Theistic Evolution?

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Postmodern

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I understand it abstractly, but I can’t help feeling the Darwinism does indeed “kill God”. I don’t like such an idea, but it seems like modern science continually erodes theism, God has less and less rome to act.

Any suggustions?
 
im not really sure what your question is. Are you asking if theistic evolution erodes God’s sovereignty? What may seem imperceptibly chaotic to us does not mean it actually is.

You can frame evolution like this, if there are two truths and you think one contradicts the other there are two choices:
  1. One of the truths is actually false
  2. Your understanding of one or both truths is incorrect.
 
From our earliest days as sentient beings we have asked the question why and how. When there was no science it was easy to ascribe most everyting to God. God caused the thunder, God caused this drought, etc. As we began to learn more, we discovered rational explanations for these events as a result of natural phenomena.

But science stops at the door to why any of it happened, or how it could have begun as a first cause. God is first Cause. It is not that God keeps getting reduced so much as that we simply plugged in God erroneously wherever we couldn’t explain something.

There is no incompatibility between God and science, he created the circumstances under which we eventually could claim science as a discipline. The fact that God apparently set up certain laws and then allowed those laws to function, thus creating both the universe, and ultimately us, is but his way of going about it. God has never changed, we just have learned more about how he created.
 
Postmodern said:
I understand it abstractly, but I can’t help feeling the Darwinism does indeed “kill God”. I don’t like such an idea, but it seems like modern science continually erodes theism, God has less and less rome to act.

Any suggustions?
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Theistic Evolution is just fine. Genesis teaches it.

Darwin’s Evolution has its limitations … and doesn’t put God in control thereof.
 
Darwin’s evolution is scientific, and hence has limitations. Science cannot talk about the supernatural.

Theistic evolution is a religious belief, in which one accepts the way God created the diversity of living things.
 
Do you mean by ‘theistic evolution’ the idea that theism evolved slowly over time and was not the dominant Jewish belief until the time of David or perhaps even as late as Isaiah?

BTW, I don’t think this theory of an evolving conceptualization of God is true, I just wanted to know if this is what you meant.
 
Hmmm… no. “Theistic evolution” is a religious belief, that God created the diversity of life by evolutionary processes.
 
Postmodern said:
I understand it abstractly, but I can’t help feeling the Darwinism does indeed “kill God”. I don’t like such an idea, but it seems like modern science continually erodes theism, God has less and less rome to act.

Any suggustions?
Click to expand...
As someone who once went through this - I suggest you pay careful attention to what science teaches, what someone says science teaches, and the distinctions between philosophy/theology and science.

Evolution (“Darwinism” always has so much baggage attached to it) doesn’t ‘kill’ God in any way. From a theistic perspective, evolution is just one more creative tool in God’s arsenal - just as artificial selection was long a creative tool available to humanity (Farming, breeding dogs, etc) long in advance of evolutionary theory.

What does tend to happen is, people (usually someone with an axe to grind) will say ‘Ha, now that scientific research has illustrated these material causes, it proves God is never involved!’ The problem is, the moment they say that is the moment they’re out of the ring of science and into philosophy - but they attempt to carry the authority (as in the repeatability, the objectivity) of science with their philosophical claim. The conflation between the two is one of the most problematic modern intellectual developments.
 
The Church clearly teaches that God was involved in Creation. The textbook explanation of chance and necessity is insufficient. I think it’s time Catholics realized there is no separation in the final answer: God guided it all, literally.

The problem, recently, is that the theory of evolution is isolated from any contact with God. This is argued, correctly, as being a limitation of science. But, for Catholics, the complete answer includes God’s work, not just as an initiator but as the guide. God arranged for all processes to occur according to His will.

Without this critical piece of real information, silent science is simply a tool that describes a process with no rationality behind it. This rationality or intelligence is identified as God. He did not simply drop kick the ball that got it all rolling according to “natural” processes. He guided all things.

Science does exclude God, and this is argued as necessary, but truth cannot contradict truth, God is just as real as anything in science. His interference, if you will, with human affairs occurs to this day in real time.

God bless,
Ed
 
Science can only test what can be observed. Thus, it is severely limited by time, distance, and our measuring tools.

Spiritual energy/processes are completely off limits to tools of science … thus, many scientist deny their existance.

Matters of the human mind [thoughts, reason, etc] are mostly inaccessible to experimentation. One must be able to step outside the object being measured to objectively observe. Test/control studies involving humans is very hard to conduct… from ethical and practical standpoints.

To fully understand man & creation of universe … one would have to have wisdom of God. Not gonna happen in man’s lifetime.
 
The Church clearly teaches that God was involved in Creation.
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That was Darwin’s opinion, also:

**There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. **
Charles Darwin, last sentence of The Origin of Species 1872
The textbook explanation of chance and necessity is insufficient.
Click to expand...
Evolutionary theory only explains a small part of God’s creation. It is far from a comprehensive summary of the way He did things.
I think it’s time Catholics realized there is no separation in the final answer: God guided it all, literally.
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This is consistent with evolutionary theory.
The problem, recently, is that the theory of evolution is isolated from any contact with God. This is argued, correctly, as being a limitation of science. But, for Catholics, the complete answer includes God’s work, not just as an initiator but as the guide.
Click to expand...
That’s perfectly OK, as far as science is concerned. If this is puzzling, think of it this way: science can’t go there, but scientists can. One way to learn about the way science and faith interact would be to read “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller. Miller is a first-class scientist and a devout Catholic.
 
