Science & Religion

[SGWessells]

I think there is a third option - IDvolution - that is:

IDvolution - God “breathed” the super language of DNA into the “kinds” in the creative act.

This accounts for the diversity of life we see. The core makeup shared by all living things have the necessary complex information built in that facilitates rapid and responsive adaptation of features and variation while being able to preserve the “kind” that they began as. Life has been created with the creativity built in ready to respond to triggering events.
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on Earth have the same core, it is virtually certain that living organisms have been thought of AT ONCE by the One and the same Creator endowed with the super language we know as DNA that switched on the formation of the various kinds, the cattle, the swimming creatures, the flying creatures, etc… in a pristine harmonious state and superb adaptability and responsiveness to their environment for the purpose of populating the earth that became subject to the ravages of corruption by the sin of one man (deleterious mutations).
IDvolution considers the latest science and is consistent with the continuous teaching of the Church.

Consider some imagery: God is an artist, the universe is His canvas, and He paints beauty, which comes to life.

You left out a few details, such as the vestiges of previous ancestors, the extinct species, the decaying DNA, the billions of years, the transitional forms exactly where they should be in the geological strata worldwide if current species had evolved from ancestral ones as evolution says, the anatomical features that show descent from earlier forms, the lack of any recognizably scientific definition of “kinds”, the evolutionary processes observed today, like bacteria adapting to antibiotics faster than scientists can invent new ones, the…but what’s the point of going on. You know about this stuff, but you are so entranced by your pretty picture that you can’t give it up. I can understand that. I’m a painter myself.

 

[SGWessells]

As we learned from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it depends on whether we are speaking about European or African angels.

LOL!! But they’d better know the capital of Abyssinia.

 

[Elizabeth502]

By an amazing coincidence, I have just discovered and translated the Bible of the Ants, snip… random irrelevant references to Scripture…]

It’s clear that you are not interested in a genuine debate, but rather in an unseemingly and condescending put-down. Like two other posters on this thread, rather than respond directly to the concepts being discussed by your opposition, your undignified “debating technique” is to categorize, patronize, and name-call in a very childish tone and without regard to the knowlege base of the poster, let alone the content of the specific post. You merely reduce the concepts to a kindergarten distortion, and proceed to ridicule the distortion.

Not once in the post you quoted did I refer specifically to Genesis as the basis of my statement. (The term “blessed” I used as an illustration, since scripture is a reflection of how the ancient Israelites perceived their relationship to their God and the relationship of all of creation to God.) And the title of this thread is Science and Religion. To merely mock, stereotype and caricature anyone whose intellectual background you seem (given your responses) not interested in understanding says more about your (lack of ) respect for others than your grasp of the basis of the concept. The Catholic understanding of the hierarchical position of mankind in creation is hardly based solely on Genesis.

Here’s a thought: If you want an adult conversation, assume that your debaters are adults and treat them like the equals they in fact are. Oh wait, that’s right, I forgot: Perhaps you believe you have evolved already beyond the rest of us mere humans?

From Forum Rules:

Posters are expected to treat each other as equals with equal expectations of each other in terms of research, logic, challenges, and portrayal of Catholic teaching.

If you aren’t going to go into the discussion with the resolution that you could just possibly have your view broadened, you may as well not go into it.

Members are not allowed to be disrespectful of anyone’s faith or religion, whether it is Catholicism or not.

 

[SGWessells]

Lui, I don’t place the existence of God on a probability footing as you seemed to in the last post. Doing so has interesting consequences for theism, and that could be an interesting discussion for another thread.

In response to the above, what I’ve found amusing in participating in CAF and in combating YECism around the world, is the tendency of YECs to take every dispute internal to evolutionary biology, or every discovery that challenges an established time line, as license to say, “See, evolutionists can’t agree, so this proves the earth is only 6,000 years old and that Noah’s Flood happened after all!”

StAnastasia

In addition, their own arguments contradict each other. They say radiometric dating is inaccurate, then when proven wrong, they answer, yes, but that’s just what we expected. They say we can’t determine the age of the earth by scientific evidence, then trot out a whole list of scientific evidence to prove a young earth (none of which is accurate).When you disprove this, they say no matter what the age of the earth, there’s still not enough time for evolution. The fact is that no amount of evidence will convince them because their worldview is not based on evidence to begin with; it is based on an immovable wall of divine revelation against which the waves of evidence beat in vain.

