I read the link but it didn’t give many details. Do you have the list of these 100 mainstream scientific articles handy?
Thus refuting the idea that we shouldn’t teach an alternative theory of gravity.In fact I don’t think there really is a widely supported theory of gravity.
High Schools teach the fact of gravity and work a little bit with some of the basic equations that describe the effects of gravity. But I don’t think you will find many that actually attempt to teach any of the current theories of gravity. The math is just too advanced.Thus refuting the idea that we shouldn’t teach an alternative theory of gravity.
You are right, there is no widely supported theory of gravity. People in this thread (not you necessarily) continue to confuse the idea that something exists (e.g. gravity obviously exists) with the idea that the theory(ies) that support it must be correct because everybody knows that gravity exists.I think if you review some of these threads you will find that what is actually said is that the Theory of Evolution is significantly more strongly supported than any Theory of Gravity. In fact I don’t think there really is a widely supported theory of gravity.
Very true. I’m somewhat of a theistic evolutionist myself especially when eating pasta. It’s so difficult to accept that something like spaghetti would just randomly evolve to fit a fork so perfectly. The FSM clearly lent a guiding appendage to the process.The “random only” evolutionists seem to me to be saying that since randomness “could” produce what we see (the laws of genetics do not preclude it), that that’s the way it actually happened. Of course, they don’t know, and will never know exactly how it happened. But their pride won’t allow them to admit that.
IMHO.
Ancient people were ignorant not stupid. They could have easily grasped the concept of evolution. Thinkers as far back as Empedocles, a Greek philosopher born in 490BC, are known to have suggested that natural selection might explain why animals were adapted to their surroundings.-“but the Bible doesnt say that”
–it was written thousands of years ago do you think the ancient people could have grasped that concept without it completely altering their society?
Unfortunately, other people have to suffer for your sins - the worst of which is the denial of the existence of God (along with ridicule of God).On the other hand, when I see parasitic worms growing in the eyes of children I sometimes have to wonder what the IPU was thinking when she came up with that idea.
Yikes. So before I was born people didn’t suffer? Thats a boat load of guilt hanging over my head. But I suspect we are getting a bit off topic.Unfortunately, other people have to suffer for your sins - the worst of which is the denial of the existence of God (along with ridicule of God).
The intelligibilty of the universe fundamental to Catholics and goes way back. Evolution goes back before Catholicism and Catholicism has been defending itself from it from the very beginning. This is nothing new.Hi All,
Apparently, not only does the Catholic Church claim that evolution is consistent with Catholicism, it was actually Augustine and Aquinas that pretty much came up with the theory…
telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4588289/The-Vatican-claims-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-is-compatible-with-Christianity.html
"Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said while the Church had been hostile to Darwin’s theory in the past, the idea of evolution could be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.
Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Santa Croce University in Rome, added that 4th century theologian St Augustine had “never heard the term evolution, but knew that big fish eat smaller fish” and forms of life had been transformed “slowly over time”. Aquinas made similar observations in the Middle Ages.
Ahead of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the Vatican is also set to play down the idea of Intelligent Design, which argues a “higher power” must be responsible for the complexities of life.
The conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University will discuss Intelligent Design to an extent, but only as a “cultural phenomenon” rather than a scientific or theological issue.
Monsignor Ravasi said Darwin’s theories had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, pointing to comments more than 50 years ago, when Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans.
Marc Leclerc, who teaches natural philosophy at the Gregorian University, said the “time has come for a rigorous and objective valuation” of Darwin by the Church as the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth approaches.
Professor Leclerc argues that too many of Darwin’s opponents, primarily Creationists, mistakenly claim his theories are “totally incompatible with a religious vision of reality”.
Earlier this week, prominent scientists and leading religious figures wrote to The Daily Telegraph to call for an end to the fighting over Darwin’s legacy.
They argued that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it to attack religion while they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to support Darwin’s theory.
The Church of England is seeking to bring Darwin back into the fold with a page on its website paying tribute to his “forgotten” work in his local parish, showing science and religion need not be at odds. "
I don’t think you read the article. The Vatican is not defending Catholicism from evolution so much as endorsing and taking credit for evolution.The intelligibilty of the universe fundamental to Catholics and goes way back. Evolution goes back before Catholicism and Catholicism has been defending itself from it from the very beginning. This is nothing new.
They are talking about micro-evolution or adaptation.I don’t think you read the article. The Vatican is not defending Catholicism from evolution so much as endorsing and taking credit for evolution.
I didn’t see any of that in the article. Can you explain what you mean? I don’t know what any of that means. Maybe you can point out where the Vatican makes such distinctions. Here is another article on the same story:They are talking about micro-evolution or adaptation.
Human Generis rules out polygenism.
William James on the question of design in nature:
"God’s existence has from time immemorial been held to be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly designed in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker’s bill, tongue, feet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light to perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held; and the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity.
The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed. Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being co-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra- uterine darkness, and the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other. They are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed, light and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment…
Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR the other…
Remember that no matter what nature may have produced or may be producing, the means must necessarily have been adequate, must have been FITTED TO THAT PRODUCTION. The argument from fitness to design would consequently always apply, whatever were the product’s character. The recent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed exquisite intelligence. And so of any state of things whatever, either in nature or in history, which we find actually realized. For the parts of things must always make SOME definite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. We can always say, therefore, in any conceivable world, of any conceivable character, that the whole cosmic machinery MAY have been designed to produce it.
Pragmatically, then, the abstract word ’design’ is a blank cartridge. It carries no consequences, it does no execution. What sort of design? and what sort of a designer? are the only serious questions, and the study of facts is the only way of getting even approximate answers."
Happy Darwin Day,
Leela
Bingo. And the more supporting evidence you pile up to support a worldview. It is self-perpetuating.Another passage on a similar subject occurs in the “Varieties of Religious Experience”, to the effect that nature is a plenum, & that we see design in it because we select from a great number of things those which appeal to us as supporting the idea of design, while we ignore the millions of others that don’t fit our idea:
- …When one views the world with no definite theological bias one way or the other, one sees that order and disorder, as we now recognize them, are purely human inventions. We are interested in certain types of arrangement, useful, aesthetic, or moral – so interested that whenever we find them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. The result is that we work over the contents of the world selectively. It is overflowing with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely more things “unadapted” to each other in this world than there are things "adapted’; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory. It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills our encyclopedias. Yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention…
- http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1637&C=1632
Bingo? I’m not sure you are understanding what is going on. Based on every article I’ve been able to find concerning Catholicism and Darwin Day, the story is that the Vatican is trying to distance itself from Intelligent Design and support Darwinian evolution.Bingo. And the more supporting evidence you pile up to support a worldview. It is self-perpetuating.
Based on what I’ve read, it seems to me that if anything, the Vatican is trying to distance itself from 6 day creationism, which is NOT ID. ID has been around for a long time (one of Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God was the “argument from design.”)Based on every article I’ve been able to find concerning Catholicism and Darwin Day, the story is that the Vatican is trying to distance itself from Intelligent Design and support Darwinian evolution.
How evolution can possibly be reconciled with Catholicism is a different story. Like you, I doubt that it is at all compatible. But the fact is that the Vatican is supporting evolution, and the new pope won’t be lending any support to design as was hoped by IDers.