Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True?

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Imagine hos man “useless vestigial” organ surgeries have been done. Now we know they are important.
 
Who created the higher civilization? Who created the space dust and meteorites that carried life to earth - supposedly? Anything but God.
 
That doesn’t mean God has no control over them. God can stop all disease and all natural disasters anytime he wants to.
 
I never argued that God has no control. I said God created a natural world, not a puppet on a string. Thats obviously what God intended. I have no reason to think otherwise.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
If all we had was fossils of chihuahuas and mastifs we would certainly call them difference species.
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Which just goes to show how wrongly fossils can be interpreted - these two dogs can theoretically mate and produce viable offspring. It is only their vast difference in size that prevents them from getting romantic.
 
Although I do accept that, due to the Fall, some junk DNA might really be junk DNA, indicating some loss of function.
 
IWantGod said:
I never argued that God has no control.
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… except when it comes to evolution.
I said God created a natural world, not a puppet on a string.
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This is confusing. God created the natural world but didn’t want to control it? Why not? That’s a bit like a man building a car but then not driving it, Or a father and mother producing a child and then disowning it.
 
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Is the theory of evolution true? Well, it explains all the known data very well and it is not in violation of revealed truth concerning God’s role as Creator. The Popes have said as much. We know God created everything. It is certainly not outside the capacity of God to have created all the creatures using a vehicle like evolution through mutation.

Consider Newton’s Laws. Are they true? Well, they explain a lot of situations. Having said that, Einstein’s work explains phenomena that Newton’s theories couldn’t. Scientists wouldn’t say Newton’s laws are “false.” They would say that Newtonian physics doesn’t explain everything.

Likewise, consider Dalton’s laws concerning chemistry. He said one element cannot become another element. Well, most of the time, that is true. He didn’t know about radioactive elements that decay into other elements. He didn’t know about protons or neutrons or isotopes. Still, his laws are useful and it are still taught as being “true as far as it goes” in chemistry classrooms.

What Darwin’s work does not address is how a population could arise from a mututation that changes the number of chromosomes. In the vast majority of cases, this kind of mutuation makes the organism sterile. I have never heard of an example of this being otherwise. Well it could be that this is true, except when it isn’t. In the vast majority of cases, you can watch an atom forever and it is not going to spontaneously spit out some radiation and become a different element. Well, except when it does. The absence of a mechanism by which a mutuation that changes the number of chromosomes gives rise to a new reproducing species is not known. It has never been seen. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Is Darwinian evolution responsible for the evolution of new species with different numbers of chromosomes? I don’t know. The fossil record, however, does show that the species present in any particular geologic era is not constant. There used to be animals alive that no human has ever seen. Even though some animals we know appear in the same geologic strata as those unknown animals, many animals we know today do not seem to have existed back then.

Whatever God did in creating life on this earth, there is evidence that it was not done by creating all species that would ever exist simulateously. God had no reason other than deception to plant what seem to be the bones of animals that never existed. That would be a divine deceit, which is an impossibility. By comparison, it is easy to concede that God’s creativity is far beyond our imagining or that Holy Scriptures resorted to metaphors that could speak the truth to us in spite of our ignorance of the natural world.

Certainly Darwin’s Laws leave much unexplained about the mechanisms by which species arise. There is more to the story, whatever it is. Stay tuned. When all is said and done, however, God is Creator of All. That much, we do know with certainty.
 
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I don’t trust the dating methods. Sure, there were dinosaurs and other animals. That proves nothing. The writers of the Bible could have wrote: “In ages long past, men looked like animals and lived like animals and thought like animals. As time passed they changed and after long ages became the men you are today.” BUT it doesn’t say that. It says man has no excuse to not recognize God in light of His creation. He is denied any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.

Communion and Stewardship

“64. Pope John Paul II stated some years ago that “new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge”(“Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution”1996). In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.”

Pope Benedict

"In the book, Benedict reflected on a 1996 comment of his predecessor, John Paul II, who said that Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were sound, as long as they took into account that creation was the work of God, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution was “more than a hypothesis.”

“The pope (John Paul) had his reasons for saying this,” Benedict said. “But it is also true that the theory of evolution is not a complete, scientifically proven theory.”

"Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.

“We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said."
 
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Nothing in Humani Generis which you have quoted forbids me to think that Adam was not formed from pre-existing living matter.
 
edwest211 said:
This is true. Bacteria and viruses have the built-in ability to modify themselves. For bacteria, Horizontal Gene Transfer occurs and when the right combination is hit upon, those bacteria are now resistant to a harmful substance. Viruses can change their outer coat, resulting in different strains of the same virus. Drug discovery is still a trial and error process with nothing from evolution to guide it.
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Are you a microbiologist, then? Otherwise he would you know the details of the research that leads to effective drug therapies?
 
Glark said:
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LeafByNiggle:
If all we had was fossils of chihuahuas and mastifs we would certainly call them difference species.
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Which just goes to show how wrongly fossils can be interpreted - these two dogs can theoretically mate and produce viable offspring. It is only their vast difference in size that prevents them from getting romantic.
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When you say they can theoretically mate you mean with artificial help from man. That’s kind of cheating, isn’t it? What if we do gene splicing with Crisper to combine DNA from a frog into a snake to get a snake with some from DNA? Does that mean you are willing to admit that frogs and snakes evolved from the same creature? If seems the animals that you are willing to admit of common ancestry are somewhat arbitrary.
 
Glark said:
This is confusing. God created the natural world but didn’t want to control it? Why not? That’s a bit like a man building a car but then not driving it, Or a father and mother producing a child and then disowning it.
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It is dangerous to assume what God would or would not want to do? For example, who would have thought that God wanted to have his son die upon a cross?
 
Look it up and see how much money is spent on drug discovery through trial and error.
 
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