 

[SGWessells]

And rightly so. Only the Catechism of the Church of the One True Elephant (3224 AG Edition) contains the true word of Ganesh. Non-believers will be banished to the land of the Ivory Poachers!

rossum

LOL. But there’s the New Reformed Church of Pachydermia, headquartered in Tuskarora, which teaches that everyone can interpret the Book of Elephantiasis on their own.

 

[SGWessells]

I’m sorry, Lui – I quoted from the wrong post. I meant to quote from your post # 16214. “I believe there may be a god but the Christian version seems very unlikely.”

When you place it on the basis of God being likely or unlikely, it seems like you are looking at it probabilistically. I’m just not sure how you would evaluate the likelihood or unlikelihood of God existing.

StAnastasia

Hey, that was my post. (That’s okay, I’ve done the same thing. Besides, Lui quoted me).

I evaluate that likelihood based on four things: first, the discord between the description of God in the Bible and his behavior described therein; second, what seems to me to be the incoherence of some attributes commonly described as his, for example, being outside time and seeing all things simultaneously, yet making prophecies, regretting his actions, and promising conditionally. Third, the fact that he cannot seem to make a revelation we can all understand, which seems to argue against his design of human nature and infinite wisdom. Fourth, the incompatibility of God as defined with the amount of natural evil in the world, including catastrophe and disease. I also find it incongruous that a being so often described as mysterious and infinitely beyond our comprehension should act so often in so human a fashion (which is a subset of reason one), and yet we claim to know in such intimate detail his thoughts, motives, rules, desires, and purposes. Being able to make up alleged reasons why we know God is good despite the misery of the world, and will make it right somehow, yet also to take refuge behind his mysteriousness whenever we can’t explain a contradiction, seems suspiciously convenient.

 

[SGWessells]

Point one - the human experience that is commonly referred to as a spiritual feeling, exists. Scientifically. People can inform you what the experience feels like. They are feeling something.

Just “feeling something” isn’t scientific. Science actually hooked up a group of Franciscan nuns and a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks to devices that measured brain activity, and when the groups reached stated they identified as “spiritual,” found that the same areas of the brain, those that give us our sense of being separate selves in the universe, were shut down, thus accounting for the feeling of exalted oneness reported by people in many different religious traditions.
Now it may be that this is all there is to it; or maybe some external spiritual force communicates with us by manipulating our brains like that. If the latter, there is no way we can detect it, so it will never be a scientific theory, only a religious supposition.

to say ‘there is no God’ is stupid. Even if I didn’t Believe in a God there is absolutely no way on earth I could prove there wasn’t. I could give many reasons why there MIGHT not be, but I couldn’t disprove it. The truth is, rationally, we don’t know. Therefore it is just as dumb to believe there isn’t a God as it is to believe in one.

Agreed. That’s why I am not an atheist either. Though I wouldn’t use the word “dumb.” I’d say something like “unsupported” to be more civil.

Human beings are not rational machines. We are capable of the irrational. And it is that very capability, imagination, irrationality, the subconscious, that make us creative, inventive, that made us a successful species. try to rationalise and hammer everything down to the science and what do you find when you get there? Particles? Look further yet and what do you find? Smaller and smaller and smaller particles.

Science is there to tell us how something works and why. But it cannot, and should not, ever attempt to tell us what it MEANS.

Why not? Science rewards and even requires as much creativity and intuition as art or poetry. Many scientific realizations arise out of a prepared subconscious, as in the case of Darwin’s colleague Alfred Wallace, to whom the theory of natural selection came in a malarial delirium. (He later got duped into mediums and table-rapping, which may explain a lot). Other scientists say that solutions don’t always come at the end of a laborious chain of reasoning. But where science differs from other creative fields, and the reason it adds to our knowledge and abilities where others do not, is that it insists on experimental verification. Thus we can dream, symbolize, imagine…but we can also know, and build on our knowledge to know more. That is how we are writing to each other instantaneously across the Atlantic Ocean instead of sending letters by ship which we would read weeks later, if at all.

And the reason you do not miss the comfort of your religion is because you have replaced the certainty of divinity with the certainty of scientific truth. You still are requiring a firm truth to shield you from uncertainty. You just exchanged one form of it for another. In truth, as Jesus himself said, ‘what is truth’. You don’t know it, and I don’t, we just believe.

