Barbarian asks:
Are you willing to accept all of the teaching, or are you another cafeteria Catholic?
That was not a teaching of the Catholic Church.
Any person who asserts that evolution is inconsistent with Catholicism is denying the teaching of the Church.
Barbarian, explaining why he cited
Imago Dei;
Perhaps you forgot what you asked me.
I asked you how you could miss the whole point of the document. And you still miss it.
No, I accept all of it, and you don’t. When Cardinal Ratzinger said that common descent was virtually certain, he was doing no more than his predecessors, in acknowledging that evolution and our faith are consistent. That is the teaching of the church. But you aren’t willing to accept everything the Church teaches, and so you rejected that part.
The document affirms the traditional Catholic teaching on Creation.
Indeed. That’s why he asserted the reality of common descent.
Barbarian observes:
You’re having trouble reconciling these two facts. But the Pope understands it.
No need, really.
So you’re lying about the pope.
No, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
It’s about natural selection. Let’s see what Barbarian has to say:
First, let’s see what the Pope had to say:
"But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1)."
Again, from Imago Dei, the part you refuse to accept.
Barbarian agrees:
random variation can serve His purposes as well as anything else. ( with the direction of natural selection, of course)"
Random variation under the direction of natural selection.
Sounds like a real non sequitur.
Perhaps you don’t know what a non sequitur is. Hint; a random process plus a non-random process is a non-random process. It’s what the Pope was saying in Imago Dei.
Barbarian observes:
As he says, common descent, (the most ambition claim of evolutionary theory) is “virtually certain.” He acknoweledges the huge body of evidence showing that it is.
I acknowledge the existence of the huge body of evidence as well,but I don’t believe in the theory,and neither does the pope.
Odd that he says it’s “virtually certain”, then. As you know, John Paul II was similarly approving of it. They objected when science steps out of bounds and tries to make conclusions about God. So do almost all scientists. You notice the creationists here are most vehement in saying that science can make inferences about God.
Barbarian, re Darwin’s theory:
It became the foundation of biology. The discovery of the means by which common descent happened was the single greatest discovery in biology.
First you have to show that common descent happened.
That is, as the Pope says, “virtually certain.” For the reasons he makes clear.
Barbarian on the misconception that evolution is random:
Nope. If you don’t understand what the theory says, how can you hope to fight it?
Try explaining to yourself how natural selection is not about chance.
COLOR]
Natural selection is the antithesis of chance. Would you like to see a demonstration.
Barbarian observes:
He merely points out that the claims of the theory of natural selection have been verified.
He points out no such thing.
No point in denying the obvious:
"Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution."
Here he makes the point that God creates through evolution:
"God causes to arise those conditions required for the emergence and support of living organisms, and, furthermore, for their reproduction and differentiation. Although there is scientific debate about the degree of purposiveness or design operative and empirically observable in these developments, they have de facto favored the emergence and flourishing of life."
These two also from
Imago Dei.
Barbarian observes:
And he also points out that the sort of contingency involved in natural selection is not inconsistent with God’s creation:
Nature does not select. Selection is from a thinking being.
When the weather changes, and natural selection changes the populations of microbes in the soil, which intelligent entity is sorting them out?
Barbarian observes:
As I said, if you actually knew what evoutionary theory was, you’d be more effective fighting it. It’s not about the cause of life.
It’s about the origins of life forms.
No. Please go find out what it is.
You can’t give a reasonable explanation about the origins of life forms without knowing what life is.
Evolutionary theory is about the way existing populations of organisms change, not about the origin of living things.
But if you’d like to define “life” for me, I’d be pleased to hear what you think it is.
