Why evolution doesnt matter.

[carinapir]

To Touchstone -

If you wish to believe you are simply the end product of a chemically derived mechanism, that is up to you.

The Christian understanding of man is rooted in the revelation of God. The hubris of man comes in when all holy books are reduced to simply books of stories invented by man. Then the old words return: “Man is the measure of all things.” and “Man invents himself.”

In the Bible, we are told the following: If Christ’s ressurection did not actually occur, your faith is in vain. You’ve got nothing.

In the early 80’s an “underground” newspaper had the following cover story: Easter Cancelled. Christ’s body found. A recent attempt to revive this idea was presented on TV as the discovery of an osuary containing Christ’s bones. Catholics know why this is going on and why it must continue. The truth is difficult to find on the internet and in everyday life.

I am watching attempts to establish a Dictatorship of Science, but like all human enterprises, it is in danger of being manipulated and is, in fact, being manipulated. Just ask Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Myers. It is all out in the open. There is nothing vague about their pronouncements.

Wow! I think that Touchstone was actually sort of agreeing with you or at the very least explaining why religious people have such an issue with evolution and then you go about disagreeing with him/her! Amazing!

Touchtone, while I agree with warpspeedpetey, you also made an excellent point. I can see exactly what you mean by evolution taking away some of the “specialness” of man. I would argue, though, that this issue would be with that individual’s understanding. If we believe and have faith that God made humanity special, why would be allow science to take that believe away from us so easily? I would suggest re-evaluating the way in which God might have made us special and moving away from the idea that our physical bodies have anything to do with our specialness.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

It matters very much. In the document Communion and Stewardship, if such a thing as evolution happened, God was very much involved. To say it doesn’t matter does not explain at least one encyclical and various other documents and articles published by the Church over the years. There are certain things in the Deposit of Faith that contradict a purely natural explanation of human origins, and it has nothing to do with Protestantism. Sadly, too many Catholics are unaware of what the Deposit of Faith contains. Divine revelation cannot be discarded.

Peace,
Ed

am i mistaken ion my understanding that the official position of the Church is that we are free to believe or not in evolutionary theories based on their own merit or not?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I

not the products of chance and error

scientism aside, i think the ideas of abiogenesis are completely laughable, some frankensteinian pool of chemicals struck by lightning, or some comet carrying organic molecules, presumably from some other place where an anlagous situation occured. completely laughable. “its alive, its alive!”

but thats not in the strict purveiw of natural selection, all of which occurs after the idea of abiogensis.

so while the argument might be made that if enough time passes, it will just happen from natural forces. who knows that enough time passed? under that thinking if i just sit here long enough someone will just come up and present me with a new pickup, problem is that there may not be enough time for that to occur randomly within the lifetime of the universe.

so i dont buy the error and chance scenario. its a possible story thhat the commited anti theists, can hang their hat on, but thats all it is, a story. one that cannot be shown to have occurred

 

[warpspeedpetey]

In the context you put it, understanding evolution is insignificant.

But in terms of the advance of science and our understanding of the world, is that true?
God commanded we “subdue the earth”. Advances in science is one way this is accomplished. By understanding our orgin and evolution, does that advance science for the betterment of the human race in any way? I think so.

youre right, its study can be a useful scientific endeavor. im merely speaking about it in light of the the usual arguments here about the existence of G-d.

 

[Matthias123]

I think your statement about the compatibility of orthodox Christian belief and the embrace of evolutionary theory is correct. So far as I can see, no contradiction between them obtains. I have Catholic friends who are both devout with respect to Church doctrine and fully supportive of modern evolutionary theory, and I find the theodicy and theology that proceed from that more elegant and robust than special-creationist alternatives. If one is going to proceed under the irrational assumptions of Christian theism in the first place, that seems to be a fairly rational way of proceeding from there. In any case, it doesn’t place those Christians in the mental ditch so many drive themselves into with the anti-evolutionary bent, denying reason and evidence in abundance for evolutionary theory.

