When Science contradicts Religion

[Valiente88]

This forum is called Catholic Answers, right

Peace,
Ed

Absolutely! Which is exactly what I’m here seeking . I was just hoping for it to be defended and explained as well (which, some of the posters have been doing, and I’m very grateful that they’re sparing the time of day to do that for me)

 

[grannymh]

When Science contradicts Religion …

Divine Revelation trumps.

Which one? The Koran? The Bible? The Vedas? The Diamond Sutra? Or perhaps you’re rather partial to the Flying Spaghetti Monsters pirate cookbook or the Oracle of the invisible pink unicorn?

To be more precise – It is when a particular science hypothesis intersects with a particular Catholic doctrine, then Divine Revelation trumps.

The world cannot agree on what constitutes divine revelation, but we can agree on how genetics work.

That is not God’s problem.

It is our problem.

 

[Valiente88]

To be more precise – It is when a particular science hypothesis intersects with a particular Catholic doctrine, then Divine Revelation trumps.

But that is the problem I have at least here, there are portions of Genesis that sit quite comfortably with science (Let there be light and the big bang, although the theory of the big bounce is beginning to threaten that) but others that are physically impossible, it just cannot have happened like that.

That is not God’s problem.

So…He tells us one thing, but then deliberately lays out the crime scene to say the exact opposite?

What a quirky sense of humor he must have.

 

[ynotzap]

Knowing

I don’t want to post too many, less this thread get derailed and transformed into just another gay marriage/creationist thread so I’ll stick with the three I mentioned in my first post.

1. Catholics are bound to belive Adam and Eve were a literal first couple, Modern Genetics can and has traced Human DNA back to it’s origin and has stated with a great deal of certainty Humanity arose from a wider group over a longer period of time. This article’s first paragraphs explains with a highly oversimplified but concise summary as to why, even if the tone is rather condecending to belivers whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/adam-and-eve-the-ultimate-standoff-between-science-and-faith-and-a-contest/
2. Catholics are bound to believe Death is a consequence of Adams sin and did not exist prior to the fall, the development of mans capacity to ingest meat along with a heavy reliance upon it for nutrition suggests otherwise. Complicated milti cellular life forms also cannot exist without the process of pre programmed cell death (apoptosis) which again suggests death was not a consequence of the fall.
3. Regardless to an individuals views on the morality of homosexual acts, the Catholic Church teaches the desire to commit them are gravely disordered, a disorder again arising from sin which had humanity not fallen into would not exist. With exception to a few hedge psychologists who are ridiculed by the rest of the profession, modern mental health authorities are certain without any doubt that Homosexual impulses are in no way disordered, merely one of many potential traits such as not liking the taste of strawberries.

Catholics are bound to believe in the magesteriums literal interpretation of the existence of Adam and Even when science has proven this an impossibility and Catholics who do not consider homosexual impulses to be disordered are condemned as being in a state of mortal sin. There are just ones cropping up in the past ten years, never mind fifty.

Knowing human nature and it’s fallibility and limitations, I don’t necessarily buy all that science says is true, we seem to treat everything science says as fact. I’m tolerant and passive about many of these so called facts. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe somethings science claims, but they have to be pretty obvious to me to accept them. Materialism is having a powerful effect on man’s thinking, and it can be, and is very misleading. God is not even considered in many scientific areas of thought, and personally I know better. In matters of homo-sexuality, to have homo-sexual tendencies does not constitute a sin. I see a lot of confusion regarding what is called gay and what is considered homo-sexual. being gay I see as being very sensitive in nature or action, in a man it’s sharing the sensitivity of a woman, and thats a physical and psychological condition which I consider to be in the natural sphere. Being homo-sexual I consider it being an un-natural act, and immoral. I don’t condemn the individual, but I do judge the act.
When it comes to religion I regard my faith as a gift, a belief in Christianity, and I have much experience in the truths of my Faith, and I found it very consistent with the truth that can be acquired by intellectual endeavor, and the truth that can be received through divine inspiration, and I find them very complimentary, like a glove that fits on a hand.

