source for that quote? It is a keeper! After the great St. Augustine, I don’t think there is much left to say.

Except that it is apparent that these types of arguments have been going on since the beginning of the Faith. Ignorance is one thing. Willfull ignorance is another!

 

[DuMaurier]

georgeaquinas:

DuMaurier, can you give a source for that quote? It is a keeper! After the great St. Augustine, I don’t think there is much left to say.

Except that it is apparent that these types of arguments have been going on since the beginning of the Faith. Ignorance is one thing. Willfull ignorance is another!

Its from St. Augustine’s book “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim) pp. 42-43

It’s remarkable how much the writings of church fathers still remain relevant today. Augustine was certainly a man ahead of his time. Funny how the same arguments pop up over the last 2000 years or so.

pibburns.com/augustin.htm

 

[PhilVaz]

Note about the Church Fathers: I think its pretty well established virtually all of them interpreted Genesis literally (see Fr. Stanley Jaki books on this), and accepted not only a young earth, but geocentrism (the earth does not move or rotate, it is “fixed.”). Why? That was the prevailing science of the day. The St. Augustine passage is cited by Kenneth Miller as well, its still a good quote given how ignorant the Fathers were of modern science.

I wanted to answer this from an earlier post:

PromethX << The problem that I have with this is the premise: similarities indicate shared ancestry. What is the basis for this premise? >>

I think this was addressed in other threads and posts by Oolon or Vindex or the other folks who are more knowledgeable in evolution. My answer would be:

If someone were to take Karl Keating’s wonderful book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, copy every word in the book including the mistakes – let’s assume there are 100 typographical errors in the book, not true of Ignatius Press but let’s pretend , and present a book called (for example) “Fundamentalism and Catholicism” that matched Keating’s book say 98% word-for-word, including 99 of the 100 mistakes, would you say the latter book was written by the second author himself, or did this book indeed “descend” from Keating’s book?

Let’s say further, another person produced another book (called “Catholicism and Evangelicalism”) that was virtually identical word-for-word from this second book including around 98 of the same 100 typographical errors mentioned above, would you conclude this book was the author’s own, or did he also copy from Keating, or at least his book “descended” from Keating’s book (i.e. the “common ancestor” of both books) ?

That is how strong the evidence is for human evolution, the copy mistakes are called “pseudo-genes” and they have been determined to exist in DNA studies. Plus our DNA is shown to be something like 98% identical to that of modern chimps. Conclusion: we (homo sapiens) and the chimps, and the great apes, had common ancestors several million years ago. The overwhelming evidence is in the copying mistakes (i.e. the genetic “plagiarism”).

See these articles from the NCSE

Especially “Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics: Another Argument in the Evolution-Creation Controversy” by Edward Max. These articles shows how abysmal is the science of the “creation scientists” who deal with paleonanthropology. These articles are written by experts in the field.

Phil P

 

[PhilVaz]

Lora << I have just read Behe’s book - and was very impressed by it. Another poster alluded to the fact that Behe as been discredited? How so? On what premise? >>

Behe accepts human evolution, that we homo sapiens, the chimps, and the great apes had a common ancestor several million years ago. So he pretty well accepts macroevolution. See Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God, he has debated Behe several times. I think Darwin’s Black Box is a great book too, but he has his critics, the prominent Catholic one being Kenneth Miller of Brown Univ

TalkOrigins on Behe and Irreducible Complexity

Also, go back and find all the creation-evolution threads in here the past 2 months (there are at least 5 good long ones). All of this has been discussed to death. With the evolutionists winning most of the battles and mini-skirmishes in my opinion.

Phil P

 

[PhilVaz]

Booger << Edwin and PhilVaz, I’m sorry that you fellows would rather put dogma ahead of empirical evidence. That is why you can’t reconcile evolution with your faith. That is irrational. >>

I think I’m quite rational. My rational question was:

Can Catholicism and evolutionary science be reconciled without completely allegorizing the Adam/Eve story? I think the answer may be No, Genesis 1-3 at least must be completely allegorical or figurative to be reconciled with evolution since (1) evolution works in populations not in individuals, (2) there was no bodily immortality of Adam/Eve before the Fall possible.

