Should Christians embrace evolution ?

[buffalo]

He can choose between two possibilities.

1. Somebody has two left feet, and is on the run from fascists who hate people with two left feet.

Or

1. Somebody deceptively made it look as if somebody has two left feet.

This makes me think actually. Why don’t we ever find people fossilized with Prosauropod dinosaurs? It seems there is a vast genetic tree of organisms that change or go instinct throughout the ages before we ever get to human beings. Why is that if evolution is not true? Is God trying to deceive us because we are bad people?

Quite easy - There were very few humans in comparison to the great number of dino’s.

 

[soma]

Christians need to evolve.I hope we all become better.

 

[donsnow]

I have a bunch of hard copy bibles too. But for parallel type readings, I use e-sword on my computer. It’s a free download, and I can see verses from the DR, NAB, KJV, ESV, ISV, NJB, NWT, and RSV all at the same time. It’s easier than having a bunch of bibles open on the desk at the same time

Thank you, very much
My CPU about a 45kb/s…how long do you reckon it will take me to download e-sword?
Oh, and do I just Google ‘e-sword’ to find it?

 

[donsnow]

I must disagree. All three are material processes at work in the natural world.

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+

Point well taken.

I’m trying to drop my grudge against Charles Darwin (no attack meant on evolution, just a defense of my faith from it), so I can be forgiven, too.

 

[donsnow]

He can choose between two possibilities.

1. Somebody has two left feet, and is on the run from fascists who hate people with two left feet.

Or

1. Somebody deceptively made it look as if somebody has two left feet.

This makes me think actually. Why don’t we ever find people fossilized with Prosauropod dinosaurs? It seems there is a vast genetic tree of organisms that change or go instinct throughout the ages before we ever get to human beings. Why is that if evolution is not true? Is God trying to deceive us because we are bad people?

Hi, MindOverMatter -

Sorry I just glanced over this, earlier.

I gained an insight to the Holy Bible, that may bear on this. I read a story once, about a grandfather and his granddaughter at a train station. He was carrying her large suitcase for her. Wanting to be grown-up, the little girl complained about not being allowed to carry her own suitcase, she was around 6yo.
Her grandfather told her, that it was too heavy to carry and when she was taller, she could then carry her own suitcase.

I think that the Holy Bible, as well as being the inspired word of God, covers as little as it does, because the explanation for the rest of creation is too heavy for us to carry. And, when we get to Heaven, we’ll have the answers, then. Our God does not give His children more than they can carry.

And, as I’ve written before, I consider TOE science’s attempt to describe some, but not all, of the processes in God’s creation.

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

St. Pius X solemnly warns you so-called theistic evolutionists in the Papal Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis to examine your errors in the light evolutionism’s effect on belief:

1. To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death. The enunciation of this principle will not astonish anybody who bears in mind what the Modernists have had to say about each of these subjects. Having laid down this law of evolution, the Modernists themselves teach us how it works out. And first with regard to faith. The primitive form of faith, they tell us, was rudimentary and common to all men alike, for it had its origin in human nature and human life. Vital evolution brought with it progress, not by the accretion of new and purely adventitious forms from without, but by an increasing penetration of the religious sentiment in the conscience.

Modernists subscribe to this very tenet and are as St. Paul said, deluded:

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom
the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth,
and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
*9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of *
Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness
in them that perish; because they received not
the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie:
*12 That they all might be damned who believed *
not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
2 Thessalonians 2:11-12

Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. Romans 1:25

Evolutionism is a lie; it is promulgated by a spirit alien to the Spirit of God; it’s fruit is decay, degeneracy, utopianism, war, eugenics, irreligion, and death.

 

[StAnastasia]

Apparently, despite being a Catholic Theologian, Dr. StAnastasia does not have a DR bible.

You are correct.

 

[StAnastasia]

Evolutionism is a lie; it is promulgated by a spirit alien to the Spirit of God; it’s fruit is decay, degeneracy, utopianism, war, eugenics, irreligion, and death.

Phrases copied straight out of the Protestant YEC playbook.

 

[StAnastasia]

But you have so many colleagues, fellow professors, conference attendees and so forth. You mean they didn’t tell you the answer? Perhaps science / scientists should be more humble about what they think they know.

I’m sure cosmologists have a farily good idea of the size of the universe, measured not by spans by by lightyears.

Scientists by and large are far more humble about what they think they know than religionists puffed up by so-called “dogma.”

 

[ricmat]

Thank you, very much
My CPU about a 45kb/s…how long do you reckon it will take me to download e-sword?
Oh, and do I just Google ‘e-sword’ to find it?

