Intelligent Design

[Donald45]

Matt16_18:

God is the enemy of death…

It seem to me that for you, Death isn’t really God’s enemy, since God created Death and allowed Death to run amok in the terrestrial Paradise…

Authentic Catholic exegesis means not throwing out two-thousand years of our understanding of God’s relationship to Death for the sake of a scientific theory.

Yes, God is the enemy of death, that is, of spiritual death and its effect on the created order, which involves man’s failure to “tend and keep” it as a good steward of God’s creation. Because of Adam’s sin, mankind has been alienated, both ethically and relationally, from the Creator, and the world suffers because of it. That is the “death” of which God is an enemy, and which is removed in Christ. Yet, you seem to envision a pre-fall temporal creation where nothing—absolutely no living thing in any sense—ever died. All plants and animals, then, were intended to live forever? None of the scores of tiny insects that live on and in various plants was ever inadvertently chewed up by a grazing mammal? None of the billions of single-celled creatures that live on plants ever perished in the digestive acids of an animal’s stomach? Animal immune systems weren’t designed to erradicate foreign organisms that had been breathed into the lungs or ingested with food? Unless you’re willing to contend that such a scenario is true, perhaps Shakespeare was right when he wrote that “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (Hamlet). And maybe this applies to the pre-fall creation as well.

No, death did not, and does not, “run amok” in God’s creation—this is simply your emotive description. In fact, nothing “runs amok” in God’s creation, then or now. In particular, spiritual death and its effects did not “run amok” in the pre-fall world. God is always sovereign.

No one’s talking about “throwing out 2,000 years of our understanding of God’s relationship to death for the sake of a scientific theory.” I’m talking about throwing out your understanding of God’s relationship to death—actually your definition of “death” in a biblical context—for the sake of truth gained through man’s God-given reason as applied to the material world he (God) created. Truth in science is no less true than the “truth” of your (or my) preferred interpretations of Scripture. My point in mentioning Psalms 93 and 24 was to demonstrate how Christians always bring their prior knowledge of the world to any interpretation of the Bible. And, historically speaking, Christians have often had to alter their understandings of Scripture, as you write, “for the sake of a scientific theory” (I offered geocentrism and a subterranean ocean as examples). The popular concept of pre-fall perfection in which no death of any kind played a useful part in God’s “good” creation appears to be another case where one’s favored understanding of particular biblical texts needs to be modified. This is nothing new in Christian history. Truth requires such changes from time to time.

Truly,
Don

 

[Matt16_18]

Anonymous_1:

… the problem is what is implied by the neo-darwinism we are taught in schools. That these forces are random and that natural forces are able to account for the origins, diversity and complexity of life as we know it. Neo-Darwinism states there need be no God. Natural forces are enough. … Neo darwinism implies that unguided random natural forces are perfectly capable of spontaneously spawning life from non life without rhyme or reason, then through a completely different unguided natural mechanism, namely mutation and natural, we happen to come across the diversity and complexity of life as we know it.

Gosh, that explanation sure sounds familiar! Now where have I heard that before? Only dialectical materialism can explain the laws of evolution and change, which sees the world not as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, which go through an uninterrupted transformation of coming into being and passing away. …

“The philosophy of Marxism is materialism”, wrote Lenin. Philosophy itself fits into two great ideological camps: materialism and idealism. …. Philosophical materialism is the outlook which explains that there is only one material world. There is no Heaven or Hell. The universe, which has always existed and is not the creation of any supernatural being, is in the process of constant flux. Human beings are a part of nature, and evolved from lower forms of life, whose origins sprung from a lifeless planet some 3.6 billion or so years ago. With the evolution of life, at a certain stage, came the development of animals with a nervous system, and eventually human beings with a large brain. With humans emerged human thought and consciousness. The human brain alone is capable of producing general ideas, i.e., thinking. Therefore matter, which existed eternally, existed and still exists independently of the mind and human beings. Things existed long before any awareness of them arose or could have arisen on the part of living organisms.

