Is The Theory of Evolution mandatory for the modern worldview

[The_Barbarian]

Here you go again, insinuating you are the only one with faith in GOD.

No, I’m suggesting to you that adding new doctrines is not what we as Catholics should be doing.

Please get off your high horse and stop telling us what we do or don’t believe. I don’t agree with you on many things especially your attitude.

Funny how those who most need to hear that, never realize it, um?

I think your letting all this evolution stuff go to your head and you need a little humility.

I guess I should point out that you seem a lot more obsessed with it than most here, and that it surely seems arrogant for someone to lecture us on the subject, when she obviously knows so little of it.

 

[Church_Militant]

No, I’m suggesting to you that adding new doctrines is not what we as Catholics should be doing.

I’m sorry… did I miss a memo somewhere?

What “new doctrines” are you asserting someone is trying to add?

Relevant question:

Am I the only one here who has a copy of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s excellent book, “Chance or Purpose?”, and am I the only one who has listened to him speak on evolution of CA Live?
Listen (MP3) Click to listen to MP3 (right-click to download)

I think there is a great deal of very useful info that can be gleaned from this man of God and it might be well worthwhile for us to bring some of his insights and comments to this discussion.

I’ll be reading it so I can do just that. Back soon.

 

[Memaw]

I’m sorry… did I miss a memo somewhere?

What “new doctrines” are you asserting someone is trying to add?

Relevant question:

Am I the only one here who has a copy of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s excellent book, “Chance or Purpose?”, and am I the only one who has listened to him speak on evolution of CA Live?
Listen (MP3) Click to listen to MP3 (right-click to download)

I think there is a great deal of very useful info that can be gleaned from this man of God and it might be well worthwhile for us to bring some of his insights and comments to this discussion.

I’ll be reading it so I can do just that. Back soon.

NO you are not the only one, I suggested they read Cardinal Schonborn’s book, “Chance or Purpose” awhile back but they paid little attention to it. I don’t recall ever mentioning a new doctrine, thats not up to me or anyone else to do.
Now hes trying to tell me that I not only have little faith but that I know nothing about evolution and what the Church teaches about that. Little does he know.

 

[Memaw]

Memaw, how did Moses get the Australian marsupials to cross the Pacific Ocean, India, and the Himalaya to get to Mesopotamia? How did he get them back to Australia after the flood, or did he drop them off at their destination before navigating back to Ararat? Divine helicopters?

And you still haven’t told me how you solved the problem of thousands of tons of animal dung per day. Even if elephants and mammoths and mastodons were not “clean” animals (necessitating seven pairs of each), you still have at least eight of these creatures, each producing 200 pounds of manure per day. That’s 1,600 pounds of **** just for one clade. Multiply that many-fold and you’ve got a huge problem of manure dispolal, which would have occupied every waking moment of Noah, Ham, Shem, and Japeth.

And you still haven’t answered the water problem – all 29,035 feet of it!

It’s a great story, and wonderful to hear during the Easter Vigil.

I don’t have to answer your absolutley ridiculous questions, GOD will. Oh Ye of little faith. Your being sarcastic. Grow up.

 

[drpmjhess]

I don’t have to answer your absolutley ridiculous questions, GOD will. Oh Ye of little faith. Your being sarcastic. Grow up.

No, Memaw – I’m taking you at your word. You argue for a naively literal reading of the Genesis flood myth, and yet you refuse to engage in a discussion of the problems of a literal reading. There are insurmountable problems with such an interpretation, of which I’ve outlined a few, How would you address these issues in a learned and scholarly way?

 

[The_Barbarian]

George Gaylord Simpson, one of the scientists who defined Neo-Darwinism, wrote:

"The process [of evolution] is wholly natural in its operation. This natural process achieves the aspect of purpose without the intervention of a purposer; and it has produced a vast plan without the concurrent action of a planner. It may be that the initiation of the process and the physical laws under which it functions had a purpose and that this mechanistic way of achieving a plan is the instrument of a Planner - of this still deeper problem the scientist, as scientist, cannot speak."

This matches up nicely with the Church’s teachings:
** 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). **
bringyou.to/apologetics/p80.htm

Simpson does not see God’s hand in nature, although he admits that it is possible, but beyond the reach of science to say one way or another.

Those many, many scientists who do, do so as theists, not scientists. This is because science cannot do it for us.

 

[drpmjhess]

I’m sorry… did I miss a memo somewhere?Am I the only one here who has a copy of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s excellent book, “Chance or Purpose?”, and am I the only one who has listened to him speak on evolution of CA Live? I think there is a great deal of very useful info that can be gleaned from this man of God and it might be well worthwhile for us to bring some of his insights and comments to this discussion.]

You are right that there is a lot of good in Schonborn’s book. There is also some nonsense, including his assertion that no one has ever found any transitional fossils. This claim made my paleontologist colleagues cringe at a recent public lecture where the cardinal was promoting his book. My colleagues work with transitional fossils on a daily basis, and the world’s paleontological museums are crammed with them.

If Schonborn had restricted himself to a theological interpretation, of evolution he would have been on much more solid ground. In fact, I was impressed by his willingness at the public lecture to retract statements that are scientifically just plain wrong.

 

[edwest2]

Only the Catholic Church has the whole answer. Science, as currently defined, does not include other elements of reason that are needed to arrive at the correct answer. The Catholic Church tells everyone that if a process like evolution occurred, random mutation and natural selection are not enough. God guided all events, infallibly. (See Human Persons Created in the Image of God, part 69).

The biology text does not contain this vital information.