Even so, I think you are dismissing the problem in a very simplistic fashion. While I just affirmed that evolution and orthodox Christian doctrine are compatible, evolution is nevertheless quite toxic in many cases to support for Christian belief. Many Catholics, for instance, have maintained a kind of faithful theistic evolution throughout their lives, but for many others, evolution seriously undermines faith in God because it in a significant sense makes God superfluous, an afterthought, an unnecessary part of the explanation.

I think that explains why so many Catholics here militate against the evidence and the facts on the ground concerning evolution. The objection is NOT that evolution cannot be harmonized with Catholic doctrine – manifestly, it can be – but rather that evolution betrays a basic conceit many believers have about their status as humans. Christian theology exalts mankind in an ontological sense – only man is imprinted with the imago dei, only man has the reasoning faculties to apprehend natural law and the noetic facilities for knowing God in a spiritual sense.

Man is fallen, but that “fallenness” itself is proof of man’s ontological primacy in the world; there is hubris in supposing man had somewhere to fall from in the first place.

As Christian, I know I was guilty of this conceit. And while evolution does not and cannot discredit the idea that God made the universe, and utlimately designed the world so that man would be man, in such form that he might enventually be invested with a soul, fashioned in some dualistic way in God’s image, evolution as a mechanical, natural process really takes the pride out of human exceptionalism. Darwin’s dangerous idea was that we are animals in the most thoroughgoing sense, cousins of the chimpanzee and relatives of the lowly cabbage, or even the most virulent bacteria, if we are to trace our lineage back far enough.

I suggest to you that some of the draw of Christian faith – not all of it, but some – obtains from this intuitive desire to classify oneself, one’s kind as “special”. Not just special in some parochial sense, but “cosmically special”. Catholicism can still cater to this innate inclination, but it’s a lot harder to cater to through the filter of evolutionary theory. Evolution places man as an ordinary leaf, like all the other leaves, or a very large and ancient tree. Many have a conceit grounded in the idea that man was “formed from the dust” in some special, hands-on way – a custom job, or as they would say in the UK, “bespoke”.

Evolution works right against this conceit, and while doctrine and faith can be maintained in embracing it, evolution just kills a lot of the joy of the “specialness” many believers are enamored of. If evolution is true, God may still be the Creator, the one forming man with the imago dei, somehow, but it sure does look more remote and mechanistic than it used to. And of course, it continually provides the idea that this is just how things would look if God were imaginary, and that’s something many believers understand, and resist strongly on those grounds.

-TS

Dear Touchstone,

I do think your comments are ignorant of the valid distinctions that have to be made when dealing with this issue. The Church has repeatedly claimed that the science of evolutionary theory does not have any implications when it comes to Catholic Dogma. What it does proclaim and fight firmly against is false philosophies and ideologies using evolution as a Trojan horse, to take advantage of the abandoning of traditional interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, and to create the illusion that what has been proven directly contradicts revealed dogma. In watching this I can not help but see the inadequacy of their position, as they have nothing firm, nothing solid, to use against us in debate.

Evolutionary theory is not a threat to our idea of being the crown of creation, as it has no impact on teleology. Teleology is a branch all into its own, and as soon as scientist makes teleological claims we enter into the superstition of scientism. I do not accept the Christian position because it makes me special. In all honesty, I am very much inclined not to leave a life of death to self and servitude to others, but live a life of indulging in carnal pleasures. For me there is no wishful thinking, there are facts, and there is grace, and I cannot accept your positions with the distinctions between the positions that I see before my very eyes. Take your hands and rip the issues apart, separate the ideology form science and you will see what I see. The general situation of Christians being scattered and divided over the issue is a direct result of this “Trojan horse” as erroneous ideologies and philosophies are attacking Catholic doctrine in the guise of scientific truth, and people are generally confused. This does not demonstrate weakness in our intellectual position, on the contrary, is shows weakness in the atheistic worldview as it cannot attack us up front as it once did. The atheists of today irrationally resurrect the naivety of the enlightenment and pretend, all too convincingly, that their ideals did not have irreconcilable difficulties, and did utterly collapse in on itself.

