Evolution? please prove it!

[Wirraway]

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?

well, if He sets up a situation where fossil and radiological evidence indicates is 60,000,000 years old, but in fact, its 5,000, I’d say we’ve been fooled. what would be the POINT of using intellect and curiosity if they’re counterfeited by a parlor trick?

God doesn’t allow us to see or directly experience much of His creation, e.g., quantum mechanics. that’s not fooling us. that’s challenging us to expand our understanding of His creation beyond our five senses through the use of our intelligence. your argument might have been made by a 5th century monk being told about radio waves.

 

[Wirraway]

…
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…

not true at all. higher dimensions can be described mathematically. this is not direct sensory experience of higher dimensions, but then, neither does a radio receiver allow direct sensory experience of RF radiation, and you’re not going to deny the existence of RF.

 

[buffalo]

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

 

[theistgal]

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

I don’t need to. The Catholic Church doesn’t work that way. We don’t pit Popes of the past against the current Pope. (Or at least we shouldn’t. )

 

[buffalo]

well, if He sets up a situation where fossil and radiological evidence indicates is 60,000,000 years old, but in fact, its 5,000, I’d say we’ve been fooled. what would be the POINT of using intellect and curiosity if they’re counterfeited by a parlor trick?

God doesn’t allow us to see or directly experience much of His creation, e.g., quantum mechanics. that’s not fooling us. that’s challenging us to expand our understanding of His creation beyond our five senses through the use of our intelligence. your argument might have been made by a 5th century monk being told about radio waves.

God fooling us and us being fools are entirely different.

And your second paragraph is exactly my point. We cannot see much. We only see the “visible” or “human knowable” part. W have to infer much. We do this through the light of reason. We also have Revelation to help.

 

[buffalo]

I don’t need to. The Catholic Church doesn’t work that way. We don’t pit Popes of the past against the current Pope. (Or at least we shouldn’t. )

Do we cast out the past teachings of the Pope’s?

 

[Wirraway]

God fooling us and us being fools are entirely different.

And your second paragraph is exactly my point. We cannot see much. We only see the “visible” or “human knowable” part. W have to infer much. We do this through the light of reason. We also have Revelation to help.

you don’t seriously believe that our perception of His creation is limited to our five senses do you? come on, think this through. can you SEE radio waves? no. do you have any doubt they exist? no. do you even claim to understand the QM two slit experments or particle/wave duality? these things surely exist but they are so far beyond human direct experience that the mind cannot clearly comprehend what is happening and language doesn’t adequately describe it.

let science take care of this, don’t see it as a threat to Faith.

 

[buffalo]

you don’t seriously believe that our perception of His creation is limited to our five senses do you? come on, think this through. can you SEE radio waves? no. do you have any doubt they exist? no. do you even claim to understand the QM two slit experments or particle/wave duality? these things surely exist but they are so far beyond human direct experience that the mind cannot clearly comprehend what is happening and language doesn’t adequately describe it.

let science take care of this, don’t see it as a threat to Faith.

Science can say nothing about the supernatural. So, we really know very little even though some think they know a lot.

We cannot see gravity either, but we see its effects. They are empirical. We can measure, recreate and predict. Same with radio waves.

Perhaps if we were allowed to by God they would be visible to us.

I am not threatened by true science. I am by scientism.

Revelation and true science are true and will not contradict. Revelation cannot and will not change. Science will nto change. Our conclusions will.

 

[theistgal]

Do we cast out the past teachings of the Pope’s?

Which Pope has officially stated, as a matter of doctrine which today’s Catholics are bound to accept, that Catholics may not accept any form of any theory of evolution?

 

[Wirraway]

Science can say nothing about the supernatural. So, we really know very little even though some think they know a lot…

I don’t think anyone here is saying the proper subject of scientific inquiry is the supernatural – however that is defined.

we know very little about what?

 

[reggieM]

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!

Here are a few Church teachings about creation (not the age of the universe though):

561 – Pope Pelagius in a letter to King Childebert I: “For I confess that…Adam and his wife, were not born of other parents, but were created, the one from the earth, the other from the rib of man.”

1215 – Lateran Council IV – “God created both orders out of nothing from the beginning of time, the spiritual and corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly.”

1860 – Council of Cologne – “Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore, we declare that…those…who…assert…man emerged from spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.”

1880 – Pope Leo XIII in the encyclical *Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae *: “We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.”

 

[reggieM]

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.”
– Pope Benedict, Sunday, 24 April 2005

The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
– Cardinal Schönborn, July 7, 2005, NY Times

“Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.” – Catechism of the Catholic Church, #36 (quoting Vatican Council 1).

 

[EasterJoy]

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?

Do you think that when something occurs by a process that science would describe as relying on a series of “random” events that it must mean that God wouldn’t know how it comes out?

If you flip a coin a million times, is it any mystery whether the result will be a million heads, a million times tails, or an even distribution between the two?

Do you see that even from our limited standpoint, inserting a random process into a mechanism doesn’t put the outcome in doubt? I am a chemist. I “believe” (by the parlance of this thread) that chemical reactions occur by random collisions between molecules. Yet when I mix this chemical with that, I know that by controlling the conditions I can be certain of arriving at the desired product.

Add in the standpoint that all times are as the present to God, and it is easy for a reasonable person to see that the presence of a scientifically random process doesn’t make the outcome a mystery to God.

