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

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stoplooklisten said:
Nothing is impossible with God. Almighty God can make a young universe look old if He decrees so.
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You are not the first to make this argument. Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian Orthodox Christian, replied to it far better than I can:
One of the early antievolutionists, P. H. Gosse, published a book entitled Omphalos (“the Navel”). The gist of this amazing book is that Adam, though he had no mother, was created with a navel, and that fossils were placed by the Creator where we find them now - a deliberate act on His part, to give the appearance of great antiquity and geologic upheaveals. It is easy to see the fatal flaw in all such notions. They are blasphemies, accusing God of absurd deceitfulness. This is as revolting as it is uncalled for.

Source: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.
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Forgive me, my friends, for being an uneducated Catholic convert.

What is the official church teaching on evolution?
 
pulchraesamicamea said:
What is the official church teaching on evolution?
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Catholics are free to believe in it or not so long as they do not deny the existence of Adam and Eve as first parents who sinned and caused our fallen nature, and that God created all things at the beginning of time. Catholics are also free to believe in a literal Genesis.
 
rossum said:
that fossils were placed by the Creator where we find them now - a deliberate act on His part, to give the appearance of great antiquity and geologic upheaveals
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I find that uncalled for myself. I don’t believe in “fake fossils” planted by God. That’s not God’s way.
 
pulchraesamicamea said:
Forgive me, my friends, for being an uneducated Catholic convert.

What is the official church teaching on evolution?
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  • God was moved by His Goodness to create the world.
  • The world was created for the Glorification of God.
  • The Three Divine Persons are one single, common Principle of the Creation.
  • God created the world free from exterior compulsion and inner necessity.
  • God has created a good world.
  • The world had a beginning in time.
  • God alone created the World.
  • God keeps all created things in existence.
  • God through His providence protects and guides all that He has created.
  • The first man was created by God.
  • Man consists of two essential parts–a material body and a spiritual soul.
  • The rational soul is per se the essential form of the body.
  • Every human being possesses an individual soul.
  • God has conferred on man a supernatural Destiny.
  • Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace.
  • They were also endowed with donum immortalitatis , i.e., the gift of bodily immortality.
  • Our first parents in paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment.
  • Through the sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God.
  • Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the Devil.
  • Adam’s sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation, but by descent.
  • Original sin is transmitted by natural generation.
  • In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity.
  • Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision of God.
  • In the beginning of time God created spiritual essences (angels) out of nothing.
  • The nature of angels is spiritual.
  • The secondary task of the good angels is the protection of men and care for their salvation.
  • The Devil possesses a certain dominion over mankind by reason of Adam’s sin.
 
stoplooklisten said:
Yes, Scripture does speak to this. Genesis is history and speaks with significant detail about the six days of Creation, the genealogies of Adam and Eve and their descendants, about the global flood at the time of Noah, about the origin of nations. For genealogies, see Genesis chapters 5, 10, 11. If Genesis chapters 1-11 were meant to be a spiritual/spiritualized description of events then it wouldn’t have included so much precise detail.
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If memory serves, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Genesis presents creation “figuratively” as six days. Scientific discoveries strongly suggest that reading the Genesis account “figuratively” (not literally) is the correct way to read it.

The Bible concerns itself with the relationship between God and man, so pre-Adamic history is unimportant and is therefore presented “figuratively” as six days. Post-Adamic history, on the other hand, is presented much more literally, because this the information that matters.
If necessary, I can provide multiple quotes to affirm six day creation from the Early Church Fathers with the specifics on the source of the quote. I could quote these Early Church Fathers: St. Ambrose, St. Archelaus, St, Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Basil, the Venerable Bede, St. Clement of Alexandria, more.
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The ECFs knew nothing of what modern geological science has revealed about how long life has been on earth. If they did, they would have realized that Genesis and the “six days” is almost certainly not a literal account of history.
 
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Ahhhh, Irreducible Complexity…

Dr Ken Miller (a Catholic, btw) showed the problem with it!

 
rossum said:
All fish and tetrapod embryos have gill arches (not gills) at an early stage. In fish, those arches develop into jaws and gills, in tetrapods they develop into jaws and various structures in the neck and ear. See Branchial arches for details.
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What does any of that have to do with evo-dreamers like T. Dobskansky claiming that human embryos have “gills” (see Nothing in bilogy makes sense except in the light of evolution)?
I assume your source did not explain all of that. It just lied by omission to try to make evolution look silly.
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No one has to lie to make evolution “look silly” - it does that all by itself.

Darwinists have to sweep the “embarrassment” of the fossil record under the carpet for precidsely that reason … to make evolution not look silly!