For materialists there is no consciousness apart from the living brain, which is part of a material body. A mind without a body is an absurdity. Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is the highest product of matter. Ideas are simply a reflection of the independent material world that surrounds us. Things reflected in a mirror do not depend on this reflection for their existence. “All ideas are taken from experience, are reflections - true or distorted - of reality,” states Engels. Or to use the words of Marx, "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

What is dialectical materialism? (from the website of www.marxist.com))

If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.

Prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima

 

[Matt16_18]

Donald45:

Yet, you seem to envision a pre-fall temporal creation where nothing—absolutely no living thing in any sense—ever died.

Correct. That is what Catholics have always believed. Paradise was really a paradise!

Yes, God is the enemy of death, that is, of spiritual death and its effect on the created order, which involves man’s failure to “tend and keep” it as a good steward of God’s creation. Because of Adam’s sin, mankind has been alienated, both ethically and relationally, from the Creator, and the world suffers because of it. That is the “death” of which God is an enemy, and which is removed in Christ.

It is merely your opinion that the “death” that is the enemy of God is only spiritual death, and does not include physical death. I suggest you study more deeply the Catholic doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body.

The popular concept of pre-fall perfection in which no death of any kind played a useful part in God’s “good” creation appears to be another case where one’s favored understanding of particular biblical texts needs to be modified. This is nothing new in Christian history. Truth requires such changes from time to time.

No, what is required is that Catholics understand that the physical world that we are now living in is passing away, and that creation will be once again restored to a paradise where there is neither spiritual death nor physical death.

You have not answered my question - how do you conceive of the terrestrial Paradise? If Adam and Eve had not fallen, would all humans be living in this world with immortal bodies? (I dread to think what the price of real estate would be now if no human had ever died). Would God the Son still have come into this world to become one of us? For what reason? Would Christ have to die on the Cross so that animals could be set free from the bondage of decay?

 

[Donald45]

JSmitty2005:

It seems as though you are trying to make a distinction between scientific and theological truths as if they are separate. Truth is truth is truth. You can’t simply say that it’s okay that there is a conflict b/c they’re separate truths. These truths must be able to be meshed together with no contradiction. Otherwise, one or the other is false.

I am distinguishing between them, but not *separating *them. For example, I can distinguish between your body and your soul, and all is well. But if I were to *separate *body and soul…well, you’d be in trouble! Yes, I’m treating science and theology as distinct areas of inquiry, as their own realms of investigation. Science is the empirical exploration of the material world, by material means, and described in material terms. It works the same for the theist as for the non-theist. It is self-limited to the forms and functions of the natural world. Theology, on the other hand, extends to super natural realities, and is equipped to answer questions which science cannot properly address.

I agree that, ideally, the truths of faith and the truths of science should not come into conflict with one another and, if each is understood adequately, they don’t. So, to pit one realm against the other (“either theology or science”) strikes one as inherently wrongheaded. As Rousseau observed: “Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.”

God bless,
Don

 

[Donald45]

Matt16_18:

Correct. That is what Catholics have always believed. Paradise was really a paradise!

It is merely your opinion that the “death” that is the enemy of God is only spiritual death, and does not include physical death. I suggest you study more deeply the Catholic doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body.

You have not answered my question - how do you conceive of the terrestrial Paradise?

You hold to the idea that the pre-fall material world experienced no death of any kind, in any sense. You ignore pre-human fossil evidence of predation, the fact that the very act of eating indicates the presence of physical death in the animal kingdom, the virtual certainty that at least some small creatures and single-celled life would have perished with the feeding and immune-reactions of higher animal life, the reality that pre-fall plant death manifestly occurred (the same word for “death” being used of both plant and human death in Scripture), the fact that the concept of “death” would have been incomprehensible to Adam if he had never witnessed death in any sense—all these things (and there is much more evidence I could have mentioned) you’ve chosen to dismiss out of hand in order to maintain your prefered pre-fall scenario. You’ve offered no explanation whatsoever for any of these points. This “don’t-cloud-the-issue-with-facts” school of thought hardly seems appropriate for those called to love God with all of their minds.

