Pope Francis: ‘Evolution … is not inconsistent with the notion of creation’

[IdaD]

I vehemently disagree with Pope Francis on this. We have enough blood vessels in our bodies to circle the globe three times! These marvelous machines we all occupy did not “evolve” cell by cell. Our brains contain a million billion synapses, all of which which fire an incomprehensible TEN million billion times every second. There is no step-by-step sequence which could have produced this. Call me disappointed with this pronouncement. Rob

I am currently a college student taking one of my last three courses this semester. The body is amazing. Just studying the chapter on the human heart was long as the chapter included the lymphatic and immune systems as well as the blood. Every other chapter focused on one system. As we have seen over years cells evolve. Just look at the stem cells. They’re called unspecialized cells. They split to remain the same are become a different type of cell.
This Pope is current on information.
You know dissection and autopsies were once banned. Now these practices are acceptable. You should educate yourself with the current times. Like I tell my daughter, "God is not of our world, so what is a day for him could be many years for us.
And you mean neurons. A synapse is the space or gap between two nerve cells. Neurons fire at different rates as they aren’t all the same.
You do know that as we progress in medical technology that enables us to understand synapses that this is called evolving.

 

[Hans_W]

I just stumbled across this new thread on creation/ID/evolution - yet another one. I have no intention of reading the 45 pages of ongoing discussion.

Why is this still a problem in the 21st century?? It has been settled in the biological sciences for more than a century. It has been settled for the Catholic Church for more than half a century. Get over it !!!

 

[phil19034]

I’m sticking with Loki.

Haven’t you seen the Avengers movie? Loki isn’t really a god, he’s an alien where they have mastered technology to a degree where everything is like magic. Plus they are a lot stronger than us

 

[IdaD]

Haven’t you seen the Avengers movie? Loki isn’t really a god, he’s an alien where they have mastered technology to a degree where everything is like magic. Plus they are a lot stronger than us /QUOTE

I am on my I-Pad mini.

Loki was also from another dimension, right?

It would be nice if we met some friendly peaceful aliens.

 

[Rin]

Haven’t you seen the Avengers movie? Loki isn’t really a god, he’s an alien where they have mastered technology to a degree where everything is like magic. Plus they are a lot stronger than us

I feel tempted to say something about source criticism, but I’ll refrain

 

[edwest2]

First of all, the idea has** not** been proposed that Adam and Eve were not parents to all humans. Secondly, you denigrate the idea of God dropping souls to two almost humans, while having no problem with the idea of God dropping souls into a lump of clay and a rib. Why is it more noble to do the later than the former? Third, not everything that might have happened has Biblical support for it actually happening. The right question to ask is what is the Biblical evidence - or more properly - the Church dogma evidence, that it couldn’t have happened as I said?
…And nothing in the proposed mechanism is in conflict with this teaching, as the Pope’s recent statement, and all recent teaching of the Church affirms.

I don’t have the previous posts archived but that is the gist. Adam and Eve somehow became human beings the moment they got their souls. Humani Generis tells us there were no other true men at the time. So the reference or connection cannot be based on science.

I believe what God actually did was recorded in the Bible, that’s all. The Church’s understanding of man and Creation is far more nuanced than a yes or no statement, especially regarding evolution.

Best,
Ed

 

[grannymh]

I just stumbled across this new thread on creation/ID/evolution - yet another one. I have no intention of reading the 45 pages of ongoing discussion.

Why is this still a problem in the 21st century?? It has been settled in the biological sciences for more than a century. It has been settled for the Catholic Church for more than half a century. Get over it !!!

Perhaps the problem is that some, not all, Catholics like to do their own thing regardless …

 

[buffalo]

So, where is your listing of Adam, of Eve’s DNA sequence? Perhaps scientists could use it to cure many genetic diseases. You do have supporting evidence of DNA sequences, don’t you? Of course, these would be the post-fall sequences, since there were no children pre-fall.

rossum

Perhaps we should dig up the bones of Adam. Yes, medical science could benefit from this and recognizing the design in humans. Many more people would still have their tonsils and appendixes. Of course they would be post-fall. Genetic entropy taken to its logical conclusions would end up at a human with pretty darn good genetics. Could it be Adam? :yup: I wonder if he is an incorruptable.

http://holylandarchive.com/section_images/385_AdamMap.jpg

The Chapel of Adam is located directly below calvary—[the place of the crucifixion of Je](http://holylandphotos.org/go.asp?img=IJNTHS54)sus.   There is an early Byzantine tradition that the “first Adam” was buried  below calvary and that the blood of the “second Adam” (= Jesus) wet the  bones of the first Adam.
In Greek Orthodox images of the crucifixion, particularly the removal of Jesus from the cross, the [skull of Adam is represented below the cross of Jesus.](http://holylandphotos.org/go.asp?img=IJNTHSIP02)

 

[buffalo]

And it is possible that Loki created the world last Thursday with the appearance of age. Science works with the best estimates currently available. When better estimates come along, then the calculations are reworked with the new estimates. That is why so much of science is provisional – we might find a better estimate in future or a better theory in future.