 

[Matthias123]

As for the current atheist position, I cannot accept a worldview that has such a limited explanatory scope. I have watched “sceptics”, self-proclaimed “free thinkers”, for sometime; reject all concept of morality, which so evidently exists complete with degrees, absence and a highest good, I have seen them dance around the premises of arguments, I have yet to see them adequately explain the immutability of truth, I have failed to see them adequately explain the uniformity of nature, I have failed to see them adequately explain the transcendental laws of logic, and I have failed to see them adequately explain why objects act towards fixt or similar ends, when acted upon by a specific cause. Most powerfully, I have not seen a sufficient explanation for why I in fact exist, or why anything exists for that matter. So excuse me for being an “irrational Christian theist”, because my irrationality has been caused by your intellectual position’s utter and complete failure, despite its most earnest and often fanatical attempts, to explain these fundamental questions.

 

[crazzeto]

As for the current atheist position, I cannot accept a worldview that has such a limited explanatory scope. I have watched “sceptics”, self-proclaimed “free thinkers”, for sometime; reject all concept of morality, which so evidently exists complete with degrees, absence and a highest good, I have seen them dance around the premises of arguments, I have yet to see them adequately explain the immutability of truth, I have failed to see them adequately explain the uniformity of nature, I have failed to see them adequately explain the transcendental laws of logic, and I have failed to see them adequately explain why objects act towards fixt or similar ends, when acted upon by a specific cause. Most powerfully, I have not seen a sufficient explanation for why I in fact exist, or why anything exists for that matter. So excuse me for being an “irrational Christian theist”, because my irrationality has been caused by your intellectual position’s utter and complete failure, despite its most earnest and often fanatical attempts, to explain these fundamental questions.

I love how “free thinkers” proclaim that you’re free to believe whatever you want (hence free thinker)… Unless you happen to beleive in Christ

Reminds me of a bit of a Joke I heard on EWTN the Journey home… A Sweedish Lady discussing her conversion to Catholicism. Her parents told her they didn’t batise her because they wanted her to be free to choose for her self. When at 18 she said she wanted to be baptised they told her she chose wrong

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Even so, I think you are dismissing the problem in a very simplistic fashion. While I just affirmed that evolution and orthodox Christian doctrine are compatible, evolution is nevertheless quite toxic in many cases to support for Christian belief. Many Catholics, for instance, have maintained a kind of faithful theistic evolution throughout their lives, but for many others, evolution seriously undermines faith in God because it in a significant sense makes God superfluous, an afterthought, an unnecessary part of the explanation.

-TS

i dont necessarily agree with that position, it may be that some people feel that way. that human exceptionalism is rooted in the creation and nullified by the taxonomical facts of our physical existence. yet i would point out that human exceptionalism is made manifest, and that is the root of our inner belief, we are, after, all the top predator. its hard not to think you are better than those that you can eat.

that said, the idea that evolution some how makes G-d somehow unnecessary is something the uninformed might think, and there are plenty of them. but its 13.7 billion years to late for that to be the case. all Christains should know that G-d is necessary for the existence of everything. to think that evolution means that G-d is unnecessary, would be in my view, just a function of poor critical thinking skills on their part.

 

[little_c]

The reason why evolution doesn’t matter to me is because what Scripture doesn’t say.
It doesn’t say that Adam was the first human. What made Adam different from all other humans (IMHO) is that Adam was the first human that God breathed life (Holy Spirit) into his nostrils (Gen. 2:7).

In addition, creationism doesn’t matter either for the same reason. Scripture doesn’t say that when God created day and night it was the very first day of the Earth.
When God created day and night, it was labeled one day (Gen. 1:5)

 

[crazzeto]

The reason why evolution doesn’t matter to me is because what Scripture doesn’t say.
It doesn’t say that Adam was the first human. What made Adam different from all other humans (IMHO) is that Adam was the first human that God breathed life (Holy Spirit) into his nostrils (Gen. 2:7).

