The “stop” is totally unexplainable. To stop either means extinction or perfection, however perfection isnt in the evolution handbook. It brings to mind the protestant term “semper reformanda”, always reforming, I tell them just keep reforming and one day you might get it right, they on the otherhand see their current status as perfected without realizing the conflict with the concept of semper reformanda.
As for the claim some things havnt evoloved for hundreds of millions of years, such information goes against evolution because it shows there is no evolution taking place.
But it isnt science to arbitrarily put humans into such a category, your data only gives evidence that certain things havnt evolved over the hundred million years and humans are not part of it, infact evolution claims human evolution was active over that timespan giving no scientific grounds to say it stopped recently.
There is no reason, scientifically speaking, to necessarily assume that humans are still changing form. The shark, the crocodile, the coelacanth, all of these organisms derived from an earlier predecessor. That is, evolution acted to bring us those organisms too, but eventually “stopped” when their current form was achieved.
Put another way, it’s a common misconception to believe that “evolution always brings about change”. In fact, it does not, as again, the shark, croc, and coelacanth prove. Evolution, in their cases, actually PREVENTED them from changing, because in the niches they occupy, they are the best they can be. So yes, there is “perfection” in evolution, IN SPECIFIC NICHES.
So, returning to the case of Man, there’s no reason to believe, that Man won’t be an evolutionary “dead end”, never changing since the first breath of Creation that gave the “form” it’s soul. That’s because there’s just as much evidence that shows we dominate our niche on the Earth, as there is that shows there are occasional anomalies in the human form. Thus, there’s no way to say for certain, one way or the other, if Man will be the same, physically speaking, 5 million years from now. Since there’s no way to say for certain, there’s no reason to think that evolution is incompatible with Christianity today, as the OP implied.
Also, as a quick aside, there’s no reason to think that Jesus won’t return before evolution would even have a chance to change us into something significantly different than the form Jesus took.
Thus the original post’s question is answered. As far as the rest of the thread goes, without having read it, it probably got so long because some are taking “sides” against the other. The true Catholic position is, that one can be a strict literalist in terms of the Creation account, or, one can be a theistic evolutionist. The only thing we as Catholics are prevented from believing is, that the soul “evolved” over time.
Knowing this, I tend to avoid any “crevo” debates, as this thread has probably “devolved” into, no pun intended. For some reason, the freedom given by the Church to believe one OR the other (literal Creation OR evolution) is lost in threads like this; I guess some just like to argue.
The OP raised a point I hadn’t considered before; but I think the answer is in the fact of the shark, crocodile and coelacanth. Again, there’s no reason to believe humans aren’t dominant (maybe even a bit too dominant!) in their own niche, and thus, there exists no evolutionary pressure that would significantly change the human physical form.
