Why do so many Catholics accept evolution as fact?

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Della said:
Considering they are part of God’s creation they are good. Very good was reserved for humankind in the creation story. 😉

I believe it was St. Augustine who taught that all the organisms that are harmful to us weren’t meant to be so, but only to the lower life forms. Only after the fall did we become vulnerable to diseases, parasites, insects, etc. They serve a purpose in the natural world, such as population control of species, adaptations of species, ridding the environment of carcasses, etc. So, they are good, but not necessarily good for us humans. After all, there are good bacteria and bugs that inhabit our bodies, too. They must be there for a reason and since God created everything we have to accept that the reason is a good one.
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Were they part of God’s original creation? If so, God has a very strange concept of “very good”, and according to Gen. 1:31, he applied that term to “every thing he had made,” not just humanity. I absolutely cannot accept that he would apply that term to the kinds of creatures that we are talking about.
 
Bradski said:
And another excellent reason why it is a banned subject: Not many people understand it and, for example, think we are descended from apes.
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Like any topic in school, you answered the questions correctly, got a good grade and that was that. And a lot of things were promptly forgotten. Regarding the apes issue, the correct answer, we are told, is that man and apes had a common ancestor. Quite a fantastic suggestion, so it is understandable that people discount it.

Ed
 
LiamQ said:
It’s absolutely OK to not accept evolution on scientific grounds. For my own part, I am a skeptic who keeps in mind his knowledge of science is limited to a smattering of anatomy and physiology.

What’s not OK is do as the Kolbe Center does, which is to dictate to faithful Catholics that the Church absolutely teaches that young-earth Creationism is true, and that those in the Magisterium who would say otherwise are mistaken.

But that’s not about science or evolution, is about setting one’s self up as an alternative Magisterium. That’s not right.
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I didn’t go through it enough to catch all that, however it is possible, like many do, to believe in an old earth w/out tying it to macro-evolution…
 
Then again, since this is not a matter of faith and morals, nor is it dogma, some of those w/in the Magisterium may very well be mistaken…
 
edwest2 said:
It has no practical scientific use.
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It is rather central to our understanding of life on Earth and how different sorts of living things (both extant and extinct) are related to each other.

You don’t have to be able to build cars with an idea for it to be an advance in human knowledge.

And of course those of us Catholics who accept the consensus view on evolution don’t remove God from the picture. Knowing more about the mechanisms of creation only increases our reverence for the Creator.

Heck, the Church even has an answer for the “how can there have been death before the Fall” issue. Long before evolutionary theories were propounded, Catholic theology held that physical immortality was one of the preternatural gifts bestowed on Adam and Eve by God. “Not dying” was never the natural state of biological bodies, but a special exception that God permitted while they remained in His friendship. It is not necessary to extend immortality to every natural animal in order to make the story of the Fall coherent. It never bothers anybody that Adam, Eve, and the animals all ate plants, at least some of which do die when you eat them.
 
edwest2 said:
But no posts here encouraging all to believe in Quantum Entanglement, just this.
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Also no posts declaring that quantum entanglement nullifies the Word of God and must be denied by good Christians. These two facts are not unrelated.

The Faith does not ordinarily require us to deny what has been discovered about the natural world through study and reason. So when we are told (by some fellow believers, not by the Magisterium) that in this one case we must, opposing that notion is only natural.
 
Usagi said:
Also no posts declaring that quantum entanglement nullifies the Word of God and must be denied by good Christians. These two facts are not unrelated.

The Faith does not ordinarily require us to deny what has been discovered about the natural world through study and reason. So when we are told (by some fellow believers, not by the Magisterium) that in this one case we must, opposing that notion is only natural.
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See post #66.

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Either they said it or they didn’t.

usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-12-pope-evolution_n.htm

Ed
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You really want me to pull up all the quotes from Pius, John Paul and Benedict that have been posted here 100s of times? I don’t know that I have the energy. Instead I will give one little quote from Pope Benedict which is pretty conclusive:
Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called “creationism” and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man?
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w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2007/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070724_clero-cadore.html
 
Fragile said:
Then again, since this is not a matter of faith and morals, nor is it dogma, some of those w/in the Magisterium may very well be mistaken…
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The statement that evolution is not inconsistent with the Faith is a matter of faith and morals. Of course, the scientific question is not a question for the Magisterium. But given that believing in science is not against the Faith, why would someone reject science?
 
TMC said:
The statement that evolution is not inconsistent with the Faith is a matter of faith and morals. Of course, the scientific question is not a question for the Magisterium. But given that believing in science is not against the Faith, why would someone reject science?
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Science is neutral about the supernatural. The Church, however, not only informs us about faith and morals but it has the authority to interpret Scripture correctly, as in this case which concerns man’s origin.

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Science is neutral about the supernatural. The Church, however, not only informs us about faith and morals but it has the authority to interpret Scripture correctly, as in this case which concerns man’s origin.

Ed
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Who says the Church lacks that authority? And, within and exercising that authority, the Church has said that evolution is not incompatible with the faith.
 
TMC said:
Who says the Church lacks that authority? And, within and exercising that authority, the Church has said that evolution is not incompatible with the faith.
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Textbook biological evolution cannot show the origin of man accurately.

Ed
 
Michael_Mayo said:
There are even more problems with young earth creationism. But evolution is a scientific theory. Not a religious belief. It presents a framework for understanding observations in nature. It is THE most accepted and workable theory in biology and anthropology.
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Yup, Catholics believe it because it isn’t contrary to the catholic faith (we don’t believe genesis is a word for word literal record of creation). It makes sense to accept the most viable scientific theory, which is evolution by far. It may be disproven in the future, but no current theory comes remotely close to challenging it.

I believe in evolution and in Adam and Eve being my forbears.
 
As it stands now, and the way I understand it (without alienating myself from true doctrine)…it is possible that at some point in time our Lord infused souls into our first parents, who may already have had bodies.

Please don’t come at me with the language of the very learned such as many of you are, as I am a high school graduate with typing, steno, and book keeping as my areas of expertise. The rest I have tried to learn by reading and listening… and still do, with the authentic teaching of the Church as my guide.

Yes! The Lord could have created in many varying ways.

Bottom line - disobedience, the Fall, and a promise from the Lord!

(It helps much to include the fall of about 1/3 of the angels.
 
Dorothy said:
As it stands now, and the way I understand it (without alienating myself from true doctrine)…it is possible that at some point in time our Lord infused souls into our first parents, who may already have had bodies.
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Of course they already had bodies.

If you read Genesis with a fresh mind, you can see that God breathed into a naked body (supernatural mouth to mouth?) and Adam became a living soul.

Nowhere does it say that any other being required Divine help to breathe; it wasn’t natural breathing God gave at that moment, but the human soul.

ICXC NIKA
 
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