Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution

[GandalfTheWhite]

Common knowledge? Were you there? Was anyone?

Do you believe that atoms contains both protons and electrons? Because by your logic you should deny this fact as well.

Have yo seen them? **
Has anyone? [No]
Were you in an atom? **
Was anyone? [Nope]

 

[rossum]

Evolutionary theory is not the same as abiogenesis. They are distinct theories. Although Darwin speculated on a primordial soup, that was not part of his work. Speciation was.

Evolution is about the rise of one species from another NOT FROM NON-LIVING MATERIAL. There is no theory of evolution that I’m aware of that speaks of man evolving from dust.

Agreed. That was why I specifically included a mention of abiogenesis in my post: “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.” (emphasis added)

What’s this got to do with anything? When did a distinct ‘man’ evolve, to be conferred with a soul. Please cite any Church Father in this.

I am giving an interpretation of Genesis 2 that is in conformance with abiogenesis and evolution. To quote Aquinas:“In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
There are a multiplicity of ways of interpreting Genesis. The interpretation I gave places no obstacles for a Christian biologist.

Augustine didn’t know about Australia!

Thankyou for making my point. My quote was an obvious example of a Church Father making a mistake in a non-theological area. The Church Fathers may well be authoritative in theology, but they are not authoritative in science, geography in this case. For the origins of the physical human body evolution has the most authoritative explanation. For the origin of the human soul evolution has no authority.

rossum

 

[Montalban]

Agreed. That was why I specifically included a mention of abiogenesis in my post: “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.” (emphasis added)

That’s still false. Evolution does not describe a process which starts with existing non-living materials. That’s abiogensis. You’re wrong to say Evolution deals with this.

I am giving an interpretation of Genesis 2 that is in conformance with abiogenesis and evolution. To quote Aquinas:“In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
There are a multiplicity of ways of interpreting Genesis. The interpretation I gave places no obstacles for a Christian biologist.

That’s denying Catholicsm then. There are a multiplicity of Christian faiths, each making different interpretations -as possible, about Scripture. Are they all valid?

Thankyou for making my point. My quote was an obvious example of a Church Father making a mistake in a non-theological area.

He didn’t make a mistake. He merely speculates about the possibility. You are the one who said he talked about the possibility of people in Australia. He did not. He did not know of Australia. He talked about the possibility of people on the other side of the world.

If he had said “People in Australia ARE…” then you’d be able to compare it to how they really are, and see if he was mistaken.

The Church Fathers may well be authoritative in theology, but they are not authoritative in science, geography in this case. For the origins of the physical human body evolution has the most authoritative explanation. For the origin of the human soul evolution has no authority.

But the Fathers say were were created. Jesus does too.

 

[Montalban]

No, it isn’t. First what I said doesn’t deny what Newton meant. In fact I wholeheartedly agree with Newton. By conducting science we learn more about by knowing the truth. Since God created the universe, by discovering it’s laws we learn more about him.

But you wanted to say that science can’t know anything about God. That’s only based on a modern materialistic science model

But science is still not about God in the sense that it can’t take him into account.

Yes, it can. Go to the time of Christ. Observe Christ walking on water. Experiment with walking on water yourself and see if you can do it. There’s no known scientific means of knowing how Jesus could have walked on water - or turned water into wine.

Science observes the material world and through scientific method attempts to discover the truth.

This is just plainly repeating your assumptions about science. And note too that there’s not just one scientific method, too!

Everything that can’t be studied by science has no place in science. Once you start speaking about God, personhood, love, souls or whatever else you seize doing science. But as I said above, this doesn’t mean that you can’t know God though science.

Then you’re trying to have both arguments at once.

Hmmm, does religion study anything?

Ouch!

Ye, I know this site (or a similar one but perhaps they changed the site design). It’s made by protestant fundamentalists and it’s pretty much what I was talking abut in the reply you quoted
Science tells us that earth is millions years old. They try to deny it and even try sounding like they are doing real science.

