Why do so many Catholics accept evolution as fact?

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Bacteria remain bacteria, just as dogs remain dogs, but with a generational cycle of 20 minutes or less, can mutate very rapidly.

There are bacteria that eat petroleum fuels and others that can live inside nuclear reactor cores. If that’s not evolution, what is?

ICXC NIKA
The bacteria that is able to clean up oil spills, fuels, and heavy metals contamination kicks some serious ! 😇😀

Usagi, there is some great research on DNA with dingoes atm, and PNG singing dogs that is also looking at rewriting the history of the dog and its global migration. DNA research recently settled an argument here on whether dingoes had contributed to the development of the kelpie. 5% dingo is what a kelpie is made of.

On man made breeds,
the distinguishing criteria is WE.

We create horses to race, Belgian Shepherds that jump out of choppers, a friend of mine created no shearing sheep, (he went on to research cancer), another, a farmer, his fav hornless sheep breed ( makes it easier to yard rams).

But this is very different to natural selection. WE are making the choice.
And we are making very questionable choices. Condensing genetic disease, creating breeds that cannot give birth naturally, ie heads too big for birth canal, or creating issues like OLW.
I am reminded of that breed of cattle created for meat. Cant remember its name. Over 70% of those bred were unfortunately extremely dangerous. A farmer here imported them. Next big thing.
He had to euthanise the whole lot after about 5 generations of still being dangerous. So did the original breeders of their herds. It just didnt work.

Natural selection also requires genetic variation, which isnt happening when Artificial selection is condensing down the gene pool and creating a very high genetic inbreeding coefficient. Your typical bottleneck.

So many people mistake what survival of the fittest means within an evolutionary context. Its not which Impala outran the Lion.
The same with the modern definition of evolution.
Which is why I asked techno if he/she understood the definition of evolution.
 
Ok…Can you show any animal today that is in the process of changing into something new ?
There is of course a gradual change but we cannot observe significant change within our life time. It takes millions of years. That was why I suggest the bacteria as a quick action.
 
There is of course a gradual change but we cannot observe significant change within our life time. It takes millions of years. That was why I suggest the bacteria as a quick action.
Billions of years have already passed when is it going to happen?🤷
 
Is that all you got.😃
All we have got to show evolution is an example of… evolution! What else did you expect?

The evolution of drug resistance in bacteria, or of herbicide resistance in weeds, are examples of evolution.

You ask for examples of evolution. We provide examples of evolution. You complain. Why?

rossum
 
Ok…Can you show any animal today that is in the process of changing into something new ?
The answer is that same as it was the last time we answered this question. Every animal (and plant and bacteria and arche) species is currently in the process of evolving as its genome changes. The changes are internal in the DNA, so they are not visible externally for the most part.

Two examples I have already given are the spread of lactase persistence in humans and the spread of HIV resistance in humans. Those are two examples of humans changing into something new: new humans can digest milk into adulthood and are resistant to HIV. Old humans could not digest milk and had no HIV resistance.

That is the process of change into something new.

rossum
 
The answer is that same as it was the last time we answered this question. Every animal (and plant and bacteria and arche) species is currently in the process of evolving as its genome changes. The changes are internal in the DNA, so they are not visible externally for the most part.

Two examples I have already given are the spread of lactase persistence in humans and the spread of HIV resistance in humans. Those are two examples of humans changing into something new: new humans can digest milk into adulthood and are resistant to HIV. Old humans could not digest milk and had no HIV resistance.

That is the process of change into something new.

rossum
So that’s about it. :hmmm:
 
From reading posts on here and also from listening to Catholic Answers, it seems like a lot of Catholics simply accept that evolution is a fact and then try to make it fit with the Catholic faith. As someone coming to Catholicism from the Reformed perspective who is also a creationist, this troubles me.

