Evolution refuting catholicism?

[hecd2]

PhilVaz:

hecd2 << David’s lack of knowledge sits poorly with his pedagogical tone. >>

To defend David a little, he’s seems pretty knowledgeable in other areas of Catholic doctrine. He’s apparently teaching a class on apologetics. But indeed he should leave science to the scientists and at least try to read responses to his arguments against evolution before posting them. And he just joined this board Nov 13 so he seems to have missed out all the great creation-evolution threads we have had already.

There is definitely a “wing” of Catholicism that seems to oppose evolution with bad creationist arguments, for example this book and this book by Tan Books and this video and this video by Ignatius Press (both orthodox Catholic publishers), and the Kolbe Center, but they are in the minority. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is very pro-science and pro-evolution.

David, go to the search, type “evolution” and spend the next week reading all those threads.

Phil P

Dear Phil,

My comments were directed at David’s science, not his apologetics. He began his depressingly bad attempt to refute evolutionary theory with the claim that he is a scientist, which was a plain attempt to give undeserved credibility to his arguments. His credibility as a scientist is belied by the errors and anachronisms in the substance of his post, but his claim to authority deceived at least three non-scientific readers. Catholic apologetics can never be truly served by this kind of tactic.

I make no comment about David’s apologetics because I am utterly incompetent to do so. For all I know he is a more than competent apologist and theologian. In that capacity, I wish him well.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[wanerious]

Newman60:

…in this thread anyone who doesn’t “believe” the same “set of axioms” or assumptions is therefore ignorant, using bad science and a continuing assortment of pejorative terms like obfuscation. But never an answer of why an honest debate cannot be held without continual reductio ad absurdum?

Hi Newman,

It is really difficult to have honest debates about logical and mathematical results, since one who argues against mathematical proofs will presumably not hold with mathematical process or logical methods, either. There are really no interpretation problems or arguments of bias in proofs, as all reasoning beings ought to agree on results. I am all for a good debate in the physical sciences, but I wouldn’t know how to begin to address one in math. It is just simply mathematically true that, in an infinitely random sequence, one can find any other sequence of arbitrary length. This has little bearing on these evolutionary arguments, as we’ve noted that evolution does not wholly rely on random processes.

 

[MichelleTherese]

The only “sources” anyone wants me to rely upon are the popular sources touted by the scientific community. But I refuse to only listen to one side of the story. My notions are not preconceived but brought about by honest questions and confusions that arise during my science classes. So, I started to look outside the box. More people should do the same rather then settling for the status quo without asking any questions.

 

[SocaliCatholic]

wanerious:

Hi Newman,

It is really difficult to have honest debates about logical and mathematical results, since one who argues against mathematical proofs will presumably not hold with mathematical process or logical methods, either. There are really no interpretation problems or arguments of bias in proofs, as all reasoning beings ought to agree on results. I am all for a good debate in the physical sciences, but I wouldn’t know how to begin to address one in math. It is just simply mathematically true that, in an infinitely random sequence, one can find any other sequence of arbitrary length. This has little bearing on these evolutionary arguments, as we’ve noted that evolution does not wholly rely on random processes.

I concur.

 

[SocaliCatholic]

hecd2:

Dear neophyte,

The evidence against monogenism and for polygenism is strong and although I have posted it on other threads in this forum at least twice before, here it is for convenience. (By the way, your statement about descent from a single female is a reference to the so-called Mitochondrial Eve - this concept has also been discussed in some detail on previous threads and provides no evidence for monogenism - I can pick this up - again - if you want me to).

Anyway here is the evidence that humans are not descended from a single pair of biological ancestors:

Analysis of common alleles in highly polymorphic loci in human and chimpanzee indicate no severe bottleneck below 10,000 individuals since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages.

This is supported by:

1. analysis of the major histocompatibility complex - specifically the human leucocyte antigen - DRB1:
   Ayala, ‘The myth of Eve, Molecular biology and human origins’, Science 270, 1930 - 1936
2. Beta-globin:
   Harding et al, ‘Archaic African and Asian lineages in the genetic ancestry of modern humans’, Am J Hum Genet 60, 772 - 789
3. Apolipoprotein C II:
   Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389

Rogers and Jorde, ‘Genetic evidence on the origin of modern humans’, Hum Biol 67, 1 - 36, show that a modest bottleneck of 10,000 individuals is consistent with the data.