In addition, creationism doesn’t matter either for the same reason. Scripture doesn’t say that when God created day and night it was the very first day of the Earth.
When God created day and night, it was labeled one day (Gen. 1:5)

uuuuh, so how do you get around we are all decended from a single pair of parents, Adam and Eve. And that we all inherit original sin (as stated in Sacrade Scripture) from our original parents?

If there are other “humans” besides Adam and Eve, could not some portion of today’s population evolved from them? Wouldn’t they then, not share in original sin? Even if Evolution was used to create man, at some point a soul was given to the creature and this would be the first “true” human. Prior to this point, the work was not complete. It wasn’t truely human, whatever it was.

 

[Matthias123]

Incorrect. Pope Benedict had to tell us that we “must have the audacity” to say something.

bringyou.to/apologetics/p81.htm

Pope Benedict XVI

Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.”

What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

Peace,
Ed

not the products of chance and error

This is completely in conformity with what I have said. Pope Benedict is not assaulting evolutionary theory he is assaulting erroneous ideology. This“change and error” that the biologists are speaking of come into the realm of teleology. If the process is caused by a divine intelligent error, although of course it would appear as chance and error, this would not be so, because teleologically it has a purpose.

 

[Touchstone]

To Touchstone -
If you wish to believe you are simply the end product of a chemically derived mechanism, that is up to you.

Do you think it is a matter of wishing? I think that’s a problematic way to put it. Reality isn’t a matter of “wishing”, right? It is what it is no matter our wishes. If human (and all life) is an emergent property of an impersonal natural universe, then that’s what it is. Wishing one way or the other won’t change that.

That said, what we choose to make of such a realization, if that is indeed what the evidence indicates is wide open. Religious types take refuge in the idea that a clear-eyed view of a godless universe entails nihilism or some other self-defeating attitude. It doesn’t, and the maturity it takes to face things as they are is often the very thing that grounds a positive, generative disposition toward life and the world around us. Atheism=despair is just another one of the conceits that religious folk often help themselves to for its anodyne qualities.

The Christian understanding of man is rooted in the revelation of God. The hubris of man comes in when all holy books are reduced to simply books of stories invented by man. Then the old words return: “Man is the measure of all things.” and “Man invents himself.”

This sounds very much like a determination to launch a tu quoque at your opponents, no matter what. If your opponents suggests hubris on your part, well by golly you’re going to find a way to use that word right back, some way, somehow.

Look, there’s nothing arrogant about recognizing the fallibility and fantastic nature of various holy books and superstitions. It’s the product of just a sober review of the world and the evidence it affords. It doesn’t make man a god, or give him super-powers. All it does it reveal hard, often painful truths, burdens. We are alone in this universe as far as we know, and there is no God or gods to paint pretty pictures over everything in the end. Justice left undone in this life stays undone, which is a very heavy situation to understand. It doesn’t make us gods. It just impresses on us the importance of seeing justice done through our own actions and attitudes. God isn’t there to bliss out the Midianite baby or the black slave or the political prisoner in eternal paradise, so it falls to us to prevent those kinds of horrors in the first place, or to undo them as we can in the here and now.

A godless universe is a very humbling prospect. We are animals – rational animals, but animals, still, and we don’t have superpowers or magic or faeries or Gods to intervene. Just the basic tools of our reasoning and our experience, and our courage.

In the Bible, we are told the following: If Christ’s ressurection did not actually occur, your faith is in vain. You’ve got nothing.

This is itself a conceit, this idea that if your belief is mistaken, life is meaningless, hopeless or doomed to despair and futility. I know that to be a comforting thought, but I suggest it’s as illusory as your God. It’s a very small mind that cannot find wonder and awe and hope and exhiliration and joy in the world we live in, right alongside all the bad stuff. It may be that the religious impulse obtains from a distinct failure of the imagination, here (which would be quite ironic, given the imaginative nature of what they do embrace), but if you look around, it’s not hard to find godless people who are motivated by hope, industry, expectation, love and joy, all ground in the wonders and potentialities of this godless universe. To suppose one needs eternal convalescence with God to give one’s life meaning and value, or any relationship with God at all signals a distinct failure to really take a long around at the world as it is.

