How evolution undermines Salvation

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This may have been mentioned as it is an extremely long thread, but I wanted to point something out

Saying that because we may evolve into a different species in means Christ sacrifice no longer applies has a major fault…

God Created the natural laws, but he is not bond to them. Even if mans genetic structure changes so much that a new Homo-Modernus results, it does not mean that Christi sacrifice no longer applies. We are still going to be a people that sin, and we will know where we came from, unlike the monkey. God is smart enough to know how to get around this apparent quandary.

If you believe in strict creationism, so be it. No problem here

But if you believe in evolution GUIDED by God as I do, and the church has no problems with, then so be it.

I reiterate… God is in control of evolution. Saying we will evolve into something that is separate from God’s plan of salvation says god is NOT in control of evolution. Something I will never support.

AS long as you truely understand that God is the one in control of evolution, there is NO theological problem

In Christ
 
heisenburg said:
This may have been mentioned as it is an extremely long thread, but I wanted to point something out

Saying that because we may evolve into a different species in means Christ sacrifice no longer applies has a major fault…

God Created the natural laws, but he is not bond to them. Even if mans genetic structure changes so much that a new Homo-Modernus results, it does not mean that Christi sacrifice no longer applies. We are still going to be a people that sin, and we will know where we came from, unlike the monkey. God is smart enough to know how to get around this apparent quandary.

If you believe in strict creationism, so be it. No problem here

But if you believe in evolution GUIDED by God as I do, and the church has no problems with, then so be it.

I reiterate… God is in control of evolution. Saying we will evolve into something that is separate from God’s plan of salvation says god is NOT in control of evolution. Something I will never support.

AS long as you truely understand that God is the one in control of evolution, there is NO theological problem

In Christ
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Again, it doesn’t have to be either or.

Evolution of other species could have been going on when God decided to insert Adam and Eve into the timeline when He wished.

Does anyone here deny God could have supernaturally created Adam and Eve as described in Genesis regardless of what may or may not have been happening on the earth at the time?
 
Science cannot be the god of the church. We are taught that Adam and Eve were our first parents, who freely sinned which necessitated the birth of Christ, true God and true man.

Here, as elsewhere, a marketing campaign is going on to gain universal acceptance of the theory of evolution. Why? Couldn’t we all just read a book about it and get on with our lives? Apparently not. You and I who believe in the living, supernatural God need to be convinced of some “facts” so that later on we can be introduced to other “facts” in an attempt to manipulate how we view ourselves and other people.

Some people believe: “We’re all just animals.” Animals have no human rights or human dignity. They deserve to be treated humanely but they are not human beings. Such a belief denies the dignity of the human person.

Catholics believe: We are made in the image and likeness of God. Our identity is based on a sacred and real connection to the divine. There are those who deny that connection but we are told this quite plainly. By having respect for ourselves and other persons and bound by the Commandments and teachings of Christ, we place ourselves in an environment that denies many worldly ‘pleasures’ of a sinful type. Abortion and the destruction of embryonic human beings are not things we should do.

And so the marketing will continue, but Cardinal Schoenborn and Pope Benedict know when science strays beyond what it can demonstrate and is used as a basis for changing hearts and minds. Otherwise, why the constant chatter that “evolution is a fact”?

God bless,
Ed
 
It was directed at buffalo, but, of course, it includes anyone who wants to read it.

Peace,
Ed
 
Again, it doesn’t have to be either or.
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Evolution of other species could have been going on when God decided to insert Adam and Eve into the timeline when He wished.
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Does anyone here deny God could have supernaturally created Adam and Eve as described in Genesis regardless of what may or may not have been happening on the earth at the time?
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No problem with this statement. God can and will do what he wants…

If he wanted to supernaturally create an Adam and an Eve… No problem. I also don’t see a problem with the idea that God uses evolution as one of his tools to create an Adam and an Eve. Whether the tool was “Poof” or the tool was supernatural manipulation of evolution… either way Adam and Eve were true, individual people (not tribes as some suggest) and they were created by supernatural means…

In Christ
 
heisenburg said:
No problem with this statement. God can and will do what he wants…

