Evolution? please prove it!

[juhothenero]

It’s not a document of the Church, it’s what the Church teaches. However, you are free to check what I’ve just said, to make sure I am correct in what I’m saying, and, if not correct, than to correct me, charitably.

Please cut down on that kind of language. You ruin threads by it. I’m not using any kind of spit in my speech, either: I’m showing you the truth. You’re using flawed reasoning, and since the Bible is Catholic, you have to go by what the Catholic Church teaches. Otherwise you’re twisting the scriptural verses, which is wrong.

An example of your flawed reasoning: You say the Big Bang is day 1. This is not correct. This is an instance of taking the six days of creation in a way too literal manner. It may seem correct, because when you read of light and darkness you think of God bringing the Universe out of nothing, but the fact is you’re mixing science with theology. The Church dose not teach God created the Universe through the Big Bang. The BB is a scientific theory. What the Church teaches is that God brought forth creation from nothing.

How do you think I was not a Catholic, the thing is why i said get rid of the hate speech is when you actually say that is your flawed reasoning, POINT IT OUT!!! or it is useless to say it…

if you say something is flawed produce evidence… just saying it is just actually flawed debating tactics… enough about that though

If there is no Magisterium document behind it, it is something which everybody is free to disagree…

catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0401bt.asp

this document from this website actually contradicts you a bit, it says that evolution cannot be a part of the deposit of faith… and wait, here is what catechism has to say about it:

“The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies that have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers” (CCC 283)

Hmmm… I some what suppose your point of view is actually not what the church teaches… please produce document to support it… this might be your flawed reasoning

also this goes for the big bang and such… that is what is said, nothing more unless you can come up with a good document talking about it…

 

[juhothenero]

Please cut down on that kind of language. You ruin threads by it. I’m not using any kind of spit in my speech, either: I’m showing you the truth. You’re using flawed reasoning

The problem is you are not showing me anything, you are just laughing at my statements and calling them flawed without pointing out where is a flaw… that is spit in your speech, you can check your previous posts if you want…

anyway i pointed your mistake in trying to teach me what church teaches, i am not protestant either, but i am not stupid enough to believe anything a catholic says is what the church teaches, it has to be backed up by an approved Magisterium document, and on this issue there is none, since these things are not part of the deposit of faith, and catholics are free to disagree on these issues. That means they are free to think the way they want on how to explain the issue.

or produce me a document that says otherwise…

 

[ac_claire]

Does anyone know what the Church teaches about the age of the Universe? Or does it not say anything? This is just something I’m personally curious about. If possible link to Church documents. Thanks!

 

[Wirraway]

The problem is you are not showing me anything, you are just laughing at my statements and calling them flawed without pointing out where is a flaw…

you’re getting laughed at for the same reason people laugh at the Three Stooges.

you never read that FAQ like you promised.

 

[buffalo]

It’s so funny, too, that the six days of creation are actually scientifically impossible. I mean, really, who are creationists trying to fool? There are gases and liquids and solids and all kinds of matter in the Universe. God created them all for a reason; He didn’t just create this or create that randomly, He created everything deliberately. It takes a combination of oxygen and hydrogen to make water, it takes a complex chemical reaction for a star to turn into a supernova. Nothing happpens instanteously. Things take time and energy to happen. So how could God create everything in the Universe in only six days? It’s impossible!

God could have added a catalyst or manipulated time. I wouldn’t make a claim like this. If He wanted He could do it in 6 minutes.

What we think may be different from what was done. I think it unwise to impose limitations on God.

 

[Wirraway]

God could have added a catalyst or manipulated time. I wouldn’t make a claim like this. If He wanted He could do it in 6 minutes.

What we think may be different from what was done. I think it unwise to impose limitations on God.

He could do that, He could do anything He pleases. but He gave us an intellect, a capacity for reason and a curiosity about His creation. so while He could have, 5,000 years ago, created a universe that appears from all the evidence to be 15 or so billion years old and that has steadily evolved from a big bang to its present condition, that seems to me to be a cheap parlor trick and mockery of His own gifts.

in the same way, denying evolution after making the effort to understand the evidence and theory (rather than stooging around on the internet looking at youtube diatribes) also seems to mock these same gifts.