This is the link to the e-sword site:

e-sword.net/downloads.html

This may take a few hours at your speed to download.

 

[ricmat]

I’m sure cosmologists have a farily good idea of the size of the universe, measured not by spans by by lightyears.

Scientists have always had a fairly good idea of the size of the universe. Even when they were wrong. Are they still wrong?

Scientists by and large are far more humble about what they think they know than religionists puffed up by so-called “dogma.”

Religionists? So-called dogma?

You seem to have lost it here.

 

[StAnastasia]

Scientists have always had a fairly good idea of the size of the universe. Even when they were wrong. Are they still wrong? .

ricmat, I don’t know what your acquaintance with science is. Let me tell you that scientific knowledge is provisional, subject to correction, refinement in accuracy, and cogency in explanation. Human knowledge about the dimensions and nature of the universe has changed dramatically in the last 2,500 years, leading us from a rather small and compact geocentric cosmos to the unbounded universe we picture today. The fact that astronomers and cosmologists do not yet have a definitive measurement of the universe is testimony to the provisional character of scientific knowledge.

StAnastasia

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

The fact that astronomers and cosmologists do not yet have a definitive measurement of the universe is testimony to the provisional character of scientific knowledge.

StAnastasia

LOL! Y’think? How about the problem of sizing an infinite universe?

2 “Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?

3 Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.
4 “ Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its** measurements**?
Surely ***you ***know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
7 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
9 When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
10 When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
11 When I said,

  ‘This far you may come, but no farther, 
  And here your proud waves must stop!’

12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It takes on form like clay under a seal,
And stands out like a garment.
15 From the wicked their light is withheld,
And the upraised arm is broken.
16 “Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Or have you walked in search of the depths?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you?
Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death?
18 Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know all this.
19 “ Where is the way to the dwelling of light?
And darkness, where is its place,
20 That you may take it to its territory,
That you may know the paths to its home?
21 Do you know it, because you were born then,
Or because the number of your days is great?
22 “Have you entered the treasury of snow,
Or have you seen the treasury of hail,
23 Which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
For the day of battle and war?
24 By what way is light diffused,
Or the east wind scattered over the earth?
25 “Who has divided a channel for the overflowing water,
Or a path for the thunderbolt,
26 To cause it to rain on a land where there is no one,
A wilderness in which there is no man;
27 To satisfy the desolate waste,
And cause to spring forth the growth of tender grass?
28 Has the rain a father?
Or who has begotten the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth?
30 The waters harden like stone,
And the surface of the deep is frozen.
31 “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the belt of Orion?
32 Can you bring out Mazzarotha] in its season?
Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?
33 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you set their dominion over the earth?
34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
That an abundance of water may cover you?
35 Can you send out lightnings, that they may go,
And say to you, ‘Here we are!’? 36 Who has put wisdom in the mind?(“http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job 38-39&version=NKJV#fen-NKJV-13830b”)**]
Or who has given understanding to the heart?

Job is the oldest of the inspired writings.

 

[NowAgnostic]

St. Pius X solemnly warns you so-called theistic evolutionists in the Papal Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis to examine your errors in the light evolutionism’s effect on belief:

Evolutionists and modernists are right and St. Pius X was wrong. As for its effect on belief - cry me a river.

Modernists subscribe to this very tenet and are as St. Paul said, deluded:

A perfect God could never willfully send a delusion. A “God” that would do such a thing is not worthy of worship but only of contempt.

 

[StAnastasia]

Evolutionists and modernists are right and St. Pius X was wrong. As for its effect on belief - cry me a river.

NowAgnostic, of what effect are you thinking? Biological evolution is by no means inimical to faith.

 

[tjm190]

NowAgnostic, of what effect are you thinking? Biological evolution is by no means inimical to faith.

The comment seemed innocent enough- Saint Pious X statement seemed to imply that those of us who accept evolution are wrong and should reexamine our belief system. Agnostic’s stance on the issue should have gone without saying.

 

[AlbertBall]

NowAgnostic, of what effect are you thinking? Biological evolution is by no means inimical to faith.

I’m my eyes it is, however i concede that is a personal position and not a statement of fact.

 

[MindOverMatter]

The comment seemed innocent enough- Saint Pious X statement seemed to imply that those of us who accept evolution are wrong and should reexamine our belief system. Agnostic’s stance on the issue should have gone without saying.