 

[edwest2]

But that is the problem I have at least here, there are portions of Genesis that sit quite comfortably with science (Let there be light and the big bang, although the theory of the big bounce is beginning to threaten that) but others that are physically impossible, it just cannot have happened like that.

So…He tells us one thing, but then deliberately lays out the crime scene to say the exact opposite?

What a quirky sense of humor he must have.

Not at all. God, being God, has powers beyond human comprehension. Knowledge from God is is true knowledge. It is fact. I am totally at a loss as to why people make it a regular habit to discuss matters that cannot be studied scientifically. The Church acknowledges as literal fact that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, taught us, healed us and established a New Covenant with us. He literally died and rose again bodily. He told us to spread the Gospel to all men. Science is secondary to all that. It can’t study it. And while it has invented many things of value, we are all going to die and face a just Final Judgment. Science can’t tell us that.

Peace,
Ed

 

[sw85]

Oh I don’t think protestants like the Anglicans will have any difficulty reconciling things like this with their teachings, after all they’ve never claimed inerrancy and have modified several of their practices when new developments in social justice, theology or the sciences have come to light. The Catholic church however will find some unease explaining this in relation to the Dogma of Papal Infalliability however.

Was it Pius XII who wrote regarding evolution? How it is acceptable to hold to “Theistic Evolution” so long as belief remained that Adam and Eve was the common source of all humanity (I honestly do not recall, but one of them did). To deny the literal parenthood of Adam and Eve of all humanity was clearly labelled a heretical proposition.

I don’t think most non-literalist Christians, or most Cafateria Catholics for that matter will care. It does pose a problem for those who say the Church cannot err in matters of faith, because in this case it clearly has.

Is there some reason you are ignoring my posts wherein I address these exact objections over and over again?

In my case it is because I am a mental health professional, and research in the field by my more scholarly colleagues has yielded more than adequate evidence to show that there is no external “trauma” that causes homosexuality, neither is it a disorder that requires treatment. Quite frankly because there is no “cure”, because it is not a mental illness or disorder.

Once again, is there some reason you are ignoring my posts wherein I comment on these issues? If you were not ignoring them you would know this response has already been addressed.

Yes it did, but it is difficult to explain why, with different people giving different answers.

The most accepted explanations as to why Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder for a time are these…

1. Psychiatry in its early days as a fledgling field was strongly influenced by an almost Imperialistic and then devout European cultural perspective as to what constitutes “normal” behavior. Naturally, since the rise of Christianity homosexuals have been routinely condemned and at times actively persecuted in the western world and this history strongly influenced what was considered “healthy”. Since Homosexual desires were condemned by the culture and were not universal to all humans, they were not thought to be natural, rather an aberration. It was only much later when it shed such a narrow perspective and research began to yield data that the profession realized homosexuality was not a disorder, nor could it be cured or require treatment.

Once again, the Church does not say homosexuality is contrary to nature in the sense of never occurring in the natural world. She says it is contrary to nature in the sense of being contrary to human nature specifically the nature of the human reproductive faculty. It is not take a doctorate to see why: the reproductive system is about reproduction; sodomy is intrinsically un-reproductive; hence it is contrary to the normative order of the human person.

This is why I asked before if my posts are somehow invisible to you. If you read them you would not keep recycling these complaints as if they have not been addressed. Put simply, medical professionals and the Church do not use “disorder” the same way. The Church is not in the business of diagnosing mental disorders because her objection to sodomy is not that it is the fruit of a mental illness. The disorder she objects to there is moral, not mental.

1. Rather like the Congregation of the Faith’s condemnation of Heliocentrism Western culture, then still strongly influenced by traditional conservative Christian conceptions of the world simply would not accept Homosexuality as not being a disorder, regardless as to any evidence saying otherwise. It was only when the sexual revolution came could we safely explore this topic.

