Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Techno2000
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Genesis uses the term according to its kind many times to emphasize. God later tells Noah to take two of each of the kinds into the Ark. From the creation the distinct kinds persisted until Noah.

The fossil record shows the fixity and stability as we see abrupt appearance, variation within and stasis. God intended there to be distinctions and separation of living creatures.

One more thing on Genesis. The symmetry of the first three days and the next three. (another form is the chiastic structure of the flood story)

Day 1 He creates light and on day 4 created the sun, moon and stars.
Day 2 He creates the sea and sky and on day 5 the occupants
Day 3 He creates dry land and on day 6 the occupants

Again we see the logic of creation.
 
Last edited:
The poetry of Genesis, and its understanding of God’s creative imagination, is astonishing in a book so old. It’s not a history book, or a science book. It is a fundamental theology book, and should be honoured and respected as such.
 
Last edited:
Interesting that it imparts so much we agree.

As the CCC teaches it records real events.

113 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83
 
Hugh_Farey said:
The poetry of Genesis, and its understanding of God’s creative imagination, is astonishing in a book so old. It’s not a history book, or a science book. It is a fundamental theology book, and should be honoured and respected as such.
Click to expand...
It is a book of knowledge.
 
“Hugh_Farey said:
Is that the ‘six-literal-day’ version of Genesis, or the ‘six-interpreted-day’?
And is that ‘fruit trees before marine life’ as well?
Just asking, but nobody seems to want to tell me!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1909 responded to a question put forward to them whether the word ‘day’ (yom in hebrew) used in Genesis 1 can be understood both in its literal sense as a natural day and also in a non-literal sense as a certain space of time and whether it is permitted to discuss this question among exegetes. The commission responded in the affirmative. It is important to note that the PBC at this time (it was established by Pope Leo XIII or a pope around that time) was an official arm of the teaching office or magisterium of the Church. The responses or decrees issued by the PBC around this time were placed in the AAS, ACTA APOSTOLICAE SEDIS, Acts of the Apostolic See. Pope Paul VI restructured the PBC around 1970 and since then it is no longer an official office of the magisterium of the Church.

The Fathers of the Church had various opinions concerning the meaning of the days in Genesis 1. Catholic Answers has an article with quotes from various church fathers with their various opinions here:
https://www.catholic.com/tract/creation-and-genesis

In connection with this, the PBC in the same year (1909) responded in the affirmative to the following question: In the interpretation of those passages in these chapters [first three chapters of Genesis] which the Fathers and Doctors understood in different manners without proposing anything certain and definite, is it lawful, without prejudice to the judgement of the Church and with attention to the analogy of faith, to follow and defend the opinion that commends itself to each one?

The CCC#337 says “God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. 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.” Here, the CCC appears to suggest that the days of Genesis 1 need not be interpreted as 24 hour days which is consistent with the response of the PBC I mentioned above.

An indication that ‘day’ in Genesis 1 can mean more than just a 24 hour day is found in the use of the word ‘day’ in Gen. 2:4 immediately following the Gen. 1-2:3 creation narrative “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” It appears to me that ‘day’ used here in Gen. 2:4 means an indefinite span of time especially if one connects this with the immediate preceding narrative of Genesis 1. Interestingly, I believe St Augustine interpreted ‘day’ in 2:4 as like one day and this interpretation forms part of his interpretation of Genesis 1 and the six days as just one day. I personally believe the ‘days’ of Genesis 1 can indeed mean a certain or indefinite span of time which was the opinion of some of the fathers and modern science appears to confirm this.
 
Last edited:
(continued)

In interpreting the seven days creation narrative of Gen. 1-2:3, there is no doubt that the very number ‘7’ is significant here and in many texts of the Bible. The number ‘7’ has some significant or symbolic meaning for the sacred writers of the Bible. ‘7’ has been interpreted to mean fullness, perfection, or completeness. The significance of the number 7 not only pertains to the seven day narrative but it is built into the very literary structure of Gen. 1-2:3. For example:
  • Genesis 1:1 consists of seven (7x1) Hebrew words
  • Genesis 1:2 consists of fourteen (7x2) words
  • Genesis 2:1-3 thirty-five (7x5) words
  • “God” (Elohim) is mentioned thirty-five (7x5) times
  • “earth” occurs twenty-one (7x3) times
  • “heaven/firmament” also twenty-one (7x3) times.
  • “And it was so” occurs seven times
  • “And God made” occurs seven times
  • “God saw that it was good” occurs seven times
  • the total number of hebrew sentences is 49 (7x7)
  • if 2:4a is included with 1-2:3, the hebrew verb ‘bara’ ,create, appears in various forms exactly seven times (I believe 2:4a needs to be included here, one could check the hebrew text to see for sure)
Genesis 1:1 besides what I mentioned above appears to have its own quite astonishing patterns of seven according to this link:
https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/panin3.htm

The number ‘3’ is also relevant as the six days are grouped into three pairs of two days each, that is, day 4 corresponds to day 1, day 5 with day 2, and day 6 with day 3. This structure has long been recognized in the narrative.
 
Last edited:
Yom is used over 1900 times in Scripture and over 50 in Genesis. It is always used to describe a natural day.
 