If he wanted to supernaturally create an Adam and an Eve… No problem. I also don’t see a problem with the idea that God uses evolution as one of his tools to create an Adam and an Eve. Whether the tool was “Poof” or the tool was supernatural manipulation of evolution… either way Adam and Eve were true, individual people (not tribes as some suggest) and they were created by supernatural means…

In Christ
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Yeah, but we keep running into these dogmatic problems"


  1. *] The first man was created by God. (De fide.)
    *] The whole human race stems from one single human pair. (Sent. certa.)
    *] Man consists of two essential parts–a material body and a spiritual soul. (De fide.)
    *] The rational soul is per se the essential form of the body. (De fide.)
    *] Every human being possesses an individual soul. (De fide.)
    *] Every individual soul was immediately created out of nothing by God. (Sent. Certa.)
    *] A creature has the capacity to receive supernatural gifts. (Sent. communis.)
    *] The Supernatural presupposes Nature. (Sent communis.)
    *] God has conferred on man a supernatural Destiny. (De fide.)
    *] Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace. (De fide.)
    *] The donum rectitudinis or integritatis in the narrower sense, i.e., the freedom from irregular desire. (Sent. fidei proxima.)
    *] The donum immortalitatis, i.e., bodily immortality. (De fide.)
    *] The donum impassibilitatis, i.e., the freedom from suffering. (Sent. communis.)
    *] The donum scientiae, i.e., a knowledge of natural and supernatural truths infused by God. (Sent. communis.)
    *] Adam received sanctifying grace not merely for himself, but for all his posterity. (Sent. certa.)
    *] Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment. (De fide.)
    *] Through the sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God. (De fide.)
    *] Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil. (De fide.) D788.
    *] Adam’s sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation, but by descent. (De fide.)
 
perhaps I am missing something, But I still don’t see the issue

As long as
  1. You understand that regardless of how created, whether through evolution or poof, You understand it was God that did it
  2. It would NOT have happened without God
  3. All human life stems from Adam and Eve.
  4. All natural laws are subject to God
  5. No Natural law will ever do something outside of Gods will
Then there is no problem…

In Christ
 
heisenburg said:
Either way Adam and Eve were true, individual people (not tribes as some suggest) and they were created by supernatural means…
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Not possible! Genetically, Adam and Eve couldn’t have been individual people, as there is a minimum population necessary for genetic diversity:

“The researchers believe the high rate of mutations is seen because the hominid ancestor to both species went through an evolutionary bottleneck, when its breeding population was limited to only about 10,000 individuals”
See http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6920

Hence, the “Adam and Eve” of the Genesis story may be said to represent the population of hominids from which modern humans evolved.

Petrus
 
Though the Church has made no official statement on evolution as a whole, It has made statements on whether or not Adam and Eve where real people, or just a tribe of people.

It has in no uncertain terms said that Adam and Eve were real individual people. If they were not, you have a genealogy problem. How can the original sin of ONE be passed on to another if it is talking about a tribe and not a person.

That being said… Why is it possible God could Guide evolution and/or make them via the “poof” method, yet not know how to ensure genetic diversity.

Saying that it is ‘impossible’ due to genetic diversity does just that, puts limits on God

In Christ
 
heisenburg said:
Though the Church has made no official statement on evolution as a whole, It has made statements on whether or not Adam and Eve where real people, or just a tribe of people.

It has in no uncertain terms said that Adam and Eve were real individual people. If they were not, you have a genealogy problem. How can the original sin of ONE be passed on to another if it is talking about a tribe and not a person.

That being said… Why is it possible God could Guide evolution and/or make them via the “poof” method, yet not know how to ensure genetic diversity.

Saying that it is ‘impossible’ due to genetic diversity does just that, puts limits on God

In Christ
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Believe it or not -dphrmss claims to be a Catholic theologian.
 
heisenburg said:
That being said… Why is it possible God could Guide evolution and/or make them via the “poof” method, yet not know how to ensure genetic diversity. Saying that it is ‘impossible’ due to genetic diversity does just that, puts limits on God
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Certainly it is possible for God by means of the “poof” method to have created the universe as we see it – we call that Omphalism. Creationists – if they are consistent – have to be omphalists: God created star light already on its way, tree rings that never actually grew, ice layers that never really accumulated, and belly buttons that were never physiologically used (by Adam and Eve). I believe Ed is a good Omphalist, and I respect him for that.