God bless,
Ed

 

[The_Barbarian]

There is also some nonsense, including his assertion that no one has ever found any transitional fossils. This claim made my paleontologist colleagues cringe at a recent public lecture where the cardinal was promoting his book. My colleagues work with transitional fossils on a daily basis, and the world’s paleontological museums are crammed with them.

To be fair, a few atheistic scientists have made equally ignorant statements about religion. As Everett Dirkson used to say, people are down on things they aren’t up on.

 

[drpmjhess]

Only the Catholic Church has the whole answer. …The biology text does not contain this vital information.
God bless,Ed

No, Ed – the Catholic Church does not have “the whole answer,” nor should we expect it to. The Bible and the lectionary are not manuals for the understanding of chemistry, physics, biology, dentistry, electronics, etc.

 

[drpmjhess]

To be fair, a few atheistic scientists have made equally ignorant statements about religion. As Everett Dirkson used to say, people are down on things they aren’t up on.

Absolutely – Richard Dawkins is a case in point.

 

[drpmjhess]

To be fair, a few atheistic scientists have made equally ignorant statements about religion. As Everett Dirkson used to say, people are down on things they aren’t up on.

Barbarian, what is your opinion as to why people spend their lives in the cultural backwater of “Intelligent Design Creationism,” rather than productively in the world of science? What do Weber and Dembski and Meyer hope to achieve in the end?

 

[edwest2]

No, Ed – the Catholic Church does not have “the whole answer,” nor should we expect it to. The Bible and the lectionary are not manuals for the understanding of chemistry, physics, biology, dentistry, electronics, etc.

The Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The Catholic Church regularly issues documents explaining its position on scientific matters. Numerous encyclicals have been published about the theory of evolution.

Only the Catholic Church has the correct answer about the theory of evolution and regularly makes statements as to the right way to view issues regarding bioethics: cloning, embryonic stem cell research, etc. There are numerous examples of this.

In the document, Human Persons Created in the Image of God, the Church’s position on the theory of evolution is clearly presented. Further, Pope John Paul II made a statement illustrating the relationship between science and religion:

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”

This is very important to keep in mind while discussing science. Too many idolize science. Too many see it in only one dimension. The Catholic Church takes science and divine revelation and determines how things fit together or not.

God bless,
Ed

 

[The_Barbarian]

I don’t know. I live not too far from Baylor University, so I go a lot of information on the fiasco Dembski had there with the rise and fall of the Polanyi Center.

In that case, Dembski seems to have committed professional suicide a series of public statements, in which he assailed the president of the university (who had protected him from the recommendations of the Baptist university’s faculty committee).

Dembski seems to have a political agenda; he issued a series of escalating attacks on the universty, finally accusing president sloan of “McCarthyism,” in what seems to have been a failed attempt to get himself fired.

So, for Dembski, at least, it seems to be a need to play the martyr. That seems to have been the motivation in the Sternberg case (wherein he falsely claimed to have been a discriminated-against employee of the Smithsonian) and the “No Intelligence Allowed” film.

Others are just convinced that science might supplant religion. Phillip Johnson seems motivated by that fear. He just wants to return to the days when Protestant Christianity was king in America.

Reading Johnson’s book, I get the impression that he would throw the creationists over the side, if all scientists would just sign a pledge stating that God existed.

 

[buffalo]

Barbarian, drpmjhess and others?

Do you believe that God is irreducibly complex? Why or wwy not?

 

[drpmjhess]

Others are just convinced that science might supplant religion. Phillip Johnson seems motivated by that fear. He just wants to return to the days when Protestant Christianity was king in America.

That I just don’t understand. There are thousand of leading Christian intellectuals – both Catholic and Protestant – whose deep and abiding faith in God is not eroded, but rather enriched by their belief in the story being revealed by science about our ancient, dynamic and evolving universe. This is certainly true of the membership of the International Society of Science and Religion (ISSR).

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Barbarian, drpmjhess and others?

Do you believe that God is irreducibly complex? Why or wwy not?

Buffalo, this is an intriguing question. On the one hand, utter simplicity and unity are traditional attributes of God. On the other hand, a cause must be at least as great as its effect, so God as creator of the cosmos must be infinitely greater than the creation. However, whether complexity is a necessary quality of this greatness I’m not sure. Couldn’t infinite simplicity be superior to biochemical complexity?

Petrus

 

[buffalo]

Buffalo, this is an intriguing question. On the one hand, utter simplicity and unity are traditional attributes of God. On the other hand, a cause must be at least as great as its effect, so God as creator of the cosmos must be infinitely greater than the creation. However, whether complexity is a necessary quality of this greatness I’m not sure. Couldn’t infinite simplicity be superior to biochemical complexity?

Petrus

Yeah - I have to really ponder this myself.

Another question - is anything in the universe irreducibly complex?

 

[ricmat]

I wonder why the Egyptians didn’t record it?

Regarding the Flood:

Inobservant varmints weren’t they?

The timeline for the Old Testament (from Understanding the Scriptures - Didache Series) shows Genesis 1-11 occurring from “Before 10,000BC to about 3150BC”.

Perhaps the Egyptians were unobservant because they didn’t exist yet.

 

[Church_Militant]

NO you are not the only one, I suggested they read Cardinal Schonborn’s book, “Chance or Purpose” awhile back but they paid little attention to it. I don’t recall ever mentioning a new doctrine, thats not up to me or anyone else to do. .

Oh, okay. Just was wondering.

Now hes trying to tell me that I not only have little faith but that I know nothing about evolution and what the Church teaches about that. Little does he know

Well, one has to remember what Patrick Swayze said in “Road House”. “Opinions vary.” I have some quotes from Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s book that I will post a little later.

Question: How many of you have listened to the MP3 of Cardinal Schönborn on CA Live because I think he says some things that are very much relevant to this discussion?