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Hope1960
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Yeah, and when they’re talking about incest, they act like that was ok.
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Gorgias
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People are living longer merely due to better medical care. The inherent lifespan of a human isn’t changing. Mortality rates due to simple illnesses (viruses, colds, etc) are down due to medicine; deaths of newborns and their mothers are down, due to better medical care; but we’re really no different than the folks were in Jesus’ time. (In fact, I’d make the case that we’re worse off, what with stronger viruses, increases in food allergies, and diseases that proceed from our diets. We just have modern medicine to prop us up…)
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buffalo
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For the second year in a row US lifespans have decreased.
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buffalo
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Pope Benedict XVI is not a macro-evolution proponent.
A Pope encouraging investigation is hardly an endorsement.
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Sarcelle
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Same here.
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twf
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I tend to think Adam and Eve predate the divergence of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, would put it back at least half a million years maybe more. The evidence suggests Neanderthals had spirituality of some sort.
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KevinK
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Yes, due to drug overdoses and suicide. Why point out this anomaly after a decades long increase?
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twf
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It’s interesting to me that many are perfectly comfortable with Adam being formed from dirt but are disgusted by the idea of Adam deriving his physical body from pre-existing animals.
A pre-human hominid seems far more noble an origin to me than a pile of dirt. It’s interesting that the Genesis account doesn’t depict God “proofing” Adam into existence. Adam is shaped from pre-existing matter. It’s a perfect allegory for evolution.
A pre-human hominid seems far more noble an origin to me than a pile of dirt. It’s interesting that the Genesis account doesn’t depict God “proofing” Adam into existence. Adam is shaped from pre-existing matter. It’s a perfect allegory for evolution.
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buffalo
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Science fiction exists, however, in the context of many sciences. What you set forth on the theories about the beginning and the end of the world in Heisenberg, Schrödinger, etc. I would designate as science fiction in the best sense: they are visions and anticipations, by which we seek to attain a true knowledge, but in fact, they are only imaginations whereby we seek to draw near to the reality. Even within the theory of evolution, a great style of science fiction exists. Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene is a classic example of science fiction. The great Jacques Monod wrote sentences that he himself would certainly have inserted in his work just as science fiction. I quote: “The emergence of tetrapod vertebrates … derives its origin from the fact that a primitive fish ‘chose’ to go and explore the land, on which, however, he was unable to move except by hopping awkwardly and thus creating, as a result of behavioral modification, the selective pressure thanks to which the sturdy limbs of tetrapods would have developed. Among the descendants of this daring explorer, of this Magellan of evolution, some can run at a speed of more than 70 miles per hour …” (quoted according to the Italian edition Chance and Necessity, Milan 2001, p. 117ff) .
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buffalo
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As another poster pointed out the biggest increases came from two reasons: sanitation and decrease in child mortality.
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buffalo
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Pope Benedict XVI
"Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”
“What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of . Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.”
"Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”
“What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of . Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.”
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twf
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Yes, and no one on this thread disagrees with the Pope Emertius’ words. He accepts, on the basis of the overwhelming scientific evidence, that biological evolution was the tool God used to bring about the multitude of life we see today, including human beings.
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buffalo
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It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason. Pope Benedict XVI
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semper_catholicus
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You’re right. It doesn’t speak of God “poofing” man into existence. It speaks of Him forming man out of the slime of the earth.
“Remember O man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return.”
“Remember O man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shall return.”
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debgab
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I wonder about something similiar; I wonder if the Nephilim mentioned in the bible as
“old men, men of renown”; could they possibly be the other people (hominids) as you mentioned?
Debbie
“old men, men of renown”; could they possibly be the other people (hominids) as you mentioned?
Debbie
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Gorgias
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We agree that this is a silly assertion that some make.
Interestingly, some say “right – taking a scientific theory and attempting to craft a pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-theological, pseudo-metaphysical worldview is patently absurd. Let the science be science, and don’t ask it to be philosophy or theology.”
On the other hand, others say “evolution is wrong because it asserts these philosophical things.”
Evolution doesn’t assert philosophy or theology – it just asserts science. Those who go overboard and make a philosophical worldview of it are missing the boat. So are those who throw the baby out with the bathwater, and jettison evolution because of some folks’ desire to make it the theory of everything.
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twf
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Sure. Still more noble than dirt. It’s still life.
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buffalo
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Wrong, wrong, wrong. Evolution is not empirical science. Evolution is philosophy and to many the secular religion.
The Magician’s Twin - CS Lewis
A powerful must see video:The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism
The Similarity Between Science and Magic
- Science as religion
- Science as credulity
- Science as power
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Gorgias
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Evolution, properly stated, makes claims about the physical world. It does not make claims about philosophy.
Now, are there folks who are taking evolution outside its boundaries and attempting to make it a philosophical system? Yes. They’re the ones who are making the error of category.
Other than that, it’s not me who’s “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Evolution is science, not philosophy. And, if your project is tilting at that windmill of philosophy, you will continue to have folks shake their heads and walk away.
p.s., scientism =/= evolution.
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