The earth is only 6000 years old (II)

[rossum]

My main area of interest is the reality, or in scientific jargon, the possibility of two sole parents of the human species. The difficulty is how to handle the fact that natural science, by definition, is limited when it comes to human nature. In not the same way, science is also limited in forecasting backwards in time regarding the age of the earth. Obviously, Adam and Eve (Jane and John Doe) had to put their feet somewhere.

The science is enough to tell us that the population was never as low as two (or eight in a boat) between now and when we diverged from our common ancestor with the Chimpanzees. It is perfectly possible that out of that larger population only two had souls and that all living humans have those two with souls in their ancestry. The existence of Mitochondrial Eve shows this latter possibility in action; she was not the only living human at the time but all of us have her somewhere in our ancestry.

At this point, I have a split opinion regarding material evolutionary theories. It is not that I am sitting on the fence. It is that I find two fences.

Do not expect biological evolution to explain the soul; all it can explain is the development of our physical bodies.

One size does not fit all. I believe you said something similar in that results from a particular experiment had been applied to areas far beyond reasonable assumptions.

Yes, that was me. Dr Berthault did some good and interesting experiments and then extrapolated them well beyond the area where they were valid: “I have shown that can lift a 1 Kg rock therefore I will be able to lift a 1,000 Kg rock.”

In your search for scientific papers you may find Google Scholar (scholar.google.com/) and PubMed (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/) useful. Google Scholar covers everything, while PubMed concentrates on Biology and related subjects.

rossum

 

[Philipp]

I might as well not waste a cranky day. I have a thread going about the Catholic sources for the literal Adam. Consequently, that is not my quest here. My quest here has to do with the age of the earth.

PHILIPP: Since your real quest is the age of the earth, a couple of web sites exist for just that purpose. However no one on earth knows the true age accept for Biblical literalists (Usherites) who also accept that the Flood of Noah (Noe in the 1590’s Douay Old Testament) happened; and, I agree with the flood. The flood really messed up the methods for study of earth chronologies so you can accept or reject their references. In any event you will have to wait to meet your Creator to learn what the true age of the earth is in temporal time. These web sites are:

www.earthage.org (lots of data, links and references)

www.omniology.com (lots of photos, field research and references )

www.kolbecenter.org (many good articles) and why accepting Traditional Catholicism and what the church fathers and church councils have written is so important to a well rounded understanding of our faith.

**I would suggest you place these in your favorite places and when something comes up of interest you may find it there. All are of course have a bais and are presenting references that would certainly be offensive to those who support a common ancestor hypothesis and long ages. Those who disagree with the above evidences for a young age and creation AT ONCE [SIMUL in Latin] of the earth, angels and its life forms can supply you with opposing web sites. Good luck and have fun but keep the faith, you’ll need that.
**

GRANNYMH: The references I am looking for are the published research redating areas of the earth as mentioned above. My apology if you have already given the complete citations. If so, let me know about where they are on the thread. Otherwise, please help me out with actual citations. I am also wondering if bones of pre-human hominids were radiocarbon dated.

PHILIPP: **The latest challenges (By Catholics) to evolution is published in Italy, in Italian only, by the National Research Council of Italy. It may be shortly published in English. The English translation is: EVOLUTIONISM: THE DECLINE OF AN HYPOTHESIS. My physicist friend can not find any evidence that HUMAN bones have been radiocarbon dated other than the Neanderthals from several caves. The owners of bones from the hominids back to 7 M years and the apeish ones before 7 M years have been formerly so challenged as have those who have discovered other dinosaur bones containing soft tissue and collagen where none should have survived 65 M years. The aforementioned web sites should be of help in obtaining references. Also google Dr. Andrew Snelling of AIG who has done a lot of C-14 dating of fossil wood, coal and diamonds from Australia to the USA **

GRANNYMH: Is that 3,000 years B.C.? Again I would like to read the actual research papers and would appreciate your help in locating them.

PHILIPP: The range is roughly 500 to 3000 years BP (before the present) for dinosaur depictions, so roughly to 1000 BC. My favorites are dinosaurs are on the crypt of Bishop Bell in a Cathedral in England 1490 AD; a stegosaurus dinosaur from the Ta Prohm Buddhist Temple in Cambodia; one in Sapphori, Israel on a floor mosaic and a smaller version of a T-Rex on a Jewish Temple stone is Syria. I and 15 others sawed the Triceratops and Hadrosaur femur bones in half to obtain samples for C-14 dating. See www.dinosaurc-14 ages.com for photos of the “sawing party” and the Glendive Montana Dinosaur and Fossil Museum web site for their neat exhibits.