It does not. There are flaws in the dating methods which concern the early composition of the earth, the early atmosphere and radioactive decay rates. About 78% of the air we breathe is made up of nitrogen. It appears this was not the case in the early atmosphere.
 
Last edited:
Hugh_Farey said:
… while the now unoccupied upper limbs were the stimulus for increased brain development.
Click to expand...
I love this - it’s a gem of evolution science and a testament to the astounding intelligence of Darwinists.
 
Last edited:
Aloysium said:
Where Scott Kelly’s year in space resulted in genetic change …
Click to expand...
You might be referring to the astronaut who evolved “space gills” in his neck. This development shouldn’t come as a great surprise, as a human foetus has fish gills. The same astronaut also evolved pointy ears and weird eyebrows (just like Mr. Spock’s), although an evolutionary explanation for this hasn’t surfaced yet.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
The original question is sensible, except that feathers do not appear fully formed from reptilian skin. Whereas ‘normal’ archaic reptilian skin folded into flat scales, a mutation resulting in tubular scales appears to have spread through one population of reptiles about 200 million years ago
Click to expand...
What? A mutation that produced tubular scales? And you’ve even thrown in a time scale (200 million years ago) to make your tale sound more authentic - nice touch.
This is a good example of the fantastic tales evolution “science” continually serves up … indeed, relies on. This isn’t science; it’s a story - based on pure speculation. There is not a shred of empirical evidence that “tubular scales” or feathers can evolve from reptilian skin.
Creationist hypotheses are also speculative, and also unverifiable. However, they do not fit observed phenomena at all well.
Click to expand...
The largest and longest running biological experiment in human history - thousands of years of animal and plant breeding by humans - suggests organisms are genetically confined to their “kinds” and cannot evolve into different “kinds”. The observations of this experiment fit the creation theory very well.
 
Trying to squeeze evolution into the Scriptures requires such trauma to the text that theistic evolutionists really don’t want to go there. They end up taking the easy road - ie, just ignore the Bible … or dismiss it as a collective of silly myths written by superstitious primitives (as has already been witnessed on this thread).
 
Some breeeders would love to bred guard dogs as big as horses, for example - but they can’t. Dogs can only get so big, because the variations in every kind of creature are limited by their DNA. Therefore it is a genetic impossibility for a “kind” to evolve into a different “kind”.
 
Last edited:
Glark said:
If you don’t believe God created life, you are not a Catholic.
Click to expand...
  1. God is alive: “living God”.
  2. God is not created.
  3. God did not create the first life (Himself); He can only have created the second and subsequent living things.
rossum
 
Glark said:
There is not a shred of empirical evidence that “tubular scales” or feathers can evolve from reptilian skin.
Click to expand...
On the contrary, there is empirical evidence, both from fossil and live studies. Reptilian, mammal and bird skin is very similar in embryo, and scales, feathers and fur develop from little sites where the epidermal cells are smaller and denser than the rest. In reptiles, the scales develop above the placodes, while feathers develop from them. Occasional examples of scaleless reptiles carry a gene which is also responsible for the failure of fur and feather development. In fur and feathers these placodes develop into tubes, and the earliest fossil feathers were also tubes. Models which explain these and other observations in evolutionary terms both fit, and account for, the observations much better than creationist explanations.

The timescale was not ‘thrown in’. The first fossil feathers are roughly 200 million years old.
Glark said:
[Me:] … while the now unoccupied upper limbs were the stimulus for increased brain development.
[You:] I love this - it’s a gem of evolution science and a testament to the astounding intelligence of Darwinists.
Click to expand...
Selective quotation. You have missed my deliberate and pointed ‘spoiler alert’ that the comment from which this extract comes was indeed speculation. You have also, unintentionally no doubt, missed the point, I think. The genetic mutations which led to increased brain size were not, of course, directly influenced by unoccupied limbs. They had been occurring here and there for thousands of years, and probably still are, but as long as they did not lead to reproductive advantage they remained unexpressed, or failed to reproduce. As other genetic changes made limbs available for exploitation, then changes in the brain, probably concomitantly rather than successively could have become a regular feature of the new varieties. Note that this is less than a confirmed hypothesis as yet, as the observations which would lead to its universal acceptance are still missing, and science does not give a nihil obstat to speculation that is insufficiently based on observation, but it does conform to observations made so far.
Glark said:
… or dismiss it as a collective of silly myths written by superstitious primitives (as has already been witnessed on this thread).
Click to expand...
You know this is wholly untrue. It has not been witnessed on this thread, and you can give no examples of any such dismissal. I hate to think of any of our contributors as guilty of a deliberate self-serving lie, but surely this must be heading in that direction.
 
Glark said:
Some breeeders would love to bred guard dogs as big as horses, for example - but they can’t.
Click to expand...
I don’t believe this is true. You have no evidence for any such desire. It would be perfectly possible to breed huge dogs, but nobody wants to.
Dogs can only get so big, because the variations in every kind of creature are limited by their DNA. Therefore it is a genetic impossibility for a “kind” to evolve into a different “kind”.
Click to expand...
Circular reasoning. Unconvincing.
Glark said:
Genesis is poetry? You could have fooled me.
Click to expand...
Richca’s explanation of the careful arrangement of the words is enough to justify the poetic nature of Genesis.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top