J
John_of_Woking
Guest
Micro Evolution. - Yes
Macro EVolution - Not Certain and I believe you can possess intelligence and not believe in macro-evolution
- Status
Macro EVolution - Not Certain and I believe you can possess intelligence and not believe in macro-evolution
B
bengeorge
Guest
No, it doesn’t. It starts with the presumption that there is a material explaination for the formation of species. There is a material explaination for sunsets and rainbows and Nothern Lights too, but that doens’t make them any less astounding or beautiful.
It’s also the faith of atheists that we turn into dust when we die, and they can proove it scientifically. Does that mean that there is no resurrection? No God?
No, it doesn’t.
All truth is God’s truth.
B
bengeorge
Guest
And nudges it continually. God is the sustainer of the universe.
B
bengeorge
Guest
Ditto on the reccommed!!
Everyone, please, before you go and debate any further on this topic, please, read this book. I can be sure but I think that the author was Catholic, based on some of the things he subtely mentions in the book.
Hmm…
You know, when the Newtonian laws of physics were discovered everyone freaked out: The laws proove that God has nothing to do with the universe! (name removed by moderator)ut-X always leads to output-Y! We’re all just machines! Etc. Etc… People jumped ship and became “Deists” which is simply the last stop on the train to “Atheist”.
But it turns out later that the universe is NOT a perfect machine, and that (name removed by moderator)ut-X will not always lead to output-Y, and in fact can lead to any of a number of different outputs, based on the roll of the teensy tiny dice that rule the quantum-level universe.
And yes, Einstein, God DOES play dice!!
All in all, those whose faith is shaken by scientific discovery have weak faith to begin with. Trust that God is true!
O
Orionthehunter
Guest
This is not real evidence. While there is some evidence of some development/evolution of man from for instance CroMagnum Man to Homo sapiens but you could just as easily deduce these are distinct species. However, what there isn’t is how amoeba’s developed into man. I don’t recall the scientific term but it has something to be that the complexity of life and its interdependence- how can two inter-related traits develop spontaneously and simultaneously as without the other, the trait isn’t an enhancement. There is no evidence anywhere of this type of transitions and the statistical probability is virtually nil.
Additionally for the first life to start, you have to have an exact combination or certain amino acids in an exact order. The statistical probability of this would be the same as if you filled every cathedreal in Europe with wheat and randomly put 32 grains of wheat that were died blue. Now, go to just 32 cathedrals and stick a big arm in there and pull out just the blue ones. If you ever pull out a non-blue one you won’t get life. By the way, you have to never go to a Cathedral without a blue one and you have to go in the exact order. Now repeat this feat 100’s of times. If you do this, you’d get life.
D
Deus_Vult
Guest
I always took this verse to mean…God new us even before conception…I frequently use this verse when discussing the right to life. What do you all think?
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…Jeremiah 1:5 (NAB)
And by the way…I do not think the concept of evolution conflicts with Bible/Church teaching of creation. We evolve even now…when I say I believe this I do not believe Darwin as an authority on evolution. Does that make sense?
B
bengeorge
Guest
You are refering to Behe’s idea of Irreducible Complexity.
This has been disproven by the common sense idea of The Happy Accident.
Things are constantly being used in ways that they were not designed for. You hear stories all the time about how “Post-it notes were developed when the chemist was looking for a new kind of permanant glue” or something.
That’s true, but that doesn’t disprove that it happened.
If it DIDN’T happen, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
The improbibility of evolution happening as it did doesn’t make me doubt evolution, but makes me all-the-more fear God the Creator.
PLEASE everyone read “Finding Darwin’s God”.
It should be required reading for ALL thinking Catholics.
P
Pondero
Guest
Deus Vult:
As for Darwin being an expert on evolution, no,but he got the basics right. Natural selection and random mutation accounts for evolution.
I am not sure about homo sapiens evolving even now. I think of the biblical people and they were just the same as we are. We may evolve over some millions of years. God does know everything about us and knew us, I believe, before we were born, I agree with you. If we do evolve into something else we should still have a soul created at birth. What that something else will be I can only speculate.