The web site for looking at photos of distinctive dinosaur depictions world-wide is Dennis Swift’s web site www.dinosaurandman.org. Swift has made many research trips to Peru, one to the Buddhist temple in Cambodia and to study the 1000’s of dinosaur depictions in Mexico. He also has wirtten one or two books on the subject regarding the defense of the the ICA stone depictions of dinosaurs of Peru. The book is fascinating and also takes the “Chariots of the Gods” book by Van Denken to task also.

 

[Philipp]

CONTINUED

GRANNYMH: Seriously, one of the objections to Adam and Eve being the sole parents of the human species is that they would not have been able to survive when dinosaurs were active. That is what interests me about dinosaur digs. But I need published research.

PHILIPP: What is the meanest looking dinosaur around? It’s T-Rex of course. A Purdue University professor of Paleontology has calculated that if a T-Rex fell to the ground while on the run the critter would fall and break its neck. What if a human would get a T-Rex’s attention after other humans had placed a large vine across its path into a jungle? Welcome to the first T-Rex hamburger joint. And how about the pet Velerceraptor chasing bunnies as noted earlier on this thread. I would never own such a critter as a pet; if it ever resorted to his wild tendencies; welcome to the first human hambureger joint. Humans are very resourceful and have been so since they were created in situ as they were with buffalos, mammoths, mastodons and saber tooth tigers. We’ve lived with lions for 1000’s of years also. Why such an issue, we made didn’t we!!! Maybe Noe’s Ark had something to do with our survival as well. Lots of arguments for Noah’s ark etc on the Internet.

GRANNYMH: What really interests me here is that there could be a different way that genes operated in pristine human nature.

PHILIPP: **Variants within the DNA then and now; but, the variants were much more pronounced in the beginning than now and that is perhaps why there are so many different kinds. For instance WHY DID BUGS GROWN WINGS TO FLY? Nature Magazine of a few days ago. As the article said, It’s all in the genes. I would disagree with their claiming it happened 400 M years ago, but to get their research printed they had to bow to the “Sacred Cow” of long ages. My reference: Monday March 29, 2010 issue of USA Today page 5D. **Blessings,
:yawn:

 

[buffalo]

There was a PBS special a few years ago on dragons. It was fascinating. It showed the dragons in art going way back.

Remember the term dinosaur is recent. Our ancestors knew them as dragons.

 

[ricmat]

Yes, that was me. Dr Berthault did some good and interesting experiments and then extrapolated them well beyond the area where they were valid: “I have shown that can lift a 1 Kg rock therefore I will be able to lift a 1,000 Kg rock.”

Wow! Just like micro-E and macro-E!!

 

[edwest2]

Thank you Ed. This should answer Grannymh’s quest for perhaps the best reference for Adam and Eve as our first parents. It leaves NO room for evolution from a common ancestor or from a group of 1000 to 3000 mating couples evolving from a group of hominids. Supposedly these ancestors were preceded by the great apes, back to a possible four legged rat like creature scurrying under the feet of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The above scenario is on the cover sheet of a brochure by the American Geological Institute, entitled ***Why Scientists Believe in EVOLUTION *** I have a copy from the fourth printing dated 1987.

But since the above brochure was printed, radiocarbon dating of dinosaur bones and other fossils have shown that those millions and even billions of year do not exist. The exact time period is not determinable by chronological studies but only 1000’s of years, NOT millions or billions.

Sedimentology and mineral research is further evidence that the sedimentary rocks were laid down rapidly including sandstone, mudstone, shale and limestone. Discovery of distinct dinosaur depictions on all sort of matricies from archaeological studies of cultures from 500 - 3000 years ago support the above research. I hope someone will someday prepare such a brochure.

Dinosaur and human footprints together has been a seething controversy since the 1970’s but now with the discovery of pristine fossil human footprint trails with dinosaurian ones under tons of rocks deposited rapidly by huge tide carrying mud and cat-scan studies of dinosaur and human footprints together me thinks that the Geological Society’s brochure needs a bit of updating — maybe with a title of “Abrupt Appearance” with Adam and Eve surrounded with both dinosaurs and mammals.

