Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution

[rossum]

{Sorry about that Rossum; is this better?}

Look at the very bottom of the page and there is a Posting Rules box with “BB code is On”. Click on the link and all will be explained.

Sorry, can’t accept this - its a Dawkinism - if something appears to be designed it can’t be! Your brain is a reliable design detector - you detected the difference between a castle and a cloud

If something appears to be designed then it might or might not be designed. Real castles are designed objects. Our brains classify both cloud castles and real castles in the same group - “castles”. Given this then we know that the argument:* P1 Castles are designed.

• P2 Some clouds look like castles.
• C Some clouds are designed.

is not correct. Hence the ID argument that runs:* P1 Outboard motors are designed.

• P2 The bacterial flagellum look like an outboard motor.
• C The bacterial flagellum is designed.

is also not correct because it has exactly the same logical form. It is for that reason that I ask for a reliable design detector.

Theistic evolution - which most Catholics accept - accepts all of the ‘scientific’ evidence which you put forward. Quite simply, either God does it or allows it to happen. There would be complete agreement between you and a theistic evolutionist - except you would say natural selection did it and they would say God did it. Both of you agree on the evidence but have different explanations for the cause

Consider two pool players trying to make a very complex shot. The first player takes his shot and then keeps on nudging the cue ball as it travels to make the result come out right. The second player takes her shot and leaves the cue ball alone to follow the path she sent it on. Both players succeed with their respective shots. Which is the better pool player? I am suspicious of any belief which requires God to intervene after He has taken His shot. If God made the rules of physics and God set up the starting conditions of the universe then He knows exactly the results that will happen, just as the better pool player knows exactly what will happen after she takes her shot.

The God who has to intervene directly within the universe to make things happen is more like the first pool player. The designer of ID is also more like the first pool player.

Its your experiment not God’s. If you or I had sufficient faith then with God’s grace we could do it

It is not strictly my experiment, I adapted it from The Harvard Prayer Experiment.

rossum

 

[antonyluby]

[If something appears to be designed then it might or might not be designed. Real castles are designed objects. Our brains classify both cloud castles and real castles in the same group - “castles”. Given this then we know that the argument:

• P1 Castles are designed.
• P2 Some clouds look like castles.
• C Some clouds are designed.
  is not correct. Hence the ID argument that runs:
• P1 Outboard motors are designed.
• P2 The bacterial flagellum look like an outboard motor.
• C The bacterial flagellum is designed.
  is also not correct because it has exactly the same logical form. It is for that reason that I ask for a reliable design detector.

I think you are being unfair to ID. For them a bacterial flagellum doesn’t just look like an outboard motor it performs like an outboard motor. So analogy doesn’t stand up.

Consider two pool players trying to make a very complex shot. The first player takes his shot and then keeps on nudging the cue ball as it travels to make the result come out right. The second player takes her shot and leaves the cue ball alone to follow the path she sent it on. Both players succeed with their respective shots. Which is the better pool player? I am suspicious of any belief which requires God to intervene after He has taken His shot. If God made the rules of physics and God set up the starting conditions of the universe then He knows exactly the results that will happen, just as the better pool player knows exactly what will happen after she takes her shot.

The God who has to intervene directly within the universe to make things happen is more like the first pool player. The designer of ID is also more like the first pool player.

Sorry, Rossum, what are you saying? God is a poor pool player?

It is not strictly my experiment, I adapted it from The Harvard Prayer Experiment.

rossum

‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
God will respond to sincere prayer but He is not to be fooled with.

 

[antonyluby]

Alec, Rosum,

It seems to me that evolutionists have reified 'natural selection, i.e. they have made a ‘thing’ of natural selection.
But there is no such thing. If it exists it is not an animal, a plant, a mineral or whatever. If it exists it is an invisible force that can be detected by its effects.
But, then, so is God. God is an invisible force who is detected by His effects - transforming people’s lives for the better; responding to prayer e.g. miracles of healing, etc.

All the effects which are claimed for natural selection can be claimed by thesitic evolutionists but their invisible force {God} is greater as He performs so much more than the invisible force {natural selection} of agnostic/atheistic evolutionists.