“Darwin’s argument [that the fossil record is imperfect and incomplete] still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the EMBARRASSMENT of a record that seem to show so little evolution directly … I wish only to point out that it [gradualism] was NEVER “SEEN” IN THE ROCKS” … We [paleontologists] fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as SO BAD that we ALMOST NEVER SEE the very process we profess to study” (S.J Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, pp. 181-182. Emphasis added ).

Since Gould, the fossil record has proven even more of an embarrassment - the fossils of two different fish (Metaspriggina and Myllokunmmingia) - ie, vertebrates - have been discovered in the Lower Cambrian. According to Darwinist folklore, the first vertebrates (fish) did not evolve (from invertebrate chordates) until the Devonian Period, about 120 million years after the Lower Cambrian.
Oh dear … how do Darwinists explain away the embarrassment of the first vertebrates appearing suddenly and fully-formed out of an evolutionary vacumm?
 
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“Pattylt said:
Dr Ken Miller (a Catholic, btw) showed the problem with it!
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He would … Dr. Ken Miller strikes me as your typical science-worshipping theistic-evo-warrior who and has swallowed the Darwinist fable hook, line and sinker. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t dare oppose the Darwinist cult that dominates his profession - he knows he’d probably find himself out of a job.
Miller rejects any suggestion that - God forbid! - God might be an intelligent designer and that the history of life on earth might involve the miraculous.
 
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Buzzard3 said:
If memory serves, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Genesis presents creation “figuratively” as six days.
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Not exactly I think but see CCC 390.
For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life. - 1 Corinthians 15:22
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Adam is a figure of death for all. Christ is a figure of life for all. Both were real historical persons.

Common descent from Adam is affirmed in 1 Corinthians 15:22. Common descent from Adam is affirmed in Romans 5:12-14.

The Passover Lamb in Exodus 12 is figurative of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God in the New Testament. The miraculous feeding of manna as in Exodus 16 is figurative of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes and of the Holy Eucharist. Something can be both figurative and real.
 
Buzzard3 said:
the fossils of two different fish (Metaspriggina and Myllokunmmingia) - ie, vertebrates - have been discovered in the Lower Cambrian .
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So? Or are you claiming that we had already found every single early vertebrate fossil? Evolution says that every living organism except the very first had earlier ancestors. All you have here is a new pair of earlier ancestors which evolution predicted but which had not yet been found.

Your sources are lying to you if they told you that these new discoveries were a ‘problem’ for evolution.
 
Eric_Hyom said:
How does this explain the evolution of the skeletal system?
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Start with cartilage, as with various very primitive chordates. Add calcium to the cartilage and you get a vertebrate. Mutation and natural selection will tweak the arrangement to suit the prevailing environment.

Humans got their skeleton from our common ancestor with the chimps, except the baculum which we have lost.
 
rossum said:
Start with cartilage, as with various very primitive chordates. Add calcium to the cartilage and you get a vertebrate. Mutation and natural selection will tweak the arrangement to suit the prevailing environment.
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As always…over simplified :roll_eyes:
 
rossum said:
There is a great deal more science where that came from
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“science”? Theories - no matter how complex - that can’t be tested don’t even qualify as science. Such is a great deal of evolutionary “science” - fancy but untestable theories that amount to nothing more than scientists blowing smoke.
 
rossum said:
All fish and tetrapod embryos have gill arches (not gills) at an early stage. In fish, those arches develop into jaws and gills, in tetrapods they develop into jaws and various structures in the neck and ear. See Branchial arches for details.
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So what? Darwinists claim that such examples in embryology are “evidence” for their theory - prove to me that it is really “evidence” and not just evidence of wishful thinking.
 
Buzzard3 said:
So what? Darwinists claim that such examples in embryology are “evidence” for their theory - prove to me that it is really “evidence” and not just evidence of wishful thinking.
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Then you do not believe that Jesus ate any food at all between his tenth and twentieth birthdays because you have no “evidence” that He ate anything during those years, merely evidence of wishful thinking.
 
rossum said:
You want the unsimplified version? Try Evolution of the vertebrate skeleton: morphology, embryology, and development for a start.
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The following quote was from your unsimplified version.
However, within these continuities, discontinuities of genetic and developmental bases arise in which morphologically homologous bones are produced through different developmental processes
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They are stating the obvious when they say, bones are produced through different developmental processes. If you said to an engineer, cars are produced through different developmental processes, that explains nothing.

I find the evidence for bone evolution to be very frustrating. They generally describe bones, but not the details of how they evolved.
rossum said:
Then you do not believe that Jesus ate any food at all between his tenth and twentieth birthdays because you have no “evidence” that He ate anything during those years,
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Yes, we BELIEVE Jesus must have eaten food, but beliefs are not evidence. We believe for other reasons.

I thought science demanded more robust evidence than mere beliefs.
 
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