Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True?

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I wonder how long Adam was asleep while this removal took place? Minutes, Hours, Years?
 
buffalo said:
I wonder how long Adam was asleep while this removal took place? Minutes, Hours, Years?
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Well, Genesis provides no details. It could have been sleep as in his was tired, or sleep as in a coma, or even something else altogether.

If someone opened my side and took a rib I think I would wake up.
 
Again, God just left the soup on the stove and walked away? For billions of years?
 
The National Academy of Sciences has only one correct answer for evolution. It is the wrong answer. Science is not a god.
 
That is wrong. The error that the Church can only comment on faith and morals has been condemned.
 
edwest211 said:
Again, God just left the soup on the stove and walked away? For billions of years?
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That’s philosophy/theology, the theory doesn’t claim that.

God was active for all that time, as He is today. Requiring God to act miraculously in everyday life for Him to be considered active is a stretch.
 
edwest211 said:
The National Academy of Sciences has only one correct answer for evolution. It is the wrong answer. Science is not a god.
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And what answer is that exactly, please quote it here and we shall see how wrong it is.

I can hardly imagine it claims science is God. That is a straw man argument.
 
edwest211 said:
That is wrong. The error that the Church can only comment on faith and morals has been condemned.
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The Church fathers are not the magisterium, and I did not assert the Church can only comment on faith and morals.

According to Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus 18:
No real disagreement can exist between the theologian and the scientist provided each keeps within his own limits. . . . If nevertheless there is a disagreement . . . it should be remembered that the sacred writers, or more truly ‘the Spirit of God who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men such truths (as the inner structure of visible objects) which do not help anyone to salvation’; and that, for this reason, rather than trying to provide a scientific exposition of nature, they sometimes describe and treat these matters either in a somewhat figurative language or as the common manner of speech those times required, and indeed still requires nowadays in everyday life, even amongst most learned people"
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anon65111186 said:
That’s philosophy/theology, the theory doesn’t claim that.

God was active for all that time, as He is today. Requiring God to act miraculously in everyday life for Him to be considered active is a stretch.
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This one … ,
 
buffalo said:
This one … ,
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Okay, the Theory of Evolution, it doesn’t comment on God, whether God exists or doesn’t. Whether He is active or not. It is simply silent.

It claims that

“All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool”

and that “the genetic composition of a population changes over each generation”

This is caused by “natural selection, inbreeding, hybridization, or mutation.”

God must have certainly been behind these mechanisms, as He is present today in current evolution.
 
“God must have certainly been…” ? According to science, that statement has no basis in fact.

"We can see this in current 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.)"

“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.)"
 
“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.)"

“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:
According to science, that statement has no basis in fact.
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God grant me the patience…

Okay, first of all, those are prime examples of what I was talking about, scientists being philosophers or theologians, which is beyond their domain. They are commenting on and coming to philosophical conclusions, which is beyond the scope of the data and the theory. That is why they are wrong.

Just because they teach philosophy posed as science, doesn’t mean science teaches philosophy.

Secondly, I did not assert the theory or science claims God was active at that time, because it certainly does not. It is not a scientific “fact”, it is a theological matter of faith, but if you look closely, you can see God in His creation.

Your quoting people commenting on or quoting other people commenting on evolution, does not prove evolution does any of those things they say it does. They are drawing their own philosophical conclusions from a philosophically neutral scientific theory.

If your railing against me, a fellow Catholic and brother in Christ is really just railing against atheists who have gone off the rails, then Lord have mercy. If atheists never hijacked the theory for their own ends, do you think you would be able to see the implications of the data and the theory in a clear headed and objective manner?

Your bias and prejudice against this rather interesting theory does no service to the many Catholics who dedicate their lives to science, and to finding ways of healing the disunity between science and faith.
 
edwest211 said:
“God must have certainly been…” ? According to science, that statement has no basis in fact.
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I think you are confusing the claims of evolution, which @anon65111186 put in quotes, with timothy’s personal opinion about “God must have been…”, which was not in quotes. Therefore it was not supposed to be taken as one of the claims of scientific evolution.

Tim: I’m beginning to think it is not worth it to feed the trolls.
 
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Glark said:
For example, as far as I know, nowhere in the entire CCC does it say that Catholics are free to believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis - on the contrary, there is an obvious and untraditional emphasis on a figurative or symbolic interpretation. The reason for this is clear - it facilitates the acceptance of evolution.
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Putting that another way, it understands that Scripture ought not be in conflict with knowledge and understanding. And no element of our salvation depends on how anyone thinks the bodies of Adam and Eve came about.
 
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