Indeed, for theistic evolutionists, all of the evidences attributed to natural selection are also evidences for God; as for them natural selection is but one small example of the immense power of God.

 

[rossum]

Thanks for the new format, much clearer.

I think you are being unfair to ID. For them a bacterial flagellum doesn’t just look like an outboard motor it performs like an outboard motor. So analogy doesn’t stand up.

A flagellum is not an outboard motor. An outboard motor is made of metal, it runs on petrol/gasoline, it has a piston, a spark plug and a crankshaft. It is designed. I take you point about “looks like” vs “performs like” so I will rephrase:

• P1 Castles are designed.
• P2 Certain clouds are in some ways like castles.
• C Certain clouds are designed.

is not correct. Hence the ID argument that runs:

• P1 Outboard motors are designed.
• P2 The bacterial flagellum is in some ways like an outboard motor.
• C The bacterial flagellum is designed.

The basic problem is that a perfectly good analogy is being stretched further than it can bear. It certainly does not constitute a scientific proof of design.

Sorry, Rossum, what are you saying? God is a poor pool player?

If God is omnipotent then He can set the laws of physics exactly as He wishes. If God is omnipotent then He can set the initial conditions of the universe exactly as He wishes. If God is omniscienct then He can foresee exactly the results of the ongoing development of His universe. Such a God has no need to “nudge the cue ball” because, like the second pool player, He shot the cue ball exactly where He wanted it to go.

A God who was not omniscient might not have foreseen all the details of the development of the universe and hence need to do a bit of nudging to keep things on track. A God who was not ommnipotent might not have been able to set up exactly the right laws of physics or exactly the right starting conditions to get the result He wanted, hence again such a God might need to nudge things a bit from time to time. A God who has to directly intervene to get the outcome He desires is either not omnipotent, not omniscient or both.

My apologies for not making the analogy clearer.

‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
God will respond to sincere prayer but He is not to be fooled with.

It was you who wanted to bring God into science. Everything in science is up for testing; if you do not want God tested then keep Him in theology and not in science.

rossum

 

[antonyluby]

Thanks for the new format, much clearer.

Thank YOU for directing me to this; I had been unaware of this.

A flagellum is not an outboard motor. An outboard motor is made of metal, it runs on petrol/gasoline, it has a piston, a spark plug and a crankshaft. It is designed. I take you point about “looks like” vs “performs like” so I will rephrase:

• P1 Castles are designed.
• P2 Certain clouds are in some ways like castles.
• C Certain clouds are designed.

Rossum, I think it should now go like:

• P1 Castles are designed.
• P2 Certain clouds perform like castles.
• C This doesn’t make sense!
  Sorry, but for me, your analogy doesn’t hold up.

Hence the ID argument that runs:

• P1 Outboard motors are designed.
• P2 The bacterial flagellum is in some ways like an outboard motor.
• C The bacterial flagellum is designed.

I prefer this one, though!

The basic problem is that a perfectly good analogy is being stretched further than it can bear. It certainly does not constitute a scientific proof of design.

Thats a fair point and it applies to all analogies. It seems to be a matter of judgement as to how well a particular analogy applies.

If God is omnipotent then He can set the laws of physics exactly as He wishes. If God is omnipotent then He can set the initial conditions of the universe exactly as He wishes. If God is omniscienct then He can foresee exactly the results of the ongoing development of His universe. Such a God has no need to “nudge the cue ball” because, like the second pool player, He shot the cue ball exactly where He wanted it to go.

A God who was not omniscient might not have foreseen all the details of the development of the universe and hence need to do a bit of nudging to keep things on track. A God who was not ommnipotent might not have been able to set up exactly the right laws of physics or exactly the right starting conditions to get the result He wanted, hence again such a God might need to nudge things a bit from time to time. A God who has to directly intervene to get the outcome He desires is either not omnipotent, not omniscient or both.

My apologies for not making the analogy clearer.

Thanks for this explanation. According to Tipler (2007): God / Cosmic Singularity established the laws of physics at the beginning and always works within His own laws.

Miracles are mistakenly referred to as ‘violations of physical laws.’ This is not the Christian description of miracles but the one devised by fellow Scotsman David Hume. Tipler (2007) chapter 5 has a good discussion of this.