There are Popes who say differently; but what is most important is the word “seem”. For instance; when Saint Pious x speaks against evolution, is he speaking against evolution as presented by strict philosophical materialism, or evolution as represented by the scientific evidence? Anybody whom truly understands the Catholic faith or has at least a little bit of intellectual initiative will understand that the Pope is peaking against materialism and not against the idea of natural events playing a part in the development of organisms. And this fact is clarified by later Popes when they further define what is an acceptable theory of evolution and what is not. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between the two, and many people think they know what a particular Pope is saying when they don’t.

I am just spit-balling here, but perhaps you don’t understand what your talking about?

Dissident; do you care to challenge my evaluation?

 

[Abu]

Kevroy
why would He [God] give us all of this fossil and genetic evidence that leads to evolution if it wasn’t true?

The feeling that “evidence” leads to the assumed historical evolution is just that – assumptions. God gave us His Church, and reason which is far from prejudices.

The claimed mechanism for evolution – random chance and natural selection – does not exist and none is known. Further, “….the mechanism for the jump from chemistry to living organisms remains to this day, even granted intelligent design, a total mystery.” (Dr Michael Denton, ND 292-293).

There is no fossil evidence – there are no intermediate types of any kind, and for mankind from hominids, the specimens are either fully human, fully animal or fake, and there have been many fakes by those without integrity.

 

[Catholic_Johnny]

There are Popes who say differently; but what is most important is the word “seem”. For instance; when Saint Pious x speaks against evolution, is he speaking against evolution as presented by strict philosophical materialism, or evolution as represented by the scientific evidence?

Pius X is speaking against the heresy of modernism. He forcefully makes the case that the philosophical underpinning for modernism’s attack on Catholicism] is an agnosticism based on adherence to evolutionism. One may argue until blue in the face about nuances in theories of evolution that need to be considered in what Blessed Pius X is arguing against but it is quite beside the point. Its very, very clear: evolutionism is a component of a cosmology completely alien to the Spirit of God. Evolutionism demands a changing material world that engulfs, swallows and changes dogmas. This is a farcical betrayal of revealed religion and is utterly incompatible with the revelation of the Word of God.

Modernism posits a Jesus who is not divine, a human nature that does not sin, scriptures that are gratuitously changed by unscrupulous redactors, and Tradition that is based on contempory need and not eternal Truth vouchsafed by the Holy Spirit. One cannot straddle the fence; there is violent disagreement between the two cosmologies and both cannot be right. St. Pius X condemns these errors with vigor and profoundly logical arguments. If one wants to be a modernist, well. But do not suppose that a true modernist can be a true Christian.

Anybody whom truly understands the Catholic faith or has at least a little bit of intellectual initiative will understand that the Pope is peaking against materialism and not against the idea of natural events playing a part in the development of organisms. And this fact is clarified by later Popes when they further define what is an acceptable theory of evolution and what is not. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between the two, and many people think they know what a particular Pope is saying when they don’t.

I am just spit-balling here, but perhaps you don’t understand what your talking about?

Dissident; do you care to challenge my evaluation?

Sir, you accuse yourself here. The Pope is speaking (in his own words) against modernism. Modernism is based on an errant natural science that cannot be reconciled with revelation. He explains in Pascendi Dominici Gregis that the error of modernism is based on its adherence to evolution.

You also presume to speak for the Church in averring that Popes have in official teaching accepted, supported or endorsed evolutionism, theistic or otherwise. No such teaching exists. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the word evolution appears once in a comment about traditional usages of the chalice. No Catholic anywhere, at any time nor for any reason is required, compelled or encouraged in official Church teaching to accept or believe in evolution.

Yes, many people do think they know what a Pope is saying when they don’t. Comments by Popes making personal observations in a pastoral setting are not binding on any Christian. Papal Encyclicals such as Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Humani Generis address evolution frontally and far from accepting or supporting it, roundly condemn all conflict with revelation. These Encyclicals are official Church teaching, yea, the voice of Peter, and are binding upon every baptized person.

The modernist supposes that because his viewpoints have received widespread acceptance among church leaders that the Church supports evolution. The Holy Roman Catholic Church never has, can not and will not ever support evolutionism as truth. The day she would, she would sign her own death warrant.

Finally, many leaders in Israel accepted the syncretism of the Canaanite religions with Yahwism. The books of Jeremiah, Ezechiel and 1st and 2nd Kings chronicle this apostasy with much detail. That syncretism with nature worship brought decay, degeneracy, compromise, loss of faith, treachery, blasphemy and finally the wrath of the LORD when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC. The prophets have always been persecuted, ridiculed, insulted, and denounced. Today more and more Catholics are seduced by the syncretism of darwinism and Christianity. Just as ancient Jerusalem fell under the wrath of God, so also a great and terrifying judment awaits those who today adulter the Word of God.