evolution

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In the 1940’s, Marxist-Leninist ideology was the epistemological premise of what was euphemistically called “Soviet Science,” and the Russian Academy bestowed its highest honors on such dim lights in biology as T. D. Lysenko. All Western science, even Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species”, was denounced as invalid on the grounds that it was subservient to bourgeois capitalist imperialism. Although Karl Marx had openly admired Darwin, this later ideology was rooted in the Neo-Marxian theory of science which first arose around 1930, and which subsequently became the official doctrine of the USSR under Stalin. Lysenko contributed to the Communist Party’s campaign against “bourgeois science,” and his particular bailiwick was the debunking of Gregor Mendel’s genetics. Michael Polanyi reported that, “The new position was finally established when in August, 1948, Lysenko triumphantly announced to the Academy of Science that his biological views had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and members rose as one man to acclaim this decision.”

Now, Lysenko held that acquired skills and learning could be passed along genetically to one’s offspring, which was presumed to be particularly fruitful when a government is trying to solidify a totalitarian state. And Lysenko did support his hypothesis with convincing but carefully selected evidence. However, this kind of endorsement was eventually the undoing of the Russian Academy’s credibility in international science, for reasons described by Hannah Arendt in her book, “The Burden of Our Time” (London, 1951). Arendt wrote, “Its members’ [the Communist Party’s] whole education is aimed at abolishing their capacity for distinguishing truth from fiction. Their superiority consists in the ability immediately to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of purpose.”

Continued…
 
Obviously, Soviet Science and Creation Science stem from irreconcilable beliefs. But they both rely for their meaning on the same epistemological foundation, as does any dogmatically random theory of evolution. Each is a circumlocution which presupposes our prior acquiescence to the tenets of a theology (or an anti-theology), an ideology or the mission of an organization, and each requires its adherents to suspend disbelief in second-hand information for the sake of furthering a broader agenda. As unlikely as this similarity may seem at first, the premises of each of these disciplines are nevertheless purposive, in that their primary referent is a socio-political teleology that transcends and overrides mere factuality, which makes them equivalent as investigative methodologies. The obvious political dimension is that he proposed referent just happens to legitimize the teaching authority of certain groups.

Whenever science becomes subservient to an ideology or an organization, it becomes instead a closed, axiomatic and circular deductive system, and all such systems cannot fail to prove their postulates. In any such system, regardless of its subject matter, every piece of contradictory evidence can be impeached and every conceivable objection logically demolished and invalidated, each in its turn, by reference to one or more of the core premises. But the flaw inherent in any axiomatic deductive system as a heuristic tool for scientific inquiry is, ironically, this very same logical circularity, for it requires the investigator to reject all hypotheses and evidence which might cast doubt on those core premises, and it also points to no new reality outside of its stipulated purpose. This was the flaw that eventually made Soviet Science the laughingstock it has become. The premises of science are unspecifiable.

A wholly satisfactory theory of the origin of the universe and life will have to be one that can account for all the evidence, including the emergence of personality and mind, and also including how we got clever enough to have theories of evolution at all-- and so far we don’t have one. When and if such a paradigm shift emerges, presumably it will be one that makes such obvious sense to everyone that it will require no elaborate rationalizations by autocratic and vested-interest organizations to ensure its coherent transmission to future generations.
 
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Philthy:
You think you’ve seen human evolution in your lifetime??? :ehh: Think again. I don’t think even the most radical evolutionist would even entertain the thought of evolution in man occurring so fast…
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news-medical.net/print_article.asp?id=2757
 
Ken,

If I could find the one major difference between the arguments against evolution I’m reading here and the way the Benedictines taught us science in the 50’s, it’s that the Benedictines made no effort whatsoever to fill our minds with pro-Catholic information or any of the us-against-the-world anti-intellectualism. Our headmaster had his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, had served on the Manhattan Project and even studied under Einstein in Princeton.

Even if we didn’t realize it as teenagers, those monks knew perfectly well from a centuries-old curriculum and tested method of pedagogy that we would soon enough outgrow all that cliquish, in-group hoopla and adolescent dependence on peer approval anyway, and that their real purpose was to challenge and develop our minds to see things simultaneously through a variety of equally valid interpretive frameworks, none of which was intrinsically superior to the others. Math. poetry, chemistry, biology and physics were just as important as Christian Doctrine, and Latin and modern languages were taught primarily to improve our mastery of English. So it was about giving us the mental tools to grapple with life & the world on our own, rather than an indoctrination in how to see everything from a “Catholic” point of view. That’s because those men were sufficiently steeped in history and ecclesiology to know that in the long run one poorly educated, zealous ideologue can do the Church far more harm than a hundred articulate heretics.

