Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.0

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The two creation accounts are complementary. The first tells the order of creation. The second the importance of man.
 
Never said they contradicted each other, only that there were two. The second is the more important of course but nevertheless there are two and they do compliment each other.
 
buffalo said:
The world was created good, it has been in a state of disease and death since the fall.
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That is a theological statement, not a scientific statement. As a Buddhist, I obviously reject Christian theology as unscriptural.

Even in Christian terms, there was death of plants (and maybe fungi) before the fall. Every time a squirrel ate a nut or an acorn there was a death of a plant.

As a scientific statement, this is ludicrous. Death goes back a very long way, well before the first humans. Every fossil we find is a death. Have you any idea how many deaths there are in rocks like the White Cliffs? Every small particle of chalk is a death.

rossum
 
It’s a pity the language puts you off. The message is important. I will try to clarify it.

The first of two commandments given to us by Jesus is that we love God above all else. Even in the most banal or most detail oriented activities, He can be made present in our lives as we dedicate the activity to Him. If He is not present here and now, when can He be, given that this is where eternity meets time.

You may wish to reflect on the fact that you mention Him only once in your post, and it is indirectly within a quote.
mVitus said:
So when I see people speaking in the style of the fundamentalists and saying things like “evolution denies God” it makes me want to correct.
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This is within a thread that asks a question concerning truth, that which is God Himself, and creation.

So you see that in spite of your protestations, those you criticize and seem to consider ignorant, appear to have something to teach you.
mVitus said:
I would hazard a guess that evolution probably occurred at a quicker pace in the pass. That guess is based on how radiation can cause random mutations and given radiation decays, I’d imagine the earth was more radioactive in the past. Adding that together to get more mutations for more chances of a neutral/beneficial (alibi also an increased rate of detrimental).
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God who is central to all that exists, is absolutely nowhere in your cosmology. Not to detract from the point I’m trying to make, I won’t be commenting on the scientific merits of your explanation, but rather on the fact that it does not need God in the least, He who is intimately involved as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in all His creation, which in all its grandeur and wonders, demonstrates and is to share, through us in Christ, in His glory. Have no doubt that your kids notice, and what is a quaint mythology, in the face of what is communicated to be reality, will easily be discarded when it conflicts with their attachments to the world.

Hell fire and damnation? Would that it be so, to spark us into action. Usually it is an imperceptible decline into the nonsense, mediocrity and unfulfilling meaninglessness of the mundane.
 
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Aloysium said:
You may wish to reflect on the fact that you mention Him only once in your post, and it is indirectly within a quote.
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With that, given that this is a Catholic forum and I’ve identified myself as Catholic, I feel it unnecessary to restate my belief in God with every post. I’ve also made posts in iterations of this thread where I’ve mentioned how when I think of evolution from that first cell to now, it outs me in awe of God and His work.

As for how I argue science, let’s imagine a hypothetical. Suppose I was advocating a flat earth position while saying round earth lessens a need for God and you were trying to show me a round earth was compatible with faith and scientifically accurate. (Side note: I use this because it’s the quickest example I could think of, not to compare 6-day creationists to flat earthers) In matters of comparability with faith, I would expect you to speak of God. But in the matter of science favoring a round earth I would expect explicit mentions of God to be seldom as the support for a round earth doesn’t revolve around God, but observations of how God’s world works, the natural sciences. In arguing a round earth, direct mentions of God would feel forced.

Essentially I’m arguing how evolution, which I believe to be God’s process of bringing about the life we see, works. And scientific explanations of a process, by their nature of explaining the process, focus on how the process works.
 
mVitus said:
Essentially I’m arguing how evolution, which I believe to be God’s process of bringing about the life we see, works. And scientific explanations of a process, by their nature of explaining the
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Evolutionary theories speak of polygenism, of random physical changes in the genome. They omit any reference to what is life and the existence of individual living beings, fail to adequately address what is a species other than in the most simplistic manner having to do with morphology and the capacity to procreate, can not explain the emergence of the psychological, nor the nature’s inherent beauty, has no credible, rational explanation for the emergence of life at the beginning, nor of our existence at the end. It speaks of the influence of natural selection and random mutation when these are of two different orders. Natural selection involves the environment and is not reduceable to chemistry. To speak of an environment requires an acknowledgement that organisms exist as such, interacting with one another and the different levels of being that exist in the universe. By not including all this, Darwinism fails to describe what actually happened during the course of what was most definitely a step-wise creation whose final cause was its meeting its Maker. The common excuse is that all this is in the realm of metaphysics and science having reduced itself to the study of the physical does not deal with it. All this sort of thinking has done is to introduce materialistic metaphysics into the classroom. It is just so far from the truth! Seriously!

It is not even a theory but a story which uses the truth that science reveals. Darwinism isn’t fact; that attribute belongs to the actual facts that arise from research.

You may wish to place God at the centre of your story of creation rather than hav Him as an appendix. He has done all this. He has done this, how? What I have found has to do more with how He does not do it, which is in keeping with the limits of our intellectual capacities and our personal distance from Him. He is the Truth, and when we see Him, the Light allows us to see what we stumbling about, seek now in darkness.
 