It was you who wanted to bring God into science. Everything in science is up for testing; if you do not want God tested then keep Him in theology and not in science.

I was following the lead of the aforementioned Tipler (2007). Notably, though, when the prophet Elijah put God to the test (1 Kings 18:23-24) He passed with flying colours!

rossum

 

[antonyluby]

Alec, Rossum,

Some parting thoughts. I think you 'll find the extract below of interest - it is from Tipler F J 2007, *The Physics of Christianity, *New York: Doubleday.

The idea of evolution in the sense of common decent is completely consistent with Christianity; theologians made this clear in the nineteenth century, and it has been confirmed in recent times by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A comparison of the DNA in chimpanzees and humans indicates that the two species had a common ancestor between 5 and 6 million years ago… Furthermore, all metozoans - living beings made up of more than one cell - had a common ancestor, a single-cell organism, approx. 2 billion years ago. This fits nicely with the creation account in Genesis 2:7 ‘And God formed man out of the slime of the Earth’… However, Darwinism goes beyond the fact of common descent and claims that the mechanism was natural selection acting on ‘random’ variation. There is no objection to natural selection, but the idea that evolution has no goal and is undirected - in short, is ‘random’ - is an attack on Christian theology at its heart. (pp126-127)

I think Behe (2007) *Edge of *Evolution concurs with this too. Tipler (2007, p130) goes on to say:

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the archbishop of Vienna, in a controversial 2005 New York Times op-ed piece, defended the traditional Christian view that evolution of body forms is consistent with the Bible - there is noting in-christian about chimps and humans having a common ancestor 5 million years ago - but Darwinism is not: ‘An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of Divine Providence - simply cannot exist.’ Physics says exactly the same: there is nothing in reality that is outside unitary time evolution: Final Cause. To accept chance as an ultimate is to accept human ignorance as an ultimate. In the words of Cardinal Schonborn, ‘In the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well… Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of ‘chance and necessity’ are not scientific at all, but as John Paul put, an abdication of human intelligence.’

For the Catholic Church there is no difficulty in siding with evolution - except in (neo-) Darwinian forms which claim evolution is unguided.

I hope this sheds some light on the matter.

 

[hecd2]

“… just the tedious rehashing of Paley’s 18th century canard of natural theology, long since disproven.”

Alec, you are hectoring again!!!

No, I am merely stating, accurately, the extent of your argument.

In any case, according to the ID movement the design or teleological argument is far from disproven

But there is no need to take the ID movement seriously. It carries no weight in the academy or in intellectual thought. It is, as was shown beyond doubt in the Dover trial, not a serious scientific school, but a religio-political movement pitched at a popular level with the stated intent of influencing laws and public opinion through propaganda rather than through rigorous scientific analysis. Its most credible supporters, Michael Behe and William Dembski, are today, totally discredited. Behe’s irreducible complexity argument made in ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ was demolished within days of publication and he was recently reduced to admitting that his definition of science must include astrology. Meanwhile trenchant criticisms of Dembski have forced him to patch up his arguments regarding specified complexity over and over again, until today, it’s impossible to see his argument for the sticking plaster. As for his “law of the conservation of information”, no such law is recognised in science, it has never had any credibility, it is entirely unsupported by evidence, and so it hangs there like a ghastly twitching corpse, because he seems to be unwilling to cut it down and bury it decently.

As this is a Catholic apologetics website I’d imagine that many contributors are more interested in theology and philosophy than science.

You might think that, but “scientific” topics seem to attract a huge quantity of attention - there are no end of people who cannot spell ‘allele’, never mind know what it means, who are perfectly willing to offer their adolescent opinions on the scientific theory of evolution.

Indeed, when it comes to evolution there is little point discussing it on a Catholic web-site. {see Pope Benedict’s point at beginning of the thread about ‘absurdity’}

Well maybe, but that hasn’t stopped you.

The vast majority of Catholics are theistic evolutionists and accept scientific findings. {see post to Rossum above} For theistic evolutionists the cause of the scientific findings is God - whereas for agnostic/atheistic evolutionists the cause is natural selection.