I did not say that the death which is the enemy of God is “only” spiritual death. It also includes human physical death, as well as that animal and plant death that comes as the result of man’s alienation from his Creator (that is, as the result of spiritual death). Yet, not all animal/plant death has come as a result of human sin. Some animal/plant death (such as through predation, the normal acts of eating and disease immunity) was simply a necessary part of God’s “good” creation. If not, then animals and plants would never die, would live forever, and would quickly swamp the earth with countless species. In your scenario, would not all these presumably plant-eating creatures simply devour all available vegetation, leaving them with nothing at all to eat? And if they did run out of food, would they then starve to death, or would they continue living eternally without eating? And this begs the question: What was the purpose of eating in the first place? If it was to keep a creature (including man) alive, then that means that a creature could, in fact, die. If the act of eating was simply for the pleasure of taste, well, most animals don’t actually taste their food as humans do, nor do they eat for pleasure as we do. The practical difficulties with your interpretation are both innumerable and insurmountable.

You suggest, somewhat presumptuously it seems, that I should study the doctrine of the bodily resurrection. In fact, I hold university degrees in both theology and philosophy, and have enjoyed studying the general resurrection in depth. Thanks for the tip, though.

You ask how I see “the terrestrial Paradise.” My reply is that I see it as a terrestrial (rather than celestial) paradise. Normal, natural physical death in the animal and plant kingdoms in no way detracts from this reality, but affirms it. It assumes that animals and plants were intended to “be fruitful and multiply,” not to live forever. What entered creation at the fall was not death per se, but rather that expression and experience of death (spiritual and, by extention, physical) that is a product of man’s spiritual rebellion against God.

Truly,
Don

 

[Donald45]

Matt16_18:

The evolution of what?

Watch a television show about evolution on PBS or the Discovery Channel, and you will be told that evolution brought about the evolution of man from some kind of bipedal animal. This is a conclusion that is wholly unwarranted by the physical evidence that scientists are examining. Why? Because man is so much more than a walking animal with a big brain…

…I am asking a metaphysical question. Is there anything in the physical universe that is truly random - random even for God?..

Yes, I would agree that “evolution brought about the evolution of man [that is, as a biological organism] from some kind of bipedal animal,” though your apparent assumption that man is not an animal is misguided. He is more than a mere animal, certainly, but I know this from divine revelation rather than from science. This is entirely “warranted by the physical evidence that scientists are examining.” Man is indeed “much more than a walking animal with a big brain,” but he isn’t less.

I agree that you’re “asking a metaphysical question.” Metaphysically speaking, the answer is no, there is absolutely nothing in the physical universe that is truly (i.e., ultimately, metaphysically) random. God is in providential control of all created realities. This is a theological conviction. Yet, physically speaking, we can and do recognise events and occurences that we would call “random” in the sense that they are unexpected, unpredicted, and do not occur for the immediate survival benefit of the organism. This is a scientific conclusion. It is based upon human observation of the natural world, and whether or not physical phenomena are divinely controlled is not a part of it. As you observed, such supernatural questions are metaphysical, not scientific. So, from a divine, supernatural perspective, there are no random events—all things fall under God’s providential control. And from a purely human, natural perspective, some things happen that are unpredicted, unexpected and unforseen. Religion deals with the former perspective, science with the latter.

In Christ,
Don

 

[Thomas2]

only got one word for this debate - PANGEA!

Good luck and God bless!

Thomas2

 

[rossum]

Anonymous_1:

Neo-Darwinism states there need be no God. Natural forces are enough.

It may well do, whatever Neo-Darwinism is. The theory of evolution states no such thing. It is silent on the question of God, as it the theory of gravity, the theory of plate tectonics, the theory of fluid dynamics and all other scientific theories.