In Christ!

Well, you make an assumption about what science is. You assume what scientific method is. You both want to argue that it can, and also can’t tell us nothing about God.

 

[Montalban]

Montalban,
Everything. By “using physical laws to create us” I refer to evolution. Instead appearing out of thin air, we evolved. God could have used physical laws to create us and when he was satisfied he could have given us an immortal soul. Therefore in a sense we were still created in a split of a second because the soul is what makes us humans.

But that’s not evolution. Evolution doesn’t need God to explain it. What you’re doing is suggesting God used a means by which he didn’t have to in order to create us with no signs that he did.

Why? Because it says that everything was created in 7 days?

Read Genesis again. Evolutionists tell us that creatures evolved in certain sequences - such as in the oceans first. Genesis has things in a different order.

We know that God is outside of time and that for him one year is like 1000 years. The number seven in the semitic culture was a very significant number which was used all over the OT and it symbolizes perfection. I see not problem for the creation story to be understood not as a literal account of what happened but rather a story that speaks about God sovereignty and that indeed God created everything. It also explains how sin entered the world.

Excepting the very reason of Adam and sin, and the cause of death, and the deaths that happened in nature, if nature existed for milions of years before Adam.

Of course, but they never denied it either.

They supported that we were created. That God worked in ‘mysterious ways’, not using known rules that don’t need God.

They neither teach us that we must believe in the 7 day creation.

Yes, I’ve quoted some who do.

Some of them perhaps believed in it, but that is their personal opinion as humans.

That’s in fact what we base faith on - the great thinkers who explained the Trinity etc were ‘only humans’.

Think about it. Supposing that world really evolved, would they support the evolution? And if yes how? Would God reveal to them how to use various conduct scientific experiments with modern technology? Would they learn how to do carbon dating? How to dig up fossils and understand what they mean? Seriously, you are using the argument from silence about an information that they could never obtain in their age.

The whole thing about God is he’s not about secrets. For you Catholics, perhaps, with your ‘development of dogma’ you might think that things are revealed later. Not to we Orthodox
“For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed “perfect knowledge…,”
Irenaeus - “Against Heresies” Book III.I.I

Creation is indeed central to our faith but as it was said many times, evolution does not deny creation. Evolution simply suggest the manner in which we were created and the manner in which we were created is NOT central to our faith.

I don’t know but for some reason you seem to believe that we possibly could have been created in one way, that is being ‘conjured’ out of nowhere. As if all other ways meant that God didn’t create us. But this is simply not true - the time scale and the manner God used IS NOT significant on whether we were created by Him or not. Whether He said: “let there be man” and Adan appeared or whether He said: “let’s make a man” and He made first man evolve doesn’t effect the statement that God created us.

…and I agree with them. We were indeed created. I believe it. I’m Catholic! We just disagree on the manner He created us.

No, no one know what caused evolution and in fact we know very little about it to say how it works. But to us Christians the cause is knowable - it is God. And it doesn’t matter whether we speak about one-day creationism, theistic evolution or intelligent design.

Well, how about we start with the old good and simply wiki?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution

No. I don’t understand why? I explained that evolution and God may go hand to hand. Faith and reason don’t contradict.

Reason says God doesn’t use a means that doesn’t require God.

Same with the soul. We don’t know how he puts a soul in us. There’s no science that says “The soul enters the being because of …”

True, but I didn’t mean that. I meant that you can’t measure God creating us, you can’t measure God giving us grace, you can’t observe God (I’m not referring to the incarnation that happened 2000 years ago).

I agree that ultimately God is beyond measure, and knowing.

(to be continued…)

I think I’ve answered your posts in reverese order

 

[Montalban]

Why is it so difficult to believe that God created Natural Laws and set them into motion?

He may well have. We know from Genesis that there were no ‘natrual laws’ in motion. God created plants before night and day existed. For those that believe a day = 1,000 years, or whatever, how did the plants survive in utter darkness for that length of time?