Speak for yourself. I do not “believe” that gravity bends light, or that entropy in a closed system must increase across the total system. I don’t believe in electricity; I turn on the light, and there it is. If it doesn’t come on, I don’t pray, because I know that if I did, it would make no difference. Instead, I change the light bulb. If that doesn’t work, I make sure I paid my electric bill. If I have, I call an electrician.

 

[SGWessells]

It’s clear that you are not interested in a genuine debate, but rather in an unseemingly and condescending put-down. Like two other posters on this thread, rather than respond directly to the concepts being discussed by your opposition, your undignified “debating technique” is to categorize, patronize, and name-call in a very childish tone and without regard to the knowlege base of the poster, let alone the content of the specific post. You merely reduce the concepts to a kindergarten distortion, and proceed to ridicule the distortion.

Not once in the post you quoted did I refer specifically to Genesis as the basis of my statement. (The term “blessed” I used as an illustration, since scripture is a reflection of how the ancient Israelites perceived their relationship to their God and the relationship of all of creation to God.) And the title of this thread is Science and Religion. To merely mock, stereotype and caricature anyone whose intellectual background you seem (given your responses) not interested in understanding says more about your (lack of ) respect for others than your grasp of the basis of the concept. The Catholic understanding of the hierarchical position of mankind in creation is hardly based solely on Genesis.

Here’s a thought: If you want an adult conversation, assume that your debaters are adults and treat them like the equals they in fact are. Oh wait, that’s right, I forgot: Perhaps you believe you have evolved already beyond the rest of us mere humans?

From Forum Rules:

I beg your pardon for offending you. I was attempting a parody in the style of Mark Twain, which was obviously hubris on my part (and duly punished by the avenging furies), but was only trying to make a point. Just as every ethnic group in history seems, until perhaps very recently, to regard itself as the summit of humanity, there seems to be a similar tendency across the species as a whole. The Chinese used to refer to themselves as “the people.” Other people didn’t count. The Greeks called non-greeks “barbarians”, with a similar connotation; Christians called members of the ancient Greek and Roman polytheisms “pagans” (as soon as it was safe to do so), meaning what Mencken would have called backwoods bozos. We like to think of ourselves as the apple of God’s eye, which is very flattering, but obviously so important to many people that challenging it immediately raises hackles and shuts off discussion. So I’ll go lick my wounds now.
<…slinks off whimpering, locks his door, and hides under the covers…>

 

[epiphany08]

It’s clear that you are not interested in a genuine debate, but rather in an unseemingly and condescending put-down. Like two other posters on this thread, rather than respond directly to the concepts being discussed by your opposition, your undignified “debating technique” is to categorize, patronize, and name-call in a very childish tone and without regard to the knowlege base of the poster, let alone the content of the specific post. You merely reduce the concepts to a kindergarten distortion, and proceed to ridicule the distortion.

Not once in the post you quoted did I refer specifically to Genesis as the basis of my statement. (The term “blessed” I used as an illustration, since scripture is a reflection of how the ancient Israelites perceived their relationship to their God and the relationship of all of creation to God.) And the title of this thread is Science and Religion. To merely mock, stereotype and caricature anyone whose intellectual background you seem (given your responses) not interested in understanding says more about your (lack of ) respect for others than your grasp of the basis of the concept. The Catholic understanding of the hierarchical position of mankind in creation is hardly based solely on Genesis.

Here’s a thought: If you want an adult conversation, assume that your debaters are adults and treat them like the equals they in fact are. Oh wait, that’s right, I forgot: Perhaps you believe you have evolved already beyond the rest of us mere humans?

There was a small town surrounded by mountains. None of the towns citizens have dared to cross the mountains to see what is beyond. One day a man from the town decided to travel across the mountain. For 10 years he was gone. On the 11th year he trekked his way back. When greeted by his old friends, they asked him, “What did you see?” The man said, “I saw water that filled the earth as far as the eye can see. There were creatures both dwelling withing the water and walking in the air.” His friends laughed at him and said, “Poor man, you have been gone for so long that you have become delusional.” The traveler’s reply was “No, you are the poor man, for you have yet to open your eyes.”

 

[StAnastasia]

Hey, that was my post. (That’s okay, I’ve done the same thing. Besides, Lui quoted me).