Anonymous_1:

Why are we denying the APPAERANCE OF DESIGN from physics to astrology

I hope that was a typo, or do you agree with Dr Behe that the new ID-style defenition of a scientific theory should include Astrology?

Anonymous_1:

Successful production of a 200-component functioning organism requires at least 200 beneficial mutations. The odds of getting that many successive beneficial mutations is r200, where r is the rate of beneficial mutations. Even if r is 0.5 (and it is really much smaller), that makes the odds worse than 1 in 10^60, which is impossibly small.

Any calculation like this has to be based on a model of what is happening. The model behind this simple probability calculation accounts for random mutations, but fails to account for natural selection, which gets rid of deleterious mutations and both preserves and amplifies beneficial mutations. For a fully worked example using a rather more complex model which includes natural selection see here. This takes a bit over two million years to evolve a new enzyme with 100 amino acids.

Anonymous_1:

I am not a microbiologist but i believe there are more than 200 functioning components in the cell alone…

Here at least I can agree with you.

rossum

 

[Matt16_18]

Donald45:

You ignore pre-human fossil evidence of predation, the fact that the very act of eating indicates the presence of physical death in the animal kingdom …

I don’t ignore that physical evidence - that physical evidence exists in the fallen universe, and it is not surprising to me to find physical evidence that death has dominion over creation in the fallen universe.

This “don’t-cloud-the-issue-with-facts” school of thought hardly seems appropriate for those called to love God with all of their minds.

I am most definitely NOT asking Catholics to ignore the facts. I am saying that Catholics are facing a challenge – to reconcile the Church’s teaching that Adam and Eve lived in a terrestrial Paradise that was untainted by decay, with the physical evidence provided by fossils that show creation is subject to decay and death. Catholics must rise to this challenge without changing the Church’s existing doctrines.

I have my own way that I can reconcile this question that so bedevils Catholic apologists for Darwinism.

… not all animal/plant death has come as a result of human sin. Some animal/plant death (such as through predation, the normal acts of eating and disease immunity) was simply a necessary part of God’s “good” creation.

Why the quotes around “good”? You are explicitly saying that animal/plant death existed in Paradise, and implicit in this statement would be the teaching that animal death is good, since God declared all of what he created in Paradise to be good. IOW, God is the cause of why animals suffer the pain of death, and that death is not a result of Adam’s disobedience.

I see it as a terrestrial (rather than celestial) paradise. Normal, natural physical death in the animal and plant kingdoms in no way detracts from this reality, but affirms it.

How does animal death affirm that the fallen world is a paradise?

I would agree that “evolution brought about the evolution of man [that is, as a biological organism] from some kind of bipedal animal,” though your apparent assumption that man is not an animal is misguided. He is more than a mere animal, certainly, but I know this from divine revelation rather than from science. This is entirely “warranted by the physical evidence that scientists are examining.”

I am not assuming that man is not an animal. It is one thing to argue that the physical body that a man inhabits in the fallen world may have been brought about by evolution, it is quite another thing to argue that evolution created a man with an immortal soul.

Metaphysically speaking, the answer is no, there is absolutely nothing in the physical universe that is truly (i.e., ultimately, metaphysically) random. God is in providential control of all created realities. This is a theological conviction.

I have always acknowledged that this is a theological conviction. And you are agreeing with the point that I have been making, that in truth, there is no such thing as natural phenomena that is truly random.

Yet, physically speaking, we can and do recognise events and occurences that we would call “random” in the sense that they are unexpected, unpredicted, and do not occur for the immediate survival benefit of the organism. This is a scientific conclusion.

From our point of view, “events and occurrences” may seem to be random. But that is only because we are not omniscient, not because these events and occurrences really are random. It is not a “scientific” conclusion that random events occur in nature, that is a metaphysical assertion made by a man that can apprehend the supernatural.

… from a divine, supernatural perspective, there are no random events—all things fall under God’s providential control. And from a purely human, natural perspective, some things happen that are unpredicted, unexpected and unforseen.

