Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

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Techno2000 said:
My point is despite having similarities of physical or functional characteristics, that in itself is insufficient to prove that A descended from B. At most one can claim that A has some characteristics of B. When the term transitional is used, it creates an illusion that something descended from another organism when in fact nothing has been proven.
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No evolutionist would disagree with that. However you do give the impression that there is, say, one single
A and one single B, when there are more usually hundreds, all slightly different, and all relatable to one another, and broadly following a chronological gradient showing a clearly defined evolutionary path. Although nothing has been “proven” (Do stop using this term in a scientific context; it belongs to the field of mathematics), an evolutionary explanation is a considerably better fit than any of the distortions creationists must go through.
 
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Nothing new has been written here by evo promoters that has not not been written for years on CAF.
 
edwest211 said:
This is just speculation. I’m not arguing for a literal interpretation but check the Catechism. The starting point for correct interpretation of Scripture is the literal. The other types of language usage comes after study.
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I think your misinterpreting what I said in some sense. I’m not arguing against a literal interpretation of the Gen. 1-2:3 creation narrative as if every word, phrase, or sentence is not to be understood literally. I believe the literal sense, the truth, or what the inspired sacred writer intended to convey lies between two extreme interpretations as it were of the creation narrative. On the one extreme, every word or phrase is taken literally as it were. For example, the question concerning the creation of the fruit trees which has been discussed somewhat here. I don’t think it is a matter of great importance whether God actually created the fruit trees before or after the marine animals. On the other extreme, nothing is understood literally, the whole narrative is a metaphor of some sort.

The point I was raising about the seven days of the creation narrative was whether the sacred writer intended to mean and God himself the principle author of scripture that God actually did all his work of creation in six 24 hour days. This I believe is inconclusive from the text of the narrative itself as well as other passages of scripture, the various opinions of the fathers of the Church, and the teaching of the Church itself such as from the responses of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 20th century. Further, assuming there is any truth at all to the billions and millions of years that modern science assigns to the age of the universe, the earth, or the fossil record, than this would mean beyond any doubt that neither the sacred writer or God intended to mean that God’s work of creation took six 24 hour days.

You point out from catholic answers that the Church has not ‘infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.’ Indeed, the Church may never infallibly define one way or the other just as it has not infallibly defined as an article of faith heliocentrism. I personally favor and I’m assuming there is some truth to the age of the universe and earth according to modern science that creation is ‘several’ or more billion years old. I do not find that this contradicts the Genesis creation narrative or the Bible at large. In fact, it appears to me that the science and the fossil record confirms the progressive creation account of Genesis. I think my main argument in the recent posts I made was that whether God created the world only a few thousand years ago or several billion years ago is irrelevant in a sense to the Genesis 1-2:3 creation narrative. Either scenario can work. The main point is that creation and its origin is God’s work as the narrative recounts and I don’t mean by this that the narrative is simply a metaphor for an evolutionary scenario such as from the Big Bang or Darwinian theories or that it can or ought to be interpreted as such.
 
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I get that. My point is this: Time had a beginning. From Catholic Answers: "The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).

“time begun”

And time will end. I know what you mean but evolution supporters will not tolerate alternative views.
 
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My understanding is that this is the view in the BBT as well: that it doesn’t make sense to talk about a time “before” it, because even time itself didn’t exist before the Big Bang singularity exploded.
 
It’s almost as though they’re saying what is already known, rather than just making up new stuff, hey?
 
ericc said:
"Although it seems to be a connection between birds and reptiles it is probably not an ancestor of birds but rather a close relative. "

So I don’t know whether it is sufficient to disrupt the descendancy theory.
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A transitional species does not have to be a direct ancestor, it has to be a close relative of the direct ancestor. In the great majority of cases it is impossible to tell from a fossil how many offspring it had, if any. All that is needed to be a transitional species if that it has a mix of characteristics from the ancestral group (teeth and a bony tail) together with characteristics of the later group (flight).

It has been known for a long time that Archaeopteryx is very probably not a direct ancestor of modern birds. That does not make it any less transitional. The claim is not one of direct ancestry, but of being transitional between Theropoda and Aves.

rossum
 
Theistic evolution is the number one reason why Catholics fall away. It tries to rewrite Scripture and the clear and constant understanding of it for thousands of years.
 
That is why all Catholics should know that God actually did something, infallibly. When they’re told about ‘the blind watchmaker’ who just happened to do this or that then where does God fit in? Unguided chance then leads to the atheist view that no one made us.
 
buffalo said:
Theistic evolution is the number one reason why Catholics fall away.
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Absolutely not. Exactly the opposite. Literal Creationism is the Atheists’ best friend.
edwest211 said:
That is why all Catholics should know that God actually did something, infallibly. When they’re told about ‘the blind watchmaker’ who just happened to do this or that then where does God fit in? Unguided chance then leads to the atheist view that no one made us.
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Absolutely not. When children who have been taught about evolution at school are told nonsense about it in church, deliberate misrepresentation that they can see immediately is a lie, then they are led to reject the whole of Christian teaching. That’s what encourages atheism, and the many of the Creationist commenters on this site are at the forefront of it.
 
Absolutely yes. The biology textbook is a secular bible. Blind Unguided Chance is how human beings came to be. Period.

From Biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. Natural selection is totally blind to the future. “Humans are fundamentally not exceptional because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in Biology by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)
 
“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)
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edwest211 said:
Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit.
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I’m still trying to figure out how these tiny slight every million year modifications is causing all the previous organisms to become unfit and childless… I might have to start a new thread on this. 🤣
 
edwest211 said:
“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor.
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And millions and millions of plant and animal species merely wandered into a successful way of life…that’s some lucky dice !
 
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What happen to error 502 …did enough donations come in to fix it ? 🤣
 
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It doesn’t. Population biologists track genes through populations and can see how the traits of the population changes over time. And the balance of traits shift back and forth as generations move on. Occasionally, traits die out. Sometimes entire species die out.

We can see a divergence in, for example, plants right now. Gymnosperms like conifers are the “older” line. But they still exist on the planet with angiosperms like deciduous trees - sometimes in the same area. But in warmer climes, angiosperms out-compete and gymnosperms are fairly rare. That didn’t happen because gardners pulled out all the fir trees. It happened over generations and generations and generations.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
Literal Creationism is the Atheists’ best friend.
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But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

1 Corinthians 1:27
 
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