Evolution

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If Evolution teaches that man and animal “evolved” from the SAME primitive biological source, is this not a blatant denial of the Scriptures. The Bible clearly teaches that the flesh of humans is different from the flesh of beasts… “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds” (1st Corinthians 15:39). Mankind was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26); animals were not.

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Evolution isn’t a problem to us as Catholics. We understand that the ‘seven days’ was a method of conveying periods of time. It is the fundamentalist thinkers who have difficulty in reconciling religion and faith.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio)

In his encyclical “Humani Generis” in 1950, Pope Pius XII stated that there is no conflict between evolution and faith and that the doctrine of “evolutionism” is a “serious hypothesis”.

In 1996, Pope John Paul II assured the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution.

Pope Benedict rejects “intelligent design” theories but recognises “theistic evolution” , that is, God created life through evolution:
and at some period in time infused His Spirit into humankind giving sacredness to our nature.

God bless you

Trishie
 
lemonbeam said:
If Evolution teaches that man and animal “evolved” from the SAME primitive biological source, is this not a blatant denial of the Scriptures. The Bible clearly teaches that the flesh of humans is different from the flesh of beasts… “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds” (1st Corinthians 15:39). Mankind was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26); animals were not.
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You’re leaving out the human soul in your analysis. Evolution has nothing to say about the human soul, which is immaterial. so evolution cannot actually say anything about the evolution of the human being, but only about the evolution of the human body (the material component of the human being).

Evolution is no problem whatsoever for the Catholic faith.
 
lemonbeam said:
Mankind was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26)
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Yup. But God the Father is pure Spirit without a body, so I assume it means our souls are created in God’s image, not our bodies. I am not downplaying the significance of the body, however. It is as much a definition of what we are as human beings as our souls are. Basically, I like the Medieval perspective on the triune human soul: rational, sensitive, and vegetable.

Also, remember that people often let their emotions get in the way and do not realize that, strictly speaking, evolution and creation do not contradict each other. [One or both have misunderstood. For instance, the doctrine of creation does not say how or when God made man’s body “of the dust from the ground” (Gen 2:7); and the theory of evolution (which is a theory, not a dogma) does not say how souls were made, only bodies (souls leave no fossils). Nor does evolution say where the very first matter that began to evolve came from.] --from Peter Kreeft’s Catholic Christianity
 
Trishie said:
Evolution isn’t a problem to us as Catholics. We understand that the ‘seven days’ was a method of conveying periods of time. It is the fundamentalist thinkers who have difficulty in reconciling religion and faith.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio)

In his encyclical “Humani Generis” in 1950, Pope Pius XII stated that there is no conflict between evolution and faith and that the doctrine of “evolutionism” is a “serious hypothesis”.

In 1996, Pope John Paul II assured the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution.

Pope Benedict rejects “intelligent design” theories but recognises “theistic evolution” , that is, God created life through evolution:
and at some period in time infused His Spirit into humankind giving sacredness to our nature.

God bless you

Trishie
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“at some period in time infused His Spirit”? Who said that?

Only one part of Pope John Paul II’s statement is recognized and not the rest, which Pope Benedict clarified by saying, “But it is also true that evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

Peace,
Ed
 
VociMike said:
You’re leaving out the human soul in your analysis. Evolution has nothing to say about the human soul, which is immaterial. so evolution cannot actually say anything about the evolution of the human being, but only about the evolution of the human body (the material component of the human being).

Evolution is no problem whatsoever for the Catholic faith.
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Not so. The biology textbook assigns random mutations and natural selection as the reason for human beings coming into existence. Stephen Jay Gould said that if evolution could be rewound, things would have turned out differently. That is not what the Church teaches:

bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm

Pope Benedict XVI

Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

Peace,
Ed
 
If Evolution teaches that man and animal “evolved” from the SAME primitive biological source, is this not a blatant denial of the Scriptures.
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Not according to your Pope. He says it’s “virtually certain.” Ed’s concern is caused by his belief that contingency could not be part of divine providence.