If you believe that there are no random events in reality, you can only assert that it is an illusion based on our ignorance that makes us perceive that “some things happen that are unpredicted, unexpected and unforseen.”

All you are really saying is that you really believe in intelligent design, but humans are too ignorant to perceive this truth!

 

[Anonymous_1]

rossum:

It may well do, whatever Neo-Darwinism is. The theory of evolution states no such thing. It is silent on the question of God, as it the theory of gravity, the theory of plate tectonics, the theory of fluid dynamics and all other scientific theories.

I hope that was a typo, or do you agree with Dr Behe that the new ID-style defenition of a scientific theory should include Astrology?

Any calculation like this has to be based on a model of what is happening. The model behind this simple probability calculation accounts for random mutations, but fails to account for natural selection, which gets rid of deleterious mutations and both preserves and amplifies beneficial mutations. For a fully worked example using a rather more complex model which includes natural selection see here. This takes a bit over two million years to evolve a new enzyme with 100 amino acids.

Here at least I can agree with you.

rossum

Ok, It has been shown that Mr. Morris’s methodology is erroneous…I dont dispute that…

As for Behe, imagine being in a courtroom being hounded by a Playwer just trying to trip you up on your words…ive been in this situation before and found myself eating my words…anyway i meant astronomy and it was a typo

and Neo Darwinism is what is taught in the Public Education system today. It is not evolution that ID believes is erroeneous, but neo-darwinism…

There were a number of problems with Darwinism as presented originally by Charles Darwin. This has led to modern neo-darwinism, a modern theory of Darwinian evolution.

Darwin took the position that variations were not random, but this was later rejected by the neo-Darwinians after they discovered genetics and mutations. Neo-Darwinians believe that random mutation in the DNA can account for the changes needed for upward evolutionary advancement.

 

[zian]

Matt16_18:

It is IMPOSSIBLE for evolution to ever explain how man received a conscience that is aware of the supernatural, and how man came to have the other faculties of his immortal soul that make man so much more than an animal with a big brain that walks upright. In spite of the total lack of evidence to support their wild claims, evolutionists constantly make the ludicrous assertion that the physical mechanics of materialistic evolution brought about the creation of man.

I also doubt that science will have much to say on the soul. Science deals with material entities and things that can be measured.

I am asking a metaphysical question. Is there anything in the physical universe that is truly random - random even for God? If there are physical processes that even God experiences as random, then it seems to me that Catholicism should be junked, and we should, at most, be teaching Process Theology. (Which is, of course, the desired goal of some people …)

God, I think by definition, is omnipresent and omniscient. I think if you are omniscient then nothing could be outside your understanding; so you know the means by which things occur that we do not and therefore consider to be random.

Science is not the way to all knowledge. Any honest scientist will acknowledge that.

 

[Matt16_18]

zian:

God, I think by definition, is omnipresent and omniscient.

I believe that God is is omnipresent and omniscient (as do all faithful Catholics), but Process Theology denies that God is omniscient. For a Process Theologian, there could be events that are random, even for God. This why I say that the statement that events happen in nature that are truly random is really a metaphysical statement.

For a Catholic, there is no such thing as an event in nature that is truly random, but an atheist, a Marxist, a Deist, or a Process Theologian might disagree with that. Their disagreement would not be a disagreement about a matter of physics, it would be a disagreement about matter of metaphysics.

 

[tradconvert]

Darwinism is science and thoroughly consistent with Catholicism. Intelligent Design is fraudulent and arrant nonsense

 

[AJC]

tradconvert:

Darwinism is science and thoroughly consistent with Catholicism. Intelligent Design is fraudulent and arrant nonsense

Not so fast there little fellow…

**Cardinal Poupard Warns of Religion Sans Reason

****At Presentation for Science-Theology Congress

**ROME, NOV. 3, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Religion divorced from reason runs the risk of falling prey to fundamentalism, warns Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

The cardinal was speaking in the Vatican press office today during a press conference on the first international congress of the STOQ Project – Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest. The Nov. 9-11 congress, to be held at the Lateran University, carries the theme “The Infinite in the Sciences, Philosophy and Theology.”