I evaluate that likelihood based on four things: first, the discord between the description of God in the Bible and his behavior described therein; second, what seems to me to be the incoherence of some attributes commonly described as his, for example, being outside time and seeing all things simultaneously, yet making prophecies, regretting his actions, and promising conditionally. Third, the fact that he cannot seem to make a revelation we can all understand, which seems to argue against his design of human nature and infinite wisdom. Fourth, the incompatibility of God as defined with the amount of natural evil in the world, including catastrophe and disease. I also find it incongruous that a being so often described as mysterious and infinitely beyond our comprehension should act so often in so human a fashion (which is a subset of reason one), and yet we claim to know in such intimate detail his thoughts, motives, rules, desires, and purposes. Being able to make up alleged reasons why we know God is good despite the misery of the world, and will make it right somehow, yet also to take refuge behind his mysteriousness whenever we can’t explain a contradiction, seems suspiciously convenient.

SGWessells, I thank God for your sense of humor, even if you yourself would not attribute it to God!

The reason I said what I did about probability is that in the course of research for a book I discovered a curious episode in seventeenth-century English Natural theology. Whereas natural theology before this had argued for the “existence and attributes of God” on a positive or absolute basis, in one period of that century a few theologians began to argue that God’s existence was more probable than his non-existence. In other words, they took the question out of the positive realm, and situated it in the realm of probability. Of course, once you have it on that footing, it’s only a small step to the alternative conclusion that God’s non-existence is more probable than his existence.

StAnastasia

 

[tonyrey]

Of course, once you have it on that footing, it’s only a small step to the alternative conclusion that God’s non-existence is more probable than his existence.

How would you justify that conclusion?

 

[tonyrey]

Neurotheology, also known as spiritual neuroscience, is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology

Do you explain your “reasoning” as the result of correlations of neural phenomena?*
As I said to StA, that was a quote from Wikipedia. I’ve not read up on it since it probably means fighting through atheists saying it proves God is all in the mind and religionists saying it proves God designed us to know Him, while all I’d be interested in is the science without the interpretations.

In other words you leave it as an open question…

 

[tonyrey]

Precisely. Either there is a fundamental demarcation between man and other animals, which allows him, through grace, to transcend his nature by sharing initimately with the divine, or there is not. If man does not signal a quantum leap from the rest of creation, then even his free will, moral responsibility, human rights are not particularly special and are subject to reduction and rationalization by cultural anthropologists as mere socialization tools (reactions) to ensure adjustment for the species group.

Thereby undermining the rational origin and foundation of all their conclusions!

 

[tonyrey]

Much ado about nothing?

Here’s the problem - by saying suffering in animals is evil except when caused by predators, you appear to be advocating a subjective utilitarianism, but that would contradict what you started off with (I think), that good and evil are objective. I’m confused by the bald claims sans any reasoning.

I have not stated that suffering in animals is evil except when caused by predators.

 

[grannymh]

I believe God called the universe into existence. Whether this creatio ex nihilio occurred 13.7 billion years ago or earlier, or whether we need to look to preconditions of the Big Bang is immaterial. However it came about, creation is ontologically dependent upon the God who created it.

I believe that God worked through the secondary causes of astronomical chance and of evolution by natural selection to call into being a moral and spiritual response to God’s creative generosity. On our planet the being that evolved to offer this moral and spiritual response was a mammal, in particular a primate. Perhaps elsewhere in the universe – where conditions and contingencies are different – God called forth some other type of being, perhaps a large-brained marsupial or a bipedal reptile. As the “imago Dei” humans do not reflect a particular physiognomy of God, but rather attributes such as moral and spiritual awareness and the possibility of living in graced love.

From the theological perspective, humans as *imago Dei *embody the moral and spiritual response called forth by God from creation. The Incarnation is the supreme terrestrial expression of this response: in the person of Jesus, God assumed the quarks of the Big Bang, the dust of supernovae explosions, the organic molecules of dinosaurs and mammals, and the long history of the primate genome. In an evolutionary paraphrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, God assumes creation by becoming incarnate at its heart in a human person, Jesus Christ. Karl Rahner noted the significance of this affirmation:
The point at which God in a final self-communication irrevocably and definitively lays hold on the totality of the reality created by him is characterized not as spirit but as flesh. It is this which authorizes the Christian to integrate the history of salvation into the history of the cosmos.

Indeed, in Catholic perspective creation is necessarily the domain of God’s redemptive work, capable of bearing the incarnation and of being transfigured in turn by that creation. Jesus unites in his person the Godhead and the evolutionary history of the cosmos.