The fossil record and modern science proves evolution exists within species.

The fossil record also tells us that man arose both in Africa, and not, depending on whether you ascribe to the “Out of Africa” model, or the multi-regional model. Both models are relying on evidence. And both are mutually exclusive.
"Where do the genes of the Europeans come from? A good, but trivial, answer is: From Africa, like everybody else’s genes. Paleontologists agree that the long-term human ancestors, a million years ago or so, dwelt in Africa. There is disagreement, however, about what happened after archaic presapiens humans (Homo erectus) spread over much of the Old World. The anatomically archaic populations of Europe, Northeastern Asia, and Southeastern Asia may have gradually evolved into the modern Homo sapiens sapiens populations inhabiting, respectively, Western Eurasia, East Asia, and Australia; this is the multiregional theory of human evolution (1). On the contrary, the Out-of-Africa theory regards all modern populations as descended from an anatomically modern group that dispersed from Africa less than 200,000 years ago and replaced archaic populations (2). "
pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/1/22
“One of the great controversies of archaeology surrounds the origins of Homo sapiens sapiens. One group of scholars believes that Homo erectus populations throughout the world evolved independently, first into early Homo sapiens, then into fully modern humans. Thus, the modern geographic populations (races) of the world would have been separated for a long time, perhaps a million years. Most experts take a diametrically opposite view. They hypothesize that Homo sapiens sapiens evolved in Africa sometime between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, then spread to other parts of the Old World. Under this model, modern geographic populations are less than 100,000 years old.
2
These two models represent extremes, which pit advocates of anatomical continuity against those who believe there was population replacement. Each model is based on the minute study of human fossil remains, but the replacement theory also relies on studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).”
bartleby.com/67/24.html

For example, the development of the horse from a small creature to what we know today is common knowledge. The elephant underwent many morphic changes to become the elephant we know today. However, there is no evidence that one animal became another. The dog did not become a crocodile, the pig did not become a giraffe. Neither did the ape become a human being. At some point, God stepped in and created man in His own image to be apart from the animals.

Unfortunately, evolution says we came from a primate… and they use the fossil record to show this.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

The difference is

Evolution : Man evolved from lesser beings through a method wholly naturalistic

and

Bible : Man was created for a purpose

There’s conflict on; who, how and why.

How about this:

God created man for a purpose, but that creation took millions of years, using a process of growth, development, and adaptation.

Where, again, is the conflict?

Peace,
Dante

 

[jemfinch]

Do you believe that atoms contains both protons and electrons? Because by your logic you should deny this fact as well.

Since you’ve clearly not read my posts and clearly don’t understand my claims, you’re clearly unqualified to draw conclusions from your lack of understanding of my “logic.”

Argue against a strawman all you want, but don’t expect a reply from me until you’ve actually made the effort to understand what I’m saying.

Jeremy

 

[Montalban]

How about this:

God created man for a purpose, but that creation took millions of years, using a process of growth, development, and adaptation.

Where, again, is the conflict?

Peace,
Dante

Within what you wrote, there is none. But with evolution, there is.

Evolution has no purpose. Evolution is explainable without God.

It’s asking us to believe God used a means by which there’s no reason to believe God used that means. He may have done so, just to test our faith. However other objections have arisen here, such as the issues of

a) death, as a consequence of sin
b) the soul - when did God instill a soul into a primate-being

 

[Montalban]

Since you’ve clearly not read my posts and clearly don’t understand my claims, you’re clearly unqualified to draw conclusions from your lack of understanding of my “logic.”

Argue against a strawman all you want, but don’t expect a reply from me until you’ve actually made the effort to understand what I’m saying.

Jeremy

There’s the old chestnut that if we accept one scientific finding, we must accept them all. Which is a nonsense else science would never be challenged in any field.

 

[rossum]

But the Fathers say were were created. Jesus does too.

