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inocente
Guest
Or they’re all wrong, and the universe has only existed for less than ten thousand years, but God made everything look a million times older to deceive us.
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rossum
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Usagi
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What?Kinda like the Movie… The Matrix
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Roseeurekacross
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Aloysium
Guest
And this is why it is difficult to have a discussion on these sorts of matters where the same word means different things to different people.
No matter what antibiotics you use, mathematics will not appear. Philosophy and music did not randomly happen, nor are they of any help for survival. They are gifts bestowed upon us, having been created with a spiritual soul.
How can people not see the lameness of our current “scientific” understanding of the creation of mankind?
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mVitus
Guest
I don’t think it’s “lame.” Frankly it amazes me when I think about all that happened to bring us where we are. How inanimate compounds became life. How that life battled for survival in conditions we’d find toxic. How just one natural disaster could’ve changed the course of Earth’s history by obliterating one ancestral population or the near absence of one could’ve led to a different ancestral population being able to make it. How little changes created such diversity and the fact that with enough gaps filled we could trace our heritage down to a single-celled organism boows my mind. Lame has never entered my thoughts on evolution, just wonder at the intricacies. It’s amazing and calling it lame, to me, is like saying the Passion was lame because it was just an execution. If you find more amazement with the Genesis story, I can understand why, but evolution, to those of us that have a respect for it, is amazing.
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PluniaZ
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:clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping:
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rossum
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You are making the logical error of petitio principii here. By saying “creation” you are assuming the answer you want.
Please show us the evidence of any deity observably creating a new species in the wild or in the lab.
If you want to move into the scientific area, then you will need to supply the relevant scientific evidence.
rossum
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Aloysium
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The so called “fact” of “evolution” as it is taught in schools and universities is simplistic, superficial, reductionistic and pretty much ignores most of what is important and necessary to being human. Maybe you can describe to me how science itself, an example of our capacity for understanding, came into existence from “inanimate compounds”, which is what all of them are, anima meaning soul. Modern explanations must rely on science-of-the-gaps, which when elucidated, will reveal God at the centre as the Source of all that is.
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rossum
Guest
You are assuming the existence of a soul. Scripture explicitly states that there is no soul:
“All the elements of reality are soulless.”
When one realises this by wisdom,
then one does not heed ill.
This is the Path of Purity.
– Dhammapada 20:7
Why should I believe what your scripture says rather than what my scripture says? Buddhism has no problem with evolution as a description of the origin of the material component of a human being. Neither, it appears from this thread, do the recent Popes.
Buddhism and Christianity disagree on the origin and characteristics of the non-material components of a human being; there is no reason to disagree on the origin of the material component. The material is well within the ambit of science.
rossum
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Aloysium
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I’m not going to argue Buddhist thought with you. I disagree with your understanding but there is no equivalent of a Magisterium. You can believe what you will, if you are satisfied with that truth. This is the world of alternate facts, but as to recent Popes, they all would all agree with the revealed truth that there was one first man, etc, etc, however that took place. I would recommend you forget these posts and refer to the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you are interested in the Church’s teachings.
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edwest2
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Inanimate compounds became life? That is not a scientific statement. It’s not reproducible in the lab.
I am losing any “respect” I had with this ongoing acceptance campaign. It is biased.
Ed
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Techno2000
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You moved the Goalpost waaay back.
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Techno2000
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Just like “Global Warming”.
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cfauster
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Any success that might come from research on abiogenesis would not threaten Catholic theology, nor Christian theology in general.
The following comes from:
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND CLASSICAL
TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE
JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY (Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, USA)
The Heythrop Journal, LIV (2013), pp. 617–630
“I argue that the classical understanding of teleology is no less necessary in modern Darwinian biology than it was in Aristotle’s time. In fact, modern biology strengthens the claims that teleological arguments make by vindicating many of their key features. As a consequence, I show how Aristotle and Aquinas’ teleological argument for an intelligent First Cause remains valid … whether life arises from non-life is very different from whether it is ‘reduced’ to it. Without getting into much debate that some classically-minded philosophers have entered, I can easily concede the first without the second. Aristotle and especially Aquinas consider the structures of animals and plants to arise from matter and to be fundamentally nothing other than structures of matter. The ‘substantial form’ of an animal or plant is only ‘negatively’ immaterial; it does not persist after death, although it is not equal to matter (in the same way atomic structure is not itself an atom). Life can easily arise from non-life by a new structure entering into the picture that permits new causal powers to be exercised. But that’s not to say life is reducible to matter or its basic powers … A kind of intrinsic order must already exist, with the powers of individual elements to enter into certain kinds of organization, before they do enter into those arrangements. There has to be, for example, carbon and water. These have to have a kind of ability to enter into an order with each other that eventually allows other kinds of order to emerge, etc. …”
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Techno2000
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God didn’t need evolution…evolution needs God.
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rossum
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Souls do not evolve. They do not fossilise and they are not encoded in DNA. They are not material and so are external to all science in general and to evolution in particular.You moved the Goalpost waaay back.
Any mention of a soul is already shifting the discussion outside the scope of the OP.
Evolution says that the biological species Homo sapiens evolved, as did every other species on Earth today. It says nothing about souls which are a matter for the specific theologies of different religions.
rossum
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Techno2000
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I’m confused now, do you believe in such a thing as a Soul/Spirit ?
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mVitus
Guest
I think these three quotes demonstrate the heart of why people have trouble accepting evolution. They feel it takes God out of the equation, but it doesn’t.
In regards to my previous post, in which I explained how evolution doesn’t detract, but adds, to my appreciation of God’s handiwork, I believe there were some misinterpretations of what I meant because I didn’t explicitly mention God. I had figured it was implied that I saw it all as God’s process. And it amazes me that He brought us forth by a process that started with inanimate compounds becoming the first microscopic organism. It’s hard to express in words at times.
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edwest2
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I’ve read too many posts from others trying to convince Christians that evolution, as taught in schools, does not deny God’s involvement. It does. I’m also not for adding God to textbooks but the implication is that something living came from nonliving matter. The end.
A statement from the National Academy of Sciences on a subject that is clearly outside the realm of science.
"Compatibility of Science and Religion
"Science is not the only way of knowing and understanding. But science is a way of knowing that differs from other ways in its dependence on empirical evidence and testable explanations. Because biological evolution accounts for events that are also central concerns of religion — including the origins of biological diversity and especially the origins of humans — evolution has been a contentious idea within society since it was first articulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858.
"Acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith. Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. Many have issued statements observing that evolution and the tenets of their faiths are compatible. Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.
“Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.”
The first sentence is totally incompatible with some statements made here, which illustrates the problem.
Ed
A statement from the National Academy of Sciences on a subject that is clearly outside the realm of science.
"Compatibility of Science and Religion
"Science is not the only way of knowing and understanding. But science is a way of knowing that differs from other ways in its dependence on empirical evidence and testable explanations. Because biological evolution accounts for events that are also central concerns of religion — including the origins of biological diversity and especially the origins of humans — evolution has been a contentious idea within society since it was first articulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858.
"Acceptance of the evidence for evolution can be compatible with religious faith. Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. Many have issued statements observing that evolution and the tenets of their faiths are compatible. Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.
“Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.”
The first sentence is totally incompatible with some statements made here, which illustrates the problem.
Ed
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