The Congregation (for the Doctrine) of the Faith didn’t exist at the time heliocentrism was a live issue. And as far as I know it never condemned heliocentrism: Galileo was disciplined for insubordination, not heliocentrism (which wouldn’t make sense since, after all, Copernicus was encouraged in the same research by the Church).

I’m not entirely sure how this is relevant, I’m talking about the Church’s teaching on the origin of homosexual desires rather than any morality concerning them but no it wouldn’t.

The Church teaches exactly nothing about the “origin of homosexual desires” because the origin of homosexual desires has exactly nothing to do with the reasons for her condemnation of sodomy.

My system of morality is much the same as most others within liberal western societies in that it is largely based on consent rather than absolute dictates. A full grown man can consent to being penetrated by another man, a young boy has not yet acquired the maturity to make such a decision for himself.

It is a radically impoverished notion of morality which objects to pederasty only on the grounds that it’s technically legally nonconsensual.

 

[buffalo]

Hey, the guy asked for an example and he gave him one.

I wasn’t going to admit to this because I’d hate to have it tinge any future discussions I have on here…I’m a practicing psychiatrist, and I have been called in on patients who’s relatives claim have been suffering from demonic possession. I can tell you something, not one of them was, and the attempts at “exorcism” nine times out of ten made the problem worse by stressing the subject of it.

Epilepsy, Panic attacks and Schizophrenia are the most usual causes. There is a reason why the Vatican ordains very few exorcists these days and the few that remain operate almost exclusively in Africa; most westerners are educated enough to know it doesn’t happen.

Priests, Medics and Scholars Attend Rome Exorcism Course

“Satan has much power and wants to cause a lot of damage to God’s people. However, Christ is risen and is all powerful. Therefore, with Him, we do not need to fear anything from the enemy,” says a priest from Haiti who has experienced, first-hand, those afflicted by demons.

Speaking to ZENIT at an annual Rome course on exorcism this  week, Father Louis Wesly Merosne from the Haitian diocese of Anse-a-Veau  and Miragoane, said the course has shown him the need for ministers  "who are willing to be used by the Lord in the work of exorcism and  prayers of liberation.

“We need clarity on how to proceed, so that our tactics can be organized to have the greatest effect against the kingdom of evil,” he said.

Catholic Church’s Top Exorcist Claims He Rid World of 160,000 Demons

Catholic Church’s Top Exorcist Claims He Rid World of 160,000 Demons

http://images.christianpost.com/full/60960/gabriele-amorth.png (Photo: Screen Grab via Youtube/caballeroperegrino)The Catholic Church’s top exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth.

The Catholic Church’s top exorcist, who claims to have sent 160,000 demons back to hell, says he wants Pope Francis to allow all priests to start performing the ritual to deal with a rising demand for exorcisms from the faithful.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 88, who also heads the International Association of Exorcists, told The Sunday Times that he will ask Pope Francis to allow all priests the right to do exorcisms without the church’s approval. According to the report, priests currently need special approval from their bishop to perform the rite and it is rarely granted.
“I will ask the pope to give all priests the power to carry out exorcisms, and to ensure priests are properly trained for these starting with the seminary. There’s a huge demand for them,” said Father Amorth.
He explained that he was inspired to make the request after watching Pope Francis perform what he insists was an exorcism on a man “possessed by four demons” in St. Peter’s Square.
“The pope is also the Bishop of Rome, and like any bishop he is also an exorcist,” Amorth reportedly told La Repubblica newspaper. “It was a real exorcism. If the Vatican has denied this, it shows that they understand nothing.”
“There was now, more than ever, a need for exorcists to combat people possessed by ‘sorcerers’ and ‘Satanists,’” he noted in that report.

 

[buffalo]

Very well, if they were that means Cain and Seth either mated with one of these other creatures (to be human, one must have a human soul) or (God forbid) their own mother or any sisters to follow.