So do theistic evolutionists. All agree that we were created by God. The disagreement is over the exact mechanisms God used to create our physical bodies. The theology of the creation of man - why God created and so forth - is not in question. The discussion is about the physical mechanism that God used. To a theistic evolutionist the evidence of God’s creation in the universe is not misleading. God’s book and God’s universe must agree when both are correctly interpreted. This is the thrust of the quote from Thomas Aquinas I gave.

Ancient Hebrew did not have words for “Deoxyribonucleic acid”. Just as Augustine had no knowledge of Australia, so the Biblical authors had no knowledge of DNA. The Bible is not a science textbook and it should not be read as such.

rossum

 

[jemfinch]

The Bible is not a science textbook and it should not be read as such.

But as a theological work (which it is), it still seems to exclude the pain, suffering, and death necessary for evolution prior to the fall of man.

Jeremy

 

[rossum]

Unfortunately, evolution says we came from a primate… and they use the fossil record to show this.

We are primates. We have all the distinguishing characteristics of primates:You are a primate.

You have five fully-developed fingers and five fully-developed toes. Your
toes are still prehensile and your hands can grasp with dexterity. You have
only two lactal nipples and they are on your chest as opposed to your
abdomen. These are pointless in males, which also have a pendulous penis
and a well-devoloped ceacum or appendix, unlike all other mammals. Although
your fangs are reduced in size, you do still have them along with some
varied dentition indicative of primates exclusively. Your fur is thin and
relatively sparse over most of your body. And your claws have been reduced
to flat chitinous fingernails. Your fingers themselves have distinctive
print patterns. You are also susceptible to AIDS and are mortally allergic
to the toxin of the male funnel web spider of Australia, (which is deadly to
all primates, but only dangerous to primates, which is why you’d be better
beware of these spiders.). And unlike all but one unrelated animal in all
the world, your body cannot produce vitamin-C naturally and must have it
supplemented in your diet, just as all other primates do. Nearly every one
of these individual traits are unique only to primates exclusively. There is
almost no other organism on Earth that matches any one of these descriptions
separately, but absolutely all of the lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, you,
and I match all of them at once perfectly, implying common descent.

Source: You are an Ape

rossum

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

But you wanted to say that science can’t know anything about God. That’s only based on a modern materialistic science model

I, the author of that post, can tell you that that’s not what I wanted to say. Science can know a lot about God because it essentially studies God’s creation.

I will give you an example of what I meant. Science looks at the studies the world and tells us that life on the planet evolved etc. That something science can study. Science can’t however tell us how and why that happened and whether it was God, Allah someone or something else or what. That is not the job of science. We Christians know that it was God and it was part of God’s plan and we are blessed that when we learn about the world through science we learn about God’s work.

Yes, it can. Go to the time of Christ. Observe Christ walking on water. Experiment with walking on water yourself and see if you can do it. There’s no known scientific means of knowing how Jesus could have walked on water - or turned water into wine.

Well the scientists may conduct his experiments because his believes in God but in the end all he will be doing is observing properties of water and wine. Where is the idea of God in that?

Sorry but I simply feel that we both are having hard time understand each other because of the language we are using. I think in many instances we don’t disagree with each other - only with the interpretation of our words.

This is just plainly repeating your assumptions about science. And note too that there’s not just one scientific method, too!

That’s not my assumption, that’s what science is about. To simplify, it’s about taking a chunk of wood, making a hypothesis about it, making observations and conducting an experiment, collecting data and verifying (or not) the hypothesis. That’s all.

How do you understand science?

Then you’re trying to have both arguments at once.

And these are?

Ouch!

No, I’m serious. Does religion study anything? And if yes, what? And how?
I suspect you wanted to say theology and not religion. Religion is a set of believes and practices.

Well, you make an assumption about what science is. You assume what scientific method is. You both want to argue that it can, and also can’t tell us nothing about God.

Well, so if it’s an assumption what is REALLY science?

And I don’t really argue that. I argue about two different things but I’m really having hard time making sure that you see the difference.

So once again.