See my other thread on that

Phil P

 

[bengal_fan]

Booger:

Something else that I don’t understand that I’ve been seeing at this board is that a lot of these creationist arguments are Young-earth Evangelican Protestant arguments? Why are Catholics siding with Protestants on religious issues? Is it because they are still harboring lingering Protestant views that didn’t leave after their Catholic conversions? Somebody should explain this.

you mean like siding with them in the opposition to abortion, or in defense of the trinity? maybe catholics are siding with the side they believe is right. stop being so judgemental and be open to the truth. even if it isn’t in line with what you believe. i am very open to evolution or creation being true and have enjoyed the threads on the subject except when people start attacking people on a personal level. that is the ignorant part of these arguments.

 

[Prometheum_x]

bengal_fan:

you mean like siding with them in the opposition to abortion, or in defense of the trinity? maybe catholics are siding with the side they believe is right. stop being so judgemental and be open to the truth. even if it isn’t in line with what you believe. i am very open to evolution or creation being true and have enjoyed the threads on the subject except when people start attacking people on a personal level. that is the ignorant part of these arguments.

Bengal fan, thank you for pointing that out. Very often people seem to think that if you can link something to protestantism, then it must be bad. . . with no other evidence necessary. While I don’t remember the exact name of this type of fallacy, it seems to be closely related to an ad hominem. An illustration:

Moron: 2 + 2 = 4
Smart Guy: What do you know?? You’re obviously wrong, cause you’re a moron!

Protestant: I have an idea. I’ll call it proposition X.
Catholic: What do you know? You’re obviously wrong, cause you’re a protestant!

Perhaps you may suspect the moron’s ability to know things, perhaps he has a higher “chance” of being wrong, but his being a moron actually has nothing to do with whether the proposition 2 + 2 = 4 is true.

The same with the protestant: You may question is knowledge, or his motives, or his relationship with God, but those things have absolutely nothing to do with the truth value of his statement.

 

[Prometheum_x]

PhilVaz:

PromethX << The problem that I have with this is the premise: similarities indicate shared ancestry. What is the basis for this premise? >>

I think this was addressed in other threads and posts by Oolon or Vindex or the other folks who are more knowledgeable in evolution. My answer would be:

If someone were to take Karl Keating’s wonderful book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, copy every word in the book including the mistakes – let’s assume there are 100 typographical errors in the book, not true of Ignatius Press but let’s pretend , and present a book called (for example) “Fundamentalism and Catholicism” that matched Keating’s book say 98% word-for-word, including 99 of the 100 mistakes, would you say the latter book was written by the second author himself, or did this book indeed “descend” from Keating’s book?

Let’s say further, another person produced another book (called “Catholicism and Evangelicalism”) that was virtually identical word-for-word from this second book including around 98 of the same 100 typographical errors mentioned above, would you conclude this book was the author’s own, or did he also copy from Keating, or at least his book “descended” from Keating’s book (i.e. the “common ancestor” of both books) ?

That is how strong the evidence is for human evolution, the copy mistakes are called “pseudo-genes” and they have been determined to exist in DNA studies. Plus our DNA is shown to be something like 98% identical to that of modern chimps. Conclusion: we (homo sapiens) and the chimps, and the great apes, had common ancestors several million years ago. The overwhelming evidence is in the copying mistakes (i.e. the genetic “plagiarism”).

Phil P

Next time I have a month to spare, I’ll read all the other evolution/creation threads here. . .

Thank you for you analogy. I understand the analogy and I would certainly agree that in the analogy, the other books “descended” from the first book. I’ll have to think about it some more and see if the situations are similar enough to apply the same logic.

† Jonathan

 

[Jennifer_J]

I vowed to myself I would stay out of these treads as I’m not really qualified. I wish I could convince my dh to contribute as he’s the Catholic biologist/researcher in the family. But I think I have something to say.