Again, why is creation reliant on sin?

You picked two very bad examples for your argument. Sickle Cell anemia is most prevalent in Africans who also live in the areas most infested with malaria. Are you aware those who posess sickle cell are immune to malaria?

Likewise, many autistic also display the traits of a “Savant”; they are socially awkward and yet excel in other fields, notably the sciences. Many of the worlds leading mathematicians, Physicists and computer developers have been autistic.

Oh they’ll become paler certainly, but certainly not in the short timeframe that even a very loose allegorical interpretation of Genesis requires.

]]

Incest between brother and sister was necessary in the beginning. Never allowed though between parent and child.

 

[buffalo]

As interesting as the first of those articles was (I haven’t read the others yet) it still concedes to my point, all of humanity cannot have a single couple as a common ancestor.

Because of the random nature of genealogy…two different genetic lineages are unlikely to have common ancestors who lived in the same population at the same time.

The base assumption is the rate of mutations. Now we know the rate is different and Adam and Eve are not debunked.

 

[buffalo]

In my case it is because I am a mental health professional, and research in the field by my more scholarly colleagues has yielded more than adequate evidence to show that there is no external “trauma” that causes homosexuality, neither is it a disorder that requires treatment. Quite frankly because there is no “cure”, because it is not a mental illness or disorder.

You know…I’ve only ever heard Christians campaigning against the LGBT movement and a couple of “quacks” who probably got their diplomas in the mail say this. No one else, ever. I can assure you, it is very, very, very, very unlikley Psychiatry will change it’s stance on Pedophilla. The only reason we don’t say never is because we’re not infallible, and we are always open to potential new evidence.

That said, we are 99.99999% certain this will never change.

Pedophilia has several potential external causes, and can be deduced as a social disorder due to a lack of empathy and an inability to recognise the thoughts of others in those who experience it. Homosexuality varies in that it does not, and (short of stress and trauma thrust upon them from persecution) homosexuals are otherwise perfectly healthy individuals.

Pedophilia is a mental disorder, homosexuality is not. I am qualified to make a definitive statement on this matter.

I’m sorry it doesn’t match what an ancient institution thinks, but fact is fact.

I think a panel of highly qualified experts, the greatest and most academic practitioners of the Psychiatric and Medical professions knows a great deal more about the workings of the mind and brain than elderly Clerics, most of them sheltered from outside society who likely have never studied it. On this one it is not Science that has stepped outside of its domain, it’s Religion.

Oh boy… :banghead:

Hopefully you are not referring to the activist political organization aka the APA.

 

[buffalo]

Which one? The Koran? The Bible? The Vedas? The Diamond Sutra? Or perhaps you’re rather partial to the Flying Spaghetti Monsters pirate cookbook or the Oracle of the invisible pink unicorn?

The world cannot agree on what constitutes divine revelation, but we can agree on how genetics work.

The one that includes Revelation by the Son of God. When one parses through the truth claims of the major religions there are many common truths, but one rises well above the rest and possesses the fullness of truth.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

"Some of the classic signs of possession by a demon, Bishop Paprocki said, include speaking in a language the person has never learned; extraordinary shows of strength; a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God; and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite and cutting, scratching and biting the skin.

“A person who claims to be possessed must be evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness, according to Vatican guidelines issued in 1999, which superseded the previous guidelines, issued in 1614.”

And one of the classic signs of alien abductions is time loss, but that doesn’t make every allegation a bona-fide abduction.

abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-wakes-coma-speaking-fluent-german/story?id=10395859

I’m curious why there isn’t much information available from the Vatican about exorcism statistics. If I were a priest and legitimately believed I could cure a set of symptoms that medical professionals couldn’t, you’d better believe I would want to submit case studies on any and all really interesting exorcisms. However, it instead seems that the efficacy of exorcisms is entirely based on verbal anecdotes from exorcists, not any organized analysis of exorcism outcomes.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Exorcist: exorcisms are totally legit you guys

Call me crazy, but when it comes to the efficacy of treatments for an affliction, I am more convinced by peer review and statistics than the word of a person whose job depends on the efficacy of the treatment in question.