 

[buffalo]

He could do that, He could do anything He pleases. but He gave us an intellect, a capacity for reason and a curiosity about His creation. so while He could have, 5,000 years ago, created a universe that appears from all the evidence to be 15 or so billion years old and that has steadily evolved from a big bang to its present condition, that seems to me to be a cheap parlor trick and mockery of His own gifts.

in the same way, denying evolution after making the effort to understand the evidence and theory (rather than stooging around on the internet looking at youtube diatribes) also seems to mock these same gifts.

It is a bogus argument. God is under no constraints to leave evidence as we expect.

I walk down the beach and I see one only left footprints. What do I conclude? The evidence of the right foot has been washed away. That the person hopped down the beach?

 

[Wirraway]

It is a bogus argument. God is under no constraints to leave evidence as we expect.

I walk down the beach and I see one only left footprints. What do I conclude? The evidence of the right foot has been washed away. That the person hopped down the beach?

you’re making a false analogy, sherlock. any good CSI would infer that the person had only one foot.

its an intellectual dry well to adopt and act on the proposition that denies a rational analysis of the evidence. Sure, God could have created the world yesterday and planted all the evidence to the contrary, but now what? why bother with exercising any intellectual gift you have? some might find that comforting, but I think its a barren and stale world view.

 

[theistgal]

you’re getting laughed at for the same reason people laugh at the Three Stooges.

you never read that FAQ like you promised.

Well, as the proprietor of a web page devoted to the Three Stooges, I have to disagree with that. The Stooges had no problem with the theory of evolution - they were the ultimate missing links! (nyuk nyuk!)

 

[buffalo]

you’re making a false analogy, sherlock. any good CSI would infer that the person had only one foot.

its an intellectual dry well to adopt and act on the proposition that denies a rational analysis of the evidence. Sure, God could have created the world yesterday and planted all the evidence to the contrary, but now what? why bother with exercising any intellectual gift you have? some might find that comforting, but I think its a barren and stale world view.

It is foolish to use the phrasing “planted the evidence”. That is not my position at all for God cannot deceive. The issue is whether we have all the information necessary to come to the conclusions we do.

Science by its own definition has a limited say about the universe. It is like looking at the tip of the iceberg.

I am all for reasoning and excercising intellectual gifts.

 

[Wirraway]

It is foolish to use the phrasing “planted the evidence”. That is not my position at all for God cannot deceive. The issue is whether we have all the information necessary to come to the conclusions we do.

Science by its own definition has a limited say about the universe. It is like looking at the tip of the iceberg.

I am all for reasoning and excercising intellectual gifts.

conceding that our minds are pale reflections of His own and that we cannot always understand His ways, our minds are, nonetheless, reflections to some degree. marshaling the evidence and concluding that a meteor strike caused a mass extinction is a natural exercise of God given gifts. Claiming that it never happened even though it looks that way seems, at least to me, to deny those gifts. in grosser terms, why would He fool us like that?

 

[buffalo]

conceding that our minds are pale reflections of His own and that we cannot always understand His ways, our minds are, nonetheless, reflections to some degree. marshaling the evidence and concluding that a meteor strike caused a mass extinction is a natural exercise of God given gifts. Claiming that it never happened even though it looks that way seems, at least to me, to deny those gifts. in grosser terms, why would He fool us like that?

You are using the phrasing to “fool us”. That is wrong. God did nothing to fool us.

Why does God not allow us to see other dimensions? Why doesn’t He allow us to see Him as He is? To fool us?

 

[Hobble]

It’s not a document of the Church, it’s what the Church teaches. However, you are free to check what I’ve just said, to make sure I am correct in what I’m saying, and, if not correct, than to correct me, charitably.

Please cut down on that kind of language. You ruin threads by it. I’m not using any kind of spit in my speech, either: I’m showing you the truth. You’re using flawed reasoning, and since the Bible is Catholic, you have to go by what the Catholic Church teaches. Otherwise you’re twisting the scriptural verses, which is wrong.

An example of your flawed reasoning: You say the Big Bang is day 1. This is not correct. This is an instance of taking the six days of creation in a way too literal manner. It may seem correct, because when you read of light and darkness you think of God bringing the Universe out of nothing, but the fact is you’re mixing science with theology. The Church dose not teach God created the Universe through the Big Bang. The BB is a scientific theory. What the Church teaches is that God brought forth creation from nothing.

