My two objections to Christianity

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SebastianTorres

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Good day, First objection:
I know that catholics don’t read the Bible literally, and that the Church accept the evolution theory as a “God’s ghided evolution”. My problem is that I can’t conciliate these 2 postures. Evolution is for me almost a proved fact given the hughe ammount of evidence. For this theory to be false it must be a conspiration of almost all science men, universities, etc…I don’t believe in such conspiracy. The darwinian evolution of the species by natural selection don’t let place for ghidance, the idea of a exterior inteligence ghiding the process is unnecesary. Even if I accept the idea that God creates the first cell or the first ARN string, from that point His intervention is superfluous since natural selection enters in scene. Even if I take tihs position, I would be rather a Deist, far from any christian believer. This leads me to the second objection: The Bible. This holly book is bassically the jewish Tora, a compilation of ancient jewish mithology and history written down during the babilonian exile, on wich not even jewish people come to an agreement regarding his interpretation, and the New Testament, writtings about a Man born in Palestina with religious teachings similar to the Essenes and Hilell the Elder, who claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God, who is later condemned by the Romans and according to Evangelia arose from the dead at third day to ascend in heaven shortly after. Please give me a convincing reason to believe the writtings of the Bible against the mostly proven explanations of natural sciences regarding the origin of this world and the life over his surface. Or at least agains the deist stance.
Don’t get me wrong, I know what I write sound provoquing and heretic, my intention is not to discredit the Church but to find a convincing reason for me to return to catholicism, the Church I fell since a long time is “calling me” but I need first to clear my reasonable objections. Sorry for my bad english, thank you for your answers.
 
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You might try reading the book called “Mere Christianity”, by C.S. Lewis.
 
Yeah I know, that’s why I wrote “sorry for my bad english”. I’m spanish.
 
SebastianTorres said:
Even if I accept the idea that God creates the first cell or the first ARN string, from that point His intervention is superfluous since natural selection enters in scene.
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God knows what will happen. He wouldn’t need to “tweak” or “intervene”, in order to guide evolution. The guidance would be in setting the environmental conditions that evolution will take place in – because environment drives natural selection.
 
This is why evolution is bad… I keep on saying it. It is incompatible with the Faith and it causes scandal.
 
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Only for people not smart enough to realize it doesn’t matter if evolution is true or not. We clearly live in a designed world. Evolution doesn’t negate that.
 
ChunkMonk said:
This is why evolution is bad… I keep on saying it. It is incompatible with the Faith and it causes scandal.
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If evolution were incompatible with the faith, that would be very bad news for the faith. The evidence for evolution is staggering.
 
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That is exactly my problem, Prodigal_Son. I see it as incompatible. How do you see it? Can a God-designed world and a world resulting of the natural selection of the fittest both be true?
 
I’m affraid I’m not smart enough then. How comes that it doesn’t matter if evolution is true or not? I think the dilema is more menacing to the credibility of the Bible that it seems.
“We clearly live in a designed world. Evolution doesn’t negate that.”
But the theory mostly denies an intelligent designer, am I right?
 
You know, Sebastian, the Big Bang theory was named and developed by a Catholic priest and scientist, Lemaitre. There are very many Catholics who hold that evolution can be scientifically theorized, and still maintain their religious beliefs. It personally doesn’t bother me, I have other issues I fret about! Enjoy your discussions, and reading, and discovery of the truth!
 
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The theory of evolution is that animals adapt to their surroundings, and the animals with traits best suited to survival, survive to pass those traits on which become the dominant traits of a species. Over long enough time and over wide enough environmental differences, species that once shared a common ancestor can look very different from each other.

A deity of infinite wisdom and knowledge would have no problem setting the mechanics of this in motion.
 
I understand. So, life is basically an emergent property of non-living matter. I mean life is a form of organization of those elements in a way that gives it certain properties (growing, reproduction, etc…). An infinite wisdom deitiy can of course create such a matter with such a potential qualities (the quality of potentially becomming “alive” and evolve).
See, that is why I prefer to ask such a questions to you catholics instead to protestants. Eralier last years I was having such discutions with some neo-protestants but their litteral fundamentalistic position towards the interpretation of the Bible and their stuborn negation of evolutionary theory make this conversations very annoying for me and actually puts me further into skepticism and agnosticism. So, thank you for sharing this point of view JanSobieskill and I hope despite my poor skills in english I made myself clear.
 
The Catholic Church has long been a champion of science, Protestants, with Sola Scriptura and no interpretive authority of the bible can’t do anything but try and take it literally if they take their faith seriously.

The Catholic Church doesn’t limit itself to literal interpretations of the Bible. The bible isn’t a science book, it isn’t a history book, it’s a book about God reaching out to Man. I do not believe that God gave us reason and logic only to ignore it and never grow in our understanding of His creation, and I don’t think having a deeper understanding of His creation could ever refute His existence, although some people with agenda’s certainly try and prove that. Which to me is akin to saying that buildings occur randomly since we can’t always find the architect, engineer, or contractor that built it inside it. Yet by studying the building we can see how the building works, though not necessarily who built it. (very clunky analogy with plenty of gaping holes but you get the idea)
 
Yes, good point. I’m not saying that my doubts are clear, but this helps. From this “deism” position to believe that the Creator of the universe became flesh in a town of the roman-ocupied Palestina is a great lap, but I’m excited looking forward the way this topic will go.
 
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SebastianTorres said:
That is exactly my problem, Prodigal_Son. I see it as incompatible. How do you see it? Can a God-designed world and a world resulting of the natural selection of the fittest both be true?
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I see them as compatible. Though, mind you, it is the evidence for evolution that is extremely strong. The evidence that natural selection is the mechanism for evolution is somewhat weaker. But both are compatible with God’s creating the world and everything in it.
 
I highly suggest you read the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I was an atheist for many years, I understand your doubts. His somewhat auto biographical book Surprised by Joy is also worth reading.
 
Second suggestion of reading that book in one day 🙂 I gess I’ll have to give it a try.
 
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