Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution

[Montalban]

“If the world has a beginning, and if it has been created, enquire who gave it this beginning, and who was the Creator: or rather, in the fear that human reasonings may make you wander from the truth, Moses has anticipated enquiry by engraving in our hearts, as a seal and a safeguard, the awful name of God: ‘In the beginning God created’ - It is He, beneficent Nature, Goodness without measure, a worthy object of love for all beings endowed with reason, the beauty the most to be desired, the origin of all that exists, the source of life, intellectual light, impenetrable wisdom, it is He who ‘in the beginning created heaven and earth.’” St. Basil the Great, The Hexaemeron quoted at orthodox.net/gleanings/creation.html

 

[josephmarie]

No matter what ever they have study or not ,the fact is GOD is the bigining of all and the end.Without GOD no evolution.

 

[Montalban]

St John Chrysotomon, St Ephraim the Syrian, St Basil the Great, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Athanasius the Great, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Abba Dorotheus, St. Macarius the Great, St. Gregory Palamas, et al all wrote commentaries on the truth of creation.

'Qui, ut rationem mullan afferent, ipsa auhtoritate me frangerent (Why, even if they gave no reasons, they would convince me by their very authority)

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

But they say we have to have faith in creation!

Montalban,

please understand that just because someone believes in evolution (like myself) his believes doesn’t contradict any of this. Whether it took 1 second, 7 days or hundreds of millions of years, God is still the Creator and he is the mastermind behind all that we see. If you think about it, evolution is so perfect and so complex that a random chance can’t be behind it. I think evolution speaks about God’s supreme intelligence more than 7 day creation.

Pax Christi,
~T

 

[jemfinch]

Yes, but if we can accept as reliable the evidence we see of how the universe was created, why can’t we accept the evidence of evolution as reliable?

I fail to see how this is at all a reply to what I actually said. Please re-read my statement.

Why is evolution incompatible with the idea that God created everything? As long as we don’t deny the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, we are not guilty of apostasy.

Again, you’re arguing against someone other than me. Pay attention to what I actually write before attempting to argue against it; I was purposefully very precise in my words.

Oh? Care to demonstrate how?

I said, “The evolution that creationists reject is a historical theory masquerading as science.” This is prima facie true.

Science is the study of the laws of nature. History is the explanation of the past. Creationists today accept all the observed present laws regarding evolution: speciation, mutation, and all the things involved in evolutionary theory. They simply reject the explanation of history via these facts. Their difference with Dawkins et al is a difference of historical interpretation, not a difference of scientific observation. They are fully within their rights, even as scientists, to do so: as long as their interpretation is consistent with the historical evidence and the laws uncovered by science, they have fulfilled their obligation to themselves, to science, and to the world.

The fact that many evolutionary biologists are atheists does not make evolutionary biology an atheistic science.

Here you are again, arguing against someone other than me in reply to something I said that was completely unrelated. Please stop.

Well, for one thing, pain and suffering are a part of reality.

Reality after the fall, sure. I find it hard to believe that pain and suffering were a part of reality before sin entered the world through Adam.

In fact, suffering is one of the ways that grace enters our lives.

What grace was Adam lacking before his fall?

You still haven’t told me why you feel this way.

I have no real reason to tell you that, because I’m not arguing about that. I simply don’t find it to be a compelling historical theory.

Jeremy

 

[anthony022071]

The Pope can accept micro-evolution,but he doesn’t believe in macro-evolution and the philosophy that goes with it.

 

[Philthy]

… we must believe that God created everything and that Adam & Eve were the first humans, but we are not required to believe that they were brought into existence within 6 days. One can believe …God … made … Adam & Eve all by way of evolution.

AAAAAANNNNNNNTTTTTT!!! That was the buzzer sounding. Im afraid that your last 2 statements are misleading at best and downright heretical at worst. You can say that the beings who were to later become Adam and Eve first evolved into a particular state of existence, but that state of existence was not human. A human being is created of body and soul and evolution does not create a soul. The soul of every man is created immediately adn directly by God, and it is this soul which, together with a body, constitutes a human being.

 

[jemfinch]

I think evolution speaks about God’s supreme intelligence more than 7 day creation.

What about all the pain and suffering and death that must take place over millions of years for evolution to occur? How would that be justified even before sin entered the world? How does that speak of God’s supreme intelligence (and justice)?