Some keep saying that death didn’t enter the picture until after the fall, isn’t that death for animals (I mean why would our sin affect the animals)? What if, through evolution, humans branched off (caused by God) from other similar animals? Now I know this can’t be proven, but it seems it’s a valid way to make the leap. God used the “materials” he created (animals) to make Adam and Eve and by giving these creatures a soul he made them human (and granted them immortality until the fall). Does that make sense? It works for me in dealing with this whole evolution thing. Evolution seems to exist, but it doesn’t deny God. Now some scientists deny God, but that’s their problem, not mine. Science should deal with the physical world, religion with God and spiritual matters.

I hope I made some sense. This whole topic can get confusing and overwhelming.
Jennifer

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Prometheum_x:

Thank you for you analogy. I understand the analogy and I would certainly agree that in the analogy, the other books “descended” from the first book. I’ll have to think about it some more and see if the situations are similar enough to apply the same logic.

This is where comparative genetics scores over comparative anatomy. Shared anatomy may not offer definitive proof (as far as that’s possible in science) of shared ancestry (though the presence of structures in widely differing organisms is strongly supportive: pantadactyl limbs, hind leg spurs in monotremes etc etc).

But the thing about DNA is that its patterns are copied down generations. Therefore, if a lineage diverges into two, the patterns will be copied into these separate lines.

So while humans and chimps, say, sharing the same genes for making… teeth for instance… might just mean that the same structures need be made in the same way, sharing similarities in the non-coding DNA means it has been passed down the generations from their ancestors. Such as the mutation which disables our vitamin C systhesising machinery. The chances that exactly the same mutation would disable the same mechanism in exactly the same way in separate lineages is so minuscule that we may as well discount it… especially given all the other evidence that the lineages are related.

(If huge improbabilities are to be explained by divine intervention, then we need a reason why said deity would make anyone without an adequate diet prone to scurvy… and did the same to other apes too.)

 

[dredgtone]

isn’t every fossil technically a transitional fossil? Is that not the point of evolution? That things evolve? So why would any creationist talk of “no transitional fossils” if the transition takes place over the course of time?

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

dredgtone:

isn’t every fossil technically a transitional fossil? Is that not the point of evolution? That things evolve? So why would any creationist talk of “no transitional fossils” if the transition takes place over the course of time?

I’ve often heard that said, but personally I’m doubtful of the logic of it. Something can only be a transitional if it – or more strictly under cladistics, its closely related species – left descendants. Otherwise it’s an endpoint. We know fossils had ancestors, but only if it is clearly related to something later can it be transitional. IMO.

Strictly, following cladistics, we don’t know if any fossil is on the direct line to any other one. Evolutionary lineages are constantly branching and bush-like. So any organism that gets itself fossilised and then found is unlikely to be on the specific line we’re interested in.

This does not mean that they are not transitional, just that it’s most likely on a side-branch that diverged from the one we’re after. They are transitional because their characteristics place them precisely on the many-branching bush. (See, evolution isn’t deliberately going somewhere: it doesn’t have an end-point in mind, so each species is adapted to its own niche at the time… and so can have features that are not found in subsequent species too – its own set of ‘derived characteristics’.

So you’ll see cladograms with Homo sapiens, say, at the end of the line, with a string of species more and more closely related branching off. Cladistic analyses therefore make the relationships far more quantifiable, testable, and so scientific. We don’t know if the fossil left descendants, but in itself it is quantifiably this much like modern humans, this much like the older species, and has these derived characteristics too.

So our actual lineage is made up of (something like, or actually) Ardipithecus ramidus, (something like, or actually) Ardipithecus ramidus, (something like, or actually) Australopithecus anamensis, (something like, or actually) A afarensis, (something like, or actually) A africanus, (something like, or actually) Homo habilis, (something like, or actually) Homo habilis, (something like, or actually) H erectus, (something like, or actually) H heidelbergensis… and so on.

So everything is (likely to be) a side-branch, but we can tell how close it is to the actual line, and where it comes along that line. And interestingly, we can do that independently of the dates of the fossils… yet the dates coincide with an evolutionary progression from more ape-like to more human-like.

Hope you followed that! There is a simple intro to cladistics at Journey into Phylogenetic Systematics (don’t be put off by the title!)

