Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True? Part Two

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Evolution as taught in schools cannot include God since God is not a scientific concept. God is just a word. A word that can be easily discarded as fiction or whatever.
 
Sure it matters. Each sperm has different DNA, so which sperm reaches the egg affects what a person will turn out like. That’s why identical twins, which come from a single egg/sperm combination, are always very similar, whereas fraternal twins, which come from multiple egg/sperm combinations, tend to vary more.
 
Intelligent Design as normally taken means that all species were created in a single creative decision by God. Evolution means that species adapt to the environment over time. These ideas are not in conflict with each other.

But you don’t really need to be a believer to study the mechanisms God has in place. If I’m studying a Picasso painting, not believe that Picasso existed doesn’t really mean that I’m not capable of learning about pigment, brush strokes, etc.

The interpretation is different. A Catholic can look at reality and say, “Wow! What an amazing system God has designed in which all these lives can be born, compete, die, and gradually change over time” while an atheist will say, “Wow! What an amazing system exists in which all these lives can be born, compete, die, and gradually change over time.”

There’s literally no conflict there-- just a different view on what ultimately lies under the hood.

To me, it seems infinitely more dangerous to say, “Studying this system is blasphemy, because it’s not mentioned in the Bible.” Well. . . nature is huge, and the Bible is only a few hundred pages. What would be expected?
 
benjamin1973 said:
Each sperm has different DNA, so which sperm reaches the egg affects what a person will turn out like.
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Yeah, I wonder about that, would we look different, if a different sperm fertilize the egg, but the father and the mother DNA is still the same.
 
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I don’t think that question is answerable, because at least right now, we can’t exactly control what DNA either a sperm or an egg has. My guess is instead of finding God in the moment of my conception (I was gonna be what I was gonna be because God made me that way), it’s better to see God in a more subtle role: yeah, theoretically the different combinations wouldn’t have been “me,” but it was always only going to turn out that a particular sperm was going to meet that particular egg, because 100% of all physical interactions are planned and known by God already.

Scientists would see this as physical determinism, but I think it’s fine for a Catholic to see this as God’s plan. I really don’t see that there’s a conflict there.
 
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The Pope supports it and the Catholic educational system supports it.
 
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benjamin1973 said:
Evolution means that species adapt to the environment over time
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That’s the problem I have , the environment doesn’t wait around for millions of years so a animal can evolve and adapt to it.
 
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I don’t get why you phrased it this way. I’m an artist and an assistant art director at work. I don’t know how many man-hours I’ve put in but all those lines mean something and they were all created by an intelligence and are limited by rules. Rules I have to know in order to make rapid changes, sometimes with the artist sitting next to me. Evolution has no rules, it just spits out organisms. Some live, some die - oh well. The atheist and nihilist take comfort in this. They can reject sin, guilt and shame and just live for the moment.

Dangerous? In what way? The planet will explode? My continuing education will end? I won’t be able to drive anymore? No, what is being proposed is a false worldview that is exactly the opposite of Church teaching.

From the Catechism:

"295 We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: “For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all”; and “The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”

The atheist and nihilist would reject this, endangering their souls.
 
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Another appeal to authority and an insult. You’re not making any progress.

I could start the Evolution is a Hoax Society… 😉
 
Ender said:
Even if it is a neutral change there is no reason it should be passed on preferentially because it confers no advantage.
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The affected animal will pass it on. Weight of numbers eventually determines prevalence.
 
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That’s right. And that’s why some species in the past, like dinosaurs, have become extinct. Evolution requires many generations, but some events happen suddenly, like the asteroid strike that seems to have wiped out the dinosaurs.

However, if the change is not so dramatic, then those members of a species which are relatively well-matched to the environment will reproduce, and eventually the average member of a species will be well-matched. Super bacteria are a good example: antibiotics will wipe out an entire population in your body if you’re lucky and if you take the full course of antibiotics. But it may be that say 1% end up surviving the antibiotics. These 1% reproduce, and now you have a population which has very quickly adapted to an environment that has that antibiotic in it.

The same could happen if the world suddenly got much hotter. White people like me would be getting sunburns, heat stroke, and generally dropping like flies. And even if they survive-- what girl is gonna want to make babies with a guy whose skin is peeling all the time? The result-- hot places have dark-skinned people.
 
Hot places have dark-skinned people? This took, what? A few months or less? Otherwise they would have to cover their bodies until evolution, without intelligence, figures out they need dark skin? If I’m hungry, I need food today, or in a few days, or I die.
 
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