The STOQ Project, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture and supported financially by the John Templeton Foundation and other benefactors, has been organized for the first two years in collaboration with the Lateran, as well as with the Gregorian University and the Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum.

In the future, the STOQ Project will involve other pontifical universities of Rome, as well as European universities in Spain, Poland and Belgium.

The STOQ Project is heir to the Study Commission on the Galileo Case, instituted by Pope John Paul II and headed by Cardinal Poupard.

The project’s objective, the French cardinal said, is to create “a new climate of dialogue within the Catholic Church between scientific culture, which penetrates our world and daily life so intensely, and what we can call the culture of faith, that is nourished by Revelation and Christian humanism.”

The cardinal continued: “We know what scientific reason leads to, which becomes an end in itself: The atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruits of a reason that has wished to free itself from every ethical and religious link.”

“But we are also conscious of the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and falls prey to fundamentalism?” he asked. “For this reason, believers have the obligation to listen to what modern science offers, and this is why we ask loyally that the wisdom of faith be taken into account as an expert voice in humanity.”

The infinite

Rodolfo Guzzi of the Italian Space Agency also spoke at the press conference.

He explained that the first congress of the STOQ Project “hopes to make an inventory of the concepts of the infinite that have emerged from physics, cosmology and mathematics, attempting to give answers to the questions that arise from the different scientific theories and from the measures that the modern radio telescopes offer us, in the most unitary manner possible.”

In addition to Cardinal Poupard, the congress will be attended by other theologians, such as Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University, and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, who will speak on “Infinity in Science and Faith.”

Among the scientists who will address the congress are Joseph Silk, of Oxford University; Juan Maldacena, of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey; and Jesuit Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.

See www.stoqnet.org/stoq05/index.html.

 

[Donald45]

Matt16_18:

I don’t ignore that physical evidence - that physical evidence exists in the fallen universe…

Well, we’ve tossed this hot potato back and forth for quite a while now haven’t we? It occurs to me that the topic of pre-fall animal death is actually off-topic for this thread, and that maybe we should get back to focusing on the central question. Besides, I’m starting to repeat myself, and to no apparent effect. In any case, I’ll lob the thing back to you one more time, and try to clarify things a bit.

You say that you’re not ignoring the physical evidence, that you acknowledge the evidence that “death has dominion over creation in the fallen universe.” However, I’m not referring to the post-fall world at all. Fossil evidence of predation and death appears in the rock record long before humans ever come on the scene. For literally millions of years prior to the biological evolution of the human species (of which you’ve affirmed the possibility), creatures appear in the fossil record with physiological evidence of carnivorous activity, with prey still clutched in their claws. Animals still present in the world today, which are known to eat insects, small mammals or birds, can be seen in the rock record long before humans ever existed. This is pre-fall creature mortality, and you have chosen to ignore or dismiss it.

I place the word “good” in quotations for two reasons: 1) to show that it’s a biblical term describing the initial creation, and 2) to highlight that you and I apparently view the “goodness” of that creation differently. I did not say that death was not the result of Adam’s disobedience, simply that “death” here does not necessarily mean (as you assume) death in any and every sense. I’m suggesting that basic animal/plant death was a natural part of God’s good creation from the start (else, one would have to conclude that animals and plants were to live forever, multiplying, “running amok,” as you like to say). It was due to his experience of this basic form of creaturely mortality that Adam could even comprehend the concept of “death” in God’s warning in Eden. What sin brought forth was human death (spiritual and physical), and a new dimension of creaturely death not known before the fall—that is, for example, plant and animal species being wiped out through the irresponsibility of man, entire species being eradicated, habitats destroyed, unnecessary (unethical) killing of animals and plants by humans (and as a result of human action or inaction), and countless other manifestations of death in the natural world due to man’s ethical rebellion against the Creator. This is the “decay” under which the material world “groans.” Your concept of “paradise” appears somewhat overly romantic and otherworldly. Pre-fall creation was just as much a natural world as is ours today. The laws of physics didn’t somehow magically change when Adam bit into the fruit. Are we to imagine that Adam never stepped on an ant? Did animals at the watering hole never suck up insect larvae or microorganisms?