Why do Catholics not seem to have encountered the myriad of books, articles and videos that show the major weaknesses of the evolution theory? Sites like Answers In Genesis, Creation Ministries International and the Institute for Creation Research show that there are serious problems with evolutionary theory. There are books written by PhD scientists (including one from my alma mater, Victoria University of Wellington) that blow holes in evolution.

With such a myriad of resources at hand, why do so many Catholics try to make evolution fit with the Catholic faith when there really is no need to?
198 posts yesterday and most seem off-topic. To try to answer your question.

People in the life sciences find evolutionary theory very useful. It helps understand many things, from how diseases develop to how to best protect habitats. It proves its power of explanation again and again.

In contrast, the many different creationist theories are only concerned to protect certain interpretations of scripture. None of them work and they’re more or less useless in the life sciences as they explain nothing. Some even claim the universe is of the order of a million times younger than indicated by cosmology, astronomy and geology. So your question would then be ‘why do so many Christians try to make cosmology, astronomy, geology and evolution fit with their faith?’

We don’t. We just look at the evidence. And then, since truth cannot contradict truth, we decide that scripture was never intended to be a science textbook. As Monsignor Lemaître, who developed the Big Bang theory, said:

“The writers of the Bible were illuminated more or less — some more than others — on the question of salvation. On other questions they were as wise or ignorant as their generation. Hence it is utterly unimportant that errors in historic and scientific fact should be found in the Bible, especially if the errors related to events that were not directly observed by those who wrote about them . . . The idea that because they were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must also be right on all other subjects, is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us at all.”
 
So that’s about it. :hmmm:
We’ve mentioned bacteria as modern examples and fossils as records of the past changes for larger animals.

And if you don’t believe evolution, please explain where we got the fossil record from. Please explain dinosaurs. While we’ve provided answers to your question, you’ve completely dodged that one.
 
I think that you’ve worn out any good will that anyone might have had left in trying to help you understand the matter.
Sometimes it seems we only argue with ourselves. As this guy puts it:
Can I try and help you understand about God ?
Putting onto others what applies to ourselves would be one reason why these discussions can get so heated and lead nowhere other than confirming for ourselves the correctedness of our beliefs.

God, is our Heavenly Father, the Source of all there is, now and always.
Jesus came, performed miracles, died and was resurrected.
We partake of His body and blood in the Eucharist.
He has made us possessing free will and granting us the possibility of love.
Modern science, as it is presented in secular society, speaks only of shadows.
Its understanding of how creation blossomed (I hate the word “evolved”) is a major contributor to the holocaust of abortion we see today.

At any rate, I’m not going to tell Him how he brought us into existence.
 
Someone will have to explain to me how bacteria adapting to the resistance of medication, HIV immune resistance and the like has anything to do w/macro evolution? :confused:
 
We’ve mentioned bacteria as modern examples and fossils as records of the past changes for larger animals.

And if you don’t believe evolution, please explain where we got the fossil record from. Please explain dinosaurs. While we’ve provided answers to your question, you’ve completely dodged that one.
Fossils come from dead animals, there is no date stamped on the bones, and to which animal they came from, it’s all speculation.
 
Fossils come from dead animals, there is no date stamped on the bones, and to which animal they came from, it’s all speculation.
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.
 
Someone will have to explain to me how bacteria adapting to the resistance of medication, HIV immune resistance and the like has anything to do w/macro evolution? :confused:
This is basic evolution: mutation + natural selection → change.

Bacteria are not identical, some have mutations which make then slightly different from other bacteria of their species.

Some of those mutations act to block the actions of some antibiotics. Hence, in the presence of those antibiotics the bacteria with the mutation have a much better chance of surviving than bacteria without the mutation, which are killed by the antibiotic.

Bacteria with the mutation survive and pass on the mutation. The bacteria that died didn’t pass on not having the mutation. Eventually all the bacteria have the mutation and are resistant to the antibiotic.

To summarise: “If your parents didn’t have any children, then the chances are that you won’t have any either.”