This minimum population size of 10,000 individuals throughout hominid history is also supported by mitochondrial genetic diversity:
Takahata, ‘Allelic genealogy and human evolution’, Mol Biol Evol 10, 2 - 22;

By Y-chromosome data:
Hammer, ’ A recent common ancestry for human Y-chromosomes’, Nature 378, 376 - 378

By nuclear DNA:
Takahata et al, ‘Diversion time and population size in the lineage leading to modern humans’, Theor Popul Biol 48, 198 - 221

At its absolute simplest, if we consider a highly polymorphic locus like DRB-1 in the Human Leucocyte Antigen complex we find 58 human alleles. By carrying out analyses of the pan-speciific alleles we can determine the likely coalescence dates of alleles, by derivation of a phylogenetic tree from pan-specific divergence of individual alleles. That indicates that all 58 alleles persisted through the last 500,000 years of human evolution. The 58 alleles coalesce to 44 lineages by 1.7 Myr BP and to 21 lineages by 6 Myr BP (the apptroximate date of divergence of human and chimpanzee ancestors). Since anatomically modern humans emerge at 125,000 years BP and culturally modern humans at 60,000 years BP, and the human lineage polymorphism at this locus is 58 alleles during this period, this puts a mathematically logical lower limit on the minimum human populatrion size during culturally modern human existence of 29 individuals which in itself destroys the concept of monogeny.

Formal population genetics demands a much larger population than 29 individuals for the maintenanence of 58 alleles in a situation of neutral drift and balanced evolution (where heterozygosity has more fitness than any homozygosity), and the conclusion from these quantitative evolutionary analyses is that the minimum human population bottlemneck was around 10,000 individuals.

All of this evidence refutes the possibility that humans derive genetically from two individuals within the last 6 million years.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Alec my friend, good to see you again.

For all of your scientific genius you forgot one simple truth.

At what absolute point was evolution scientifically verifiable?

Please, do not attempt a show of hands, a picture of reassembled fossils, scientific consensus, or another link by PhilVaz to Project Steve

 

[buffalo]

SocaliCatholic:

Ok you caught me spreading innuendo again… Just don’t tell Alec!

Well to be completely honest if one were an atheistic evolutionist, then there would be no such thing as evil in the first place!

Some have not tried to fit the theory to their bias?

 

[buffalo]

hecd2:

Well, I am someone who understands and defends both the Theory of Evolution and the concordance model of cosmology against ill-informed attacks. For the life of me, I cannot see where these branches of science are in conflict.

Alec

\

Cosmology is pointing to a creator (design), atheistic evolution points to chance without design.

 

[wanerious]

\

Cosmology is pointing to a creator (design), atheistic evolution points to chance without design.

Hi Buffalo,

I know we’ve had this discussion before, and I still think we’ve got to be careful. Cosmology does not point towards a creator, but rather it leads towards a set of questions regarding origins that it cannot, as of yet, address. “Atheistic evolution” is not at all in conflict, as it relies upon the change in genetic patterns over time as prescribed by natural laws. There is some component of this that is “chance” and a large component that is certainly not random, as has been talked about above. We may postulate the original creator or designer of the physical laws that govern both cosmology and evolution, but they are certainly not in conflict.

 

[buffalo]

wanerious:

Hi Buffalo,

We may postulate the original creator or designer of the physical laws that govern both cosmology and evolution, but they are certainly not in conflict.

Correct. They could not ever be in conflict. It is our understanding or lack of understanding that they may seem to be in conflict.

But cosmology is showing more design not less the deeper we look. This certainly moves the argument towards God than away from Him. This is a change from what the materialists of this and last century expected.

 

[SocaliCatholic]

buffalo:

But cosmology is showing more design not less the deeper we look.

What phenomena in cosmology shows evidence of design?

 

[buffalo]

SocaliCatholic:

What phenomena in cosmology shows evidence of design?

There are a number. For example quantum physics is probabilistic. Quantum theory has solidified itself for 75 years. To determine a result of a probabilistic event, one needs an observer outside its own frame of reference. Ultimately, God.

Hawking himself had said he had to re-examine his atheistic bias.

Anthropic coincidences are another. They show that there are many conditions in the universe that were just a little off of what they are - life as we know it could not have formed.

The Big Bang itself. What was before the Big Bang?