Oolon

 

[Les_Richardson]

Oolon Colluphid:

LOL! And still the tried and untrustworthy creationist claims roll in…

Thank you Les for yet another unsupported assertion on these boards. Now… I don’t suppose I could trouble you to support that claim, could I? I realise it’s too much to hope that you’ll explain why "evolution is becoming ‘untenable as science’ " yourself, so perhaps you might start by citing the source for the bit you put in quote marks, suggesting it is a quote.

Leaving aside the elitist mockery, since it is a temptation on both sides, and I for one will presume scientific sincerity on your part, I would suggest that Dembski’s paper “Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information” rationally describes what many of us know intuitively, yourself included, and that many have stated here, that higher, more complex beings cannot arise from lower. Indeed, even Richard Dawkins, the celebrated Darwinist, recognizes the *theory *of evolution as counter-intuitive and that is what is so “neat” about it.

Dembski’s treatment of complex specified information argues for an exterior (name removed by moderator)ut, that is all, from an intelligent source, at some point within the closed system of natural causes, if not at many, for the simple reason that *error and selection *have never been shown and cannot be shown to produce complex specified information.

My point is that the human genome, as an example is the very definition of complex specified information. The more that is known, the greater the preponderance of the argument.

If you haven’t read the paper, link www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm

If you have, how would you critique it scientifically.

 

[Prometheum_x]

Oolon Colluphid:

This is where comparative genetics scores over comparative anatomy. Shared anatomy may not offer definitive proof (as far as that’s possible in science) of shared ancestry (though the presence of structures in widely differing organisms is strongly supportive: pantadactyl limbs, hind leg spurs in monotremes etc etc).

But the thing about DNA is that its patterns are copied down generations. Therefore, if a lineage diverges into two, the patterns will be copied into these separate lines.

So while humans and chimps, say, sharing the same genes for making… teeth for instance… might just mean that the same structures need be made in the same way, sharing similarities in the non-coding DNA means it has been passed down the generations from their ancestors. Such as the mutation which disables our vitamin C systhesising machinery. The chances that exactly the same mutation would disable the same mechanism in exactly the same way in separate lineages is so minuscule that we may as well discount it… especially given all the other evidence that the lineages are related.

(If huge improbabilities are to be explained by divine intervention, then we need a reason why said deity would make anyone without an adequate diet prone to scurvy… and did the same to other apes too.)

Thank you. That is a very clear explanation. That gives me something to think about.

† Jonathan

 

[Vindex_Urvogel]

Mike Rainville:

Evolution has been on shaky ground for a long time, propped up by repeated falsification of evidence, and persistent errors in textbooks.

Examples?

Intelligent Design is a new, alternative approach, to the problem from scientists who have honestly approached the data with an open mind, open to the possibility that there MAY be a creator, though the evidence and its analysis does not require a creator.

No, it is not. It does not meet the minimum philosophical requirements of a scientific hypothesis, and the data it has invoked has repeatedly failed to stand up to critical scrutiny. ID advocates in failing to provide any explicit theory of ID, or demarcate explicitly how it is to be tested against data to meet the Popperian falsification criterion, are in reality trying to define nature, not describe it. Sorry folks, that just ain’t science–it’s at best philosophy.

Vindex Urvogel

 

[Edwin_Taraba]

PhilVaz:

If someone were to take Karl Keating’s wonderful book Catholicism and Fundamentalism, copy every word in the book including the mistakes – let’s assume there are 100 typographical errors in the book, not true of Ignatius Press but let’s pretend , and present a book called (for example) “Fundamentalism and Catholicism” that matched Keating’s book say 98% word-for-word, including 99 of the 100 mistakes, would you say the latter book was written by the second author himself, or did this book indeed “descend” from Keating’s book?

This is a very common blunder made by evolutionists - using an example of creation to illustrate evolution. One book did not come out of the womb of the other. Every book - no matter how similar - was created. So the answer is -NO- I would not say the latter book descended from Keating’s. The same is true in living beings. According to evolutionists new beings with slightly different genes are claimed to have come out of the womb of an earlier less advanced life form.