Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

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Your understanding of evolution is lacking here. Not every species is replaced by a new species. The total number of species may increase or decrease with time. In this case a species is going extinct with no replacement.

You can increase your understanding of evolution by learning.

rossum
 
Thank you so much for taking the trouble to respond more fully. Snappy rejoinders can be fun, but the endless repetition of questions which have already been answered, and of meaningless one-word dismissals, does not really constitute much of a discussion.

I think it will be impossible for either of us to take a stand that the other would accept as “a rational, unprejudiced mind”. However, as to the literal meaning of Genesis and Exodus, I agree with you. To me, the days of Genesis are clearly ordinary 24-hour days, and I find the distortions of those who try to twist its words into a better semblance of history unconvincing and unnecessary. I do not think the late creation of the sun and moon was due to a clearing of the clouds, and I do not think that the animals in the ark were all juveniles in order to fit them all in. I think these stories were written, and for thousands of years mostly read, in the belief that they were word for word literally true in the sense that ordinary readers understood. However, I do think that some scholars, even from early times, had their doubts about whether they were literally true, or meant to be literally true.

I did not know that a “Church Father” had to be a saint. Perhaps that is a definition of your own, but let it pass. I agree that the vast majority probably assumed that Genesis and Exodus were literally true, just as they assumed the earth was still and the sun circled it. They read the stopping of the sun in the sky as just that, not the stopping of a rotating earth.

However, my knowledge of Church Fathers is small, so here I will defer to St Thomas Aquinas (a Saint, but possibly not old enough to count as a Father?) who discusses the six days at some length, mostly in connection with St Augustine, whose interpretation he seems to disagree with, but also says “And on this kind of facts even the Fathers held diverse opinions, explaining sacred Scripture diversely,” which suggests that there were at least some who questioned the literal interpretation. Those who disputed a literal interpretation, however, did so on theological rather than empirical grounds.
 
So I agree that it is broadly true that for much of ‘church history’ the literal interpretation of the Genesis was largely unchallenged on empirical grounds. (Not 99.999%; that would amount to all but a week of the last two thousand years). But your statement that for the sake of very dubious and untestable “scientific” theory, many Catholics has decided to throw 2000 years of tradition out the window in favour of the historical paradigm of an atheist cult, is completely wrong. What changed the general view of Creation was not evolution at all - it had begun long before that. In the absence of empirical evidence to the contrary, Genesis provided as good a scientific picture of the world as any other, but as soon as that evidence began to be observed, like any other scientific explanation it had to be modified or discarded. From the sixteenth century onwards, observations of fossils led to serious doubts about the age of the earth, and the Copernican revolution of course removed any doubts about the sidereal centrality of the earth. The main dispute about the scientific truth of the Genesis and Exodus was settled three hundred years before Darwin was born. From then on, understanding the ‘science’ of Genesis became a matter of interpretation, not literal reading.

Empirical observations continued to accumulate, but to scholars, they only widened the distinction between the theological and scientific readings of Genesis, without altering the fundamental nature of either. (You still need to find out what “empirical” means, by the way. Your distinction between ‘empirical’ and ‘circumstantial’ shows that you don’t. Circumstantial evidence can be as empirical as any other.) The Origin of Species was the result of an accumulation of over a century of observations of fossils, geological strata, animal and plant breeding, and so on, all of which, in good scientific fashion, Darwin laid out clearly and in detail, before stating his coherent explanation for it all. Its credibility did not rest on atheism, it rested on empirical evidence, and it still does.
 
There’s no “perfect environmental pressure.” There’s an environment, and organisms that have to survive and reproduce within it. Those which do survive and reproduce will have their DNA, and therefore their traits, continued into further generations.

Your mistake is thinking of evolution as a purpose-driven process-- an animal needs to adapt, and so it does. That’s not the case. Those animals which exist are those which are descended from survivors. When those today are different than those found say ten million years ago, we say the species has evolved.
 
What do you mean by “them”? Dodo birds? Neanderthals? Dinosaurs in general?
 
You may be correct that the majority of those who study evolution are atheists, but I doubt if your explanation for why this should be so is the same as mine. I think the problem lies in their not recognising that theological and scientific truth are not the same thing, a fault I attribute to the harmfully conservative nature of most school Religious Education, which until recently focussed more on “Bible Stories” than on what their religion is really about. There is very little difference in appearance and style between a children’s “Big Book of Bible Stories” and a “Big Book of Greek Myths” or even the “Big Book of Fairy Stories”, and a bald command to accept that one is true and the others are not is no longer, if it ever was, acceptable.

Your last post is a little incoherent, if I may say so. I do not believe that atheist scientists would believe in evolution even if there were no evidence for it, or that the evidence they have is imaginary. Nor is evolution an obvious derivation from atheism. Nor do I think that evolution is a modern idea (although in its current coherence and comprehensiveness it is). Nor do I (or any of those evolutionist commenting here) “dismiss” the bible at all. Your twisting of my knowledge of fossils is unfair and unkind. Your question and answer: “How do you “know” what’s in the fossil record? You don’t - you believe what you’re told without questioning” was merely ignorant, and I explained how I know what I know. The idea that I believe what I’m told without questioning is absurd. I have questioned everything, and in detail. To claim that I don’t is dishonest.