In the early 80’s an “underground” newspaper had the following cover story: Easter Cancelled. Christ’s body found. A recent attempt to revive this idea was presented on TV as the discovery of an osuary containing Christ’s bones. Catholics know why this is going on and why it must continue. The truth is difficult to find on the internet and in everyday life.

Hmmm. I think that even if such bones were to be found and somehow authenticated as the bones of Jesus (don’t ask me how that would be done), the Christian faith would carry on as before. Only now, the empty tomb was a mistaken embellishment, and Christ rose again in a “heavenly” body, an interpretation of Paul and other NT writers that is a point of contention even now. For many, those bones would cause faith to be lost, but the Church would carry on, regardless.

I am watching attempts to establish a Dictatorship of Science, but like all human enterprises, it is in danger of being manipulated and is, in fact, being manipulated. Just ask Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Myers. It is all out in the open. There is nothing vague about their pronouncements.

Peace,
Ed

I don’t see the dictatorship happening that you are seeing. Who wants to eliminate religious freedom, or any freedoms, there? My take on all of those guys is that they are advocated for human and civil rights in the most robust sense. Maybe I missed the part where they want to deny, say, homosexuals equality under the law?

-TS

 

[little_c]

. . . so how do you get around we are all decended from a single pair of parents, Adam and Eve.

Conventional wisdom accepted as fact. What is interesting to me is that when Noah and his sons came out of the Ark the Bible says: These three {were} the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. (Gen. 9:19).

If Adam and Eve are Male Alpha and Female Alpha; why doesn’t the Bible say . . .
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, ‘and from these the whole earth was populated.’ and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Gen 1:29.

And that we all inherit original sin (as stated in Sacrade Scripture) from our original parents?

I’ve studied this issue in great detail before the birth of my son 1.5 years ago. Scripture states that we have a sin nature, not original sin. Would you like for me to point out the differences?

If there are other “humans” besides Adam and Eve, could not some portion of today’s population evolved from them? Wouldn’t they then, not share in original sin? Even if Evolution was used to create man, at some point a soul was given to the creature and this would be the first “true” human. Prior to this point, the work was not complete. It wasn’t truely human, whatever it was.

I’ve read this statement\question several times now. I’m sorry – I just don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Would you care to restate?

 

[little_c]

. . . And that we all inherit original sin (as stated in Sacrade Scripture) from our original parents?

Please disregard my previous statement regarding original sin, I’m afraid it drifts off topic.
I meant to say the following…

How does the doctrine of original sin support Adam & Eve being the first humans ever existed?

 

[Matthias123]

Touchstone, why didn’t you respond to my rebuttal? In all honesty Ed’s rebuttal was weak, yet you write a paragraph refuting him, but you didn’t touch mine. Don’t make my cry straw man!

 

[edwest2]

This is completely in conformity with what I have said. Pope Benedict is not assaulting evolutionary theory he is assaulting erroneous ideology. This“change and error” that the biologists are speaking of come into the realm of teleology. If the process is caused by a divine intelligent error, although of course it would appear as chance and error, this would not be so, because teleologically it has a purpose.

I think you’re missing the point. Under the heading General Description, for this book:

aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/title/Creation-and-Evolution/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/61116/#

Please read the last paragraph. Clearly God is doing more than standing outside of a process that supposedly works on its own.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Matthias123]

I think you’re missing the point. Under the heading General Description, for this book:

aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/title/Creation-and-Evolution/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/61116/#

Please read the last paragraph. Clearly God is doing more than standing outside of a process that supposedly works on its own.

Peace,
Ed

Yes, but this doesn’t mean that God being infinitely perfect, must use ad hoc causes in order to make this process, which he set in motion in the first place, produce it’s desired result. On the contrary he is involved in the sense that natural agents are directed towards fixed or similar ends, because they cannot orient themselves towards these ends. Also God sustains the being of these natural agents as they proceed towards their final cause. There is no reason to think that God must pile on ad hoc causes in order to get what he set in motion to be correct. Evolution is not undirected and it is not without purpose, on the contrary it is directed, by God, just like everything else in the universe to a final cause. Now biological evolution is just a participation in the general evolution of the cosmos as it strives towards its fixed end/perfection. However biological evolution does have it’s own specific final cause that furthers he cosmic quest for perfection.