Why hasn’t the Vatican collected any information about exorcism outcomes at all?

 

[buffalo]

Call me crazy, but when it comes to the efficacy of treatments for an affliction, I am more convinced by peer review and statistics than the word of a person whose job depends on the efficacy of the treatment in question.

Why hasn’t the Vatican collected any information about exorcism outcomes at all?

They really don’t have to prove anything. When appropriate they rid the person of the demon, they know it and the person rid of the demon knows it. Who cares what science thinks?

 

[buffalo]

Call me crazy, but when it comes to the efficacy of treatments for an affliction, I am more convinced by peer review and statistics than the word of a person whose job depends on the efficacy of the treatment in question.

Why hasn’t the Vatican collected any information about exorcism outcomes at all?

Be careful of putting all your eggs in the peer review process as we have seen recently much fraud.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

They really don’t have to prove anything. When appropriate they rid the person of the demon, they know it and the person rid of the demon knows it. Who cares what science thinks?

I imagine the family of Anneliese Michel care. Rational people care. If exorcisms were demonstrated to be an effective treatment for otherwise intractable symptoms, the entire medical community would be perfectly willing to join the Catholic Church in the fight against demonic affliction/possession/allergies. Imagine if hospitals knew when to summon a priest for an exorcism; currently people who need an exorcism may go without thanks to ignorance on the part of medical professionals. On the other hand, imagine if the symptoms that the church identifies as possession were actually caused by a new disease unknown to science! Scientists could develop less dangerous treatments and lives could be saved. Evidently, though, the Church prefers to deliberately do things in an inefficient manner. They think its not worth risking a forced position change on exorcisms for the sake of preventing repeats of tragedies like the case of Anneliese Michel.

Be careful of putting all your eggs in the peer review process as we have seen recently much fraud.

Peer review and data doesn’t make fraud impossible, a lack of peer review and data makes fraud trivial.

People argue over whether or not the Catholic Church is anti-science by arguing about whether or not the church has censored science in the past. I don’t think that is the right argument to have. I think that the church is anti-science in a more subtle way: it simply never crosses the church’s mind to do science. Exorcisms are a good example of this, people have been doing exorcisms longer than people have been doing science, but no one in the Catholic Church has yet bothered to do science to exorcisms. This is true of a great many other issues that the Catholic Church claims to care deeply about. For example, the Church claims to care a great deal about abortion, but nearly all the scholarly analysis of abortion statistics is funded by and comes from secular organizations. How can the Church say things like “Abortion is the greatest evil of our age” then turn around and not even bother to see how science can help them understand and solve the problem?

 

[rom422]

Our grasp of how genetics “work” is solid enough now to say with a great deal of certainty that humanity cannot have all descended from a single pair. Yes, Mitochondrial Eve is probably not the biblical Eve (I’d be very surprised if she was), science does not claim this. What it does claim is there is a far wider source of todays genetic diversity, it could not have all descended from one couple. It is an genetic impossibility.

I have two comments on that:

1. Actually there is far less genetic diversity between individuals than you imagine. At the DNA level the difference is only about 0.1% (or 1 in 1000).

nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

Therefore, I do not see the descent of all humanity from a single pair of parents to be impossible. There is no need to postulate the existence of 10,000 first parents just to explain the variations between individuals, populations and races. Actually, the idea that humanity derived from multiple pairs of parents with very diverse genetic makeup is an artificial concoction invented by Scientism, not by Science. My research shows that the science of genetics actually is closer to the Bible than are trumpeted by many scientistic scholars.

1. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that there is really that much genetic diversity between peoples that make their descent from a single pair of parents highly improbable. So what? The probability of producing one living cell by randomly mixing the particles in the universe is also very slim (as calculated by Charles Guye and other scholars). Yet life appeared on earth, didn’t it? What I am getting at is that if you only use math and probability calculus, and you don’t put God in your equations, your result will be nil (or practically impossible). But once you posit God as an influencing factor in the world, then things behave differently. If there is a God who is at work in the universe, and who directs the laws and processes of nature to accomplish His work of creation, then what appears improbable by your math becomes completely feasible by His power.

Ah, you say, but we are not supposed to consider God in scientific enquiries. Then, I say, scientists must refrain from passing judgment on the veracity of the biblical Adam and Eve, for the truth about Adam and Eve cannot be adequately studied without putting God into the story.

Please forgive the red. It is only to help my eyes, as I could see them better.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Oh I don’t think protestants like the Anglicans will have any difficulty reconciling things like this with their teachings, after all they’ve never claimed inerrancy and have modified several of their practices when new developments in social justice, theology or the sciences have come to light. The Catholic church however will find some unease explaining this in relation to the Dogma of Papal Infalliability however.

Anglicans have claimed Biblical reliability, like pretty much all Christians. Moreover, I don’t understand what your goal is here. Are you questioning whether Christianity is true? If so, that has nothing to do with specifically Catholic dogmas. You should be open to Catholicism, sure, but if you find something problematic in Catholicism, you shouldn’t conclude that Christianity is false. That’s like me saying all modern science is false because I have an issue with quantum mechanics.

Was it Pius XII who wrote regarding evolution? How it is acceptable to hold to “Theistic Evolution” so long as belief remained that Adam and Eve was the common source of all humanity (I honestly do not recall, but one of them did). To deny the literal parenthood of Adam and Eve of all humanity was clearly labelled a heretical proposition.

OK. But that doesn’t settle the question, of course. And if you can’t reconcile this particular issue, that should have NO BEARING over other questions about faith, like “Does God exist?” or “Did Jesus come to save sinners?”. I just don’t understand the way you’re proceeding here, unless your goal is just to show off. I’m assuming your goal is to make a serious inquiry, however.

If you want a serious inquiry, you can’t assume that the only two choices are a literal Adam and Eve or atheism.

I don’t think most non-literalist Christians, or most Cafateria Catholics for that matter will care. It does pose a problem for those who say the Church cannot err in matters of faith, because in this case it clearly has.

You haven’t made this clear, since your arguments against the two-parent theory are not conclusive.

It doesn’t automatically mean it is a bad thing either as the Church would have us believe. Even if you do not act upon it, it is still disordered, something to be shunned and kept tucked away.

Of course, you are supposed to accept and nurture the good parts of your disposition, and reject and starve the bad parts of your disposition. That’s the way to deal with ALL natural dispositions. A person with a passionate disposition should nurture one’s intensity in doing good, but reject the way that such intensity tends toward anger and destructiveness. It would work the same for a person with homosexual dispositions.

Maybe it doesn’t fit into a cute 50’s American idyll of what makes a perfect family, but no family or relationship is perfect. I know I’d certainly rather embrace the variety within society than enforce a monotone standard.

Straw man. The 50s ideal is a bad ideal. It is historically exceptional and unhealthy – not as unhealthy as modern families, perhaps, but unhealthy. The truly traditional family is the one which includes cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends all living in close proximity, if not under the same roof. In such a context, being gay would alienate no one. It’s the silly modern notion of “making your own house as a couple” that helps create a culture which alienates gay people (whether or not they are celibate). It’s this modern notion that destroys variety, not the traditional notion.

The status quo on marriage and family in recent years is very sad, and I don’t support it at all. I don’t think gay marriage is a solution to the problem, but I do agree there is a problem.

 

[Robyn_p]

If Adam and Eve were the first humans with a rational soul, that means they spawned admist a larger selection of proto-humanoids without a Human Soul.