No this utterly wrong. Proposing theistic evolution and natural selection as alternative mechanisms is like proposing apples and frogs as alternative crops in an orchard. Natural selection is one of the most important natural processes by which evolution takes place. Theistic evolution does not replace natural selection with “goddidit”. Professional biologists who are also devout Catholics and theistic evolutionists accept natural selection as one of the processes by which evolution progresses. In spite of all our discussion, and my correction, you are still falsely claiming that natural selection is a random process. But even if it were, so what? Fundamentally random processes, such as random sorting of chromosomes, and recombination and crossing over, never mind sperm selection, are key to the creation of new human beings which all Catholics accept as divine providence. Your views are equivalent to claiming that random sorting and God are alternative processes in procreation, or gravity and God are alternative explanations for the orbit of the planets. I discuss this in some detail in my critique of Cardinal Schoenborn’s essays:
evolutionpages.com/Schoenborn_critique.htm

Theistic evolutionists would simply say that God is responsible for natural selection.

Ah yes - just as God is responsible for random sorting, for crossing over, for radioactivity, for tunnelling in semiconductors, for cosmic rays and for supernovae. But God is not a useful or credible explanation for natural phenomena in science, so scientists, whether they are believers or not, cannot be satisfied by saying ‘that God is responsible for natural selection’ - they need to understand more than that.

But suddenly, here, you seem to be accepting natural selection as a dominant process in evolution. You are no longer saying natural selection OR God, but natural selection AND God. Do you have a consistent position?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Alec, Rosum,

It seems to me that evolutionists have reified 'natural selection, i.e. they have made a ‘thing’ of natural selection.
But there is no such thing. If it exists it is not an animal, a plant, a mineral or whatever. If it exists it is an invisible force that can be detected by its effects.

As far as I know, there are no knowledgeable scientists who think natural selection is a ‘thing’, which, if I take your examples, you suppose is an object made of ordinary matter. To suggest that any scientists think that natural selection is a thing made of matter is to make an truly absurd proposition. Anyone who thinks that natural selection is an important explanation for the fact of evolution will describe it as a *process *not a thing- it is a process by which the frequency of alleles and traits is modified from generation to generation. Natural selection is no more a thing than gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum-electrodynamics, mitosis, meiosis, RNA interference, DNA translation, DNA replication, the gulf stream, gravitational lensing, continental drift, the proton-proton fusion reaction in light stars or the carbon cycle in more massive ones and so on and so on. Natural selection is an explanatory natural process that explains what we observe just as all these other, non-matter, processes do. Science deals with more than things - to suggest that it deals only with things is bizarrely wrong.

But, then, so is God. God is an invisible force who is detected by His effects - transforming people’s lives for the better; responding to prayer e.g. miracles of healing, etc.

Except that a) there is no evidence for God in the effects of prayer, for example. The conclusion after a number of properly controlled double blind trials on the efficacy of prayer is that it makes not a jot of difference; and b) God is a non-explanation, because the concept of God can do anything. Whereas natural selection is a real explanation because the process is constrained naturally and mathematically, so that one can build a predictive science around the conceptual process of natural selection - that predictive science is called population genetics and it makes many detailed predictions that are exquisitely supported by experiment.

All the effects which are claimed for natural selection can be claimed by thesitic evolutionists but their invisible force {God} is greater as He performs so much more than the invisible force {natural selection} of agnostic/atheistic evolutionists.

Another instance of your false dichotomy of theistic evolution and natural selection - these are not mutually exclusive positions. The absurdity of your claim can be illustrated by extending it to parallel cases: “All the effects which are claimed for gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum-electrodynamics, mitosis, meiosis, RNA interference, DNA translation, DNA replication, the gulf stream, gravitational lensing, continental drift, the proton-proton fusion reaction in light stars or the carbon cycle in more massive ones” can be claimed by god-believers but their invisible force {God} is greater as He performs so much more than the invisible forces of scientists (whether believers or unbelievers)." Give me the Enlightenment any day, before I sink into such superstitious darkness.

Indeed, for theistic evolutionists, all of the evidences attributed to natural selection are also evidences for God; as for them natural selection is but one small example of the immense power of God.

