Evolution & the catholic church

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Jasny:
The facts speak for themselves look at who supported Eugenics and “scientific racism”. Look to the Founder:…
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your making the mistake of imposing a religious model on science

Darwin wasn’t some Founder with a capital “F” whose every word is regarded as sacrosanct

He was just a guy with a new way of looking at existing data. Nothing more nothing less.
in fact he had contemporaries who were arriving at the same conclusions he just beat them to publishing.

if Darwin said other stuff that was silly, stupid or misused by others that has absolutely nothing to do with the robustness of the theory.

I’m not even sure what your point is. :confused:

I’ve read things that put the blame for the anti Semitism in Nazism squarely on Luther…that doesn’t make that true either. There have always been folks who will misuse, misquote, or other wise abuse the works of others for their own ends.

Eugenics ideas are nothing new: The Spartans exposed sick babies 2500 years ago. And given the romantic and classical revival aspects of some parts of 19th century culture that seems just as likely a tree top bark up as Darwin.

Remember he was a man of his time. He was born into a world where people seriously held to both the notion of “white man’s burden” and the “Noble Savage”.
 
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Jasny:
Tim

I dont know too much about the KKK but its claims could be compared with Jesus’ teachings and their history. If they don’t match then they are making a false claims.

My point is not just to examine the theory of Darwinism but also its history.

If Eugenics and Nazism were based on the theory gravity we should investigate why the theory gave birth to such things.

I think it is a justified inquiry.
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Well, I think that evolution comes out fine if you examine the history of the theory. After all, no where in history was the theory found to be false.

Regarding your attempt to falsify evolution because someone used it to justify their actions, why don’t you try using science, since that is the realm of evolution.

Peace

Tim
 
My question would have to do with the doctrine of original sin.

If we believe that not only sin but death entered the world with the fall, how would creatures have died before this?
 
well then you’d surmise that the “death” you speak of is allegorical since clearly things have been dying for a long time

I filled my gas tank up with some dead things just the other day
 
The pertinent passage is Romans 5:12 where the Apostle tells us that with the fall sin entered the world and with it death for men.

While Paul’s point is to outline the nature of the problem of sin and God’s solution in the atonement, he is writing anthropotropically. Elsewhere he does speak in a more cosmically extensive fashion about the effects of sin and the atonement.

I see no reason to conclude that this death is allegorical just to accommodate a scientific theory.
 
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Steadfast:
Okay then, maybe sin is just “allegorical” too.
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well that doesn’t necessarily follow :confused:

sin doesn’t leave fossils or other physical marks
 
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Steadfast:
The pertinent passage is Romans 5:12 where the Apostle tells us that with the fall sin entered the world and with it death for men.

While Paul’s point is to outline the nature of the problem of sin and God’s solution in the atonement, he is writing anthropotropically. Elsewhere he does speak in a more cosmically extensive fashion about the effects of sin and the atonement.

That’s not his purpose here but he does speak of sin and death entering the world for men at the fall.

I see no reason to conclude that this death is allegorical just to accommodate a scientific theory.
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I don’t see where there is a problem. Surely you would agree that we are human because of both our physical bodies and our souls. If the physical Adam evolved but became man only when ensouled, the idea of death following the fall is not hard to reconcile. There are those who claim that all death is the result of the fall, including plants and animals.

Peace

Tim
 
Here’s a more pressing question I’ve never heard answered by a Theistic proponent of the current scientific theory of evolution:

Since the existence of Jesus Christ precedes creation, and since Jesus Christ possessed the “form” of man as the image of God prior to becoming “incarnate,” would not believing in evolution necessarily entail believing that the form of God made man is not a product of God’s willful and direct creation but infact a product of a “force” that He set into motion?

Is the image of God then defined by his creation of evolution as opposed to God Himelf? How can God be defined by His creation?

[in Mike Myers *Coffee Talk accent] Discuss…

😃
 
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Steadfast:
…I see no reason to conclude that this death is allegorical just to accommodate a scientific theory.
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Well you’re not doing it to accommodate a theory (in the pejorative sense you seem to use that word), you’re doing it to accommodate observable facts.

The scriptures also mention a flat earth with a solid firmament above. We can observe that it is not. That has no bearing on the intent of the scripture.
 
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Orogeny:
I don’t see where there is a problem. Surely you would agree that we are human because of both our physical bodies and our souls. If the physical Adam evolved but became man only when ensouled, the idea of death following the fall is not hard to reconcile. There are those who claim that all death is the result of the fall, including plants and animals.

Peace

Tim
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I think that’s a dangerous idea because it hints at a body-soul division beyond what we find in revelation.

I think men are consistently portrayed not as bodies with souls in them but as being embodied souls; a man is not a man without either part.

Thus I don’t believe there can have been a physical Adam before “ensoulment”.

But then, I’m traducianist too.

As an editorial: I think a lot of the recent fervor over things like this and the British Bishops’ document “The Gift of Scripture” is more a cultural reaction against what is perceived to be a particularly American “problem”; i.e. fundamentalism and which certain persons in the church have decided that the time has come to demolish.

But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
 
Steve,

But those things (flat earth, domed heavens) do not impinge upon soteriology or even theology proper. In these instances I am content to conclude that the Bible does not pretend to be a textbook, but when it comes to the nature and effects of the fall and the solution God has provided in Christ Jesus, then I am prepared to be as skeptical of ‘accommodations’ as any rank fundie.
 
but clearly God wouldn’t make the world to so that it just appears as if there was always death

So if the evidence shows that to be the case then there must be another explanation
 
Also, wrt what is called Macro-Evolution, which would include the evolution of lower primates to human beings, there are no “observable facts”.

Or even if you insist that human beings and australopithicenes (for example) are the same animal, we have NO examples of such a shift or even of any comparably gradated evolutionary development, though we have, under certain clinical conditions, seen animals adapt environmentally (micro-evolution).
 
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steveandersen:
but clearly God wouldn’t make the world to so that it just appears as if there was always death

So if the evidence shows that to be the case then there must be another explanation
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What about what you see in the world makes you think there was always death?
 
you mean besides the aforementioned gasolene in my car and several hundred million years’ worth of fossils in the ground
 
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steveandersen:
you mean besides the aforementioned gasolene in my car and several hundred million years’ worth of fossils in the ground
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How do you know it’s that old and is that the same as “always”?
 
well I suppose that if you wanted to be pedantic about then yes you are right there couldn’t be death until there was life

which is sort of implicit in what I said
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Steadfast:
Also, wrt what is called Macro-Evolution, which would include the evolution of lower primates to human beings, there are no “observable facts”.
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Really? Do tell.
(give me strength)
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Steadfast:
Or even if you insist that human beings and australopithicenes (for example) are the same animal
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who would say such a thing? we’re not even the same genus
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Steadfast:
, we have NO examples of such a shift or even of any comparably gradated evolutionary development,
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so I suppose that something like this wouldn’t impress you then?
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Steadfast:
though we have, under certain clinical conditions, seen animals adapt environmentally (micro-evolution).
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you know very well that the micro/macro distinction is specious. you can’t just be a little bit evolved. Once you admit that possibility that isolated populations can diverge over time then you’re sort of stuck with that. How small is a “micro” change? How many of them can there be before they are “macro”? What process stops the micro changes from accumulating?
 
I looked this up on the Vatican Website. It was written by Pope Pius the XII and is from Humani Generis
  1. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.[11] Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
 
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