To achive this wider genetic diversity, this means Adam and Eve had to have interbred with these other creatures. Isn’t breeding with a non human bestiality? Why is Gods creation plan reliant upon both adultery and zoophilia, two mortal sins?

It’s here that the single pair source theory falls to pieces again.

I agree that it would have been sinful. (Though it wouldn’t have been bestiality, more like a drunken one-night stand, since these pre-human creatures were human in every respect except for the presence of an immortal, rational soul.)

But I don’t think we can say from the fact that Adam and Eve and their descendants sinned after the Fall that this was part of God’s original design for the human race. For all we know, had Adam and Eve not sinned, God could have continued to do what he did with Eve and create spouses for their children directly. Possibly taking a few more of those proto-hominids and infusing them with a soul.

All we know is what happened. And what happened was when sin entered the world, man was in a sense rejecting God’s plan. All human relationships were subject to perversions after the fall. It’s really not surprising to me that the first humans would have engaged in illicit sexual activity.

So no, the presence of sin after the Fall doesn’t make the single pair theory fall apart. If anything, it supports the Catholic position. The idea that our first ancestors were sinners can hardly be considered an objection. That’s what the first eleven chapters of Genesis are all about. Like the Catechism itself says, “After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin” This seems to fit.

This may be possible, but to my knowledge the Catholic Church has long held a literal interpretation of Death entering the world and a spiritual death is a (relatively) more recent development. A case of “the God of the Gaps” if you like.

If by relatively recent you mean the thirteenth century with Thomas Aquinas, sure.

I highlighted the case of physical death here but we can replace it with any one of the ills said or have been said to have been a result of the fall. Ilness, Aging, Pain; these have been said to be the consequence of sin where science has clearly defined that they are a requirement for the world to function. Without Illness or Aging there would be overpopulation (Darkmatter2525’s first critique of Genesis on youtube explains this far better than I do), and without a full emotional spectrum humans are not fully sentient.

Why are the results of sin a requirement for the world to function and human sentience?

St. Thomas recognized this back in the twelve hundreds. I’ll quote him here, I think you’d find him interesting:

Now God, who is the author of man, is all-powerful, wherefore when He first made man, He conferred on him the favour of being exempt from the necessity resulting from such a matter: which favor, however, was withdrawn through the sin of our first parents.
**
Accordingly death is both natural on account of a condition attaching to matter**, and penal on account of the loss of the divine favor preserving man from death [Summa Theologiae, II-II:164:1 ad 1; cf. I:97:1].

Also

In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals.

But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon.

Nor does Bede’s gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some.

Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals [Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2].

The Church has never said that illness and aging and death were not present in the natural world. Only that man was supposed to be free from it originally. Some people certainly over the centuries and even may have thought that, but like Thomas, says, that’s just not the case.

But I’m not really sure we can argue that because things are this way now, and humans need pain to have a full emotional spectrum, that this is the only way it ever could be. We don’t have any other experience, but that’s hardly proof against the Catholic belief.

To me, the fact that pain has some good effect on us is an example of good being brought out of evil, not proof that it is absolutely necessary or that we were meant to experience it. There’s really no reason to say it had to be this way, we don’t have any other knowledge of things.

 

[Robyn_p]

But that is the problem I have at least here, there are portions of Genesis that sit quite comfortably with science (Let there be light and the big bang, although the theory of the big bounce is beginning to threaten that) but others that are physically impossible, it just cannot have happened like that.

So…He tells us one thing, but then deliberately lays out the crime scene to say the exact opposite?

What a quirky sense of humor he must have.

You’re assuming that the Biblical account is meant to tell us how the world came to be. If God inspired the writer of Genesis for that purpose then yeah, that is strange. But like Pope Benedict XVI says, Genesis isn’t supposed to be about that. It’s about telling us what the world - and specifically the human race - IS, using symbolic and poetic language. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and mankind rejected God and that’s why there is evil in the world. That’s what it is about.

In that sense the Biblical account and science are complimentary, because they are telling us two different things.