***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). *** Thank you Buffalo.

Well Philipp. We’ll see where this goes. I’ve just finished reading Signature in the Cell and there is compelling evidence that life has characteristic design features that could only have been produced by an intelligence. Also, what cannot be ignored by Catholics is that God is God. He is not God over here in the Bible, but not God in another part of the Bible. God has the power to intervene, with Jesus Christ being an example. Nothing that Jesus did can be explained by science. He used no technology. He could control the wind and walk on the waves. Scientific laws were His to bend. He could bring the dead back to life.

While science has made great strides in understanding the world around us, it should never become the whole explanation. Yet, especially recently, it defines two camps. One who sees the work of God in what was made and another that sees only mechanism. Too often, the latter turns toward a utilitarian view of his fellow human beings. Human dignity is sometimes lost. Man as mechanism places us on the same level as our ‘evolutionary cousins,’ the apes. Who neither write books or build cities or further their own knowledge of the world around them.

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

 

[edwest2]

This is a very unwise move, you are tying the truth of your religion to a particular scientific interpretation; something along the lines of “Unless the Sun goes round the Earth, my religion is false”. You are putting unnecessary obstacles between anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge and your religion. Do you really want to exclude people in that way?

Join Philipp’s new weight loss plan. No horrid exercise! No dieting!! Eat whatever you want!!! Don’t use your bathroom scales, stand on your kitchen scales instead – just watch how your weight drops to 10 Kg overnight!

Some rocks are formed quickly, other rocks are formed slowly.

Again, your total failure to provide any references limits the credence we can give to this. Where are these studies published? Where were those footprints found?

rossum

“very unwise move”? What do you mean by that? Or is this just an attempt at censorship? The unpopular idea should not matter to you. People hold lots of unwise ideas. I doubt the world will explode tomorrow if they continue to hold them.

And who is being ‘excluded’? People exclude other people all the time. I don’t associate with people who spend their nights drinking alcohol. I don’t hate them for it, I simply don’t want to get involved with that. You see?

And will you be with the others at the door to the Church to make sure each person walking in has the ‘right’ ideas?

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

 

[rossum]

Wow! Just like micro-E and macro-E!!

Except that we have observed Macro-evolution (i.e. speciation) in the lab and in the wild.

As far as I am aware no creationist has ever observed God creating a new species either in the lab or in the wild.

rossum

 

[rossum]

“very unwise move”? What do you mean by that?

It is my own inadequate paraphrase of Saint Thomas Aquinas:“In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
Insisting on a 6,000 year old Earth as the only allowed interpretation allows “Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers” and places an obstacle to anyone with any knowledge of biology, geology, physics or astronomy believing.

rossum

 

[ricmat]

Except that we have observed Macro-evolution (i.e. speciation) in the lab and in the wild.

So you observed natural selection working on random mutations to create a new species?

And you can prove that the mutations were random? That is, after all, what your theory says. And it’s the key difference between your theory and mine.

And BTW - I’m not a creationist if by that term you mean “believes that all species were created 6000 years ago exactly as they are now.”

 

[SpeakInSilence]

I have never understood why people have a problem with evolution. Evolution is extremely complex and wonderful when you have a deeper understanding of it, and many times why I was sitting in my science classes at my college I thought to myself, “How did God do this all? How did he know we would be a product of this?” Evolution is an indirect way of creation, can you not see it? Can knew we would be the product of it all, he knew we would come from years of endless development into the beings we are now. A day is like a thosuands years for God, he is not bound by our laws, and he created science.

Science is NOT evil, Darwin did not come to end the church, but through evolution it should God even MORE glory.

 

[grannymh]

It is my own inadequate paraphrase of Saint Thomas Aquinas:
“In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
Insisting on a 6,000 year old Earth as the only allowed interpretation allows “Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers” and places an obstacle to anyone with any knowledge of biology, geology, physics or astronomy believing.

rossum

As I have posted many times, the estimate of earth age is not a required Catholic belief. The required earth belief is that it and everything else in the universe is created by God. Genesis 1:1

Note: to neo-Thomists. Is there a similar passage to the one above that refers to science or nature or some such thing? This passage doesn’t indicate which kind of explanation, only that it is particular nor does it indicate if natural science is the proof?

Or is what I am remembering the words of St. Augustine? If so, how would you explain this broaden quote with appropriate examples.

 

[edwest2]

It is my own inadequate paraphrase of Saint Thomas Aquinas:“In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”
Insisting on a 6,000 year old Earth as the only allowed interpretation allows “Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers” and places an obstacle to anyone with any knowledge of biology, geology, physics or astronomy believing.

rossum

I think that is simply false. It is an appeal to fairness but ignores two key words from St. Thomas: “with certainty.” OK? That is the problem here. No matter how anyone qualifies their statements, certain concepts about biology, geology, physics and astronomy are set in concrete or carved in marble and if anyone, and I mean anyone here denies a single word about those set in stone concepts, saints, Popes, Cardinals, you name it, are brought up here. And if that doesn’t work, the poster tries to shame the dissident.