 

[Bob_Baran]

God said bang! And it was BIG!

 

[SocaliCatholic]

buffalo:

There are a number. For example quantum physics is probabilistic. Quantum theory has solidified itself for 75 years. To determine a result of a probabilistic event, one needs an observer outside its own frame of reference. Ultimately, God.

Hawking himself had said he had to re-examine his atheistic bias.

Anthropic coincidences are another. They show that there are many conditions in the universe that were just a little off of what they are - life as we know it could not have formed.

The Big Bang itself. What was before the Big Bang?

OK thats fine and dandy but shouldnt it follow that evidence of design should be everywhere?

Not just limited to some far-off scientific discoveries allowing room for evolutionists to obfuscate the truth with their complex proprietary scientific knowledge?

 

[buffalo]

SocaliCatholic:

OK thats fine and dandy but shouldnt it follow that evidence of design should be everywhere?

It is. That’s precisely what they are finding. It is built in all over.

 

[hecd2]

SocaliCatholic:

Alec my friend, good to see you again.

For all of your scientific genius you forgot one simple truth.

At what absolute point was evolution scientifically verifiable?

Please, do not attempt a show of hands, a picture of reassembled fossils, scientific consensus, or another link by PhilVaz to Project Steve

Dear Socali,

What a fine welcome. I will, as ever, try to answer your question as honestly and comprehensively as possible. However, I don’t see what’s wrong with some of the approaches (hands, fossils, consensus) you reject.

You’ll know, of course, that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace arrived at an almost identical explantion for the diversity of species at almost the same time. In fact, the first open publication describing the Theory was a joint paper, read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in 1858 and published in the Journal of the Proceeings of the Linnean Society later that year. Darwin’s name overshadows Wallace’s in part because Darwin published his marvellous exposition of the theory ‘On the Origin of Species’ a year later in 1859. From the beginning, Darwin’s work caught the popular imagination - the book sold out as soon as it was published and was re-published (with revisions) many times in Darwin’s life time. Many good scientists accepted the truth of Darwin’s hypothesis during his lifetime, but considerable opposition remained.

There is powerful evidence for the truth of Darwin’s claims in the ‘Origin’ itself. The ‘Origin’ is unique amongst scientific works of the very first order in being entirely comprehensible to the non-specialist (an attempt to read, for example, Newton’s Principia, will end in frustration, unless you are a specialist). The ‘Origin’ has long been out of copyright and you can pick up a paperback edition for next to nothing or read it for free on the web. Go here for a list of sources:
evolutionpages.com/resources.htm
No-one who wants to debate evolution should fail to read the ‘Origin’ - it is beautifully written and compelling.

Now then, Darwin had one problem that he never resolved - he never came up with a credible mechanism for the variation with descent. Although Mendel was working at the same time, Darwin was never aware of his work.

The lowest point for Darwinian evolution was from the start of the 20th century up until about 1930. During that period Darwinian Natural Selection was seen as an alternative to Mendelian genetics and Lamarck’s idea that acquired characteristics could be passed on to offspring also appeared credible.

The turning point came between 1925 and 1940, when Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics were brought together in an utterly compelling synthesis by some great names: Dobzhansky, Mayr, Fisher, Haldane, Simpson, and Wright. The science of population genetics was established and the theory of speciation was formulated. Simultaneously, palaeontologists with fossils, geneticists with chromosomal karyotyping, and systematists with nested phylogeny provided overwhelming evidence for the Modern Synthesis or neo-Darwinism. By this stage, evolutionary theory was already established as the foundational framework for all of biology.

Then, in 1953, the structure of DNA was established by Crick and Watson, and an entirely new and powerful source of evidence for evolution became available: comparative genomics or molecular biology.

To be continued

 

[hecd2]

**Continuation

**The fact is that, not being a scientific historian, I cannot say with any precision just when the evidence for evolution became so powerful that to deny it requires pervesity, dishonesty or ignorance. That point was passed at least decades ago. Nothing that we have discovered since then refutes the basic principle - on the contrary, everything from the analysis of the roots of the tree of life to the comparative genomics of man and mouse, points inexorably to common descent with modification based on mutational and recombinational change and Natural and Sexual Selection.