He is hardly not involved.

 

[Touchstone]

Matthias123,

Thanks for the “poke” in your last message, I had not seen your reply. I always gravitate more toward the beefy replies, and this one I just missed.

(Anyone else who thinks I am ignoring your thoughtful replies, I’m not doing so on purpose, and feel free to “poke” me on that in thread or via PM for a reply I overlooked)

Dear Touchstone,
I do think your comments are ignorant of the valid distinctions that have to be made when dealing with this issue. The Church has repeatedly claimed that the science of evolutionary theory does not have any implications when it comes to Catholic Dogma.

I agree, and my post above affirms as much, straight away. I can find no contradictions between Catholic Dogma and evolutionary theory, and I said so. I do think that monogenism may be a problem in the future, based on the kind of evidence I expect to be uncovered in genetics in the future, but there may be a way to resolve that with Catholic dogma on monogenism, and it may not play out that way evidentially after all. In any case, as things stand, I see no problem.

What it does proclaim and fight firmly against is false philosophies and ideologies using evolution as a Trojan horse, to take advantage of the abandoning of traditional interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, and to create the illusion that what has been proven directly contradicts revealed dogma. In watching this I can not help but see the inadequacy of their position, as they have nothing firm, nothing solid, to use against us in debate.

Against a materialist? I think the materialist by definition would be defending the solid against the ethereal, no? Just kidding, there, but only a little. Evolution is a neutral fact in terms of science, fully compatible with Catholic Dogma, as I said, but philosophically, I think it is a powerful wedge between the “creationist intuition” and Church teaching, compatible as it may be. Like I said – evolution doesn’t and can’t disprove God, but it does make God a lot more superfluous and remote than he traditionally has been, theologically. Moving God back behind the veil of “random mutations”, etc. which the theistic evolutionist sees as not random at all (or at least not random in full) but instead the means of teleology by God places one much closer, intellectually speaking, to a godless paradigm.

Ask me how I know.

Evolutionary theory is not a threat to our idea of being the crown of creation, as it has no impact on teleology.

At first glance, I think that’s correct. Technically yes, in the sense that Catholic Dogma can be fully upheld in conjunction with a throroughgoing embrace of evolutionary science. But evolution does push the teleology back in transcendental terms, and gives more weight to a naturalistic version of a “clockwork universe”. Such a universe, where man is a planned emergent property of nature, one that “arises automatically” is still consonant with Catholic ideas. But God gets banished further and further behind the curtain.

I think that is quite corrosive to the faith of many believers. And I suggest that explains why you find so much hostility to good science in the ranks of faithful Catholics here. They understand in some visceral sense how evolution pushes God back into the background, where he is “front and center” tinkering away, in the young earth creationist model, for instance.

Teleology is a branch all into its own, and as soon as scientist makes teleological claims we enter into the superstition of scientism.

I guess I need to go learn about scientism, then. This is clearly an ascendant polemical term, now, and one I can’t make head nor tail of. Or maybe I just don’t understand what you mean by “superstition” (or maybe you use it like “hubris” gets used by Ed, an arrow slung at you that you feel compelled to sling back, somehow).

I do not accept the Christian position because it makes me special. In all honesty, I am very much inclined not to leave a life of death to self and servitude to others, but live a life of indulging in carnal pleasures.

That sounds like a life of servitude, right there. Carnal pleasures are as good a set of chains to wear as religious servility, if one is looking to be enslaved.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Matthias123:

For me there is no wishful thinking, there are facts, and there is grace, and I cannot accept your positions with the distinctions between the positions that I see before my very eyes. Take your hands and rip the issues apart, separate the ideology form science and you will see what I see. The general situation of Christians being scattered and divided over the issue is a direct result of this “Trojan horse” as erroneous ideologies and philosophies are attacking Catholic doctrine in the guise of scientific truth, and people are generally confused.