And how is this in any way different from: “Indeed, for theists, all of the evidences attributed to gravity are also evidences for God; as for them gravity is but one small example of the immense power of God.”?

It might possibly be true, but in scientific terms it has no explanatory power. In science we are interested in the how gravity and natural selection work and how they affect the operation of the natural world. Those questions can be answered whether or not one believes in God as the absence of religious bias in all natural science proves.

Aloec
evolutionnpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Alec, Rossum,

Some parting thoughts.

Oh, have you had enough? Are you going so soon?

I think you 'll find the extract below of interest - it is from Tipler F J 2007, *The Physics of Christianity, *New York: Doubleday.

Who can dismiss anything that Frank Tipler says out of hand? Not me. Nevertheless, I think he is wrong in what he says here, as there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for directed evolution or directed mutations (the undirected random process in evolution is mutations, by the way, not natural selection). No-one has been able to propose a remotely credible process or any evidence whatsoever for directed evolution. All the evidence is that it is contingent on random mutations and external events with a strong random element.

I think Behe (2007) *Edge of *Evolution concurs with this too.

Edge of Evolution has been utterly demolished. Behe is an utterly discredited spent force. Just read the damning review by the Catholic Kenneth Miller in Nature:
“Behe tells us frankly that darwinism cannot account for even a modest share of the complexity of life, and therefore design is absolutely required as an explanation. Yet, at the heart of his anti-darwinian calculus are numbers not merely incorrect, but so spectacularly wrong that this badly designed argument collapses under its own weight…
Behe, incredibly, thinks he has determined the odds of a mutation “of the same complexity” occurring in the human line. He hasn’t. What he has actually done is to determine the odds of these two exact mutations occurring simultaneously at precisely the same position in exactly the same gene in a single individual. He then leads his unsuspecting readers to believe that this spurious calculation is a hard and fast statistical barrier to the accumulation of enough variation to drive darwinian evolution.
It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics…
A mistake of this magnitude anywhere in a book on science is bad enough, but Behe has built his entire thesis on this error. Telling his readers that the production of so much as a single new protein-to-protein binding site is “beyond the edge of evolution”, he proclaims darwinian evolution to be a hopeless failure. Apparently he has not followed recent studies exploring the evolution of hormone-receptor complexes by sequential mutations (Science 312, 97–101; 2006), the ‘evolvability’ of new functions in existing proteins — studies on serum paraxonase (PON1) traced the evolution of several new catalytic functions (Nature Genet. 37, 73–76; 2005) — or the modular evolution of cellular signalling circuitry (Annu. Rev. Biochem. 75, 655–680; 2006)…
No doubt creationists who long for a scientific champion will overlook the parts of this deeply flawed book that might trouble them…Instead, they will cling to Behe’s mistaken calculations, and proclaim that the end of evolution is at hand. What this book actually demonstrates, however, is the intellectual desperation of the intelligent-design movement as it struggles to survive in the absence of even a shred of scientific data in its favour.”

Tipler (2007, p130) goes on to say:
For the Catholic Church there is no difficulty in siding with evolution - except in (neo-) Darwinian forms which claim evolution is unguided.

And Tipler, as good a physicist as he is, appears to be an appallingly bad biologist - neo-Darwinism is just as unguided, no more no less, than the forces that led to you, Antony, being born.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Peter_Wilders]

Being new to the thread and having looked at some of the exchanges I got the mpression that they were not particularly Catholic nor scientific. By this I mean the magisterial, theological and scientific arguments were inadequate.

Magisterially, or perhaps one should say historically, evolution theory was condemned in 1215 by the Lateran 1V definition of creation:

…creator of all visible and invisible things, of the spiritual and of the corporal; who by His own omnipotent power at once from the beginning of time created each creature from nothing, spiritual and corporal, namely, angelic and mundane, and finally the human, constituted as it were, alike of the spirit and the body

(D. 428).

and over six centuries later by the First Vatican Council in 1869-70

If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing - let him be anathema

(canon 5).

It is, therefore, an infallible teaching of the Church that all things visible and invisible in their whole substance were created directly by God at once (simul in the original text, i.e. together) ex nihilo from the beginning of time by his own power (i.e. no second causes)

There is clearly no place in this dogma for gradual evolution over millions of years.

