Transitional Fossils and the Theory of Evolution in relation to Genesis Accounts

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NSmith said:
not nearly as solid as the case for an old earth, scientifically.
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All I can really say is how much of a breath of fresh air this was to read. It was a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for being respectful.
 
NSmith said:
Based solely on DNA I am not sure the there is much convincing evidence for evolution.
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So how would you explain the existence of shared genetic material, such as the fact that you and I share half our genes with plants and 95%-plus with Chimps?

The fact of evolution of one species from the other is demonstrated by this fact. It’s really just saying the same thing twice - we hare genetic material, therefore we are related. This is exactly the same evidence accepted in every court for relationships both of people and of animals and plants. How, exactly, this occurs is the theory (or theories) of evolution. But the fact of evolution has been beyond any reasonable doubt since our understanding of genetics improved.

Our genetic links prove we have common ancestors with whales. Drawing the family tree is harder than finding this knowledge just as it is if you find a cousin on Ancestry.com.
 
I’ve read multiple exemplary articles from universities like UC Berkley, Stanford, and other respected institutions that use the term, and it neatly distinguishes between what occurs with Darwin’s finches and the phenomena being proposed, which is that of a fish sprouting legs or a single-celled amoeba becoming a fish.
Furthermore, we don’t share 95% genetic material with chimps, recent estimates place the number at nearer to 80% (chimps have 18 chromosomes and humans have 23, for one thing). In any case, it wouldn’t matter overly much, because small changes in DNA result in massively significant changes in biochemistry. And I don’t dispute that we are somehow related to the chimp, both Man and chimp being creations of God, but I do dispute that Man is the descendant of the chimp or of any other chimp-like species.
Finally, the study of genetics has improved so much that in my view it makes Darwin’s initial conjectures outrageous to consider. The amount of information that we currently believe is stored in a single gram of DNA is a billion terabytes, which is enough to encompass all of humanities written word since the invention of language multiple times. It is statistically impossible that this amount of information is the result of random mutations and selection. Earlier geneticists tried to say that most of DNA held no information, but that claim was proven false by recent studies showing that the previously named “junk DNA” actually has a key role in regulating cell behaviors.
In short, DNA is a huge problem for evolution, not a proof. The unanswered question being: Where is the new information coming from? And so far as I’ve read there are no current answers to this question other than Intelligent Design or mutation. I’m a computer scientist, so I recognize how encoding works. Mutations in encoding are actually a problem in my field, because they make the message, whether over a network or the internet, totally unreadable and meaningless. Randomly changing a 0 to a 1 is destructive and not creative. This mentions nothing about the fact that some creatures have twice as much DNA as other creatures. How did they end up with more data? Where did all that information come from?
If God is the one who made DNA, then he didn’t have to bother starting with single-celled organisms and evolving form there, but could have made all species as they were, and he didn’t have to use chimps when he made Man.
 
OK.

Evolution Theory is the scientific theory that explains the great variety of species on Earth, their appearance and disappearance in the fossil record, and the relatedness of their DNA. It is held to be the theory that most satisfactorily explains those phenomena.

If you believe it is not the most satisfactory scientific theory to explain those phenomena, what is?
 
St. Augustine explains an acceptable interpretation of Creation in Book 6 of his “Literal Meaning of Genesis,": which I think is helpful here.

He explains that the six days represent not literal days, but a scheme or plan of creation. The actual creation during those “days” was instantaneous and of things in potency and causation, but not necessarily their final visible form which would be shaped later over time. For example, he places the actual formation of man’s body after the seventh day (which explains why there is two creation accounts of man in Genesis):

St. Augustine
There can be no doubt, then, that the work whereby man was formed from the slime of the earth and a wife fashioned for him from his side belongs not to that creation by which all thing were made together, after completing which, God rested, but to that work of God which takes place with the unfolding of the ages as He works even now.
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This interpretation works well with concepts like an old universe, the big bang, and evolution–ie God created all things at once in potency (the big bang) and then formed them over time (old universe, evolution). St. Augustine elsewhere compares this formation of things to how mountains and rivers are shaped over time. Even with man, Genesis doesn’t say how long it took God to form man from the slime of the earth after the seventh day.

Whether we are talking dinosaurs or transitional fossils, etc., they are simply part of this “shaping” that continues even today.
 