StAnastasia

Gentle Readers,

Please note that the following comments are not, I repeat are not, directed to the poster herself. It is assumed that the poster is speaking from her deep love of God as Creator. The comments are solely directed to the public expression of ideas as encouraged by CAF.

On the other hand, 21st century Catholics need to be aware that this type of
verbiage is also used as part of a theological movement to change the Catholic Church. These good words are legitimate and sincere. Do enjoy them.

However, it is important to point out that at least one sentence is very similar, sad to say, to a movement which denies some of the theological truths in Catholicism.

For example. In the midst of good thoughts, there is this sentence: “I believe that God worked through the secondary causes of astronomical chance and** of evolution by natural selection** to call into being a moral and spiritual response to God’s creative generosity.” Emphasis mine.

21st century Catholics need to be updated that the phrase “evolution by natural selection” has changed meanings.

In the old days, Catholics looked at evolution theories as pertaining to animals, plants, bacteria, etc. and perhaps having an influence on the development of the modern human anatomy. This is proper since human nature was created by God to unite b*oth *the material *and *the spiritual worlds in one single nature.

Today, this innocent looking phrase “evolution by natural selection” refers to the material development of humans which excludes the spiritual soul. It also knocks out the unity of humanity insured by descent from two sole human parents. In addition, this contemporary evolution theory claims that the idea of right and wrong emerged as one or another evolving being – belonging to a 10,000 population of developing anatomies spread over x amount of years – became aware that he or she could think. Obviously, this is intended to reduce the concept of Original Sin to a group decision as to what will benefit themselves.

Again, I do not evaluate the position of the poster. I am evaluating public publication of material which happens to contain at least one sentence representative of the modernist, secular theology popular today. I use the word secular because this kind of theology is outside the Catholic Church.

 

[tonyrey]

Today, this innocent looking phrase “evolution by natural selection” refers to the material devopment of humans which excludes the spiritual soul.

It is certainly important to specify whether natural selection excludes rational direction by God. Fortuitous combinations of molecules and **random **mutations of genes are an inadequate explanation of the development of highly advanced forms of life.

 

[You]

…
In response to the above, what I’ve found amusing in participating in CAF and in combating YECism around the world, is the tendency of YECs to take every dispute internal to evolutionary biology, or every discovery that challenges an established time line, as license to say, “See, evolutionists can’t agree, so this proves the earth is only 6,000 years old and that Noah’s Flood happened after all!”

StAnastasia

What do you mean, Noahs Flood did not happen?
Every bit of land on earths globe was covered by water at some stage or another. That is modern geological fact.

 

[inocente]

Today, this innocent looking phrase “evolution by natural selection” refers to the material development of humans which excludes the spiritual soul.

But that is the theory of evolution. Here’s why I think trying to have it tiptoe around the soul plays into the hands of the hard-line atheist.

The theory says that all our basic traits and behaviors give us or at least gave one of our ancestor species a survival advantage, and this of course must include our capacity for spiritual belief. The hard-line atheist argues this capacity has passed its sell-by date and must be suppressed for the good of us all, but she says so without any evidence that we’d be better off, or even that most people could suppress it. It’s a fundamental part of human nature after all, and for many of us part of what makes life worth living.

So from an evolutionary angle the hard-line atheist is playing with our future survival on no more than a dangerous hunch, and needs to demonstrate that all religion works against our survival and that it must and can be suppressed. She hasn’t a got a hope imho. All she has is the strange notion that we must at all costs be rational on her terms, while the vanilla theory of evolution places science squarely against her, which it can’t do if you mess with it.

 

[inocente]

It is certainly important to specify whether natural selection excludes rational direction by God. Fortuitous combinations of molecules and **random **mutations of genes are an inadequate explanation of the development of highly advanced forms of life.

On the other hand if God designed the physical law properly in the first place He wouldn’t need to tinker around to produce His favored outcome, and would then be all the more almighty, an argument apparently made by Thomas Aquinas - catholic.com/magazine/articles/aquinas-vs-intelligent-design

 

[tonyrey]

Today, this innocent looking phrase “evolution by natural selection” refers to the material devopment of humans which excludes the spiritual soul.

As for** persons** it baffles me how anyone in their right mind can attribute us to the mindless activity of purposeless particles which haven’t the foggiest notion of what they are doing…

The only “explanation” is that we too are mindless and only imagine we can understand anything…