But if we accept evolution at all we must accept all of it. If God chose to create a universe free to evolve according the developmental parameters established in the beginning, God didn’t need to set aside genetics and select out a single Adam and Eve. God works with evolution, not against it, even if that means accepting that God gives the universe freedom and that people will be born with horrible genetic diseases.

Catholics (and other Christians) affirm that God ultimately redeems the cosmos by suffering with it, and that on Earth this redemption comes through the evolutionary order in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a genetic descendant (like all humans) of the first single-celled Eukaryote, of the expanding phyla of the Cambrian Explosion, of the proto-mammalian survivors of the Chicxulub asteroid impact, and of the primate/hominid sequence.

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus
 
jsut for reference

HUMANI GENERIS
  1. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.[12]
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That being said, I can accept Evolution and still accept that God Manipulates… it is not an all or nothing. God created the Tools for him to use, but he is not Bond to them. And that is the key differance

In Christ
 
drpmjhess said:
Certainly it is possible for God by means of the “poof” method to have created the universe as we see it – we call that Omphalism. Creationists – if they are consistent – have to be omphalists: God created star light already on its way, tree rings that never actually grew, ice layers that never really accumulated, and belly buttons that were never physiologically used (by Adam and Eve). I believe Ed is a good Omphalist, and I respect him for that.

But if we accept evolution at all we must accept all of it. If God chose to create a universe free to evolve according the developmental parameters established in the beginning, God didn’t need to set aside genetics and select out a single Adam and Eve. God works with evolution, not against it, even if that means accepting that God gives the universe freedom and that people will be born with horrible genetic diseases.

Catholics (and other Christians) affirm that God ultimately redeems the cosmos by suffering with it, and that on Earth this redemption comes through the evolutionary order in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a genetic descendant (like all humans) of the first single-celled Eukaryote, of the expanding phyla of the Cambrian Explosion, of the proto-mammalian survivors of the Chicxulub asteroid impact, and of the primate/hominid sequence.

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus
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That’s not the only way. Another option is that the speed of light was much faster at the beginning. We already believe that at inflation the universe expanded more and many times faster than the speed of light in this brief time than in 14 bilion years. Which means a lot could happen in an apparently short time. We measure time in observed cycles. Suppose those cycles were speeded up?

It is also very interesting how you know the mind of God. You are boxing Him into a human box.

And if we do accept evolution are you positing we cannot accept supernatural intervention?
 
drpmjhess said:
Not possible! Genetically, Adam and Eve couldn’t have been individual people, as there is a minimum population necessary for genetic diversity:

“The researchers believe the high rate of mutations is seen because the hominid ancestor to both species went through an evolutionary bottleneck, when its breeding population was limited to only about 10,000 individuals”
See http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6920

Hence, the “Adam and Eve” of the Genesis story may be said to represent the population of hominids from which modern humans evolved.

Petrus
Click to expand...
You are confusing development of our bodies with spiritual infussion. It took a breeding pool for us to develop as a biological species, but that does not mean that God did not single out a small group, or just a pair to ensoul. That is the most conventional Jewish interpretation of Genesis today.

In fact, the best DNA research that we have seems to suggest that we are virtually all related to an extremely small breeding pool. However, HUMANI GENERIS, as quoted, is not deemed to be infallible, that is, it was not taught Ex Cathedra. From Pope John Paul II’s comments and Pope Benedict’s comments, it seems clear that what is important is that we accept the teaching of original sin. Rather that means Adam and Eve were literally individuals, or metaphores for a small group, is open to debate.

We know that Genesis is not literal truth. For one thing, the moon does not produce its own light. So if we know that it is somewhat metaphoric, then it does, in fact, fairly closely match what we know about the universe. It seems to have had a moment of creation, took a period of time, started with the formation of stars (“light”), and is a massive ‘project’ beyond our understanding (seemingly tiring even to God).

The only large matter of faith is that, having created us and then given us special stature, we then failed God, creating the stain of original sin. God then sacrificed His only Son, to rectify our failure.
 
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