Very little of science is certain, it is only accurate to within the stated degree of error. Popularisations often omit the error bars. For example, we only know the gravitational constant to eight decimal places of accuracy.

rossum

An artist decides whether he will paint a picture of maturity or not. God could paint anyway He wants.

 

[clem456]

An artist decides whether he will paint a picture of maturity or not. God could paint anyway He wants.

 

[shelby_sun]

I may sound ignorant and I know we need to now our past, but isn’t time we stop focusing on 2000 years ago and start focusing on today and where we are gong from here. IMO opinion some are stuck in the time of Christ and fail to evolve our faith into the present. There are different issue than 2000 years ago and they need to be handle differently.

I had a priest express his concern with those who want to deal with their faith and their beliefs as they would when Christ walked the Earth; however, the Catholic Church has evolved a great deal over time. Women are no longer seen as property of their husbands. It is no longer seen as OK to own slaves, etc. God has shown the world more science, more medicine, more evolution, it is not right that we do not take that as a gift from God to improve the world and ourselves.

 

[grannymh]

I may sound ignorant and I know we need to now our past, but isn’t time we stop focusing on 2000 years ago and start focusing on today and where we are gong from here. IMO opinion some are stuck in the time of Christ and fail to evolve our faith into the present. There are different issue than 2000 years ago and they need to be handle differently.

I had a priest express his concern with those who want to deal with their faith and their beliefs as they would when Christ walked the Earth; however, the Catholic Church has evolved a great deal over time. Women are no longer seen as property of their husbands. It is no longer seen as OK to own slaves, etc. God has shown the world more science, more medicine, more evolution, it is not right that we do not take that as a gift from God to improve the world and ourselves.

There is a whale of a difference between human actions and Divine Revelation contained in the Catholic Deposit of Faith.

 

[shelby_sun]

There is a whale of a difference between human actions and Divine Revelation contained in the Catholic Deposit of Faith.

Yes and only God completely understands both when dealing with each one of His children on Earth.

 

[Hobbes42]

An artist decides whether he will paint a picture of maturity or not. God could paint anyway He wants.

Exactly.

We as a race still really know so little about the universe and its complexities… I think when dealing with the question of how exactly God created us it suffices to say that we will never really know with any real certainty.

What matters is that He did. Those who have decided that they are going to believe in their scientific cult god “dark energy” are going to regardless of the weight of proof. Just look at the scientific high priest Richard Dawkins for example…

There isn’t even a consensus on whether the universe is static or expanding, we know so little!

 

[TMC]

I may sound ignorant and I know we need to now our past, but isn’t time we stop focusing on 2000 years ago and start focusing on today and where we are gong from here. IMO opinion some are stuck in the time of Christ and fail to evolve our faith into the present. There are different issue than 2000 years ago and they need to be handle differently.

I had a priest express his concern with those who want to deal with their faith and their beliefs as they would when Christ walked the Earth; however, the Catholic Church has evolved a great deal over time. Women are no longer seen as property of their husbands. It is no longer seen as OK to own slaves, etc. God has shown the world more science, more medicine, more evolution, it is not right that we do not take that as a gift from God to improve the world and ourselves.

Even 2000 years ago Christians did not treat Scripture with the kind of fundamentalist literalism that some do today. Fundamentalism is a modern problem related to (some in) the modern world’s lack of appreciation for different types and layers of truth. It was not such a problem in antiquity.

 

[clem456]

Even 2000 years ago Christians did not treat Scripture with the kind of fundamentalist literalism that some do today. Fundamentalism is a modern problem related to (some in) the modern world’s lack of appreciation for different types and layers of truth. It was not such a problem in antiquity.

It is a modern problem. Any Catholic scripture scholar will tell you, even when they were originally told, the events of Genesis were not meant to be taken as a set of historical or scientific facts. That is a purely modern lens trying to read literature that was never meant to be rigidly applied as facts.

Individualism is a key problem. Individualism allows one to take concepts out of context from the “holos” and place one’s self, one’s understanding, as the final arbiter of things, rather than taking direction from the Church. Rather than accept various allowable possibilities, individualism demands a pat answer agreeable to one’s self.

Individualism also fails to recognize perspectives of ancient cultures, but rather insists that only the modern interpretation of words, and the modern way of using logic, apply to events that were told centuries ago. In reality, Hebrew thought was not the same as Greek thought, is not the same as modern American thought. People express themselves in many different ways, and not just linguistically.

