Why do so many Catholics accept evolution as fact?

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goout said:
I just want to point out that this discussion does matter.

Erroneous ideas about the senses of scripture, the nature of inerrancy, the nature of inspiration, the relationship between faith and reason…these things all drive people away from the Church. We have a well reasoned case to be made in these areas, and most of us are helpless to make it. If I learned the Church that some people articulate, I would run screaming from it also.

As a complete Catholic people from top to bottom, we have done a horrendous job at catechesis. Absolutely awful. How do we expect anyone to be Catholic when we ourselves don’t know how to articulate what the Church teaches?
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You (meaning anybody) can show us what the Church teaches.

Ed

A quicker method would be hanging large banners on Catholic Churches that read: “Come on in! We accept Evolution!” But I don’t see that happening.
 
edwest2 said:
You (meaning anybody) can show us what the Church teaches.

Ed

A quicker method would be hanging large banners on Catholic Churches that read: “Come on in! We accept Evolution!” But I don’t see that happening.
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Ed, why would the Church make a pronouncement on a matter of scientific inquiry, let alone put it on a banner? 🤷
That’s not the Church’s mission or purpose for being.
 
goout said:
Ed, why would the Church make a pronouncement on a matter of scientific inquiry, let alone put it on a banner? 🤷
That’s not the Church’s mission or purpose for being.
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What did you mean in post #358?

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
The process has no goal.
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Natural selection has a “goal”: have more grandchildren. That means that you need to have fertile children who produce grandchildren. Whoever produces more grandchildren on average wins.

Genetic changes that result in more grandchildren are amplified by natural selection and spread.

Sometimes those changes have very obviously visible effects, sometimes not.

Birds evolved to make use of the air, an obviously visible change. Humans are evolving to be able to digest milk in adulthood, not a visible change but still a change.

As the environment changes, so animals in that environment change to better match the changes around them. Elephant poachers hunt elephants for ivory, so having large tusks is now a disadvantage for elephants, making them more likely to be shot. So elephants are changing to grow smaller, or no, tusks. The environment changed when the poachers arrived; elephants are adapting to their changed environment.

Changes are driven by the environment.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Natural selection has a “goal”: have more grandchildren. That means that you need to have fertile children who produce grandchildren. Whoever produces more grandchildren on average wins.

Genetic changes that result in more grandchildren are amplified by natural selection and spread.

Sometimes those changes have very obviously visible effects, sometimes not.

Birds evolved to make use of the air, an obviously visible change. Humans are evolving to be able to digest milk in adulthood, not a visible change but still a change.

As the environment changes, so animals in that environment change to better match the changes around them. Elephant poachers hunt elephants for ivory, so having large tusks is now a disadvantage for elephants, making them more likely to be shot. So elephants are changing to grow smaller, or no, tusks. The environment changed when the poachers arrived; elephants are adapting to their changed environment.

Changes are driven by the environment.

rossum
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Adaptation. You can buy a previously extinct tree now (circa 120 -150 million years old).

wollemipine.com/news/Found_Tree_from_the_Dinosaur_Age.php

Ed
 
I’d like to remind a few of you that the Church doesn’t answer every question.

When the air-intake manifold on my Ford started leaking, Mother Church had no insight for me on how to fix it. Which is fine.

The Church gives me my “why” (meaning). Scientific Inquiry gives me my “how” (facts).

Recall the Galileo Affair. And recall that the Church thus began focusing more on matters of faith rather than matters of science.

Similarly, please be at peace with the fact that the best scientific thought currently posits that we likely evolved from ape-like ancestors. This theory is, per the scientific method, subject to unending revision.

Also, just because we may have evolved from an ape-like species doesn’t make the “reality” of Genesis any more or less probable; especially in the pre-scientific world in which those stories came to be.

As a conclusion, “Why do so many Catholics accept evolution as fact?”

Because the Catechism won’t help me fix my busted Ford. And that’s ok.
 
Vonsalza said:
I’d like to remind a few of you that the Church doesn’t answer every question.

When the air-intake manifold on my Ford started leaking, Mother Church had no insight for me on how to fix it. Which is fine.