Actually Nickname, juhothenero never said that the 6 days was literal. They basically agreed with you, they said that the 6 days was symbolic. I think you may have overlooked some of their post.

 

[Starwynd]

Evolution does have something in common with God.

You can’t reason with people who will refuse to accept it under any circumstances what so ever.

 

[EasterJoy]

It is a bogus argument. God is under no constraints to leave evidence as we expect.

I walk down the beach and I see one only left footprints. What do I conclude? The evidence of the right foot has been washed away. That the person hopped down the beach?

Many people might conclude that the person had hopped down the beach, because most people don’t know enough about footprints to know how to tell with certainty the difference between the kind of footprint made while hopping and the kind of footprint made while walking. Someone who has made a study of biomechanics, however, can study footprints long enough and intelligently enough to look at one single footprint and say with certainty, “This footprint was not made by a person hopping down the beach”, because they know the physics required for a person of any size to land and take off again from a one-legged stance.

The theory of evolution is not a knee-jerk supposition that was thrown out without any scrutiny from those well-acquainted with the laws of nature. It is not a monolith that has stood unchanged from the day that Darwin proposed it. The archeological record is full of things that are not what people expected. Truth be told, those are the nuggets of gold in a scientific career. That record even has instances of entries which were fraudulently entered and later corrected when the understanding of skeletal structure were expanded.

So, you argue, why believe in evolution if a later expansion of knowledge might cause the whole “theory” to be discarded? If by “believe” you mean that “the current theory of evolution leaves no questions about what happened, that’s that, and it is impossible that a better theory will ever emerge”, then I hope you won’t. If you mean “there is another theory that is a far better explanation of the known data, so we should discard evolution as a theory”, though, we’d all like to hear what that “better” theory is. When it comes to explaining known data, the theory of evolution is nothing to spit on. It has had a great deal of scrutiny from those who knew they could make their fame by scrutinizing and finding the one card that makes the whole house of cards come down. The naysayers against evolution have conjectured where that card might be, yes. The problem is that they haven’t found it.

The problem with the “competing” theories about evolution is that so far they can’t compete. They leave far more unanswered questions and the current theory. Some even violate the known laws of nature. By any standard of intellectual fairness, those have to be discarded. If God violated his own laws to accomplish something, that event has become supernatural, and beyond the purview of science.

And that is just the thing. The fundamental assumption of science is that every part of the mechanism under discussion could reasonably have taken place without matter or energy violating the known patterns of behavior that may be reliably observed now. Science deals only with those things which God may have accomplished by using his omniscient understanding and omnipotent mastery of the same physical laws that are in operation today. The laws of nature are God’s laws!

Knowing that God did understand the physical laws he had designed into the universe he fashioned from its very beginning, and knowing that to God, all times are as the present, it is reasonable to suppose that God created the universe and all life as we know it by use of his own laws. Some find it too much a leap of faith to believe it, but I find it perfectly reasonable to suppose that, from the first time he released the entirety of known physical creation at the event we call “the Big Bang”, God would surely have known on which planet and at what time the brontosauruses and the passenger pigeons and the lions and the tigers and the speakers of Hebrew and Greek were going to show up, and by what means. There is no reason to believe that supernatural intervention would have been required to accomplish the creation of life. Therefore, it seems reasonable for science to inquire into what natural means God chose to use.

Frankly, I think that people who will not suppose that God could have come up with evolution as his normal means of creation lack either faith or imagination…but that’s just me.

 

[buffalo]

Many people might conclude that the person had hopped down the beach, because most people don’t know enough about footprints to know how to tell with certainty the difference between the kind of footprint made while hopping and the kind of footprint made while walking. Someone who has made a study of biomechanics, however, can study footprints long enough and intelligently enough to look at one single footprint and say with certainty, “This footprint was not made by a person hopping down the beach”, because they know the physics required for a person of any size to land and take off again from a one-legged stance.

The theory of evolution is not a knee-jerk supposition that was thrown out without any scrutiny from those well-acquainted with the laws of nature. It is not a monolith that has stood unchanged from the day that Darwin proposed it. The archeological record is full of things that are not what people expected. Truth be told, those are the nuggets of gold in a scientific career. That record even has instances of entries which were fraudulently entered and later corrected when the understanding of skeletal structure were expanded.