 

[anthony022071]

A population of two people (or of eight after the flood) would constitute a genetic bottleneck. The effects of a recent genetic bottleneck can be detected today. For example, cheetahs had a serious bottleneck about 10,000 years ago, with a breeding population as small as a single family. Modern cheetahs are so closely related genetically that any cheetah can accept a skin graft from any other cheetah, there is no rejection because they are so similar.

Studies on genetic bottlenecks in our past show that the lowest human population was between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs about 70,000 years ago – possibly associated with the Toba eruption. Any smaller bottleneck would have been more than five million years ago, before our line separated from the line leading to the chimpanzees.

Of course, none of this says anything about whether or not any of those 1,000+ pairs had souls. A soul does not appear in DNA.

rossum

A genetic bottleneck happens when a population is reduced in size,not when a species has just come into existence.

And why would a genetic bottleneck be problematic anyway? It just means that genetic variation is very limited,not that a population can’t grow.

There is no way to detect with certainty if a genetic bottleneck happened millions or thousands of years ago. That there is little genetic variation in a species does not entail that a reduction in numbers made it that way. That is just another hypothesis about the past,which cannot be retrieved and observed. The species could have always been without much genetic variation.

As for souls,they are the spiritual forms of bodies. All living creatures have spiritual form. The soul is created together immediately with the body of a creature,and it gives the body its form and makes it alive. Soul originally means life or animating principle. It does not always mean the immortal human soul.

 

[anthony022071]

It is a modern problem. Any Catholic scripture scholar will tell you, even when they were originally told, the events of Genesis were not meant to be taken as a set of historical or scientific facts. That is a purely modern lens trying to read literature that was never meant to be rigidly applied as facts.

That’s not true. The Church Fathers took most,and perhaps all,of the statements in Genesis as historical facts,and the Pontifical Theological Commision upheld the literal,historical truth of the stories in Genesis. And the 4th Lateran Council affirmed that God created all things at once by his own power.

catholicorigins.com/lateran-iv-–-the-church’s-key-dogmatic-teaching-on-creation/

kolbecenter.org/the-traditional-catholic-doctrine-of-creation/

catholicapologetics.info/scripture/oldtestament/commission.htm

Individualism is a key problem. Individualism allows one to take concepts out of context from the “holos” and place one’s self, one’s understanding, as the final arbiter of things, rather than taking direction from the Church. Rather than accept various allowable possibilities, individualism demands a pat answer agreeable to one’s self.

Individualism also fails to recognize perspectives of ancient cultures, but rather insists that only the modern interpretation of words, and the modern way of using logic, apply to events that were told centuries ago. In reality, Hebrew thought was not the same as Greek thought, is not the same as modern American thought. People express themselves in many different ways, and not just linguistically.

That is a problem with protestants and liberals and modernists,but it is not a problem with Catholics who take the stories in Genesis as historically real.

 

[rossum]

A genetic bottleneck happens when a population is reduced in size,not when a species has just come into existence.

That depends on the size of the population from which the species originates. It can be very small (a single pregnant female) or it could be a large group geographically separated from others of the original species, which evolve their own way and lose inter-fertility between the two groups.

And why would a genetic bottleneck be problematic anyway? It just means that genetic variation is very limited,not that a population can’t grow.

It is not problematic, though it does increase vulnerability to diseases. However, it does leave evidence in the descendants of the small group, and humans do not show such evidence in the last 5 million years. Our minimum population was 1000 breeding pairs, though the actual figure was probably closer to 10,000 breeding pairs.

There is no way to detect with certainty if a genetic bottleneck happened millions or thousands of years ago.

Given the right conditions, we can set limits on the population size. Comparisons with Chimpanzee and Bonobo genomes help, as is the observed level of variation in the human population. If you have evidence then you are free to publish it.

That there is little genetic variation in a species does not entail that a reduction in numbers made it that way. That is just another hypothesis about the past,which cannot be retrieved and observed. The species could have always been without much genetic variation.

That is not the case with humans. We have DNA from many thousands of years ago, well back towards 70,000 years ago when the bottleneck probably happened.

rossum

 

[rossum]

And the 4th Lateran Council affirmed that God created all things at once by his own power.

Thank you for that. I am now 6,000 years old, as is every other human being. None of us were created in the last 150 years. Does that mean that nobody ever has to work and we can claim our old-age pension backdated from the moment of our conception?

That is a problem with protestants and liberals and modernists,but it is not a problem with Catholics who take the stories in Genesis as historically real.

And Genesis tells us that God did not create living organisms directly: “let the waters bring forth”, “let the earth bring forth”. Since Genesis does not describe the exact method used, then science is free to investigate the method God used. Genesis 1:1 tells us that God made the earth. Studying the earth, and its rocks, is studying God’s work, just as studying the Bible is studying God’s word. Both are, indirectly, studying God and so have equal value.

rossum