Ignorance and evolution

[ricmat]

“…not covered by papal infallibility.” ? “…cannot be taken as the official position of the Church.”? “…only be his opinion.”?

Excuse me, but isn’t this an example of criticizing a book before reading it? And if the Pope cannot offer the ‘official position’ of the Church, who do we ask?

Respectfully,
Ed

Here’s a description of the book from amazon.com:

It includes papers that were presented from the fields of natural science, philosophy and theology, and records the subsequent discussion, in which Pope Benedict XVI himself participated.

It doesn’t sound like this is going to be any definitive sort of teaching.

BTW - I have the book Jesus of Nazareth, also by B16. In the forward to that book he states

"It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magesterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search “for the face of the Lord.” Everyone is free to contradict me. [Pages xxiii and xxiv.]

If this new book has the same kind of language in the forward, then it’s not going to help anyone looking for a definitive teaching. And we’ll be back to arguing just like we always do

 

[PhilVaz]

stevea << size is not the distinction between a dog and a horse >>

Well its one obvious distinction, horses are normally much larger than dogs. I am not a Zoologist.

Horses evolved from the dog-sized “dawn horse” (cross between fox/hyrax) 50 million years ago.

Dogs evolved and are descended from the gray wolf, domesticated about 130,000 years ago. Humans also played a part in the domestication and artificial evolution of the dog. And wolves evolved about 50 million years ago, from a group of small, early carnivores known as the Miacidae. “Many paleontologists strongly believe that the miacids are the most likely ancestors of the Canidae, which includes all wolves, dogs, and foxes.”

That’s all I know in a quick search. Dogs are definitely not horses, and Hyracotherium is definitely not a modern Equus, but on its way through macroevolution.

Phil P

 

[edwest2]

Here’s a description of the book from amazon.com:

It doesn’t sound like this is going to be any definitive sort of teaching.

BTW - I have the book Jesus of Nazareth, also by B16. In the forward to that book he states

If this new book has the same kind of language in the forward, then it’s not going to help anyone looking for a definitive teaching. And we’ll be back to arguing just like we always do

“If” No one will know until the book comes out. And by the way, where does one look for a definitive teaching on this subject?

God bless,
Ed

 

[ibetrippin07]

Wow theres already a perfectly fine book out about the patheticness of evolution called “The Long War Against God”.
Evolution simply put is just tautology and relative thinking. Put in the same room will create quite the dangerous upbringing.
I think it is very important to note that the founding fathers of modern evolution were very racists. In fact its important to note that the Origin of Species subtitle was “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” And yes Races is talking about people, just read the book and you will find according to Darwin that the average black person has the intelligence of a child.
In fact early evolution was just a scientific way to support racism.
We can see in Hitlers ideology of trying to “speed up the evolutionary process” considered one of the greatest evils of all time was simply based on evolutionary principals.
There are no transitional fossils, any evolutionists want to talk about Lucy, Java man, picto man or others? that would be fun!
Also we can discuss the many quotes from top evolutionists supporting there are no transitional fossils…

 

[PhilVaz]

ibe << There are no transitional fossils, any evolutionists want to talk about Lucy, Java man, picto man or others? that would be fun!
Also we can discuss the many quotes from top evolutionists supporting there are no transitional fossils… >>

Uh oh, you forgot to read the other 41 pages of this thread. Should only take you 7 hours. We’ve discussed all this stuff and more.

Plus the other 4.5 billion creation-evolution threads we’ve had in here since May 2004.

Generally the creationists get beaten down with the scientific evidence for evolution, the creationists cry uncle, and they come back with theological objections: Original Sin, death before the Fall, God and “chance”, Adam/Eve up from the apes, how to interpret Genesis, etc.

Always a new thread on the topic every week. I have my articles in support of evolution of course:

Philosophy and Science Articles

Phil P

 

[The_Barbarian]

Wow theres already a perfectly fine book out about the patheticness of evolution called “The Long War Against God”.
Evolution simply put is just tautology and relative thinking. Put in the same room will create quite the dangerous upbringing.
I think it is very important to note that the founding fathers of modern evolution were very racists. In fact its important to note that the Origin of Species subtitle was “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” And yes Races is talking about people, just read the book and you will find according to Darwin that the average black person has the intelligence of a child.
In fact early evolution was just a scientific way to support racism.
We can see in Hitlers ideology of trying to “speed up the evolutionary process” considered one of the greatest evils of all time was simply based on evolutionary principals.
There are no transitional fossils, any evolutionists want to talk about Lucy, Java man, picto man or others? that would be fun!
Also we can discuss the many quotes from top evolutionists supporting there are no transitional fossils…

Hmm… “New Member”… every whacked-out argument against evolution even most creationists won’t touch…and the name… “I be tripp’in”

I smell a troll.

 

[edwest2]

Whoever this new person is, he’s right about the racist aspect of Darwin’s book. Science should not rule the Catholic Church but the science worshippers would appear to want it that way. Clearly, for Catholics, the answer is, in fact, God did it, which is anathema to those Pope Benedict refers to as under the thrall of a new rationalism.

God and religion are just words to them. There is no evidence of a love of God or His Word, just a worship of the mind of man.

