Science over the Bible

[Stephen_says]

You are the darlingest

hahahaha!

 

[BartholomewB]

I’ve never heard that it will contract again.

Back in the mid-twentieth century, that was one hypothesis among several. I have an idea it’s still around, but I’m not sure about that.

 

[ReaderT]

The Church teaches there was, indeed, a first couple. You can work really hard and fit this with evolutionary theory but…

The human species is apparently 200,000 years old, but there’s good evidence to suggest that some fundamental change may have occurred roughly 5000 - 7000 years ago with impacts on our analytical skills.

One piece of evidence is symbolically-complex written language. For the first 195,000 years, there is no record of human writing anywhere. But starting 5,000 years ago, writing is independently created in four different places: Egypt, Sumeria, China, and (a little later) Mesoamerica. If humans always had the same brain capacity, one wonders why we didn’t see writing sprouting up all over the place in the earlier 195k years.

(Just a thought.)

 

[OddBird]

The Church teaches there was, indeed, a first couple. You can work really hard and fit this with evolutionary theory but…

I don’t really see a “but”.

As far as I’m aware, the Church firmly affirms the creation by God of the soul of said first parents (and all subsequent human beings). She doesn’t make pronouncements on how their bodies came to be, and leaves open the possibility that they’re the result of an evolutionary process.

One of the general audiences of pope John Paul II sums it up for me (original text here) :

[…] from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution. But it must be added that this hypothesis proposes only a probability, not a scientific certainty. However, the doctrine of faith invariably affirms that man’s spiritual soul is created directly by God. According to the hypothesis mentioned, it is possible that the human body, following the order impressed by the Creator on the energies of life, could have been gradually prepared in the forms of antecedent living beings. However, the human soul, on which man’s humanity definitively depends, cannot emerge from matter, since the soul is of a spiritual nature.

(Bolding mine.)

 

[GKMotley]

Try a Carolina Reaper. Or maybe a Dragon’s Breath.

 

[Gorgias]

I hate to break it to this community, but there is scientific evidence against God.

I thought I was clever when I was 14, too…

(oh, wait… I still think I’m clever…! )

 

[FiveLinden]

] from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the faith, there are no difficulties in explaining the origin of man in regard to the body, by means of the theory of evolution. But it must be added that this hypothesis proposes only a probability, not a scientific certainty.

I know the Pope is not believed to be infallible on matters of science. This is an example. He uses the word ‘hypothesis’ and ‘theory’ to mean the same thing. Evolution is actually a fact and long ago ceased to have any element of ‘hypothesis’ about it. The theory is the theory of how evolution occurs, not that it occurs.