So, you argue, why believe in evolution if a later expansion of knowledge might cause the whole “theory” to be discarded? If by “believe” you mean that “the current theory of evolution leaves no questions about what happened, that’s that, and it is impossible that a better theory will ever emerge”, then I hope you won’t. If you mean “there is another theory that is a far better explanation of the known data, so we should discard evolution as a theory”, though, we’d all like to hear what that “better” theory is. When it comes to explaining known data, the theory of evolution is nothing to spit on. It has had a great deal of scrutiny from those who knew they could make their fame by scrutinizing and finding the one card that makes the whole house of cards come down. The naysayers against evolution have conjectured where that card might be, yes. The problem is that they haven’t found it.

The problem with the “competing” theories about evolution is that so far they can’t compete. They leave far more unanswered questions and the current theory. Some even violate the known laws of nature. By any standard of intellectual fairness, those have to be discarded. If God violated his own laws to accomplish something, that event has become supernatural, and beyond the purview of science.

And that is just the thing. The fundamental assumption of science is that every part of the mechanism under discussion could reasonably have taken place without matter or energy violating the known patterns of behavior that may be reliably observed now. Science deals only with those things which God may have accomplished by using his omniscient understanding and omnipotent mastery of the same physical laws that are in operation today. The laws of nature are God’s laws!

Knowing that God did understand the physical laws he had designed into the universe he fashioned from its very beginning, and knowing that to God, all times are as the present, it is reasonable to suppose that God created the universe and all life as we know it by use of his own laws. Some find it too much a leap of faith to believe it, but I find it perfectly reasonable to suppose that, from the first time he released the entirety of known physical creation at the event we call “the Big Bang”, God would surely have known on which planet and at what time the brontosauruses and the passenger pigeons and the lions and the tigers and the speakers of Hebrew and Greek were going to show up, and by what means. There is no reason to believe that supernatural intervention would have been required to accomplish the creation of life. Therefore, it seems reasonable for science to inquire into what natural means God chose to use.

Frankly, I think that people who will not suppose that God could have come up with evolution as his normal means of creation lack either faith or imagination…but that’s just me.

God could have done it through evolution. But at least as far as man goes Revelation tells us something different.

One thing to remember, we are essentially flatlanders when it comes to this. We cannot see other dimensions wo we are handicapped as a 2d flatlander is.

The question to you is - did God know what man would look like?

 

[theistgal]

God could have done it through evolution. But at least as far as man goes Revelation tells us something different.

How strange, then, that the official spokesman (the Pope) for the organization that gave us that Revelation (the Catholic Church) says otherwise!

 

[buffalo]

How strange, then, that the official spokesman (the Pope) for the organization that gave us that Revelation (the Catholic Church) says otherwise!

What does our Pope say specifically about man?

 

[wildleafblower]

A great overview of EVOLUTION by Eric J. Chaisson, Wright Center for Science Education. Enjoy exploring :
tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html

http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html

What does our Pope say specifically about man?

Hi Buffalo. The “lastest” statement as you requested:

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY
OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 150th ANNIVERSARY
OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12 - 15, 2008)

VISIT AT THE “INSTITUT DE FRANCE”

GREETING OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Paris
Saturday, 13 September 2008

Mr Chancellor,
Dear Permanent Secretaries of the five Académies,
Dear Cardinals,
Dear brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood,
Dear friends from the Académies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

[snip]

As Rabelais rightly asserted in his day, “Science without conscience brings only ruin to the soul!"(Pantagruel, 8). It was doubtless in order to contribute to avoiding the risk of such a dichotomy that, at the end of January of last year, and for the first time in three and a half centuries, two Académies of the Institut, two Pontifical Academies and the Institut Catholique in Paris organized a joint Colloquium on the changing identity of the individual. The Colloquium has illustrated the interest generated by broad interdisciplinary studies. This initiative could be taken further, in order to explore together the countless research possibilities in the human and experimental sciences. This wish is accompanied by my prayers to the Lord for you, for your loved ones and for all the members of the Académies, as well as all the staff of the Institut de France. May God bless you!
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080913_parigi-institut-de-france_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...pe_20080913_parigi-institut-de-france_en.html

 

[buffalo]

How strange, then, that the official spokesman (the Pope) for the organization that gave us that Revelation (the Catholic Church) says otherwise!

What have our other past official spokesman’s (Popes) siad. Care to quote any?