Your implication that scientists hold that “evolution created a man with an immortal soul” is simply a straw man. Science can say absolutely nothing, pro or con, about an immortal soul, since this is a religious concept which is outside the empirical bounds of the natural sciences. If you agree, as your previous comments seem to incicate, that humans—from a purely biological standpoint—may have come to their present physical form through a process of biological evolution, then where is the dispute? For this is simply what scientists affirm. Immortal souls do not, and cannot, enter into the scientific picture.

Yes, I’m asserting that we humans are not omniscient and therefore that we experience many natural occurrences as random (unexpected, unpredicted, unforseen). This allows science to work the same for the theist as for the atheist, since both experience the world in this way. The atheist, too, experiences as “random” the same natural events as does the theist. He may not preface his experiences with the metaphysical qualifier: “But I know that God is really behind all things.” He doesn’t need to, since this idea is not a scientific conclusion anyway. Within the material context of science, all of us experience natural occurrences as “random.” The concept of “chance” is not somehow a pagan idea; it is simply the way we all—theist and atheist alike—experience the world.

Anyway, I’ll be returning to the actual focus of this thread. Maybe we can discuss pre-fall creature mortality some other time, on another thread perhaps. Take care, and God bless.

Truly,
Don

 

[Donald45]

tradconvert:

Darwinism is science and thoroughly consistent with Catholicism. Intelligent Design is fraudulent and arrant nonsense

I agree completely with your first sentence. And I can affirm your second as well, though with a bit of qualification. I’d say that “Intelligent Design is fraudulent as science, and is nonsense when asserted* as science.*” ID is in reality a modernized version of the Teleological Argument for God’s Existence, and I think it works fairly well as a corroborative religio-philosophical argument. But as science it fails utterly.

Truly,
Don

 

[Matt16_18]

Donald45:

It occurs to me that the topic of pre-fall animal death is actually off-topic for this thread …

I created a new thread to discuss the idea that animals suffered death before the Fall: Old Yeller in Paradise.

I encourage all who have an opinion on this issue to post to that thread.

I’m not refering to the post-fall world at all. Fossil evidence of predation and death appears in the rock record long before humans ever come on the scene.

And I am saying that you ARE referring to the post Fall world, since the post Fall world is the only place where one can find evidence of physical death. See this thread where I had this same discussion with Phil Vaz: ** Christoph Schonborn on evolution**.

I place the word “good” in quotations for two reasons: 1) to show that it’s a biblical term describing the initial creation, and 2) to highlight that you and I apparently view the “goodness” of that creation differently. … I’m suggesting that basic animal/plant death was a natural part of God’s good creation from the start.

You are correct, we have vastly different conceptions of what God considers to be good, and that is where I see you abandoning Catholic doctrine to support your belief in Darwinism. You believe that when God declared his creation to be good, that God was also declaring animal death in creation to be good. Thus, you implicitly believe that animal death is intrinsically good, at least in the case where animals are killed by other animals or when animals are killed by “natural” diseases (which would also be intrinsically good).

What sin brought forth was human death (spiritual and physical), and a new dimension of creaturely death not known before the fall—that is, for example, plants and animal species being wiped out through the irresponsibility of man, entire species being eradicated, habitats destroyed, unnecessary killing of animals and plants by humans, and as a result of human action or inaction, and countless other manifestations of death in the natural world due to man’s ethical rebellion against the Creator. This is the “decay” under which the material world “groans.”

This is merely your theological opinion based on either your own novel interpretations of scripture, or the novel interpretations of the Protestants you have quoted.

Your concept of “paradise” appears somewhat overly romantic and otherworldly.