The Church gives me my “why” (meaning). Scientific Inquiry gives me my “how” (facts).

Recall the Galileo Affair. And recall that the Church thus began focusing more on matters of faith rather than matters of science.

Similarly, please be at peace with the fact that the best scientific thought currently posits that we likely evolved from ape-like ancestors. This theory is, per the scientific method, subject to unending revision.

Also, just because we may have evolved from an ape-like species doesn’t make the “reality” of Genesis any more or less probable; especially in the pre-scientific world in which those stories came to be.

As a conclusion, “Why do so many Catholics accept evolution as fact?”

Because the Catechism won’t help me fix my busted Ford. And that’s ok.
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The original question is the issue. And yes, the Church has made pronouncements about it and issued documents related to it. Nothing on car maintenance 🙂

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Adaptation.
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Is a synonym for evolution. Evolution is a process which adapts organisms in an environment to suit that environment.
You can buy a previously extinct tree now (circa 120 -150 million years old).
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Do not believe everything a salesman tells you. I just happen to have this bridge in New York I can sell you…

The Wollemi pine was thought to be extinct, but (obviously) was not.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Is a synonym for evolution. Evolution is a process which adapts organisms in an environment to suit that environment.

Do not believe everything a salesman tells you. I just happen to have this bridge in New York I can sell you…

The Wollemi pine was thought to be extinct, but (obviously) was not.

rossum
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I don’t think so. A sugar beet raised in good conditions can produce X amount of sugar while those grown in ideal conditions can produce a lot more. This is a built-in feedback mechanism. Everything works the same. In other words, the sugar beet will grow in either environment but it will do better if grown under the best conditions.

Ed
 
mVitus said:
Actually scientists use carbon dating and similar methods, which utilize radioactive half-lives to determine the age of fossils. It’s not like they look at a bone and say “Hmm, looks like a billion to me.” There’s work behind it.
And with the bones, we can make reconstructions ofh ow they look and by looking at that we recognize those animals aren’t around today. A T-Rex skull for example is easy to identify as not living today. Or smaller fossils, like some trilobites I own, can be found in completion without any need to reconstruct the bone structure.
And some more recent remains, like a wooly mammoth trapped in ice, are found complete and pbvious to identify.
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Carbon dating is only good to about 50,000 years.
 
Bradski said:
Your post implies that it could if it wanted to.
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Perhaps you could quote the actual words used and suggest an alternative. The blatant anthropomorphism involved in speaking of evolution “wanting” something would obviously be inaccurate.

On the other hand, it is sometimes very natural to speak in such terms simply to avoid complicated circumlocutions.

For example, when explaining the basics of using computers and the internet, if somebody enters search terms into the Google website and waits for something to happen without clicking on the search button, and complains that nothing is happening, then one might ask, “How does the website know that your search terms are ready? Do you want a time limit to be imposed, with a clock counting down? Do you want it to provide search results if you have paused to think, and your search terms aren’t ready?”
Bradski said:
That if something doesn’t work, then evolution could fix it.

It doesn’t fix anything. It just removes that which doesn’t work. Leaving that which does.
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Now it sounds as though you are insisting that evolution is restricted to just natural selection, and that mutation isn’t part of the process of evolution.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to quote rossum in this context:
rossum said:
It is still subject to mutations and to neutral drift. It is no longer subject to natural selection. If you are going to talk about evolution, then you really should know this already. Mutation, natural selection and neutral drift are three basic and fundamental processes in evolution.
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Now, while I have an opportunity to ask you directly, here are some questions that I already posted in this thread:

If bones of an extinct primate species are found with stone tools, then do we know that they are bones of creatures that were ancestral to homo sapiens? Is there some undisputed fact of biology that guarantees that beings who don’t have spoken language are en route to acquiring spoken language if they can make stone tools?

Alternatively, is there some undisputed fact of biology that guarantees that beings who can make stone tools also have language?

Of course, the matter cannot even be discussed unless you are willing to distinguish between human languages and the general capacity for communication that is shared with other species.
 
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