But the Pope says, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas:

**But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). **
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
COMMUNION AND STEWARDSHIP:
Human Persons Created in the Image of God
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
 
The_Barbarian said:
Not according to your Pope. He says it’s “virtually certain.”
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Quoting the Pope about a scientific matter? Why? If the facts are what they are then why do you invoke the words of the Pope? What he says shouldn’t change anything.

Peace,
Ed
 
My understanding of what was written by Benedict 16 when he used to be Ratzinger was that there could have been animals in existence before mankind (as in the descriptions of the order of creation). It was that it is unknown exactly when God in His wisdom decided to give His grace to one to start humanity. He could have created all varieties of creatures at once or even in a temporal period deciding to infuse his “likeness” into a creature that started our humanity. This unfused likeness would be a self-realization of rationality which would allow for this being to know a creator.

mdcpensive1
 
Man came from an animal? That’s inconsistent with Catholic teaching. Catholic teaching does say that all human beings had Adam and Eve as their first parents. There were no “other” parents. And we just didn’t show up unexpectedly due to evolution. We were created.

bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm

Pope Benedict XVI

Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 wrote:
Man came from an animal? That’s inconsistent with Catholic teaching. Catholic teaching does say that all human beings had Adam and Eve as their first parents. There were no “other” parents. And we just didn’t show up unexpectedly due to evolution. We were created.
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What I heard Benedict 16 say was that it was possible for an animal to be picked for the instilling of Grace to be the ADAM of human existence. He is not speaking doctrinally, but theologically. Both he and I are not saying there were more than one set of parents as this would definitely be against our revealed truth. This is not inconsistent with doctrine concerning creation. God created “man” but we just don’t know how and it is not important for Him to tell us now. We will have to wait for the Final Judgement when God’s plans are unveiled to us.

mdcpensive1
 
edwest2 said:
Not so. The biology textbook assigns random mutations and natural selection as the reason for human beings coming into existence. Stephen Jay Gould said that if evolution could be rewound, things would have turned out differently. That is not what the Church teaches:
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Wow, you can’t see the critical point here? The critical point is that there is no “random” to God. God either controls “random” directly, or at the very least he has complete foreknowledge of every “random” event in the universe. So there is nothing whatsoever to prevent God from setting the conditions of the universe to bring about precisely each and every hair on your head. There is no contradiction, no difficulty here at all.

What Stephen Jay Gould says is simply words, and not very useful words at that, given the rather obvious reality that we can’t rewind evolution.
 
edwest2

Would you say that random selections and mutations are part of God’s permissive will??? I guess I am not understanding your point !!

mdcpensive1
 
VociMike said:
What Stephen Jay Gould says is simply words, and not very useful words at that, given the rather obvious reality that we can’t rewind evolution.
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In defense of Gould I would like to point out that he expressed sincere respect for religions even though he was not a believer. He was nothing at all like the militant atheists such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, or Daniel Dennett.

Gould’s words were and still are quite important in this world whether you agree with him or not.
 
It seems to me that there exists a fundamental conflict between the Catholic Doctrine (or Dogma?) of Original Sin and evolution.

The Church clearly teaches that death came to humans at that moment of disobedience (an act which the Church also asserts was, though figuratively presented in scripture, nevertheless a real event, and not just a metaphor).
“Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will ‘return to the ground,’ for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, π 400​
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Yet, in contrast to the Catholic teaching above, death is necessary for the process of evolution to work, for it is the turnover via death that largely integrates beneficial mutations into a species. So…

**1. If evolution is true, and death occurred prior to the First Human, then Original Sin is refuted.
  1. If the dogma of Original Sin is true, and death did not occur prior to the First Human, then evolution is refuted.
    **
    If Catholics wish to claim that evolution is not incompatible with Original Sin because God infused a higher primate with a soul which became the “first human”, then I would request that they also explain:
A) How it is that death would be viewed by this “Adam” as anything new, and at the very least some sort of punishment.

B) At which point on the evolutionary tree did this “infusion of a soul” occur?

C) If the above questions cannot be reconciled adequately with the evidence of evolution, on what basis should Catholics continue to adhere to the doctrine of Original Sin?
 
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