Evolution

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Squishy said:
Semantics, Homo sapiens evolved from earlier primates that did
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Well, semantics are important. We also evolved from much earlier forms that didn’t look ape-like, but we don’t use the characteristics of those animals to describe man.

Peace

Tim
 
Squishy said:
I would say that mercy is a by product of evolutional forces that have persuaded man to group together and form societys. Those societys impressing on its members certain attibutes that help the group over all. Theistic evolutionists would say that mecry was an attribute given when god infused man with a soul (im assuming) neither of which are incompatable with evolution.
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Yes but a clam is incapable of mercy, simply because the genetics are not there, it cannot be taught mercy.
But human genetics allows for the attribute, mercy.
Did genetics develop to allow the quality of mercy or did that quality develop the genetics for itself. And how would the genetic attribute develope a completed sense in all its complexity in one stroke, as anything less than mercy is not mercy, it needed to be fully formed on a genetic level all at once.
Mercy pre-exists people, it was a quality humanity slipped into, like a hand that slips into a well formed glove.
Evolutions heart is cold, it says humanity may not have developed if there was one too many or too less ice-ages, or, for whatever other random reason.
But the quality of mercy pre-existed all of this. Those types of attributes, like mercy, are ordered and reasoned and can only find their expression in humanity.
 
If this is your belief then you are only a biological mechanism. God is not God, your genes are god. This belief is not consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church teaches we are not haphazard mistakes. Science is incomplete and incapable, as currently practiced, to reveal man’s true identity and origin.

Neither evolution or nature have goals or intelligence.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
If this is your belief then you are only a biological mechanism. God is not God, your genes are god. This belief is not consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church teaches we are not haphazard mistakes. Science is incomplete and incapable, as currently practiced, to reveal man’s true identity and origin.

Neither evolution or nature have goals or intelligence.

Peace,
Ed
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From the point of view of an atheistic evolutionist, mercy, as an attribute exists as does the genetics of an organism, but the human soul does not exist.
There are human attributes, I believe, that are or may be in some sense, accommodated, for want of a better word, by human genetics. Their origin and existance I find interesting. e.g. Did the genetics of the human create the attributes or did the attributes design their own genetics.
If pre-humans became mercyful by behaving mercyfully, how did that work if they could not behave mercyfully because they had no mercy.
Of course this problem is negated by the introduction of the idea of the human soul. And that idea changes the idea of evolution to … well … creation
 
Thing said:
From the point of view of an atheistic evolutionist, mercy, as an attribute exists as does the genetics of an organism, but the human soul does not exist.
There are human attributes, I believe, that are or may be in some sense, accommodated, for want of a better word, by human genetics. Their origin and existance I find interesting. e.g. Did the genetics of the human create the attributes or did the attributes design their own genetics.
If pre-humans became mercyful by behaving mercyfully, how did that work if they could not behave mercyfully because they had no mercy.
Of course this problem is negated by the introduction of the idea of the human soul. And that idea changes the idea of evolution to … well … creation
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If the idea that the brain is simply a data processing device created by your genes and modified by outside experiences, then man is still only a mechanism responding to sensory (name removed by moderator)uts and events. Mercy is only a functional concept, with all concepts being geared toward successful reproduction and protecting the other new biological mechanisms until they can survive on their own.

Of course, science, as it is done today, cannot consider the soul because it is immaterial. And even if science could somehow define a soul, I don’t think they could arbitrarily assign characteristics to it.

Fortunately, the Catholic Church can combine science with other real information and it concludes that man has a soul. He has a mind that allows him to detect God. He can be in a relationship with the living God. If science is defined as the only source of real knowledge, then being defined as a biological mechanism is your only choice. Abstract thought is just neurons picking up some data and manipulating it for survival and reproductive purposes only.

Peace,
Ed
 
As Ed knows, science does not claim to be the only source of knowledge.

