The earth is only 6000 years old.

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I’ve read your links. 😃
I do not believe it -you never even offer any kind of rebuttal other than sarcasm. Other posters can judge for themselves.

However, I will end this little exchange, you can have the last word. I do not want to be suspended.
 
I do not believe it -you never even offer any kind of rebuttal other than sarcasm. Other posters can judge for themselves.

However, I will end this little exchange, you can have the last word. I do not want to be suspended.
Buffalo, I have read your links. I just don’t happen to agree with you, and not agreeing with Buffalo is hardly a crime. There is a diversity of opinion within the Catholic Church on many issues, as I’m sure you agree. We can respectfully agree to disagree, and still remain within the same church.

StAnastasia
 
I do not believe it -you never even offer any kind of rebuttal other than sarcasm. Other posters can judge for themselves.
That’s not true at all. I offer extensive responses, position statements, and thoughtful, critical appraisals. That is, after all, what dialogue is all about.
 
Young minds should not be manipulated by a system that instills a philosophical bias into the curriculum.
I have been a school teacher for 25 years. I would like you to explicate this claim, please, at least out of courtesy to one (me) who actually teaches for a living.

While you do this, I will read everything on the link you provided above. I will get back to that.

I await your explication of how young minds are being “manipulated” by a “bias” into a curriculum.
 
Buffalo, I have read your links. I just don’t happen to agree with you, and not agreeing with Buffalo is hardly a crime. There is a diversity of opinion within the Catholic Church on many issues, as I’m sure you agree. We can respectfully agree to disagree, and still remain within the same church.

StAnastasia
That is a heterodox admission.

You and I both know that there are certain -non-negotiable (theologically certain) areas where we tangle. I reference the constant teaching and beliefs of the Church as cited by the Magisterium. There are areas that if you take a heretical position you have already separated yourself from the Body of Christ. You also know you take these positions and are pushing for the Church at large to accept them hoping to gain the force of custom. It isn’t going to work.

The Church does not support the cafeteria approach.
 
To larkin31, I invite you and everyone else to read the following article by a scientist who is a member of the NAS:

uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/philip-skell-revisited/

Do you know how modern drug discovery is done? It’s a massive trial and error process. The same trial and error process is going on right now with DNA knock out experiments. Basically, they knock out a little sequence and see what happens: Something (write that down), Nothing (write that down), Death of the organism (write that down).

Instead of a sense of wonder, most of what I see here is a political campaign to get me to vote the “right” way so that an agenda can move forward, as opposed to real knowledge.
I read the entire linked page.

Here, toward the end, is Skell’s conclusion: None of this demonstrates that Darwinism is false. It does, however, mean that the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.

I have no problem with this. The only thing that I would say is that it addresses a point mostly irrelevant to this debate about the age of the earth and responding to the measurements being made from various disciplines (none of them ‘evolutionary’ per se) with various instruments and calculations.

Your claim about manipulating young minds with a biased curriculum?
 
Mr Skeptic, do you have any insider knowledge as to why the discussion of evolution has officially been banned, and why evolution threads keep being shut off? There are other topics you mention that are probably conducive to an even greater flow of vitriol. I keep getting dire warnings that if I don’t contribute to Catholic Answers the forums will be shut down. But I have no intention of contributing to a group that suppresses or threatens to suppress the discussion of solid science.

StAnastasia
“insider knowledge”? 😃 I’m brand new here. I have no idea why the topics of evolution and atheism have been banned in the Apologetics forum. I’m not even sure if the ban is site-wide or just in the Apologetics forum. In either case, the topic of the age of the earth is not evolution or atheism. Its a geological and cosmological topic.
 
“insider knowledge”? 😃 I’m brand new here. I have no idea why the topics of evolution and atheism have been banned in the Apologetics forum. I’m not even sure if the ban is site-wide or just in the Apologetics forum. In either case, the topic of the age of the earth is not evolution or atheism. Its a geological and cosmological topic.
In its purity. Can you support this claim? - Geology and cosmology are totally devoid of any influence of ideology.
 
I have been a school teacher for 25 years. I would like you to explicate this claim, please, at least out of courtesy to one (me) who actually teaches for a living.