I think a lot of hay is made by anti-Catholics who use evolution as a “wedge”. Look at its effect here in this forum. It makes a big chunk of the posters look foolish – conspiracy theorist creationists who go to mass instead of pentecostal services on Sunday morning. One of the very strong draws for me to Catholicism several years ago, before I abandoned Christianity, was it’s pragmatism and general reasonableness on the issue of science and origins. It was astounding to me to see so many rays of light coming from Rome, in contrast the the general craziness of Protestant fundamentalist and conservative evangelicals – the world I lived in for decades.

But alas, here we have evidence that even the retail Catholics have the same conceits. The irrational creationist mindset seems nearly as prevalent here as it was in my evangelical circles of days past.

Which makes that a powerful, if a bit cynical and frankly, cheap, rhetorical tool. It’s pretty effective to point at a forum like this, and say “See, the leadership is a lot more sane on this, but there’s just no getting around this creationist impulse – no science or evidence can overcome that”. That doesn’t discredit Catholicism directly, but it does suggest that it’s own synthesis of faith and reason on this issue just isn’t compelling, even to its own membership. As enlightened as the RCC may be officially on this issue, it’s as full of credulous irrationality as most evangelical Protestant denominations. And they appear to be just as committed to evolution as the active front in the “culture war” as any of them.

To be fair, I should say that theistic evolutionists in evangelicaldom are usually just shamed, shunned or banned from the conversation. Here, I think the “science sane” are thoroughly outnumbered, but are tolerated and given some respect. TEs in Catholic circles get powerful air cover from official pronouncements and statements that do NOT protect Protestant TEs.

This does not demonstrate weakness in our intellectual position, on the contrary, is shows weakness in the atheistic worldview as it cannot attack us up front as it once did. The atheists of today irrationally resurrect the naivety of the enlightenment and pretend, all too convincingly, that their ideals did not have irreconcilable difficulties, and did utterly collapse in on itself.

Well, that’s a whole separate contest, there. But I think you are right in that embrace of evolution is a very powerful defense against materialist polemics.

Look, the easiest way to expose the folly of religion right now is to make it go on a rant against evolution. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s why I said above it’s a bit cheap – it’s so easy, it doesn’t feel sporting. It’s a very effective club, because anti-evolutionism is anti-intellectual, ignorant, and incorrigible.

The RCC is wise and rational to embrace it. They would seriously undermine their basic credibility if they did not, and the current collapse of evangelicalism in America is a good experiment that shows how this works. If you can’t even accept basic scientific knowledge, what kind of authority can you be on the hard questions.

So, yes, RCC affirmation of evolution in a way that is compatible with its dogma (teleological evolution, that is) is a very powerful bulwark against atheism. If the RCC did not do that, they would be intellectually brutalized the way young earth creationists are.

-TS

 

[edwest2]

Yes, but this doesn’t mean that God being infinitely perfect, must use ad hoc causes in order to make this process, which he set in motion in the first place, produce it’s desired result. On the contrary he is involved in the sense that natural agents are directed towards fixed or similar ends, because they cannot orient themselves towards these ends. Also God sustains the being of these natural agents as they proceed towards their final cause. There is no reason to think that God must pile on ad hoc causes in order to get what he set in motion to be correct. Evolution is not undirected and it is not without purpose, on the contrary it is directed, by God, just like everything else in the universe to a final cause. Now biological evolution is just a participation in the general evolution of the cosmos as it strives towards its fixed end/perfection. However biological evolution does have it’s own specific final cause that furthers he cosmic quest for perfection.

He is hardly not involved.

There are no “natural” agents in the sense that some try to assign to nature some built-in rationality. The most widely advertised view, including here, is that so-called natural agents have the power to self assemble into living things. This is absurd but there are those who clearly believe it. Once the process begins, we are told, human life can appear. However, this type of human life is just a chemical robot responding to its genetic programming. This is false.

Peace,
Ed