Do you believe that Adam and Eve ever lived in a Paradise that was free from all taint of death, disease, and decay?
When I said “a radically different approach”, I didn’t mean becoming an apostate!
** using Darwinian mechanisms; mutation, variation, natural selection, genetic drift, etc. It seems to me that the second view is seriously problematic for theists, and particularly for Christians.If you see Behe as an evolutionist, then we must have different definitions of “evolution”. But I’ll say again that the debate between “God was involved” vs. “Nature did it all” is far more fundamental than any debate about whether God worked actual miracles to create or not.
The scientific community is perhaps not as tractable and fair-minded as this would imply. To go to the general public is a smart and practical way to compel professional scientists to give some attention to the ID and creationist viewpoints.
I think this somewhat misrepresents Behe. What he was saying is that life is sophisticated, even on the level of the cell and basic biochemistry; so sophisticated that Darwinian evolution becomes an intractable problem. Certainly changes on a gross anotomical level would be even more problematic for evolution than mere cellular changes.
these days. Now I need to ask these folks how they resolve the whole Adam/Eve questions. 
Glenn Morton has explicitly written on this which I am reading…
no place we can find it on this earth
Need to get this one… by John Haught and published by Paulist Press that bastion of liberal modernist apostate Catholicism. 
Thank you Marcia. Any evolutionists care to respond?Don’t know if anyone else responded Chris, but I would guess that evolution (strict, scientific) would say our intellect is an evolved feature and that there is a progress -an evolution- in intellect (and brain to body size ratio, which houses that intellect) from other mammals, to apes, various hominid forerunners to us … each being more intelligent than the former. Cranial capacity = intellect.
Catholicism says that the intellect is due to the spiritual soul.
To me there is a bit of conflict there, unless we say that the brain size is determined more by our soul - our spiritual soul as the form of the human body- than it is by the material aspects such as DNA (since other creatures share a lot of the same DNA).
On the face of it conflict with what science proposes. Evolution (pure science) even posits that our belief in God is an evolved feature, along with everything else about us that we attribute to being made in the image of God. We can’t accept the atheistic evolution, but to me it is difficult to sort out conclusions like these from the theory without it seeming pick and choose on the science. Then same on the doctrines which seem to be sometimes overlooked if they don’t fit what people think on the science. I’m not certain that many Catholics realize that according to Catholic teaching the intellect is a product of the spiritual soul rather than the physical brain and cranial capacity that is taught in science classes.
God bless
Marcia
I can see why you would find comfort in looking at it this way but the fact of the matter is, the Catholic Church teaches more than just spiritual descention, wanerious. You need to resolve the issue of conflict on the matter of physcial descention, rather than keep focusing on spiritual descention (which no one contests). Evolution says we did not descend from a single pair. So either Catholicism is wrong, or evolution is wrong (by the law of non-contradiction). Which is it?
I have no problem agreeing that The Garden of Eden still exists, Matt. In fact, I would tend to think we live in it. I understand the kicking out Adam and Eve experienced was what they exerienced, not what physically happened to them. Much like in the Garden they experienced a walking and talking with God that you and I do not enjoy. Same for bodily immortality.St. Hildegarde said Paradise still exists, and she is hardly the only saint that believed that Paradise still exists. In fact, Genesis says that Paradise was NOT destroyed by Adam’s sin, so St. Hildegarde is anything but unorthodox in her beliefs. So how do you deal with that? Do you think that Paradise still exists, and if so, where?
No offense taken, but I would appreciate an honest answer to the question I just raised.
Don’t we all wish we could close a thread, having had the last wordOkay time to close the thread on this happy note.
Phil P
I keep hearing this type of accusation against those who reject evolution. So, once again, I would like to clarfiy the position of this anti-evolutionist (me)
Yep. Big Time. To deny it is to either misunderstand Catholicism, or to misunderstand evolution.I still don’t see what the argument is all about
Do people seriously see a conflict between Genesis and evolution?
But I don’t know how to resolve them. It’s very well established anthropologically that there would be homo sapiens (our human species) before Adam/Eve, unless you date Adam/Eve millions of years ago (before the rise of homo sapiens) as Glenn Morton does. The question is what to do with these “people” (e.g. the homo sapiens before Adam/Eve, or the other hominids that seem to “act” human). Glenn Morton’s book is a step in the right direction in my opinion on how to resolve this question. He is honest with both the scientific and anthropological evidence, along with the Bible as he interprets it (he is an evangelical). And my dominant evolutionary position on these threads keeps evolving and adapting and creating new species to resolve the difficulties. 
Hmmm, I don’t buy the premesis. I think we need to draw the distinction between intellect and technology. Humans have a superior intellect, perhaps related to our capability for reason. It is not at all clear that this has “evolved” at all in thousands of years. We are no smarter than ancient Greeks, but have thousands of years of technology and accumulated learning to draw upon. In turn, this technology helps us cope with competition from animals and a changing environment.
I am admittedly biased, but it really depends on the basis for rejection. If you truly understand the journal articles these scientists have written and reject their conclusions based upon some experimental error or their lack of understanding of some physical process that you have a better grasp of, then I can certainly understand. That happens among scientists all the time. Without their common background and experience, rejecting their conclusions because you are theologically opposed to the results can be called irrational, though the word is probably too strong and pejorative. A truly and fully rational scientific objection would involve some kind of specific dispute as well as predictions from your new theory (the predictions are necessary to distinguish the more correct from the less correct) and its effect on already observed phenomena.
Oh, that’s easy (for me, at least) — if the evidence shows that we derive from more than one “base pair”, that’s fine with me. In that sense, I would disagree with Church teaching. Truth cannot condradict Truth, as they say, so it is more likely to me that the Church teaching is in error (or, more precisely, that our understanding of Divine Truth is imprecise). I believe strongly that God has revealed Himself through His creation of the natural world and the laws and principles it is subject to.
If you believe our fallen world is Paradise, then you do not believe what is written in the scriptures. You have radically reinterpreted both scriptures and Catholic doctrine so that your novel interpretation of scripture fits your own presuppositions. You are doing exactly the same thing that the evolutionists do, i.e. embracing the heresy of Modernism to support your reinterpretation of scripture and Catholic doctrine. With the Protestant flavors of “creationism” one gets the worst of both worlds, both bad science and bad doctrine.
It is certainly Catholic doctrine that original sin has caused the progeny of Adam and Eve to be born in a condition where they possess neither the preternatural gifts, nor sanctifying grace. But Catholic doctrine also teaches that ALL of the physical creation became subject to death, disease and decay because of original sin. So, no, it isn’t possible that this fallen world is the same as Paradise.
Both Jesus and Mary now possess their glorified bodies. Has either Jesus or Mary given any indication that they see the physical world as being a place that is free of death, disease, and decay? It is Catholic doctrine that at the Resurrection of the Dead that the physical world will be freed from the “slavery to corruption” - that creation will be *restored * to a state it possessed before the Fall. The lion will once more lie down with the lamb.
You are saying the same thing that Ghosty says, and you are both making God the author of death. God is NOT the author of death, period. What you are saying cannot be reconciled with what both scriptures and Catholic doctrine teach, i.e. that death, disease, and decay entered into creation because of the Fall, and that death is the enemy of God.
