Evolution: much ado about nothing

[ricatholic]

Charles:

I’ve known several Catholics, myself included, who do not see evolution as contrary to Catholic dogma. As long as it is not being used to deny the Creator, or to mitigate original sin, the theory itself does not seem, to me at least, to be at all unacceptable.

I’m off on vacation tomorrow! You all have a great week!

When Jesus said that we were not responsible for the sins of our fathers and then died for our sins, wasn’t He saying there was no original “sin”?

Peace

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Hi again, Oolon!

You mentioned this concern:

Sure… but then the intelligence is rather inscrutable. Too many mass extinctions – too many extinctions! – and too many ‘design’ foul-ups, y’see. But these don’t mean that there actually was no intelligence involved, just that it doesn’t operate in directly, obviously intelligent ways. It presumably has its own agenda.

Just wanted to remind you that God is infinite. In an infinite 100 and 1 billion don’t seem to make much difference. If God wanted infinite Perfection He wouldn’t have bothered with creation at all. Instead He wanted to diffuse His Love (I believe that’s the Catholic theology) through time and space.

So terms like “many” and “foul-ups” are subjective from our point of view. Those wacky trilobites now revealed to delight a child’s imagination may have served that purpose–or maybe trilobite remains fit in some other design or maybe trilobites add to some great metaphysical design echoed in heaven?

Work with me here! I’m just saying our subjective views about the history of creation are not really proof or dis-proof of an intelligent designer because the intelligence of the Designer from a mechanistic point of view is the difference between finite and infinite.

So we walk by Faith and appreciate what we can. We can draw clues and consolations and ponder mysteries, but drawing a proof or disproof of the Infinite from all creation seems a bit beyond the scope of human perception, which fits with the Christian (Truth) that we walk by faith.

Just my ahem speculation on the matter.