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.”
– Pope Benedict, Sunday, 24 April 2005

As Pope John Paul II pointed out, this truth does not mean that the theory of evolution is incompatible with the Catholic faith. A person just has to understand both.

 

[buffalo]

Do you think that when something occurs by a process that science would describe as relying on a series of “random” events that it must mean that God wouldn’t know how it comes out?

If you flip a coin a million times, is it any mystery whether the result will be a million heads, a million times tails, or an even distribution between the two?

Do you see that even from our limited standpoint, inserting a random process into a mechanism doesn’t put the outcome in doubt? I am a chemist. I “believe” (by the parlance of this thread) that chemical reactions occur by random collisions between molecules. Yet when I mix this chemical with that, I know that by controlling the conditions I can be certain of arriving at the desired product.

Add in the standpoint that all times are as the present to God, and it is easy for a reasonable person to see that the presence of a scientifically random process doesn’t make the outcome a mystery to God.

As Pope John Paul II pointed out, this truth does not mean that the theory of evolution is incompatible with the Catholic faith. A person just has to understand both.

So we agree - God did know what Adam would look like. We agree then we are not the outcome of some meaningless series of events.

 

[Wirraway]

Do you think that when something occurs by a process that science would describe as relying on a series of “random” events that it must mean that God wouldn’t know how it comes out?..

the universe itself, at its most fundamental level, appears random. e.g., radioactive decay of any particular atom in a sample; the uncertainty of the position of electrons in an atomic shell. even your chemical reactions are “certain” only because the probability of molecules interacting in the desired way is very high, approaching, but not reaching, 1.

all this highlights the complexity of His creation and the limits of human comprehension (in that the mind is the child of experience, and much of this cutting edge science is demonstrably contrary to common sense expectations and every day experience) and shows the futility of trying to shoehorn modern science into medieval cosmology.

 

[buffalo]

If you flip a coin a million times, is it any mystery whether the result will be a million heads, a million times tails, or an even distribution between the two?

QM shows that the only way to know for certain the outcome of a single flip is to actually observe it. It cannot be predicted.

 

[Wirraway]

QM shows that the only way to know for certain the outcome of a single flip is to actually observe it. It cannot be predicted.

we can’t understand God in the same way we can understand some ordinary aspect of creation, such as a cat, and that is a comment on both the majesty of God but more, I think, on the limitations of the human mind (and language) which are the product of ordinary, commonplace experience.

a fair analogy from QM is the double slit experiment, where photons or electrons display both or either atributes of a particle or wave, and where wave interference patterns appear even if photons are sent through the gates one at a time - a photon appears to be interfering with itself. this is so far beyond common sense experience such that the human mind has no “real world” analog for this, and consequently no ordinary language to convey this (I suggest that “particle/wave duality” falls short), apart from mathematical constructs.

this hard to wrap one’s mind around, but it is part of Creation. (concepts like the Trinity are magnitudes beyond this, and are a matter of Faith).

but QM, physics and the rest of science describe things that are part of Creation, and are among the processes that evolutionary biology is based on. so it seems to me that a lot of the anti-evolutionary positions rest on arguments from personal incredulity or arguments from ignorance, flawed reasoning at best, even when its not willful ignorance.

 

[buffalo]

we can’t understand God in the same way we can understand some ordinary aspect of creation, such as a cat, and that is a comment on both the majesty of God but more, I think, on the limitations of the human mind (and language) which are the product of ordinary, commonplace experience.

a fair analogy from QM is the double slit experiment, where photons or electrons display both or either atributes of a particle or wave, and where wave interference patterns appear even if photons are sent through the gates one at a time - a photon appears to be interfering with itself. this is so far beyond common sense experience such that the human mind has no “real world” analog for this, and consequently no ordinary language to convey this (I suggest that “particle/wave duality” falls short), apart from mathematical constructs.

this hard to wrap one’s mind around, but it is part of Creation. (concepts like the Trinity are magnitudes beyond this, and are a matter of Faith).

but QM, physics and the rest of science describe things that are part of Creation, and are among the processes that evolutionary biology is based on. so it seems to me that a lot of the anti-evolutionary positions rest on arguments from personal incredulity or arguments from ignorance, flawed reasoning at best, even when its not willful ignorance.

Yes, when we look out at the stars are we really seeing them? Are theyt real or not? Have we influenced it by the mere fact of viewing it?

Interesting questions indeed. Sort of changes the way we think.

Is the cat in box alive or dead before you open the box? Did you kill it by opening the box?

 

[Wirraway]

Yes, when we look out at the stars are we really seeing them? Are theyt real or not? Have we influenced it by the mere fact of viewing it?

Interesting questions indeed. Sort of changes the way we think.

Is the cat in box alive or dead before you open the box? Did you kill it by opening the box?

that’s a fun thought experiment. its just an analogy, however, the – what is is – probability function collapses when it interacts with any system (measurement). so a photon can zip around without any interaction that forces it to act as either a particle or a wave, but on the macro-level, no doubt the cat is fully aware of whether it is alive or dead. I mean, that’s why lampposts don’t move. except on saturday nights, once in a while.

 

[buffalo]

that’s a fun thought experiment. its just an analogy, however, the – what is is – probability function collapses when it interacts with any system (measurement). so a photon can zip around without any interaction that forces it to act as either a particle or a wave, but on the macro-level, no doubt the cat is fully aware of whether it is alive or dead. I mean, that’s why lampposts don’t move. except on saturday nights, once in a while.

This may well explain why so many car accidents happen - the motorist claims the tree just jumped out in front of them.