Please Help Me!

[JosephSharon]

Please help me!

I accidently read something today while reading the Wikipedia article about Nairobi, Kenya, that bothered me very much.

It was mentioned that on display at a Natural History museum in Nairobi were the full remains of a “homo erectus” boy. As a person who does not ascribe to Darwinism and who was previously winning in the battle against atheism, this bothers me more than you can imagine.

Would someone please provide me with a refutation of that claim? Were those remains human and merely misidentified?

There are refutations for “Java man” and “Peking man”. There must be one for this!

Please help me!

 

[bibleguy180]

Why do you not believe in evolution? JP2 said about it being “more than a theory”. There’s so much evidence… haha no offense if you are but you’re not one of those 6,000 year old earth people are you?

 

[PeeWee]

God’s creation is a constant work. We do not know how long ago this works was begun, whether it be 6,000 or 6 million years ago. That is why natural disasters occur, and evolution a possibility. Even though evolution may have occurred, it is not like it was not guided by Him, as God’s hand is in all things visible and invisible. Also, we must not take the creation story literally, as we must look at it through the author’s (possibly Moses) perspective. His way of explaining creation in “7 days” could be his best interpretation linguistically of what the Holy Spirit infallibly related to him. We can embrace the possibility of evolution, with our Creators hand in mind.

 

[Questionhaver]

Might I suggest reading the full text of the excerpts below?

His Holiness Pius XII - God rest him - on August 12, 1950 (Humani Generis)

…]
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.
…]
When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
…]

His Holiness John Paul II - God rest him - on October 22, 1996 (Truth Cannot Contradict Truth)

…]
How do the conclusions reached by the various scientific disciplines coincide with those contained in the message of revelation? And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth.
…]
In his encyclical Humani Generis, 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.
…]
the encyclical Humani Generis considered the doctrine of “evolutionism” a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and in-depth study equal to that of the opposing hypothesis.
…]
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
…]
Pius XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God (“animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere iubei”; “Humani Generis,” 36). Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man.
…]

So in a nutshell, unless we say the earth was literally created in 7 days (168 hours), there should be no problem whatsoever with evolution.
And as long as the theory does not claim the soul’s being a product of that evolution, or the human race’s originating from anything other than a single Adam, there should be no problem whatsoever with faith.

Of course, as long as you consider evolution on par with atheism, accepting that could prove kind of difficult…

 

[Big_Dummy]

Joseph the dating methods are flawed. They say this or that rock is x years old based on the fact that they found a bone there, then they turn around and say that the bone is x years old because they found it in such and such a rock. Also, google carbon dating online, it is flawed too.

 

[Rolltide]

It is worth mentioning that in the case of at least one human relative, we have something better than fossils now. Recently, scientists successfully extracted and analyzed DNA from Neanderthal skeletons found in the Caucasus region. (I won’t say that Neanderthal is a human ancestor, since it is currently believed that our species and Neanderthals both evolved from a common ancestor, perhaps Homo Erectus. They would be more like cousin species.)