Ah! Dishonest. Yes. I do not think you are silly, or speak gibberish, or have never studied your subject. But I do think that, in the course of this thread, some creationists, including yourself, have been deliberately dishonest. But in every case, I have explained why I have said so, and I will say so again.
  1. Quoting selectively from a firmly convinced evolutionary scientist, with the sole purpose of trying to show that he does not believe in evolution, is dishonest.
  2. Making statements about someone’s thinking which has already been specifically denied is dishonest.
  3. Assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is naive and gullible, in the face of their detailed explanation of their side of the argument, is dishonest.
I shall be interested to hear your comments on this. Will you claim that the things I have mentioned are not dishonest at all? Or will you claim that although they are dishonest, nobody here has done them? If you do not do either, then presumably you agree with me.
 
benjamin1973 said:
You understand that every thing that ever lived is a “transitional stage,” right?
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This is precicely the understanding that is confused. The materially based vision of the world determined by necessity and orchestrated by death, both in terms of the breakdown of fragile structures and their final dissolution, unseen and unloved.

You and I, friend, are persons, giving light to what was, is and will be from our finite perch in eternity. The light we give has been given to us by Light itself, He who brings all creation into being. We can know and love because we are known and are loved. As lost as humanity became, placing our selves at the centre of the Garden which is our being in this world, by the grace of the Holy Spirit we can discern the Truth. At that point, everything is turned upside down.

We are individual, unique persons, one fallen in Adam and redeemed, through and in, one with Christ journeying to our destiny. The meaning of your words doesn’t lie in fossilized remains, but rather in the transitional nature of worldly existence, which is the means by which we are transforming our human nature into an act of love, and thereby to ultimately reside eternally in communion with the Source of all this wonder.
 
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benjamin1973 said:
Your mistake is thinking of evolution as a purpose-driven process-- an animal needs to adapt, and so it does. That’s not the case. Those animals which exist are those which are descended from survivors.
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They survived what ?
 
I wonder if you’re not confusing (deliberately, of course) “die” with “die out”. An individual organism does not die out, it dies, of disease, predation, accident or whatever. A group of organisms dies out. Such a group may include successive generations, so the term “die out” does not refer to individual death at all, it refers to a failure to replace those individual organisms after they have, individually, died. A simple failure to reproduce in sufficient numbers in sufficient time, caused by environmental stress, competition for resources, etc. is all that is needed for a group of animals to “die out.”

In the case of the rhinoceros, its lack of predators and availability of resources until recently meant that its population could be maintained by fairly low reproductivity, but recent human predation, very sudden in evolutionary terms, has not given it time to evolve adequate extra reproduction, and its population is declining to the point where no further reproduction will be possible, and it will become extinct.
 
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Hugh_Farey said:
I wonder if you’re not confusing (deliberately, of course) “die” with “die out”. An individual organism does not die out, it dies, of disease, predation, accident or whatever. A group of organisms dies out. Such a group may include successive generations, so the term “die out” does not refer to individual death at all, it refers to a failure to replace those individual organisms after they have, individually, died. A simple failure to reproduce in sufficient numbers in sufficient time, caused by environmental stress, competition for resources, etc. is all that is needed for a group of animals to “die out.”

In the case of the rhinoceros, its lack of predators and availability of resources until recently meant that its population could be maintained by fairly low reproductivity, but recent human predation, very sudden in evolutionary terms, has not given it time to evolve adequate extra reproduction, and its population is declining to the point where no further reproduction will be possible, and it will become extinct.
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If it took the whale 15 million years to evolve into the whale … then that second creature would have been around for at least a million years surviving and multiplying countless offspring, what was it that causes its demise and not exist any longer?
https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/catholic/original/2X/2/24c3869c4a183caf70dc7d2f02e0a5045bfd05c0.png
 
Techno2000 said:
What was it that causes its [Indohyus] demise and not exist any longer?
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Indohyus was a semi-aquatic animal living in the shallows on the north-east coast of Pakistan. Pakistan no longer has a north-east coast. The shallows have become the Kashmir Himalaya. That caused the demise of Indohyus.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
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Techno2000:
What was it that causes its [Indohyus] demise and not exist any longer?
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Indohyus was a semi-aquatic animal living in the shallows on the north-east coast of Pakistan. Pakistan no longer has a north-east coast. The shallows have become the Kashmir Himalaya. That caused the demise of Indohyus.
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Ok. that’s one… still millions and millions more transitional plants and animals to go through.What was the demise of the third creature?
 
Hugh_Farey said:
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Techno2000:
What was it that causes its [Indohyus] demise and not exist any longer?
Click to expand...
Indohyus was a semi-aquatic animal living in the shallows on the north-east coast of Pakistan. Pakistan no longer has a north-east coast. The shallows have become the Kashmir Himalaya. That caused the demise of Indohyus.
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So, DNA mutations, jumped into action as soon as they saw that Pakistan was no longer going to have a north east coast, and provided the mutations to remedy the situation ? 🤔
 
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benjamin1973 said:
You understand that every thing that ever lived is a “transitional stage,” right? Including me and you, assuming we are lucky enough to reproduce and for our kids to do the same.
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The evo claim they have transitional fossils is a lie? because there are none?
 
Techno2000 said:
Ok. that’s one… still millions and millions more transitional plants and animals to go through.What was the demise of the third creature?
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When we meet in heaven, if you’ve got a few thousand years to spare, I’ll go through them all with you.
Techno2000 said:
So, DNA mutations, jumped into action as soon as they saw that Pakistan was no longer going to have a north east coast, and provided the mutations to remedy the situation ? 🤔
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No, the mutations were there, randomly, all along.
 
Glark said:
Again you have demonstrated your naiveté. Atheist scientists would believe in evolution even if there were no “evidence” for it (as Dawkins suggested).
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Exactly. They also limit their knowledge by excluding the supernatural which is really unscientific.
 
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