Thank you for the link! I really enjoyed their summary of the Church Fathers on Genesis 1. I don’t have a lot of time because I have to get to work but I think the biggest thing that I noticed in their attempt to synthesize theology and evolution was that they reduce the imago dei to the appearance of symbolic thought and language. Proceeding from there, they contend that mutations are responsible for the understanding of language that Man exhibits, and that a chance meeting of two mutants resulted in Homo Sapiens.
I do not agree with this view of the imago dei, and I don’t think that the act of creation which made Man in God’s image was driven by probabilities. Furthermore, such a view leaves open the possibility that other human races with language could have been born separately in other places by other mutant homo erectus, and that was the problem identified by Pope Pius XII in his statement endorsing monogenism.
In my opinion, to agree with this view, you must hold that in the creation of homo sapiens, God directly and supernaturally intervened the one time, and that such a meeting of mutations did not happen again in the homo erectus population afterward. As the thomists observe, science once thought that there were indeed several groups of first ancestors, and they could believe so again if evidence emerges to support that view. But if it doesn’t, then you have to go through the trouble of reconciling polygenism with original sin, which might be possible but is an unnecessary problem if you simply don’t read Genesis through the eyes of evolution and contend that Man was specially created.
I don’t think less of theistic evolutionists, but I find it mightily difficult.
 
I have found the Church Fathers immensely helpful in interpreting Genesis, especially as an answer to much of my family who are Young Earth Special Creationists. I have considered YEC and I don’t think that it best explains what we observe today, but it does have its explanations. In that way it is similar to the classical flat earth theory, which in its time could answer all the same questions as the round earth. Today, we can just go high in the air and see with our own eyes, but unless time machines are built there won’t be a resolution that is quite as ironclad to the problem of the earth’s age. I do admit that YEC poses its own exegetical problems, and that there are historical and archaeological troubles on top of this, which is why I tend to favor the old earth.
However I view old earth and evolution as problems of a different kind, because the first is primarily an interpretive problem whereas evolution is a problem with the doctrine of creation of Man and even of the identity of Man.
Part of Genesis which is indispensable is the theological assertion that Man is male and female, and that they produce offspring of their own kind, just as other creatures produce offspring of their own kind. Saint Pope John Paul II talked extensively about the importance of this intrinsic Nature in the Theology of the Body, a series of lectures that I find immensely appropriate to the current time.
But if evolution is true then there is no nature in itself. The nature of a creature is only what currently exists, and that kind of nature is in flux, subject to mutation and change, and is the result of a series of such changes. Thus the idea of the missing link is archaic, because all creatures are the missing links, and all creatures will one day become as other creatures now are, or perhaps into something new that we have not seen.
This assertion is problematic theologically, because it leads to the collapse of the Biblical Nature, replaced by evolutionary nature, and the first is a solid rock while the second is like shifting sand. Divine Law rests on the Natural Law, but if evolution is true then the Natural Law is subject to change.
 
I think first it must be thought of not as random and mutating, but as guided by God according to His laws. Much like His physical laws, the natural law is fixed. I also think that because God formed things over time, it doesn’t necessarily mean everything is subject to future substantial change (ie change in substance). The Incarnation likely means we will not see any further shaping of human beings in form/substance.
 
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If you believe it is not the most satisfactory scientific theory to explain those phenomena, what is?
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This is a big question. It’s definitely easier to poke holes in other people’s ideas than to come up with something coherent. I’m sure I couldn’t provide an alternative at this time. That doesn’t mean it isn’t important for me to resolve the difficulties I see with the theory.
 
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It’s interesting that you think no further changes will take place in man. Even if you say evolution is guided by God which I won’t dispute, we are still going through tiny evolutionary changes. Because of how slow it progresses, we will never notice any major change within our short lifetimes but we see some nonetheless.

Our jaws are changing. Wisdom teeth have been causing problems for man for quite some time as our jaws have narrowed. Eskimos no longer have wisdom teeth and many people have wisdoms that never erupt, are impacted and cause major problems needing removal.

People might look at photos of us in a thousand years and marvel out our huge jaws! We can only look at skeletons from the past to see the progressive shrinking of our lower jaw. This an illustration of one slight change but shows the slow slogging of evolution over time.
 
I guess you get to the ship of Theseus problem. How many incremental changes to Man can take place before he is no longer Man as God created him? In other words, how many before the Natural Law is no longer Law?
 
Could you give me an example of natural law that would be impacted by humans evolving and changing? I’m a bit slow today in understanding what might change. Thanks.
 
The teachings on sexuality are based on the Creation account. From the fact that God created Man male and female, the Church teaches that there are no other genders but male and female, and this is considered Natural Law. Similarly, based on the fact that God created man and woman in union, the Church teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman and is indissoluble.
There are some who say that homosexuality and trans-sexuality are genetic predispositions, arguably a result of evolutionary processes. They point to species of primates that exhibit regular homosexual acts, such as the bonobo, as well as certain amphibians that have evolved to change their gender according to their environment. The claim is that such processes are taking place among humans as well, and therefore such acts are not in violation of the Natural Law.
There are also those that say that monogamy contradicts the evolved instincts and nature of Man. They point out that the most prolific of breeders are the most successful in the gene pool, and that those individuals were not likely to be predisposed toward chastity. The natural direction of evolution then follows a line towards polygamy rather than the Natural Law of marriage.
My response to these arguments has always been that the Natural Law is dependent on how we were created, perfectly, and not dependent on our current nature, which is corrupted by the presence of sin. Thinking through them here, I suppose you could similarly say that any evolution in the human species cannot change the Natural Law because of the fallen nature of the world. But if we have already conceded that evolution is guided by God then the rebuttal becomes, “Why would God be directing our evolution towards sin?”
Edit: I do not necessarily think that the above two propositions are true, but they could be. I haven’t really checked their sources.
 