As for Darwin being an expert on evolution, no,but he got the basics right. Natural selection and random mutation accounts for evolution.
L
Liberian
Guest
Pondero,
The devil here is in both the details and in the definitions. If you believe that evolution was random, as in totally undirected by God, that is incompatible with Catholic teaching. If you believe that God used the process of evolution to create us (which explains the fossil record equally well), that is in accord with Catholic teaching.
The idea that “the universe was kick-started by God and afterwards left to its own devices” is both incompatible with Catholicism and also incompatible with modern science. Quantum mechanics with its uncertainty principle tore a big hole in the idea of the “clockwork universe,” and the more modern theory of chaos put the final nail in its coffin. Even the idea that space and time are separate things was ruled out a hundred years ago by special relativity. To say that God arranged all of space at the beginning of time and then left everything alone is to ignore the connectedness of four-dimensional space-time.
- Liberian
P
Pondero
Guest
The mutations are random, but a scientist, as a scientist cannot see the hand of God in that. As a Catholic I can, because I believe it so.( I am not a scientist)
The clockwork universe was a good place to start, it made sense until the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle showed that you can know where a particle is, but not its velocity, or predict where it will go. And vice-versa. The whole universe rests on infinitely small particles which are unpredictable in their movements. But, according to my reading, you can predict using statistical methods what a particle is likely to do.
In a nutshell, there are no laws for small particles, I understand this to be part of Quantum Mechanics.
I don’t see how, if it had been true, ( and it is not true) that the clockwork universe, kick started by God, would have been incompatible with Catholicism. God is free to do as He pleases.
L
Liberian
Guest
Pondero,
I can appreciate where a scientist cannot attribute something to God and still be doing science. But a scientist can attribute something to God and still be a scientist; I know because I am one and I do that.
You are right, the clockwork universe was a good place to start. (To be in accordance with Catholic teachings, you had to make an allowance for the possibility of the clockmaker putting his finger on the works to move them around occasionally, but that is a different subject.) But it isn’t tenable any more. Certainly large numbers of molecules do tend to follow certain statistical “laws” virtually all the time, but those statistical laws are not ironclad. The fact that a molecule bounced one way rather than another will eventually have a macroscopic effect, sort of an extreme version of the “butterfly effect” of chaos theory.
I calculated once (some decades ago, so I’m a little fuzzy on the details) that if you did the following:
(1) opened a box full of air (instantaneously) in a vacuum,
(2) some time later reversed the velocity of each air molecule (again instantaneously, and as perfectly as the uncertainty principle would allow you to), and
(3) had the air molecules track their trajectories backwards back into the box,
the air molecules would not go back into the box perfectly. The uncertainty in the position or velocity would make a difference in the trajectories as they went backwards. I forget whether it was seconds or milliseconds that it would take for the velocities of the air molecules to be completely randomized and unpredictable, but it was something in that area.
Certainly God is free to do as He pleases, but Catholicism states that He has done things in a certain way. If you say that He did them differently, then you are being incompatible with Catholicism. If you say that God kick-started a clockwork universe and exclude any possibility of the miraculous, that is incompatible with Catholicism. A lot of people said, and many still do say, that science has proven that miracles are impossible.
- Liberian
M
mike182d
Guest
Randomness only exists when there is not a known outcome. Thus, true randomness does not exist in the world but merely appears as such to us because we cannot determine an affective cause or sufficiently predict an outcome.
In the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient God that, as the Psalms poetically put, knows the number of hairs on my head, there is nothing occuring in the universe that has a truly unknown outcome or unknown cause.
I think the beauty of Quantum Physics is that in a very real way one can see that there’s a reality outside of our own that we’ll never be able to “see” or understand by our own conventional means. It does not stand to reason, though, that this “other realm” is non-existant because we can’t perceive it or study it and that everything in the material, physical world is as it is because it is.
P
Pondero
Guest
I think we are in agreement here.
Yes, and I can name two . Richard Dawkins and Richard Lewontin.