While you do this, I will read everything on the link you provided above. I will get back to that.

I await your explication of how young minds are being “manipulated” by a “bias” into a curriculum.
With all due respect. When I was taught science, I had every confidence that the information I was getting was accurate. It was my favorite subject. Today, it has become a political tool, and that concerns and saddens me. But to answer your question:
I did a little research and I think we can prove quite easily that mainstream evolution does not support the evidence of intelligent design in nature at all. Evolution is defined as a blind, undirected process built mainly on randomness. There is no plan or purpose for evolution – this contradicts the claim that “everything is designed” and that there is design to be found in nature.

We can see this in current biology textbooks:

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)
This blatant philosophical poisoning of the well concerns me.

God bless,
Ed
 
I have no idea why the topics of evolution and atheism have been banned in the Apologetics forum.
I know, it’s odd. Among the non-theists or inquirers I meet, one of the most frequently expressed prejudices against the Church is that they are a bunch of anti-evolutionists." I always try to disabuse them of this false notion, and point to the great work in evolutionary biology done by Catholics and other Christians. Even atheism should be discussed in these forums, since whether or no God exists is a topic of key significance to inquirer into our faith.
 
I know, it’s odd. Among the non-theists or inquirers I meet, one of the most frequently expressed prejudices against the Church is that they are a bunch of anti-evolutionists." I always try to disabuse them of this false notion, and point to the great work in evolutionary biology done by Catholics and other Christians. Even atheism should be discussed in these forums, since whether or no God exists is a topic of key significance to inquirer into our faith.
Every one in the Church should be an avid anti-materialist evolutionist.

I know of no Catholic who is anti-micro-evolutionist.
 
Every one in the Church should be an avid anti-materialist evolutionist. I know of no Catholic who is anti-micro-evolutionist.
Ahhh, more buffalo dishonesty, by sleight-of-hand trying to create a false dichotomy!
 
I know, it’s odd. Among the non-theists or inquirers I meet, one of the most frequently expressed prejudices against the Church is that they are a bunch of anti-evolutionists." I always try to disabuse them of this false notion, and point to the great work in evolutionary biology done by Catholics and other Christians. Even atheism should be discussed in these forums, since whether or no God exists is a topic of key significance to inquirer into our faith.
I didn’t mean to discuss forum rules here. That wasn’t my intention.

Life forms occurred almost a billion years after the planet formed. All I’m saying is - evolution and the age of the earth, are two, completely different topics.
 
I know, it’s odd. Among the non-theists or inquirers I meet, one of the most frequently expressed prejudices against the Church is that they are a bunch of anti-evolutionists." I always try to disabuse them of this false notion, and point to the great work in evolutionary biology done by Catholics and other Christians. Even atheism should be discussed in these forums, since whether or no God exists is a topic of key significance to inquirer into our faith.
Science is the new circumcision? A requirement for entering the House of God? Others are afraid to enter because science prevents them? How will they believe the Body and Blood?

God bless,
Ed
 
I didn’t mean to discuss forum rules here. That wasn’t my intention.

Life forms occurred almost a billion years after the planet formed. All I’m saying is - evolution and the age of the earth, are two, completely different topics.
They are intimately connected. If the age of the earth could be shown to be much less than the required long ages currently established for evolutionary development, then that would be a very serious problem.

God bless,
Ed
 
They are intimately connected. If the age of the earth could be shown to be much less than the required long ages currently established for evolutionary development, then that would be a very serious problem.

God bless,
Ed
The major problem I see is that some people are unable to make the distinction between one supporting the other, and, the two being separate lines of inquiry and separate topics.
 
With all due respect. When I was taught science, I had every confidence that the information I was getting was accurate. It was my favorite subject. Today, it has become a political tool, and that concerns and saddens me. But to answer your question:

This blatant philosophical poisoning of the well concerns me.
The last quote bothers me, too. But that is it. And are these quotes all that you mean? Do you even have any idea how broadly these texts are currently used?

And is your point that the description of natural selection as “purposeless” and “undirected” is inaccurate or that it is counter to your belief in a divine purpose?
 
I don’t know how to use the quote function to keep quotes within quotes.
 
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