Science studies facts about the natural world. Since natural world is God’s creation then as a consequence of studying nature we learn more about God. When we study the atom we lean more about atom, which is God’s creation and thus subsequently we know more in which way God created us (out of atoms). Notice this is however application of science and not science itself.

This is not what science studies, as I just said, this is simply an application of the understandings we gain from science. Science still ONLY studies objective natural world (in fact that’s the only thing it can do study) and not God. Science itself thus can’t make any claims about God and his plans.

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

Since you’ve clearly not read my posts and clearly don’t understand my claims, you’re clearly unqualified to draw conclusions from your lack of understanding of my “logic.”

Argue against a strawman all you want, but don’t expect a reply from me until you’ve actually made the effort to understand what I’m saying.

Jeremy

Oh well, I guess I need to apologize for the crime of being too slow to understand your posts and then shamelessly applying these misunderstandings when drawing drawing conclusions.

In Christ,
~G

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

But that’s not evolution. Evolution doesn’t need God to explain it. What you’re doing is suggesting God used a means by which he didn’t have to in order to create us with no signs that he did.

Evolution explains the process but not why this process happened and who or what initiated it. Explaining the process that was used doesn’t require God just like explaining how we die doesn’t require God. We however must turn to God to understand why death happens and why such thing as evolution took place.

Read Genesis again. Evolutionists tell us that creatures evolved in certain sequences - such as in the oceans first. Genesis has things in a different order.

I know what it says. You might believe that we must take genesis literally but I for example don’t believe that. I don’t believe in the 7 day creation. I believe that genesis explains the truth about faith in a form of a allegory, thus simpling the truths that the Jesus would never be able to understand.

They supported that we were created. That God worked in ‘mysterious ways’, not using known rules that don’t need God.

First, we were created - they supported that and theistic evolution believes that as well. I already explained that being created doesn’t mean appearing out of thin air.
Second, how do you know that he used unknown rules that human can’t understand?
Third, these rules need God. They were created by God. Up to that I believe that God made the evolution happen and made it happen in the way he wanted (to shape the world in the way he wanted). Without God there would be nothing, absolutely nothing - not even emptiness.

Yes, I’ve quoted some who do.

Yes, some believed that and some people still believe that today. That’s fine. They are however fallible and we can’t hold everything each Church Father ever believed especially since some Church Father actually didn’t believe in the literal interepretaion of Genesis (as was shown to you).

That’s in fact what we base faith on - the great thinkers who explained the Trinity etc were ‘only humans’.

But you must understand that the Church Father, while being all that, had personal believes which don’t have to followed. Or do we have to believe in every single thing every single Church Father ever wrote?
In the end the Church tells us that we don’t have to believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis and thus we don’t have to believe in that. If what they was an Dogma or doctrine the Church would say so.

The whole thing about God is he’s not about secrets. For you Catholics, perhaps, with your ‘development of dogma’ you might think that things are revealed later. Not to we Orthodox
“For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed “perfect knowledge…,”
Irenaeus - “Against Heresies” Book III.I.I

The full quote you offer has nothing to do with it. It speaks about Apostles handing us the deposit of faith. I don’t see how this has anything to do with your argument.

Creation is indeed central to our faith but as it was said many times, evolution does not deny creation. Evolution simply suggest the manner in which we were created and the manner in which we were created is NOT central to our faith.

Yes, it’s not central to our faith. You must accept the account in Genesis as Truth, but you may believe that it’s literal or rather an allegory.

Reason says God doesn’t use a means that doesn’t require God.

Certainly. After all how could evolution not require God if the very laws that he used were his creation, right?

Same with the soul. We don’t know how he puts a soul in us. There’s no science that says “The soul enters the being because of …”

True, and I said that science cannot measure like it can’t measure the CAUSE behind evolution.

I think I’ve answered your posts in reverese order

That’s fine

God bless,
~G

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

I think it’s time to end this debat and I think St. Augistine’s words say it well.