“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.” --Thomas Aquinas
 
It is a theory that fulfils a certain sociological need - the need for militant atheists to be able to justify their beliefs and to counter the cosmological argument.

Ever notice how, if one critisizes, say, the theories of Stephen Hawking or even the Big Bang, it unleashes a riot. Still, this is nothing like the almighty firestorm released by anyone foolish enough to challenge this hollow, vague theory of Evolution?

While certain aspects of it may be true (microevolution, some forms of speciation, etc.), the theory of macroevolution is pointless, untestable and based on sand-like evidence.

Check out answers in Genesis.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
 
robertbrown said:
While certain aspects of it may be true (microevolution, some forms of speciation, etc.), the theory of macroevolution is pointless, untestable and based on sand-like evidence.

Check out answers in Genesis.

👍👍…:👍
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so I’m reading this over, and I’m saying to myself, wow, this all sounds familiar; then I look at the dates and see why - LOL, 2004!

This thread is a real fossil.😛

Welcome to the forums, Robert.🙂 I think you’ll find that few here are strangers to AiG (or their many dubious arguments)
 
PhilVaz said:
carol marie << something that could be very difficult since, as you so wisely pointed out, I have no brain. >>

Hee hee. 😃 You have a brain, its around 1350 cc, just don’t check it at the door. Have fun in R.C.I.A.

You were probably one of the people who voted “evolution is definitely false” without even looking into the evidence for it. The Catechism deals with Adam/Eve in that section you mentioned, but also seems to affirm evolution is (at least) probably true (Catechism 283-284). There’s the tension I’m trying to resolve. Perhaps a more “symbolical” understanding of the early chapters of Genesis will resolve this… :confused:

Phil P
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Symbolic? Adam and Eve were the parents of the human race.

Evolution is doubtful. As Pope Benedict stated after referring to the statement by Pope John Paul II that met with great secular approval: “But it also true that evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.” I believe him 100%.

Peace,
Ed
 
Godefridus said:
Just because nobody’s posted it yet…

Truth Cannot Contradict Truth; John Paul II on evolution.

newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm
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This is misleading. See Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created In the Image of God. Please read part 64.

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

Too many come here trying to convince Catholics that science can contradict Biblical truths. That’s the whole point of posts on this subject.

Peace,
Ed
 
zian said:
so I’m reading this over, and I’m saying to myself, wow, this all sounds familiar; then I look at the dates and see why - LOL, 2004!

This thread is a real fossil.😛

Welcome to the forums, Robert.🙂 I think you’ll find that few here are strangers to AiG (or their many dubious arguments)
Click to expand...

Maybe it needs to evolve - a bit 😛​

 
Ed << Symbolic? Adam and Eve were the parents of the human race. >>

2004 extinct thread meet 2009 evolved thread. :eek:

Yes, and here is how they did that. OK one view. Another view. And yet another view (see bottom, someday I may finish editing up this one again).

Ed << Evolution is doubtful. As Pope Benedict stated after referring to the statement by Pope John Paul II that met with great secular approval: “But it also true that evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.” I believe him 100%. >>

Balance with these statements:

“While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.” (Statement of ITC headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, paragraph 63 [July 2004]).

“All of this is well and good, one might say, but is it not ultimately disproved by our scientific knowledge of how the human being evolved from the animal kingdom? Now, more reflective spirits have long been aware that there is no either-or here. We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities. The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the ‘project’ of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary – rather than mutually exclusive – realities. But let us look a little closer, because here, too, the progress of thought in the last two decades helps us to grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution and of faith and reason.” (In the Beginning by Cardinal Ratzinger [Eerdmans, 1986, 1995]

To say something is not completely scientifically proven, does not mean the Pope thinks evolution is not true or “doubtful.” Which reminds me of some more recent books:

Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI (Ignatius Press, 2008) for his and others complete views

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne (Viking, 2009)

Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins by Johanson, et al (Harmony, 2009)

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters by Donald Prothero (Columbia Univ Press, 2007)

Same old, same old. Evolution is a fact, the most prominent Catholic churchmen and scientists know this, but these threads haven’t evolved much in 5 years because many people in these threads don’t realize this (yet). :cool: :rolleyes:

Phil P
 
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.

We are not haphazard mistakes.

Peace,
Ed
 
Evolution is one the biggest loads of garbage I have ever heard
 
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