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Hmmm, this seems to be more along the lines of cultural evolution which everyone admits that cultures change for better or worse. I’m was thinking more along the lines of us physically evolving towards a humanity that isn’t exactly like us.

One physical change that humans endured was the enlargement of our brains and requiring birth to occur when the baby is less developed requiring a longer childhood and dependence on parents. We often still witness baby’s heads too large to pass the opening in the hips requiring C-Sections. Before this surgery became safe and effective, most mothers and babies died. Our intelligence bypassed this problem. It’s interesting to speculate on what that might mean in the future.

Cultural changes will, however, tend to always challenge biblical requirements. This is dependent on where our culture moves into the future. Evolution will have relatively little to say in this. Our intelligence and adaptability has much more influence. What ever we are in the far future, we will still call ourselves humans. We just may not look much like we do now. We now have the ability to override evolution. Everything from C-Sections to eye glasses are overcoming evolution in tiny matters.

Where we go culturally is unknown. Battles between religious beliefs and societal norms have always been in conflict. I don’t see that changing much for the near future, anyway.
 
I think I answered my own question while reasoning through it. Because our current nature is corrupted by sin it is already less than the perfect nature that existed in the beginning. Further corruptions are to be expected, whether they are driven by culture or by evolution. And in the Genesis account we already have the example of the snake tempting Eve, that is to say a created being which was made by God for one purpose was corrupted to the ends of the Devil. In Thomistic thinking evil does not exist in itself but is a perversion of something that was meant for Good. So if God did use evolution as a tool to create Man perfectly in the beginning, there is no reason to suspect that evolution still today is oriented towards that perfection. Indeed, I would suspect that much of evolution following the Fall is actually a departure from how God created the world, for all of Creation groans and cries out for a redeemer.
I still have trouble with the genealogies of Genesis, however.
I suppose that if the earth is old, I could accept Man to be created at some time between 4000 and 6000 BC, since Man was made in the last Day of Creation and on the seventh Day, which according to some Church Fathers is the current Day, God rested, as long as I do not hold to the theory of evolution as the origin of Man. But if I believe that evolution explains the origin of Man, then I have to accept that human civilization follows the timeline of some 100,000 years, but this seems to be an abuse of the Genesis genealogies, since there is no other place in Scripture where there is a gap of such magnitude in any of the genealogies.
 
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I think one area where you’re getting messed up is that we aren’t created in the physical image of God. That’s impossible. God doesn’t have a physical image. Our creation in His image and likeness is talking about our reason, our immortal souls, our ability to love. Humans can change physical appearance and evolve different jaws, but so long as we are intelligent, rational creatures, we are made in God’s image and likeness.
 
NSmith said:
but this seems to be an abuse of the Genesis genealogies, since there is no other place in Scripture where there is a gap of such magnitude in any of the genealogies.
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Your problem will continue as long as you demand a literal interpretation of the Bible. I understand your desire to do this, really, I do.

Is it possible to think of the Bible as you do the Magesterium and the Pope…infallible on morals and salvation but capable of other error? The Bible can be perfect with regard to morals and salvation but using stories than are not perfect? The Genesis stories were orally transmitted for centuries before being written down. Their message of morals and salvation haven’t changed but it’s possible that details were.

Many Christians aren’t the least bothered by HOW sin entered the world, only that it did. They aren’t bothered if the talking snake is allegory, that it represents the temptation of Adam and Eve is what matters. The stories represent what God was teaching mankind and if the stories themselves aren’t literally true it doesn’t matter because the message was true. You will always struggle to mesh science and faith if you demand an accuracy from the Bible that the writers themselves never cared about. If the story of Adam and Eve are allegorical, does it mean that Jesus didn’t come to earth and die for your salvation? Don’t give the stories more power than they deserve. They don’t explain Gods plan in a scientific manner. They explain them to a simple people that would have never understood a scientific explanation…but they understood the message that they were meant to convey.
 
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NSmith said:
In short, DNA is a huge problem for evolution, not a proof. The unanswered question being: Where is the new information coming from?
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Okay, I’ve seen a lot of people use this conjecture but I don’t get it. Can someone explain to me why this matters at all?
 
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