D
didymus
Guest
Evolution isn’t the theory – evolution (change over time) is a fact, clear from the record. Darwin’s theory and later refinments is “natural selection” as the mechanism by which evolution occurs. Certainly it can’t be tested the same way a that a theory of physics can be but that’s true of biology generally.
Personally I don’t have a problem with Darwin and I think we’d be better off if we left the creationism to the Baptists and other fundies.
M
mike182d
Guest
But evolution isn’t solely concerned with change as change existed prior to life. Evolution cannot explain why planets change as they do, but rather attempts to explain change in life, which is quite different. But, how does an evolutionist explain abiogenesis - or rather the beginning of life? What “natural selection” processes led to the creation of life in the first place from the cliche primordial ooze?
Furthermore, “natural selection” isn’t the cause of the change, it affects the change.
C
Celeste88
Guest
Oh oh you got me thinking…Did Neanderthal man possess a soul ? They used tools and it appears they mourned their dead. Did God only put souls into Homo Sapiens??? 
F
Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
The short answer is yes. We may believe in evolution as long as we understand God’s role in it and that He is the author of our souls.
Here is what some popes have to say on the matter.
Humani Generis from Pope Pius XII found at vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html
In his Encyclical Humani generis [1950], my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points
Now if Pope Pius XII does not forbid the study of it, and Pope John Paul II upholds that, then we are free to believe in it too.
Here is what some popes have to say on the matter.
Humani Generis from Pope Pius XII found at vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html
- For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.[11] Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
In his Encyclical Humani generis [1950], my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points
Now if Pope Pius XII does not forbid the study of it, and Pope John Paul II upholds that, then we are free to believe in it too.
O
Orogeny
Guest
Then I suggest that there is no evidence that you will accept because you have your mind made up.
The argument that Cro-Magnon is not Homo sapiens is one you should take up with the scientific community. I don’t think you will get far, however. Some pretty smart people have studied Cro-Magnon and have concluded that Cro-Magnon is modern man.
Irreducible complexity has been shown to be wrong.
How life began isn’t evolution. This has been beaten to death on these threads. Evolution only deals with how life has developed since it began.
Peace
Tim
O
Orogeny
Guest
I don’t understand what you are trying to say. Evolution as we are discussing it and as is generally used has nothing to do with planets, cars, pencils, the universe or any other inanimate object. Evolution only deals with the way life has developed.
How does an “evolutionist” explain abiogenesis? He doesn’t. Abiogenesis is a separate field of study from evolution. In evolutionary theory, how life started doesn’t matter.
Peace
Tim
M
mike182d
Guest
I beg to differ, but then again I love beating dead horses - figuratively speaking of course.
Is evolution an affective cause or a perceived effect? If evolution is a cause, then the theory is very much concerned with the beginning of life because it is being claimed that a new force in the universe came into being at the same time as life. Sounds odd, doesn’t it?
On the other hand, if evolution is only the description of a perceived effect, the theory really hasn’t explained anything and is nothing more than stating in an overly complex way the fact that things change. What good is such a statement, scientifically?
Take light and color, for example. When I look at my car, I see that it is blue. However, the paint is not the *cause *of my car appearing blue. Rather, it is light that makes the car blue; once the light is gone, the “blueness” is gone. In the paint there are various elements that absorb certain colors of the light spectrum and others that reflect certain colors of the spectrum, but the fact of the matter is that it would not exist, nor continue to exist, nor change, if it were not for the presence of light. Light is the source of all color, and “blueness” is just the effect.
Apply this analogy to evolution: there are various elements that affect the development of a particular life form, but these are not the *cause *of the life form developing anymore than paint is the cause of my car being blue. God is the source of all life and the sole sustainer of it and can change it when He sees fit. Following with my analogy, it would be like switching between a flourescent light and a black light - the changing of the light changes the “color” of an object while remaining the same in substance.
However, this is not directly analogous because not only is God the source of all motion in the universe, He is also the cause of the things being moved in the universe - thus, the cause of everything.
Any attempt to explain what affects change and what is the cause of change in the universe is to miss the omnipotent hand of God present in all Creation from the beginning of time.
In my mind, evolution as a theory is nothing more than naturalistic drivel that misses the greater Force at work in the universe.
- Status