Every year there are tens of thousands of observations in systematics, comparative genomics, structural bioogy, developmental biology, field zoology and botany, palaeontology, population genetics, and other biological sciences that strengthen the foundations of evolutionary theory and none that undermine it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[adnauseum]

I was just wondering, hecd2, how are we to believe what you say?

I myself am not a biologist, and no matter how much reading I do, I don’t think I could ever come to the point where I convince myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you say is true.

Yet if I accept your testimony based on faith, just as I accept the facts handed down by the Apostles, isn’t that something you would ridicule me for?

By the way, posting guidelines clearly state you should not make long posts. Why do you disobey this rule constantly?

 

[hecd2]

buffalo:

hecd2:

Well, I am someone who understands and defends both the Theory of Evolution and the concordance model of cosmology against ill-informed attacks. For the life of me, I cannot see where these branches of science are in conflict.

Alec

Cosmology is pointing to a creator (design), atheistic evolution points to chance without design.

Really! Just what is there is the the concordance model of cosmology that points to a designer? Do you actually understand anything about cosmology? Do you understand, for example, that the structure of matter in the universe (galaxies, galactic clusters, super clusters) relies on entirely random (‘chance’ as you describe it) anisotrpies (non-uniformities) in the scalar field of inflation that are Gaussian, adiabatic and scale-invariant? The existence of our galaxy and our solar system depend on processes that are as ‘chancy’ as any that underlie evolution.

To what extent are you really familiar with the stochastic processes that drive the anisotropy of the CMB? Do you understand why the theory that predicts the first peak in the CMB anisotropy power spectrum matches observation? Do you have any understanding of the acoustic basis of the fluctuations in the universe? Can you distinguish between fluctuations that arise from the Sachs-Wolfe effect and those that arise from the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect?

I think your idea that cosmology points to a ‘designer’ whereas evolutionary biology points away is based on an imperfect underrstanding of the science and is deeply flawed.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

adnauseum:

I was just wondering, hecd2, how are we to believe what you say?

I myself am not a biologist, and no matter how much reading I do, I don’t think I could ever come to the point where I convince myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you say is true.

Yet if I accept your testimony based on faith, just as I accept the facts handed down by the Apostles, isn’t that something you would ridicule me for?

By the way, posting guidelines clearly state you should not make long posts. Why do you disobey this rule constantly?

No-one has to take what I say on faith. Everything that I say is backed by references to the peer reviewed scientific literature, which is in the public domain - anyone who is willing to learn can access it for themselves.

I do sympathise with you, though, in that much of science seems to be inaccessible to the lay person who must either reject or accept it on the basis of expert testimony. Scientists should do a better job of explaining their ideas. But it is genuinely difficult to do so; no-one can hope to understand scientific ideas without genuine effort and thought. I do my best, poor as it is, to explain scientific ideas to non-scientists.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether to accept scientific findings on faith; or to make the effort to truly understand scientific hypotheses and their empirical foundations and so accept or reject them knowledgeably; or to reject the authority of science. That’s your choice.

As for the length of my posts: serious subjects cannot be dealt with in one or two sentences. If the rules preclude reasoned debate, then the rules are wrong. I don’t think there is a rule that bans long posts provided they are substantial. If arguments of more than a few lines upset or confuse you, then skip over them.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[wanerious]

hecd2:

I think your idea that cosmology points to a ‘designer’ whereas evolutionary biology points away is based on an imperfect underrstanding of the science and is deeply flawed.

Well, I’ll try to argue what I was hearing Buffalo to say. I myself find some aspects of cosmology to point to a strangely compelling argument for some kind of cosmic designer of physical law. Wow, that was an awkward sentence. In the specifics of the the theory, as you say above, of course the Universe evolves according to imperfectly understood natural principles after, so far as we can tell, 10^-43 seconds or so after the instantiation of the initial matter/energy field. In addition, there are some interesting apparent conspiracies between fundamental constants of nature that allow for a stable and evolving universe. Quantum mechanics is also imperfectly understood, and a popular interpretation involves some interplay between consciousness and observational results. I don’t go so far as Buffalo as to say that this is evidence of design or of a higher power, since I like to leave room for future discoveries of beautiful and unifying physical principles, but currently there is some room there nevertheless. I don’t draw any distinction between the natural principles of cosmology and those of evolution; rightly understood, evolutionary theory is a beautiful expression of those natural laws and principles we’ve been fortunate and bright enough to uncover.