“In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity”

Stay faithful to Christ and His Church and by all means feel free to believe in creationism (I don’t) if that’s what you believe.

Pax Domini,
~G

 

[jemfinch]

Good question and you certainly caught me off-guard. I’m sure there is an answer to that but I don’t know it. Perhaps someone else may contribute…

No one else has contributed yet

Jeremy

 

[dcharlesworth]

What evidence did he endorse? All he said was that there is scientific proof.

What proof? What reasons are there to believe in evolution?

Darwin himself outlined that the biggest problem with his theories was the lack of “transitional” forms. And he also said that if they didn’t pop up soon… which they have not, that his theories could not have been taken seriously.

I think everyone is off topic instead of looking for evidence.

Where is a horse becoming a pig? or a reptile becoming a bird? The fossil record should show millions of “half and halfs” but we haven’t found them. And we can’t see them today. If man came from an ape why do we have millions of apes millions of men, and still are looking for sasquatch. Its completely rediculous. They few things that evolutionists cite for evidence of half man half apes are all admittedly fakes.

 

[Ianjo99]

Darwin himself outlined that the biggest problem with his theories was the lack of “transitional” forms. And he also said that if they didn’t pop up soon… which they have not, that his theories could not have been taken seriously.

Darwin may have said this, but Darwin is not the pope of evolution. His words are not infallibly held in the scientific community.

There are many reasons why very few transitional fossils have been found. For example, a transitional species would not be a long-lasting species. It would quickly shed its less useful adaptations when they became underused. Because of this, it makes sense that mostly recognizable species are found in fossils: they have a long-lasting form.

Within what you wrote, there is none. But with evolution, there is.

Evolution has no purpose. Evolution is explainable without God.

It’s asking us to believe God used a means by which there’s no reason to believe God used that means. He may have done so, just to test our faith. However other objections have arisen here, such as the issues of

a) death, as a consequence of sin
b) the soul - when did God instill a soul into a primate-being

Just because evolution is explainable without God doesn’t make it an invalid theory. The whole of science doesn’t deal with theological issues primarily for that reason. Science advances much faster if everything must be examined and probed for explanation instead of being held up by throwing one’s hands in the air and saying “God did it”.

A little side note: this is what annoys me about the people at answersingenesis.com. I went to one of their lectures and it was one the most asinine things I’ve ever experienced. The entire lecture pandered to people who had no idea what evolution truly is and consisted entirely of what some people are doing on this thread; that is they are pointing out scientific theories that turned out to be false and then extrapolating that into proving that modern ideas about science must be false as well. (run-on sentence, I’m sorry )

As for the death being the catalyst for evolution, I still don’t see how that is proof for it being an “atheistic theory”. I always figured that the “death” God was talking about was in someway connected to the death of the soul.

I think of it this way. Animals may have temporary souls, but they do not have eternal souls. They have no intrinsic hunger to search for God, nothing they do can be good or evil. Them fighting and killing each other is not evil anymore than what they are doing now could be considered evil. Man, on the other hand, has an eternal soul. In the beginning of mankind, Adam was not intended to be cut off from God, but did so of his own volition and subsequently “died” by losing that grace and going into limbo/hell/whatever. Only at Christ’s harrowing of Hell did Adam regain grace.

Aside from all that, however, I still fail to see how any of this proves the current scientific theory wrong. What a lot of creationists fail to realize is that pointing out a few inconsistencies to evolution does not disprove it (as it would religion). This theory is based off thousands of studies by a large majority of the world’s scientists which by and large correspond really well with the tenets of evolutionary theory (And trust me, herd mentality, while it does exist, happens much less with science than religion. If someone could disprove evolution conclusively, they would be lauded in the community, not branded as a heretic.). As of now, the question in the scientific community is not whether evolution happened, but how it happened.

If you choose to believe creationism or some altered version based off Genesis, do so. But trying to silence scientists with faith based arguments and the discovery of little evolutionary plot holes is akin to throwing a pebble at the great wall and expecting it to crumble.