But sometimes he writes as though he forgets.
 
edwest2 said:
I stand by the current formula being proposed:

science=evolution=reason=rationality (obviously missing is God)

The outside world is opposed to people who work outside of that formula. I invite everyone to read the following:

news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/10/15/the-atheist-indoctrination-project/

Peace,
Ed
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Dear Ed,

Science must not include God for to include God would destroy science, it would then be religion. It’s really a lot more simple than you are making it.

I assume that you are well acquainted with NOMA, Non Overlapping Magisteria. I think that is a valuable concept to use in understanding this conundrum.
 
Dear Namesake,

I disagree. The Catholic Church does overlaps. Such as the statement made here:

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.

So, while recognizing what science is, Pope Benedict encourages all of us by saying “we must have the audacity to say… not the products of chance and error.”

For the record, I am not for adding religion to science. What I am always pointing out are the conclusions of many scientists that are currently being heavily marketed. We are the products of a purely non-God, natural process. And I understand that science has limits.

What I’m seeing here is the constant, daily marketing of an idea that goes beyond what science can demonstrate. Again, beyond what science can demonstrate. When the international weeekly journal of science, Nature, confidently declares that man is not made in God’s image, I ask myself, why? What is the scientific basis for such a statement? How can the writer demonstrate such a statement as true or factual in any way, scientifically? He can’t.

So the next question is, why would an international science journal print such a statement? Any thoughts?

Peace,
Ed
 
Does anyone have the convincing defense of Theistic Evolution?

Does anyone have at least a partial defense of Theistic Evolution?

Any guesses?

:confused:

Blessings,
granny

Eve & Adam need a friend. Soon.
 
grannymh said:
Does anyone have the convincing defense of Theistic Evolution?

Does anyone have at least a partial defense of Theistic Evolution?
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Have you read Francis Collin’s The Language of God?
He used to manage the Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins doesn’t like the termTheistic Evolution, he has put forward BioLogos instead.

Then there’s Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God

I would recommend both of these books. In the meantime you can find some interesting videos on Youtube from both of these scientists.
 
edwest2 said:
For the record, I am not for adding religion to science. What I am always pointing out are the conclusions of many scientists that are currently being heavily marketed. We are the products of a purely non-God, natural process. And I understand that science has limits.

What I’m seeing here is the constant, daily marketing of an idea that goes beyond what science can demonstrate. Again, beyond what science can demonstrate. When the international weeekly journal of science, Nature, confidently declares that man is not made in God’s image, I ask myself, why? What is the scientific basis for such a statement? How can the writer demonstrate such a statement as true or factual in any way, scientifically? He can’t.

So the next question is, why would an international science journal print such a statement? Any thoughts?

Peace,
Ed
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Ed, do you happen to know which issue it was? Was this a statement by someone or was it on the front page. I think if you read the artical it might give a bit more explanaition as to why it made such a bold sweaping statement.
 
Ed from what i read in that artical its not claiming that man was not made in the image of god in this regards to the human brain and not actual body.

Its asking for a bit of peace between religious people and those in the scientific comunity who are creating friction between them.
This does not utterly invalidate the idea that the human mind is, as Senator Brownback would have it, a reflection of the mind of God. But the suggestion that any entity capable of creating the Universe has a mind encumbered with the same emotional structures and perceptual framework as that of an upright ape adapted to living in small, intensely social peer-groups on the African savannah seems a priori unlikely.
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I think this sums it up pretty well.

Its not backing the what it claims at the top because its not claiming anything its asking that this difference be put to the side.
 
You do not see the obvious non-scientific conclusion in the first sentence as something science cannot prove?

Peace,
Ed
 
The Catholic Church has not problem with science so why are Catholics afraid of it.

Catechism of the Catholic Church
**159 Faith and science: **“Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”
 
soma said:
The Catholic Church has not problem with science so why are Catholics afraid of it.

Catechism of the Catholic Church
**159 Faith and science: **“Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”
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No Catholic is afraid of true science. It is faulty reasoning that can be the issue. Faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God.
 
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