Regarding science, the principal evidence proposed for evolution is the fossil record. Fundamental experiments in sedimentology published both in France and Russia show that the basic principal of stratigraphy, i.e. superposition of strata, has been invalidated both in the laboratory and in the field (see the French Academy of Sciences for micro-strata or laminae and the Russian Academy for macro-strata). Experiments and paleohydraulic analyses show that strata do not necessarily deposit successively one on top of the other as believed and taught since the seventeenth century, but laterally and vertically at the same time. This means that the fossils in them provide no indication of age. It can no longer be deduced that a fossil in a lower layer is older than one in a higher layer; because part of an underlying layer could form at virtually the same time as part of the one above. The experiments also show that strata form rapidly at the speed of the current transporting the sediment (see www.sedimentology.fr) and not over millions of years.

 

[Orogeny]

Regarding science, the principal evidence proposed for evolution is the fossil record. Fundamental experiments in sedimentology published both in France and Russia show that the basic principal of stratigraphy, i.e. superposition of strata, has been invalidated both in the laboratory and in the field (see the French Academy of Sciences for micro-strata or laminae and the Russian Academy for macro-strata). Experiments and paleohydraulic analyses show that strata do not necessarily deposit successively one on top of the other as believed and taught since the seventeenth century, but laterally and vertically at the same time. This means that the fossils in them provide no indication of age. It can no longer be deduced that a fossil in a lower layer is older than one in a higher layer; because part of an underlying layer could form at virtually the same time as part of the one above. The experiments also show that strata form rapidly at the speed of the current transporting the sediment (see www.sedimentology.fr) and not over millions of years.

Bringing up Berthault will require you to explain his erroneous conclusions. His experiments were valid, his conclusions were not. Even his associate, Pierre Julien, disagrees with his conclusions. They are not rational, but they are certainly in line with his goal of reconciling his belief in a literal reading of Genesis with science. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get the science right.

By the way, when one speaks of “higher” and “underlying”, what do you think the average person thinks of? A vertical orientation or a horizontal orientation?

Peace

Tim

 

[rossum]

It is, therefore, an infallible teaching of the Church that all things visible and invisible in their whole substance were created directly by God at once (simul in the original text, i.e. together) ex nihilo from the beginning of time by his own power (i.e. no second causes)

I am having a problem understanding your interpretation here. Are you saying that Adam, Moses, George Washington and Bill Clinton are all contemporaries because “they were created at once”, “from the beginning of time”? That interpretation does not seem to me to be in conformance with reality. Assuming that this is not what you intended, then could you please explain what you mean so I can see what you are getting at. Thankyou.

There is clearly no place in this dogma for gradual evolution over millions of years.

Neither is there a case for 60,000 years, 6,000 years or 6,000 milliseconds if everything is created at the same instant in time.

Regarding science, the principal evidence proposed for evolution is the fossil record. Fundamental experiments in sedimentology published both in France and Russia show that the basic principal of stratigraphy, i.e. superposition of strata, has been invalidated both in the laboratory and in the field (see the French Academy of Sciences for micro-strata or laminae and the Russian Academy for macro-strata). Experiments and paleohydraulic analyses show that strata do not necessarily deposit successively one on top of the other as believed and taught since the seventeenth century, but laterally and vertically at the same time. This means that the fossils in them provide no indication of age. It can no longer be deduced that a fossil in a lower layer is older than one in a higher layer; because part of an underlying layer could form at virtually the same time as part of the one above. The experiments also show that strata form rapidly at the speed of the current transporting the sediment (see www.sedimentology.fr) and not over millions of years.

Berthault’s experiments showed that in some circumstances horizontal layers can form rapidly. That layers can form rapidly has been known for a long time - layers formed rapidly in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE and in the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Berthault’s experiments were useful in clearing up some of the details in exactly how they formed rapidly. Berthault’s error was to say that layers formed rapidly in all circumstances. That is incorrect since the particular requirements for rapid layering are not always met. There is plenty of evidence for slow layering.

rossum

 

[GrantMeGrace]

It is, therefore, an infallible teaching of the Church that all things visible and invisible in their whole substance were created directly by God at once (simul in the original text, i.e. together) ex nihilo from the beginning of time by his own power (i.e. no second causes)

Are you saying all the living things yet to be born and all the human beings yet to be endowed with a soul and all the new things yet to be invented, etc., have existed since the time of creation and we are somehow accessing them from our reality as time passes?