Just curious,
Jeremy

 

[jpjd]

AAAAAANNNNNNNTTTTTT!!! That was the buzzer sounding. Im afraid that your last 2 statements are misleading at best and downright heretical at worst. You can say that the beings who were to later become Adam and Eve first evolved into a particular state of existence, but that state of existence was not human. A human being is created of body and soul and evolution does not create a soul. The soul of every man is created immediately adn directly by God, and it is this soul which, together with a body, constitutes a human being.

Read my words again. I am talking about evolution of the physical body. I did not say anywhere at any time that the soul evolves. I said that I believe that at some point the creatures evolved into what we now call human beings. It is in those humans that God infused a soul at conception. Read my posts carefully.

 

[jpjd]

Montalban,

You conveniently skirted my post where I said,

“We imitate the saints for their wisdom and holy lives they lead, but their words are not infallible. When THE POPE infallibly tells me I must believe God created everything, including human beings, in 6 days, then I will believe it. Until then, personally, I believe that God created the universe, the earth and everything in it, and human beings, through the laws of physics and evolution.”

I repeat, among the early Church Fathers were great thinkers and saints, but we can not take their every word as Truth. Their writings are not the Bible and are certainly not infallible. When I hear the Pope infallibly teaching that God created everything in 6 days, then you can do the high five. Until then, we will agree to disagree.

 

[MinHC]

The pope doesn’t support intelligent design - creationism being made out to be science.

Evolution doesn’t go against Catholic doctrine, we are free to believe the creation of different species, of the Earth took place over a period which consisted of 6 days, it doesn’t say it was consecutive days in the bible.
St Peter did say a day to God can be like a thousand years and thousand year like a day. So, even the disciple of Jesus was not a literalist when it came to time as to God time is irrelevant.
Everything that lives on the planet came from the dust of creation. I don’t have a problem with evolution and it to me is like gravity, the speed light travels at etc something God created for a purpose.

There is nothing in the theory of evolution which excludes God, like gravity it is not an atheist or theist principal/theory despite some like Dawkins using evolution as part of his fundamentalist belief in his militant atheism.

Creation happening over a 6 day period contradicts evolution but if we see it as St Peter stated, then creation and evolution do not conflict.

 

[rossum]

Actually we know quite a bit. Genesis says God created Adam from dust. Not “God created Adam by infusing an animal (ape-like) with a soul”

Genesis 2:7 describes a two stage process: “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” First God forms man from dust and second He breathes the breath of life.

Compare this with Genesis 2:19 “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens”. This is a one stage process - God forms animals from “ground”.

In both cases God does not create ex nihilo, He starts with existing non-living materials, dust or ground. Since abiogenesis and evolution describe a process which starts with existing non-living materials and ends with living organisms the description in Genesis is compatible with evolution for the formation of physical bodies.

Evolution has nothing to say about the human soul, the “breath of life” which is specific to humans and not to animals. Souls do not fossilise and are not found in our DNA. Souls are theology, not science.

And I’ve yet to see any Church Father supporting the making of an animal into a human by infusion of a soul

Church Fathers are not a scientific authority. Here is St Augustine on the possibility of the existence of people in Australia:“As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants. They fail to notice that, even should it be believed or demonstrated that the world is round or spherical in form, it does not follow that the part of the earth opposite to us is not completely covered with water, or that any conjectured dry land there should be inhabited by men. For Scripture, which confirms the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, teaches not falsehood; and it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man.”

Augustine (De Civitate Dei, xvi, 9)

rossum

 

[Mannyfit75]

I agree with Pope Benedict XVI. I also believe that Evolution itself contain part of the truth about our origins.

I do believe that God created Adam from dust. In a literal sense, we are also made of dust particles from a dead star billions of years ago.

I do believe Adam is the first man and from his came Eve, the first woman. I think there came a top that there were other humanoid beings apelike creatures who have human feature. If you look at the archeological evidence, homo-sapiens came into being 125,000 yrs. I believe the first man 125,000 to be Adam. Completely human.

I think the other biped humanoids probably did co-exist with humans, but since the humans overwhelm the private apes… we subdue them.

Evolution itself is only base on speculation and theories. What I wrote is only an opinion. I read an article that the ancestors of dinosaurs co-existed (See Article news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070719/sc_livescience/dinosaursrisetodominancewasgradual;_ylt=AulSMf8HhWHBWipOzJP1rSZ7hMgF - Dinosaurs Rise to Dominance was Gradual.

I don’t the Catholic Church has a job to accept evolution as a fact. I do think she does say it contains truths, but not all of it. The Catholic Church job is not to defined what is science is. Her job is to teach moral and faith issues.

I do believe in some type of evolution but I don’t believe in evolution that negates God.