“to anyone with any knowledge” clearly defines the average educated person. This is a discussion forum, not a Vatican or other teaching authority site. Are people allowed to believe in thousands of years? They certainly are. Look it up, please. If you ask someone to acknowledge science then take the time to understand what their faith teaches as well. For Catholics, and the Catholic Church, the two are integrated. That is why saints and Popes are quoted here all the time by non-Catholics.

God bless,
Ed

---

Choose Jesus.

 

[ricmat]

I have never understood why people have a problem with evolution. Evolution is extremely complex and wonderful when you have a deeper understanding of it, and many times why I was sitting in my science classes at my college I thought to myself, “How did God do this all? How did he know we would be a product of this?” Evolution is an indirect way of creation, can you not see it? Can knew we would be the product of it all, he knew we would come from years of endless development into the beings we are now. A day is like a thosuands years for God, he is not bound by our laws, and he created science.

Science is NOT evil, Darwin did not come to end the church, but through evolution it should God even MORE glory.

Yes, we all understand that it can be an indirect way of creation.

Yes, most of us agree that God created science.

Yes, we all agree that science is not evil.

And most of us agree that we should give God glory for everything he created.

So, tell me, does God work with purpose and intent, or has complex life come about due to randomness and with God not involved?

 

[grannymh]

Yes, we all understand that it can be an indirect way of creation.

Yes, most of us agree that God created science.

Yes, we all agree that science is not evil.

And most of us agree that we should give God glory for everything he created.

So, tell me, does God work with purpose and intent, or has complex life come about due to randomness and with God not involved?

May I quickly add a comment. There are two kinds of life or living beings. One is the non-rational forms of life such as animals. The other is the rational/corporeal human being.

 

[edwest2]

I have never understood why people have a problem with evolution. Evolution is extremely complex and wonderful when you have a deeper understanding of it, and many times why I was sitting in my science classes at my college I thought to myself, “How did God do this all? How did he know we would be a product of this?” Evolution is an indirect way of creation, can you not see it? Can knew we would be the product of it all, he knew we would come from years of endless development into the beings we are now. A day is like a thosuands years for God, he is not bound by our laws, and he created science.

Science is NOT evil, Darwin did not come to end the church, but through evolution it should God even MORE glory.

“even MORE glory.” How so? To me, this is what God can do without science or technology:

Raise the dead.
Give sight to the blind.
Cleanse the lepers.
Make a withered arm whole, instantly.

Human science pales by comparison. I don’t think science is evil but I think the way it is used today makes its use evil to other people. When a Professor who denies God appears on television and states, based on the same 'mountains of evidence": “We no longer believe in the Greek or Roman gods, I’m simply adding one more.” What is he trying to do? Promote science?

He believes all of the things non-Catholics tell Catholics to believe but the only way he will get any practical use out of that knowledge is to use it to deny God. Do you see why the public – the average person – might have a reason to distrust science and scientists about this subject? Can you blame them when other scientists add their voices to promote the same message? Do you understand?

God bless,
Ed

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Choose Jesus.

 

[SpeakInSilence]

“even MORE glory.” How so? To me, this is what God can do without science or technology:

Raise the dead.
Give sight to the blind.
Cleanse the lepers.
Make a withered arm whole, instantly.

Human science pales by comparison. I don’t think science is evil but I think the way it is used today makes its use evil to other people. When a Professor who denies God appears on television and states, based on the same 'mountains of evidence": “We no longer believe in the Greek or Roman gods, I’m simply adding one more.” What is he trying to do? Promote science?

He believes all of the things non-Catholics tell Catholics to believe but the only way he will get any practical use out of that knowledge is to use it to deny God. Do you see why the public – the average person – might have a reason to distrust science and scientists about this subject? Can you blame them when other scientists add their voices to promote the same message? Do you understand?

God bless,
Ed

---

Choose Jesus.

Yes, I understand completely, but there are plently of scientist and philosophers out there that believe in that God is not separate from science.