I think the magisterium says rather that all creation came from God, whether by instantaneous substantiation or by a process of procreation or by a process of evolution.

 

[antonyluby]

But there is no need to take the ID movement seriously. It carries no weight in the academy or in intellectual thought… Its most credible supporters, Michael Behe and William Dembski, are today, totally discredited.

Sunday August 19, 2007. The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“…the response to Behe has been predictable. The editors of the major print media have assigned known enemies of ID to trash the book - Richard Dawkins for the New York Times; Coyne for the New republic; Miller for Nature; Ruse for Toronto’s Globe & Mail. A large part of each review is ad hominem, concerned with Behe’s alleged religious agenda, his minority status among biologists, and other irrelevant matters. In Dawkins’ review, the science is barely touched, and it’s not clear from Ruse’s review that he has even opened the cover of the book. Behe deserves better. The Edge of Evolution makes a serious, quantitative argument about the limits of Darwinian evolution. Evolutionary biology cannot honestly ignore it.”

Cameron Wybrow is a freelance writer with a doctorate from McMaster University. He has published two books on the origin of modern science.
…

Ah yes - just as God is responsible for random sorting, for crossing over, for radioactivity, for tunnelling in semiconductors, for cosmic rays and for supernovae. But God is not a useful or credible explanation for natural phenomena in science, so scientists, whether they are believers or not, cannot be satisfied by saying ‘that God is responsible for natural selection’ - they need to understand more than that.

‘If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason by means of the things that are made, let him be anathema.’
First Vatican Council 1870

 

[antonyluby]

Except that a) there is no evidence for God in the effects of prayer, for example. The conclusion after a number of properly controlled double blind trials on the efficacy of prayer is that it makes not a jot of difference

"Our knowledge of God by the light of natural reason also inspires us to look to Him for help, but such prayer lacks supernatural inspiration, and though it may avail to keep us from losing our natural knowledge of God and trust in Him… it cannot positively dispose us to receive His graces.
Like every act that makes for salvation, grace is required not only to dispose us to pray, but also to aid us in determining what to pray for.

…In hearing our prayer God does not change His will or action in our regard, but simply puts into effect what He had eternally decreed in view of our prayer."

newadvent.org/cathen/12345b.htm

Give me the Enlightenment any day, before I sink into such superstitious darkness.

Isaac Newton
aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Man_of_Science_Man_of_Faith.asp

 

[buffalo]

I think I evolved a little just reading this whole dang thread lol

Maybe not!

Can evolution make things less complicated?

Scientists suggest cell origins involved a forward-and-backward process

We’ve all seen the popular cartoon of evolution’s march from an ancient sea, beginning with a single floating cell that morphs into increasingly complicated creatures, on the way to the punch line of Weekend Man slumped in his armchair. It’s just a joke, but the idea that life starts simple and gets more complex over time persists even in scientific circles. Yet one of the biggest events in evolutionary history — the origin of the cells that make up every tissue in our bodies — may be a case of life getting less complicated, according to recent research.

more…

 

[antonyluby]

To repeat,

General Editor Catechism Catholic Church (CCC):
“An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of Divine Providence - simply cannot exist.”

Tipler (2007:130):
“Physics says exactly the same: there is nothing in reality that is outside unitary (i.e. deterministic) time evolution: Final Cause.”

General Editor CCC:
“Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of ‘chance and necessity’ are not scientific at all, but as John Paul put, an abdication of human intelligence.”

 

[hecd2]

Being new to the thread and having looked at some of the exchanges I got the mpression that they were not particularly Catholic nor scientific.

Aha - another visitor from the Kolbe Center. I am gleefully looking forward to this. I see that you are on the ‘Advisory Council for the Kolbe Center’. What exactly do you give them advice on? Can you remind us what training and knowledge in exactly what branch of science is the basis for your impression that the exchanges in this thread weren’t scientific?