Of course my concept of paradise is otherworldy! The terrestrial Paradise is definitely not located in this fallen world. But as to “my” conception of the terrestrial Paradise being something alien to Catholic thought, I don’t agree with that at all. What I have been saying is what I see the Church Fathers and the saints saying - that the terrestrial Paradise is a real paradise free from the taint of death, and that the terrestrial Paradise still exists as a real place, just as scriptures teach.

You claim to have studied the Church’s doctrine about the Resurrection of the Body in depth. Surely, then, you know that part of that doctrine is the restoration of creation to its ORIGINAL state. Can you show me any evidence of a Church Father that believed that when creation is restored after the second coming, that animals will still be suffering from disease and decay?

 

[Matt16_18]

Donald45:

Your implication that scientists hold that “evolution created a man with an immortal soul” is simply a straw man. Science can say absolutely nothing, pro or con, about an immortal soul, since this is a religious concept which is outside the empirical bounds of the natural sciences. If you agree, as your above comments seem to incicate, that humans—from a purely biological standpoint—may have come to their present physical form through a process of biological evolution, then where is the dispute? For this is simply what scientists affirm. Immortal souls do not, and cannot, enter into the scientific picture.

The dispute is about whether evolution could produce a human – it is not about whether evolution could produce the body of a human in the fallen world. A human is a being with a body and an immortal soul – so if a scientist asserts that evolution produced a human from a bipedal animal without an immortal soul, that is an assertion that is way beyond what the physical evidence for evolution supports. These are the things that need to be made clear if we teach Darwinism in our public schools. Otherwise we let our students fall into the snares laid by secular humanists such as John Dewey.

The atheist, too, experiences as “random” the same natural events as does the theist. He may not preface his experiences with the metaphysical qualifier: “But I know that God is really behind all things.” He doesn’t need to, since this idea is not a scientific conclusion anyway.

The theistic scientist may not need to make these clarifications. But when we are teaching Darwinism in our public schools, we need to point out that the assertion that the mutations that humans observe in nature are “random” is really a metaphysical assertion about why the mutations occur. This assertion that mutations are “random” is not supported by science, since asserting that random mutations even exist implies that there is no God for whom nothing is random. These things must be made clear to our students if we are to educate them properly. Secular Humanists really do have an agenda to destroy the faith of the students in the public schools!

 

[wanerious]

Matt16_18:

The dispute is about whether evolution could produce a human – it is not about whether evolution could produce the body of a human in the fallen world.

Then you are fighting an argument that no one else is having. Nothing in biology textbooks indicates that our immortal soul is the product of evolution. Evolution is indeed all about tracing the ancestry of the human body. Since we scientifically cannot address the soul, it is quite outside any evolutionary considerations.

The theistic scientist may not need to make these clarifications. But when we are teaching Darwinism in our public schools, we need to point out that the assertion that the mutations that humans observe in nature are “random” is really a metaphysical assertion about why the mutations occur.

I disagree. There is no need to point this out, since if one studies genetics and mutations, it is obvious what “random” means in this context. Again, no one is claiming your take on the vocabulary. These are basically straw men. And no one really teaches “Darwinism” anyway; the modern synthesis of biological theories and ancestries is what is important. The word “Darwinism” is too imbued with philosophical ambiguities, and is viewed as almost as incendiary as words like “macro-evolution” — things that only non-scientists would say.

This assertion that mutations are “random” is not supported by science, since asserting that random mutations even exist implies that there is no God for whom nothing is random. These things must be made clear to our students if we are to educate them properly. Secular Humanists really do have an agenda to destroy the faith of the students in the public schools!

Thankfully, if they, like you, tend to only see the word “random” in this limited and flawed way, they don’t hold sway over the educational system.

 

[Donald45]

Matt16_18:

…asserting that random mutations even exist implies that there is no God…

No, rather it indicates that “science” is only equipped to investigate the natural world (that of secondary causes), and that supernatural realities (primary causes) are by definition above and beyond that natural world, and thus outside the purview of the scientific enterprise.