 

[Philthy]

Read my words again. I am talking about evolution of the physical body. I did not say anywhere at any time that the soul evolves. I said that I believe that at some point the creatures evolved into what we now call human beings. It is in those humans that God infused a soul at conception. Read my posts carefully.

I think I did read it carefully and I think I expressed that when I said that your statements were potentially confusing. I wasnt trying to anger you. Perhaps you could express what you are trying to say more clearly. Here is exactly what you said:

jpjd:

One can believe …God … made … Adam & Eve all by way of evolution.

The problem with this statement is that we cannot believe that Adam was made ALL BY WAY OF EVOLUTION. The precurser, non-human entity which may have become Adam we can believe was made all by evolution (granting that evolution did not cause any of what evolved into that precurser to come into being from nothingness). However, Adam is not Adam until he is human and he is not human until something happens which evolution cannot cause: being endowed with a human soul.
So to sum it up:
We cant believe that evolution explains the creation of matter from nothingness (not really part of this discussion) and,
We can’t believe that evolution alone created Adam, the human being - that requires a human soul. Both situations require supernatural acts of God and cannot be attributed to evolution.
You may not have meant to leave those two possiblities open in your post, but I think some may have been confused by the wording. That’s all I was trying to say…

 

[Jerry-Jet]

If the Eucharist can be substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine is it possible for the Garden of Eden to have once long ago in the time of Adam and Eve to have been under the accidents of present day Iraq?

 

[zemi]

After viewing enough debates on creationism vs. evolution and reading things about ID…

I really can’t say…

I mean, there can be maybe 6 subtypes of evolution, from which only micro-evolution has been proved. No one disputes that.

It all depends on what you mean by evolution. If it means that we had one common ancestor, it’s OK. It it means your granparents came from a rock, that’s a different issue.

There is much debate concerning the origins of life. The evidence shows it is highly improbable that life (even the simplest form, not complex) would emerge from non-life by a mere chance in such a short time-span.

If God was involved in the process or not is however not a question for sciences. They are here to study natural phenomena, not supernatural ones. Even if we knew God was involved in the process, science would still pursue the question HOW it all happened. I think it’s exciting.

I think B16 is right on this.

And moreover, there are very intelligent people/scientists in the Church

 

[Jerry-Jet]

If the Eucharist can be substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine is it possible for the Garden of Eden to have once long ago in the time of Adam and Eve to have been under the accidents of present day Iraq?

 

[jpjd]

The precurser, non-human entity which may have become Adam we can believe was made all by evolution (granting that evolution did not cause any of what evolved into that precurser to come into being from nothingness). However, Adam is not Adam until he is human and he is not human until something happens which evolution cannot cause: being endowed with a human soul.

OK, I realize now that your last sentence identifies the source of our misunderstanding. I completely agree that evolution can not cause the endowment of a human soul. But I believe that God at that point infused a soul. I believe God stepped in.

I believe God created all matter out of nothingness, voidness, and that includes the beginning of evolutionary life on earth. Stuff evolved. And I don’t think God got it going and then stepped away. I think he directed it. I think he worked through the laws of physics, biology, etc. And I think when it came “time” in the evolutionary line for the creature to become human, he stepped in, and in his normal God-like fashion (like what happens thousands of times every day now with human couples), a then pre-human couple conceived a child that was infused with a soul by God and therefore was made the first human. If you believe in evolution and at the same time you believe that only God can make a soul, then how else could it have happened that humans came along?

That is my line of thinking, anyway.

 

[zemi]

After viewing enough debates on creationism vs. evolution and reading things about ID…

I really can’t say…

I mean, there can be maybe 6 subtypes of evolution, from which only micro-evolution has been proved. No one disputes that.

It all depends on what you mean by evolution. If it means that we had one common ancestor, it’s OK. It it means your granparents came from a rock, that’s a different issue.

There is much debate concerning the origins of life. The evidence shows it is highly improbable that life (even the simplest form, not complex) would emerge from non-life by a mere chance in such a short time-span.

If God was involved in the process or not is however not a question for sciences. They are here to study natural phenomena, not supernatural ones. Even if we knew God was involved in the process, science would still pursue the question HOW it all happened. I think it’s exciting.

I think B16 is right on this.

And moreover, there are very intelligent people/scientists in the Church

Oh and one more thing…

I don’t believe in creationism…

 

[jpjd]

If the Eucharist can be substantially present under the accidents of bread and wine is it possible for the Garden of Eden to have once long ago in the time of Adam and Eve to have been under the accidents of present day Iraq?

Anything is possible with God.