The_Barbarian said:
That’s perfectly OK, as far as science is concerned. If this is puzzling, think of it this way: science can’t go there, but scientists can. One way to learn about the way science and faith interact would be to read “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller. Miller is a first-class scientist and a devout Catholic.
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Thanks…I think I’ll give that one a read. Below this link is a editorial excerpt from Scientific American:

amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215643703&sr=8-1
Miller, professor of biology at Brown University, believes firmly in evolution. He also believes in God-a belief not widely shared among scientists. Here he sets out to offer thoughts on how to reconcile the conflict many people see between the two positions. Evolution, he says, is a story of origins; so too is the Judeo-Christian creation story. “The conflict between these two versions of our history is real, and I do not doubt for a second that it needs to be addressed. What I do not believe is that the conflict is unresolvable.” Laying out the positions with care and clarity, he offers his resolution: "As more than one scientist has said, the truly remarkable thing about the world is that it actually does make sense. The parts fit, the molecules interact, the darn thing works. To people of faith, what evolution says is that nature is complete. God fashioned a material world in which truly free, truly independent beings could evolve."
Click to expand...
 
BRB said:
Science can only test what can be observed. Thus, it is severely limited by time, distance, and our measuring tools.

Spiritual energy/processes are completely off limits to tools of science … thus, many scientist deny their existance.

Matters of the human mind [thoughts, reason, etc] are mostly inaccessible to experimentation. One must be able to step outside the object being measured to objectively observe. Test/control studies involving humans is very hard to conduct… from ethical and practical standpoints.

To fully understand man & creation of universe … one would have to have wisdom of God. Not gonna happen in man’s lifetime.
Click to expand...
For Catholics, there are other tools involving reason that tell us God created and was intimately involved.

The Catholic Church is not limited to science.

Peace,
Ed
 
The_Barbarian said:
That was Darwin’s opinion, also:

**There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. **
Charles Darwin, last sentence of The Origin of Species 1872

Evolutionary theory only explains a small part of God’s creation. It is far from a comprehensive summary of the way He did things.

This is consistent with evolutionary theory.

That’s perfectly OK, as far as science is concerned. If this is puzzling, think of it this way: science can’t go there, but scientists can. One way to learn about the way science and faith interact would be to read “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller. Miller is a first-class scientist and a devout Catholic.
Click to expand...
Science is not the focus, God is. For the Catholic Church, the alignment must be with divine revelation. Science is examined against divine revelation.

For the average person who views science as the only source of knowledge, he has an incomplete answer. For Catholics, the answer contains both necessary parts. But to say evolution is the whole answer is incorrect.

God bless,
Ed
 
Science is not the focus, God is. For the Catholic Church, the alignment must be with divine revelation. Science is examined against divine revelation.
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I’m pleased you accept this. A lot of people spent a lot of time telling you.
For the average person who views science as the only source of knowledge, he has an incomplete answer.
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I don’t think that the average person sees it that way. As you know, scientists remind you that science is a very limited method, one that cannot be the only source of knowledge.
 
The average person is currently being bombarded with a lot of anti-Christian propaganda and books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et. al. The Church is currently struggling with what it calls anti-theism.

Religion is being described as nothing more than an evolutionary crutch that needs to be discarded. Fortunately, a friend of mine has realized that evolution cannot fully explain the complexity of a living cell. But prior to that, the books witten by Stephen Jay Gould removed God from his life.

In closing, I’d like to point out that I have many disputes with these and other conclusions that are clearly associated with evolutionary theory and popularized by the media, not to mention individuals like Bill Maher.

Most people spend a short time in school, but it looks like they will spend the rest of their lives in a media environment hostile to Christianity (God forbid).

Peace,
Ed
 
I think you need to have a little more faith in faith, Ed.
 
AS FAR AS I HAVE KNOWN IT, THE EVOLUTION THEORY OF DARWIN DOESN’T REALLY DESPISE GOD’S EXISTENCE. ACTUALLY THERE ARE THEOLOGIANS WHO ARE ALREADY ACCEPTING DARWIN’S EVOLUTION THEORY IN THEOLOGY AND ONE OF THEM WAS Teilhard de Chardin WHILE IT IS ALSO NOTE TAKING TO CONSIDER ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD, A PHILOSOPHER ON PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, WHO SAID THAT “GOD IS WITH THE CREATIVE PROCESS…” READING FURTHER THIS PHILOSOPHER AND CHARDIN, THE THEOLOGIAN, YOU WILL SOMEHOW REALIZE…

NEVERTHELESS, DARWIN’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION MAY OR MAY NOT HELP US APPRECIATE THE CREATIVE POWER OF GOD IN THE WORLD. LASTLY, TO BE PARTICULAR, IN THE PROCESS PHILOSOPHY WAY OF THINKING IT GOES LIKE THAT GOD ONLY PERSUADES HIS CREATION BY GIVING ALL POSSIBILITIES AND CHANCES BUT IT IS UP TO THE CREATION TO DECIDE…BECAUSE GOD DOESN’T IMPOSE BUT ONLY PERSUADES.

I HOPE MY ANSWER SOMEHOW HELP CLARIFY THINGS OUT BUT IF IN ANY CASE YOU CAN RESEARCH ON CHARDIN AND WHITEHEAD FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

GOD BLESS!😃 👍 😉
 
edwest2 said:
Fortunately, a friend of mine has realized that evolution cannot fully explain the complexity of a living cell.
Click to expand...
Interesting. If by that you mean that science “hasn’t yet” explained the complexity of the living cell then I agree. But if you mean that there is something about the cell that science will never explain then I would like to know how you know that and where you see science having to stop in the quest for understanding?

Emotel
 
In fact, many previously inexplicable features of the cell have been understood as evolutionary theory makes clear why they are the way they are.

There’s a great deal of work left to be done, of course. Thank God for that. It would be a sad day indeed, when there was no more to be learned about His creation.
 
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