* John M. Page, author of The Genesis Code
* Paleontologist Robert T. Bakker
* R. J. Berry, Professor of Genetics at University College London
* Microbiologist Richard G. Colling of Olivet Nazarene University, author of Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with Creator
* Geneticist Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health and director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief in which he has suggested the term BioLogos for theistic evolution. Collins is also the founder of the Biologos Foundation.
* Biologist Darrel Falk of Point Loma Nazarene University, author of Coming to Peace with Science
* Biologist Denis Lamoureux of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Canada who has co-authored with evolution critic Phillip E. Johnson Darwinism Defeated? The Johnson-Lamoureux Debate on Biological Origins (Regent College, 1999)
* Evangelical Christian and geologist Keith B. Miller of Kansas State University, who compiled an anthology Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Eerdmans, 2003)
* Kenneth R. Miller, professor of biology at Brown University, author of Finding Darwin's God (Cliff Street Books, 1999), in which he states his belief in God and argues that "evolution is the key to understanding God" (Dr. Miller has also called himself "an orthodox Catholic and an orthodox Darwinist" in the 2001 PBS special "Evolution")
* Biologist Joan Roughgarden at Stanford University is author of various books including Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist
* Paleobiologist Prof. Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University, well known for his groundbreaking work on the Burgess Shale fossils and the Cambrian explosion, and author of Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
* Biologist Richard T. Wright, emeritus professor of biology at Gordon College, Wenham, MA, author of Biology Through the Eyes of Faith Rev. Ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, ©2003)

Philosophers, theologians, and physical scientists who have supported the evolutionary creationist model include:

* Eco-theologian Fr. Thomas Berry
* Eco-theologian and evolutionary evangelist Rev. Michael Dowd
* Fr. George Coyne of the Vatican Observatory
* Astronomer Owen Gingerich
* Physicist Karl Giberson of Eastern Nazarene College, author of several books: Worlds Apart: The Unholy War between Religion and Science, Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story, The Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion, and Saving Darwin.
* Theologian-philosopher John Haught of Georgetown University
* Martinez Hewlett, co-author of the book Can You Believe in God And Evolution?
* Biochemist and theologian Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford
* Theologian-philosopher Thomas Jay Oord of Northwest Nazarene University (known for saying, "The Bible tells us how to find abundant life, not the details of how life became abundant.")
* Pope John Paul II, who is famous for praising evolutionary biology and calling its accounts of human origins "more than a hypothesis"[46]
* Ted Peters, co-author of the book Can You Believe in God And Evolution?
* Physicist and theologian Rev. John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University
* Theologian Rev. Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, author of God, Chance, and Necessity
* Theologian-philosopher Rev. Michał Heller, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.
* Theologian-philosopher catholic archbishop Józef Życiński, professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland.
* Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, University of Munich, author of "Toward a Theology of Nature."

All these men are are either great intellectual’s or scientist. Scientist whom the popular secular media would rather you not hear about. The guy Richard Dawkins described as second to Darwin, Ronald Fisher, was also a devote Christian. I have read enough about evolution to know that it would take intervention by a God such as ours to make it able to work. The greatest scientist, the greatest watchmaker, and the greatest being as set up these laws to show his glory, and when he needs to he moves outside these laws and does something amazing, like Christ. Evolution is not exactly “random” either. I like to almost say it’s an organized chaos.

 

[edwest2]

Are you familiar with Pope Leo XIII ? Have you read the encyclical Arcanum? Eve was created by God from Adam’s side. That’s not in any Biology textbook.

Catholics need to understand that God willed man into existence and that whatever process occurred, occurred infallibly.

The following is from Communion and Stewardship:

“69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).”

God is a direct causal agent. You can’t have it both ways. That is why the Biology textbook is incomplete.

God bless,
Ed

---

Choose Jesus.

 

[SpeakInSilence]

Are you familiar with Pope Leo XIII ? Have you read the encyclical Arcanum? Eve was created by God from Adam’s side. That’s not in any Biology textbook.

Catholics need to understand that God willed man into existence and that whatever process occurred, occurred infallibly.

The following is from Communion and Stewardship:

“69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).”

God is a direct causal agent. You can’t have it both ways. That is why the Biology textbook is incomplete.

God bless,
Ed

---

Choose Jesus.

I believe evolution is guided, and the randomness as people like to call it in my opinion does not exist. “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency." Is exactly what I am saying. Every organism have evolved to perfectly adopt to their environment, according to God’s will.

This site describes several ways to look at genesis, it’s interesting enough, but I’m not claiming any of the viewpoints to be fact haha…

asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/humans.htm

 

[ricmat]

I believe evolution is guided, and the randomness as people like to call it in my opinion does not exist.

But that list of people you posted above…they believe that the randomness exists, and is not guided.