Thanks for this! I enjoyed it.
The other interesting thing he noted is that about 100 years before Darwin, geologists were on to the idea that the earth was older than previously thought.
That’s right. Otherwise, the God we believe in can create nothing. He is not a causal agent at all.
In some sense, even you are a creationist, a Biblical literalist and an IDer, at least, if you claim to accept Catholic teaching on these issues. Each of these matters is not a simple black and white assessment of whether one is guilty of the sin of “being” a creationist, literalist, IDer or not. The question is to what degree is it at all acceptable to be any of these in modern secular culture.
Naturalism is the entire issue. When “nature” contains everything required to create human beings then you have a belief system. Those who attempt to add the Bible or the soul or God to the mix will not get anywhere if the dogma of naturalism must never be questioned or referred to as incomplete. Moral relativism occurs because of ‘radical individualism,’ mutual consent to do anything and a desire to make one’s ego/self-esteem as the primary reason for living.
Science is more than just techniques to discover facts,it also has a commitment to naturalistic,mechanistic explanations for all phenomena. That leads to bad logic in regard to searching for the causes behind matter,order,life,species and human thought. Natural causes are attributed with power that that is impossible for them.
Why do you think a person must have a shaky faith if he disbelieves in a scientific theory?
It is a teaching of scripture (some of the psalms,the wisdom books,Romans 1,19-20) and of the Church that the power and wisdom and glory of God is known through creation.
If some people take offense at Catholics for believing that the creation stories in Genesis are true and that nature shows intelligent design,that is not something for us to be ashamed of.
Theistic evolutionists don’t see the logic contradiction between their belief in evolution theory,which attributes gradual natural processes with the power to produce species,and their belief that God works through evolution. God’s creative action has always been thought to be immediate act of his own power. And we can see that living creatures come into existence immediately.
I agree. It should also be recognized that materialistic,reductionist and spiritualistic theories are incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
It is not clear to me that God does make things come into existence immediately. Most living beings develop from a single cell to a collection of stem cells to a collection of distinct organs and tissues made up of highly specialized cells. All the growth and changes are managed by the genome, the DNA code within each cell that directs each cell to take on the role given to it within the genetic “plan.”
The human genome is not well understood.
The development of a living being that already exists is one thing,but I was talking about the act of creation itself. Living beings come into existence immediately. A cell which is the body of an individual creature is a living being,a life-form,with an immediate beginning. We should not use the word ‘development’ to mean gradual coming into existence,because that does not happen. The idea that life forms gradually develop into existence comes from evolution theory. The Church rejects that idea in regard to the creation of human persons,insisting that they come into existence immediately at conception (which means ‘beginning’). Human persons have an immediate beginning. The same principle of immediate creation is true for all other living creatures and thus for all groups of creatures.
If we say that DNA evolved into its varied forms,we are speaking of species as if they are just the results of genetic material and changes,and we are attributing DNA with mechanistic creative power. When speaking about the origination of species,we should always remember that species consist of individual creatures that have immediate beginnings. They are created at once by the power of God. If a new species comes from a prior one it happens through reproduction. Evolutionists say that ‘individuals don’t evolve,populations do’,but populations consist of individual creatures,so they must all have specific beginnings. Species should not be regarded as amorpous genetic pools or ‘transitional’. The processes and environmental pressures that populations go through do not have the power to create new species. Natural selection is a process of elimination,not a creative process. Genetic mutation only happens with a few traits such as hair and eye color and resistence to disease,not with every trait of every species,as the theory of evolution suggests.
I agree with you here.
It’s interesting when the Church is praised about a certain scientific topic. It is then labelled a villain if it is perceived to be against this topic or vague.
This is pretty close to what I said earlier, with one big divergence where I disagree with you. Atheistic evolutionists make the error of conflating science with reality. Science is a tool that is often useful for comprehending reality. To assert that nothing is real unless demonstrated via the scientific method is oxymoronic logic (self refuting).
That’s often the issue here: “According to science, your Holy Book is wrong, here, here and here.” What is oxymoronic is calling the Bible ‘not a science book’ followed by comments that treat is as ‘a science book.’
I think its a cause and effect thing going on. That animal may have evolved and lost and regain a thumb because the environment may have changed. So yes while it does look random its not unguided because its responded to environmental pressures. In that way its incorrect to say that any evolution is unguided because it occurs as a result of environmental pressures. Science can explain what those environmental pressures were and how they were caused but the why is where your religion can come in.I agree that religious commentary has no place in a science textbook, but I would assert that science textbooks SHOULD openly disclose the unprovable assumptions built into the scientific method as they apply to the field discussed in the book.
Scientists do just as bad a job as creationists in respecting jurisdictional lines. I had that prof in college too. The one that spent a half a class period “proving” that evolution was unguided because some animal somewhere evolved and opposable thumb, lost it and eventually gained it again. As if God’s playfulness disproved his existence.