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I agree with mVitus, and am not clear that your comment is relevant to his (her?) remarks. Evolutionary theories do indeed speak of polygenism - but so what? If that’s how God goes about his business, as it seems to be, why shouldn’t he? Evolution deals with random changes - quite so, but God knows what those changes are. Evolution cannot fully define a species? Does it matter? A species is an artificial construct to facilitate taxonomy, nothing more. Evolution doesn’t discuss the meaning of life? Why should it? Neither does my car manual or the instructions for the washing machine.

And yes, there are explanations which ought to be within the field of evolution which have not yet been fully described. The same is true of many other disciplines. It would be wrong to assume that such things will never be explained, and even wronger to say that it is fruitless to keep looking for them.

It is also wrong to say that evolutionists introduced materialistic metaphysics into the classroom. There were atheist scientists advancing wholly materialist origins for morality and religion long before Darwin was born, but even devoutly Catholic teachers of things like architecture, agriculture, cookery and tailoring could hold whole semesters of classes without explicitly involving God at all. They still do.

You are perfectly correct in emphasising the centrality and immediacy of God, but wholly incorrect in your apparent assumption that Catholic evolutionary scientists don’t acknowledge that.
 
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Please provide an example of what “evolutionary science” contributes to science. In forensics, it is important to find out if a badly burned body is Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Capoid, Congoid, Australoid and so on. Evolution does speak of “breeding populations” of humans and so-called pre-humans, like hominids.
 
The examples are not credible. Biologists deal with things that are alive now. Drug discovery is still trial and error. There is no ‘evolution guidebook’ for any of this. Direct observation, selective breeding, etc. require intelligence, nothing more.
 
All very odd. Of course God knows what all his creation looks like. And who cares whether Evolution is any use or not? Truth doesn’t have to be functional. I can’t say I follow the point of your postings.
 
I’m not really even sure where to begin in replying to your post. For me it’s as if I’m speaking about apples and you’re wanting that to give answers about oranges. For another example, it would be as if I was talking about how the human body works and you want me to include how the soul functions. In other words there’s a big disconnect between what each of us is saying.

Maybe because I was raised in an environment that understood evolution as fact but also saw no conflict with religion in regards to it, I’m just so accustomed to not even having to really think about how they interplay because it’s so ingrained?
It’s also possible we’re having a disconnect in terminology if we have different implied meanings ascribed to things?

And again, when I speak of evolution, I’m only speaking as to the natural aspects to it. Evolution doesn’t concern the ‘why’ of God making us. It’s a scientific explanation of ‘how.’ Kind of like a historian explaining crucifixion can talk to the ‘how’ of Jesus’ death but not the ‘why.’

I’m willing to talk, but right now it feel like we’re speaking apples and oranges. (And small request: I read this forum from my phone, so the less questions at a single time, the easier it is for me to reply.)

@Hugh_Farey *looks down* I’m a he.
In terms of polygenism for humans, Humani Generis made clear that Adam and Eve were real people and our first parents so it is necessary for us true humans to all be descended from Adam and Eve. That’s the only thing I feel a need to interject at this time.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
Evolutionary theories do indeed speak of polygenism - but so what? If that’s how God goes about his business, as it seems to be, why shouldn’t he? Evolution deals with random changes - quite so, but God knows what those changes are. Evolution cannot fully define a species? Does it matter? A species is an artificial construct to facilitate taxonomy, nothing more. Evolution doesn’t discuss the meaning of life? Why should it? Neither does my car manual or the instructions for the washing machine.

And yes, there are explanations which ought to be within the field of evolution which have not yet been fully described. The same is true of many other disciplines. It would be wrong to assume that such things will never be explained, and even wronger to say that it is fruitless to keep looking for them.

It is also wrong to say that evolutionists introduced materialistic metaphysics into the classroom. There were atheist scientists advancing wholly materialist origins for morality and religion long before Darwin was born, but even devoutly Catholic teachers of things like architecture, agriculture, cookery and tailoring could hold whole semesters of classes without explicitly involving God at all. They still do.

You are perfectly correct in emphasising the centrality and immediacy of God, but wholly incorrect in your apparent assumption that Catholic evolutionary scientists don’t acknowledge that.
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I’m not sure why someone would assert that evolution and polygenism is how God goes about His business when it is a major deadly incompatability with the truth He has revealed through His dialogue with us.

To you maybe that is how it appears, but this is most definitely not as it seems to be to me. I am speaking with full honesty here. And I am certain about what I say; although less so about my capacity to convey what I see.

Truly, this is how evolutionism will go on to corrupt our relationship with God. It seems far better that people leave the Church because they adhere to such obviously nonsensical views, than to have God’s message distorted, as is happening with many Christian denominations, which in catering to the world, lose their purpose.

As you say, species are artificial constructs according to evolutionary theory. My cat vehemently disagrees by its very existence.

And, that is at the core of everything - Existence, Triune in Nature, two Divine Persons, eternally becoming One through the third Person, the mutual giving of themslves - Love. God, who wills everything into existence, is the Light by which we come to know any truth. Whether it is a carbon atom, an amoeba, a plant, an animal or human being, all exist in a hierarchy of being here and now, having been temporally created. The living truth can illuminate the science, which only discerns shadows of things that are. What you say is actually a pity; what wonders are being denied our children.

As to what scientists are up to these days, Buffalo’s a pretty good source of information on the matter, but I would rather appeal to reason than authority.
 
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