God bless,
Ed

 

[ibetrippin07]

Hmm… “New Member”… every whacked-out argument against evolution even most creationists won’t touch…and the name… “I be tripp’in”

I smell a troll.

name calling is for the uneducated

 

[ricmat]

name calling is for the uneducated

When he really gets mad at you, he’ll call you a “creationist”.

 

[hecd2]

There are no transitional fossils, any evolutionists want to talk about Lucy, Java man, picto man or others? that would be fun!

Don’t feed the troll!
Don’t feed the troll!

Damn!

OK - I can’t help it. Let’s have some fun and talk about Lucy and Java Man (I have no idea what picto man is).

Lucy: a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, AL 288-1, discovered in Hadar, Ethiopa by Donald Johanson in 1974, dated to 3.2 million years BP. Originally reported in Taieb, Johanson and Coppens, CR Acad Sci 281, 1297 - 1300

Java Man: A partial cranium, also known as Trinil 2, the type specimen of Homo erectus, discovered in Trinil, Java in 1891 by Eugene Dubois, dated to 500,000 BP. Origimnally reported in a monograph - Dubois, Pitecanthropus erectus, eine menschenaehnliche Ubergangsform aus Java (Landesdruckerei, Bavaria), 1894

Now just what do you have to say about them?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Kaninchen]

Don’t feed the troll!
Don’t feed the troll!

But isn’t that what the ‘evolution’ threads are all about, people turn up and pretend to believe in ‘creation science’ for a bit of intellectual fun?

You all seem to fall for it every time, anyway!

 

[hecd2]

But isn’t that what the ‘evolution’ threads are all about, people turn up and pretend to believe in ‘creation science’ for a bit of intellectual fun?

You all seem to fall for it every time, anyway!

You’re right. In fact all these “creation scientists” are, in reality, respected authorities in evolutionary biology who pretend to be creationists and who pretend they can’t spell or construct a reasoned argument for fun.

And we fall for it every time! We might even be arguing with the guy down the hall. Beats coming to the lab with a squeaky rubber nose and huge floppy shoes.

Alec

 

[edwest2]

???

Ed

 

[Kaninchen]

You’re right. In fact all these “creation scientists” are, in reality, respected authorities in evolutionary biology who pretend to be creationists and who pretend they can’t spell or construct a reasoned argument for fun.

You mean it isn’t all some kind of frat-boy semi-permanent joke?

And we fall for it every time! We might even be arguing with the guy down the hall. Beats coming to the lab with a squeaky rubber nose and huge floppy shoes.

Alec

There’s an awful lot of ‘talking at’ that goes on, isn’t there?

Still, I’m not an American and, thus, a bit of an observer - after all, if American higher education gets bogged down in ‘creation’, Europe and other competitors can only benefit!

 

[steveandersen]

Our higher education system seems ok
Although I’m not sure how… maybe all those foreign students in the science and engineering programs

It is our primary education system that I worry about

 

[Wolseley]

ibetrippin07:

name calling is for the uneducated

When he really gets mad at you, he’ll call you a “creationist”.

Or a Hare Krishna.

 

[ricmat]

Our higher education system seems ok
Although I’m not sure how… maybe all those foreign students in the science and engineering programs

It is our primary education system that I worry about

It’s funny you should say that. Darwin has reigned in our primary and secondary educational systems since before I was in grade school in the 50’s. And it reigned quite well in Germany in the years leading up to WW2. Funny how that turned out.

I’ll assume, though, that this is not the thing you’re worried about.

 

[ricmat]

Or a Hare Krishna.

Yes, I forgot about that. Perhaps we could start a list…???

 

[Kaninchen]

Our higher education system seems ok
Although I’m not sure how… maybe all those foreign students in the science and engineering programs

It is our primary education system that I worry about

I doubt that struggle will be won or lost on message boards, though.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Darwin has reigned in our primary and secondary educational systems since before I was in grade school in the 50’s. And it reigned quite well in Germany in the years leading up to WW2.

And in Switzerland, and Sweden, and England, too. But not in the Soviet Union. Darwin became officially verboten.

**In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.**
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

Sakharov, as you may know, was the courageous Soviet physicist who fought for peace and freedom in the Soviet state.

And Dawinism was rejected in Nazi textbooks for a more politically altered version of evolution that emphasized race and conquest and subordination of the individual:

As we have already noted, people do not live as individuals like animals and plants, but as peoples, which largely have come together as ethnic states. We know something similar only with insects. Bees and ants are not only the sum of individuals; each individual shares a united drive in service of the entire group. They do not have an individual will any longer, but rather their actions have only the goal of serving the welfare of the whole, the welfare of the community. The state-building drive in insects has created a higher order from the drives of the individuals. Their species has become a higher order, one will in many parts. The individual member of a beehive does a single task: One may be a worker that carries nectar, another cleans the hive, the third builds on to it, a fourth feeds the larva, a fifth watches the hive’s entrance. Each individual activity serves the whole. It is the same with ants. Certain ant species even have a warrior caste that fights in the front lines for the rest; the battle against the enemies of the state here, too, involves the whole group.

Pure hooey, as far as comparing human societies to social insects. But it served the state’s purpose to downgrade Darwin, and so it was done.

Funny how that turned out.

Not really. Authoritarians abhor Darwinism. Science was tightly censored by states like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.