It is, therefore, an infallible teaching of the Church that all things visible and invisible in their whole substance were created directly by God at once (simul in the original text, i.e. together) ex nihilo from the beginning of time by his own power (i.e. no second causes)

Others have already pointed out the fundamental and elementary theological and logical errors in this. I leave this discussion to others. So far you are, disappointingly, much less fun than PoG. You do know PoG, don’t you?

Well, let’s turn to science.

Regarding science, the principal evidence proposed for evolution is the fossil record.

Oh dear, oh dear. That’s not a very promising start. I am afraid you are mistaken. The fossil record is an evidence for evolution, and a powerful one, but it is by no means the principle or the only one. There are many other compelling lines of evidence such as: the hierarchical organisation of life, molecular, physiologic and anatomic homology, embryological development or evo-devo, transposable elements, living transitionals, biogeography, vestigial characters - all of these lines of evidence are each supported by thousands of specialists who have painstakingly investigated tens or hundreds of thousands of individual pieces of evidence. And against that you set the hubristic crank, Monsieur Guy Berthault. Let me save you some embarassment. Do not claim a) that M Berthault has 3 PhDs - he has none; b) that M. Berthault is on the verge of revolutionising the science of geology as practised since the 18th Century - he has six published papers in his entire career, three in the last seven years, these last three all in extremely obscure zero-impact journals, basically repeating his earlier work. The fact is that mainstream high impact geological journals won’t touch his nonsense with a barge pole.

Fundamental experiments in sedimentology published both in France and Russia show that the basic principal of stratigraphy, i.e. superposition of strata, has been invalidated both in the laboratory and in the field (see the French Academy of Sciences for micro-strata or laminae and the Russian Academy for macro-strata). Experiments and paleohydraulic analyses show that strata do not necessarily deposit successively one on top of the other as believed and taught since the seventeenth century, but laterally and vertically at the same time. This means that the fossils in them provide no indication of age. It can no longer be deduced that a fossil in a lower layer is older than one in a higher layer; because part of an underlying layer could form at virtually the same time as part of the one above. The experiments also show that strata form rapidly at the speed of the current transporting the sediment (see www.sedimentology.fr) and not over millions of years.

Well, the fact is that Berthault’s experiments show that under very specific circumstances deposition has a lateral element, a fact not unknown to geology before Guy came along. His leap from that observation to claim that he is redefining geology is completely unwarranted. Nothing that Guy has done undermines the conclusions that were reached in the 18th century with regard to the fundamental principles of geology and the concept of index fossils. The fact is that he is utterly ignored by the community of professional geologists. PoG also majored on Guy Berthault. Is this easily refuted claim ALL you guys have got to set against the vast weight of evidence for evolution? Is that because Guy is also an ‘advisor’ to the Kolbe Center?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[bankerdavid]

It hasn’t? The Church doesn’t formally teach that God created everything? The Church does not teach that there was a literal Adam and Eve?

Think again.

The creation story does not refute or uphold the theory of evolution. That’s what the Church teaches. And evolution does not refute or uphold the Church teaching that there’s a literal Adam and Eve.

 

[edwest2]

Sowing confusion. Sad.

In the beginning, they were made male and female, not asexual protozoa.

The Bible is the starting point for all knowledge. God was there and communicated to His people.

If there was no Adam and Eve who sinned, why did Christ appear, a living sacrifice for all?

The Theory of Evolution relies on a totally mathematically unlikely series of events. In breeding horses or dogs, one always ends up with a horse or dog. There may have been slight, limited changes but dogs remained dogs.

Evolution is being used as a deception to distract Christians from key Biblical truths, revealed by God.

I am a Creationist who believes Intelligent Design (not the political kind) is far more sensible, with God as the designer.

Look at an Anteater. This animal was once a fish? A protozoa? Give me a break.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, ask yourself: Why the constant posting about evolution? My answer: to negatively affect you faith. God told the truth in the Bible. Jesus spoke of Noah as an actual person. And miracles from God happen all the time.

Every creature was made by God.

God bless,
Ed