Mutations and natural selection introduce changes. Where populations are separated, there will be different changes in the two populations. Ancestral big cats lived in both Africa and Asia. The African population changed gradually into lions; the Asian population changed gradually into tigers. They are different, but still similar enough to interbreed: ligers and tigons. However, male ligers and tigons are always infertile, while the females are not. These two species are in the process of separating but have not yet completely separated. Horses and donkeys are further along the road to separation, both male and female mules are infertile.

The accumulation of lots of small changes makes for a big change: 1 + 1 + 1 + … + 1 + 1 = 100,000

rossum
 
Fossils come from dead animals, there is no date stamped on the bones, and to which animal they came from, it’s all speculation.
No, it is not “speculation”. Modern science works, demonstrably. Mere speculation would not work anywhere near as well.

Which animal? Can’t you tell the difference between a Triceratops skull and a T. rex skull? Well, even if you can’t, there are palaeontologists who can.

Modern scientific measurements work to within a remarkable degree of accuracy. Astronomers have measured radioactive decay rates in distant stars and they are the same as the decay rates we see on earth. Those distant stars tell us that decay rates have not changed for a very long time.

The bones do not have a date, but the rocks those bones are in do often have a date which can be determined. See Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective for a lot of detail on the process.

Sometimes even the bones themselves are datable, though only if well preserved, not contaminated and less than about 60,000 years old.

rossum
 
This is basic evolution: mutation + natural selection → change. . . . The accumulation of lots of small changes makes for a big change: 1 + 1 + 1 + … + 1 + 1 = 100,000

rossum
Genetic changes within the body most often, if the cell is viable and undetected by the immune system, result in tumors. If we understand evolution to happen in a similar fashion, but on a macro level, natural selection on a basis of random mutation would not actually result in the increase in sophistication that is observed in the natural order. A materialist would have to assume a natural biological force, along the lines of the physical law of thermodynamics, to explain why this is. At any rate when we are talking about humanity in this context, we are having to explain the origins of mathematics, philosophy, art, music, what is going on right here and now, and love, that is to say the capacity to enter into relation with what is other in such a way that communion results from the giving of oneself to that other.
 
Someone will have to explain to me how bacteria adapting to the resistance of medication, HIV immune resistance and the like has anything to do w/macro evolution? :confused:
Same mechanism on a smaller scale. There’s no reason that the principle of “offspring with different traits have different survival rates and thus the frequency of certain traits changes over time” would stop working at an arbitrary boundary of species (or “kind” or whatever).

Do we no longer believe that the Book of Nature tells us the truth about God’s creation just as the Book of the Scriptures tells us about His nature? Especially now that we can study genomes directly, there is a spectrum of genetic similarity among all the creatures of the earth that strongly suggests a family tree. As someone said earlier, lions and tigers are similar (and can, imperfectly, interbreed) because they have a common ancestor from which they diverged. Yes, of course God has the power to have created lions and tigers completely separately and still to have given them genes that make them look related, but that’s like the old “God/the Devil put fossils in the rocks even though the planet isn’t old enough to have dead animals that far back.” It means that we can’t trust any of our observations or measurements, and that just doesn’t seem to be the kind of Creator God is. He makes rules for the world that even He rarely breaks, rules that we can figure out and thus better understand His Creation.
 
Usagi;14443115. . . . As someone said earlier said:
related, but that’s like the old “God/the Devil put fossils in the rocks even though the planet isn’t old enough to have dead animals that far back.” It means that we can’t trust any of our observations or measurements, and that just doesn’t seem to be the kind of Creator God is. He makes rules for the world that even He rarely breaks, rules that we can figure out and thus better understand His Creation.

Random mutation is hardly an explanation for the beauty that is life, the mystery of creation and our own individual being. Existence is directed to one goal, God, and all life manifests His glory, expressing His infinite creativity. Causes are not all temporally sequential and God wouldn’t have to break rules to bring something different, new and beautiful into existence.
 
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