Why giraffe can't come from the evolution

[abcdefg]

rossum:

Here we go again. I often wonder what the uncommitted CAF reader thinks of these evolution threads. Do they see tham as obvious wins for one side or the other, or do they just ignore them? Probably the latter.

When they see so much personal attacks, they would simply leave this site.

rossum:

So abcdefg has moved on to the giraffe.

This thread isn’t about whether neck evolves or not. but according to Darwinism they should evolve or not.

 

[abcdefg]

ahimsaman72:

I realize that this post is straying somewhat but I couldn’t help but ask this while you good folks were here already.

As a life-long protestant I was shocked to come to the realization that Catholics could reconcile evolution with their faith. As a fundamentalist Baptist, evolution was an “evil, Satanic conception” propagated by secular atheists.

Catholicism can’t. as clearly shown no pope under the protection of Holy Ghost can declare one can believe in evolution and don’t damage faith. so many document recently, yet none can declare it.

However, Tradition is always quite clear on this issue, evolution not acceptable.

 

[abcdefg]

Orogeny:

I don’t have the slightest problem accepting evolution and my faith is probably stronger now than ever in my life.

I don’t know how good my faith is. it may be lost in the future due to a temptation. so I keep praying that would never happen.

 

[abcdefg]

Isidore_AK:

I guess a good way to put it is that if the Bible is wrong on anything contained within it, their faith is utterly destroyed.

Don’t attack literal interpretation of Bible. what if Church’s wrong declaring homosexuality a disorder and gay gene is found?

problems with sola scriptula isn’t Bible is always right but no truth outside Bible thus rejecting Tradition.

Bible is always right, however translations not.

In both case. no one need to worry, as it will never happen.

 

[Orogeny]

abcdefg:

To show even evolutionists find this is absurd.

I didn’t think you understood the article you posted.

Peace

Tim

 

[ahimsaman72]

PhilVaz:

ahim << My point being - do you Catholics find it hard to reconcile your Catholic faith with scientific evidences for evolution? As a protestant the merging of evolution with Christian belief was unthinkable. >>

There have been the theological difficulties we have discussed in here: original sin, death before the Fall, where and when and who is Adam/Eve, God and randomness, how to interpret Genesis, etc. Those have been discussed somewhat, and the modern Popes have touched on these.

Maybe one thing you can say is these are “mysteries” just like the whole predestination / free will, and Problem of Evil will be mysteries and tough problems to resolve. HOWEVER, the scientific arguments against evolution (e.g. Kolbe Center, AnswersInGenesis, Kent Hovind DrDino) are very lame as you’ve noticed.

Best current book on this whole topic: Perspectives on an Evolving Creation by evangelical scientists, an article based on this book

Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record

Phil P

Thanks Phil -

Peace…

 

[ahimsaman72]

Orogeny:

I will only speak from myself although if you read many of these posts, you will find similar positions from many different posters. I don’t have the slightest problem accepting evolution and my faith is probably stronger now than ever in my life.

Truth cannot contradict truth. There is so much evidence for evolution that to ignore it would not be reasonable for me. There are things I don’t understand, but so what?

That said, you can be a good Catholic and reject evolution. I personally have absolutely no problem if you are a young-earth creationist if that is important to your faith. The only problem I have is when those of us who do accept the science are labeled as either athiests or some what lesser Catholics than those that don’t.

Peace

Tim

Thank you Tim. I hope I didn’t come across as saying that all Catholics believe in evolution. I would say there are many more Catholics than conservative protestants however.

I agree with you that truth cannot contradict truth. If there is evidence that shows contrary to what we may believe, we have to accept that evidence as it is.

Thank you for your response friend.

Peace…

 

[rossum]

abcdefg:

young trees(for example 1 year old) are shorter than fully grown bush but you should compare that with young bush and young giraffes

When you are in a hole you should stop digging. Are you now saying that adult giraffes can only eat from mature trees and bushes? Will an adult giraffe starve to death if there are only younger trees and bushes around? Do you really expect me to believe that? Please think before posting this sort of stuff, you are not doing yourself any favours.

I find it helps me to write my text offline and then wait an hour or so before looking at it again. Only then do I post. Your post has all the signs of something you thought of off the top of your head and did not consider well enough before pressing Submit.

Your failure to produce any evidence of Cambrian giraffes is noted.

rossum

 

[abcdefg]

rossum:

When you are in a hole you should stop digging. Are you now saying that adult giraffes can only eat from mature trees and bushes? Will an adult giraffe starve to death if there are only younger trees and bushes around? Do you really expect me to believe that? Please think before posting this sort of stuff, you are not doing yourself any favours.

If I don’t dig it, someone else will dig it. and it doesn’t affect me in a negative way.
Are you smarter than a adult ape when you’re born? can you say since adult apes are smarter than human babies, apes are smarter than humans?

 

[Orogeny]

ahimsaman72:

Thank you Tim. I hope I didn’t come across as saying that all Catholics believe in evolution. I would say there are many more Catholics than conservative protestants however.

You didn’t and I would bet that you are right about that.

I agree with you that truth cannot contradict truth. If there is evidence that shows contrary to what we may believe, we have to accept that evidence as it is.

I would love to take credit for that, but it rightfully belongs to the late Pope John Paul II. You might be interested in this address he made in 1996.
newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

Thank you for your response friend.

Peace…

You are certainly welcome. And of course you are also welcome to ask questions whenever you have them.

Peace

Tim

 

[abcdefg]

rossum:

Your failure to produce any evidence of Cambrian giraffes is noted.

rossum

my article in post #1 shows there’s no fossil evidence, his article shows there’re. you can believe whatever you want, but don’t force it on me.

 

[ahimsaman72]

steveandersen:

Well, as is apparent from these threads some of us do and some of us don’t.

Very true, very true. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

As you’ve probably read from Phil’s posts above, the Church in Her wisdom (and even you as a Protestant must admit that you don’t get to be the world’s largest and longest lived organization without doing something right) has taken the position that scientific matters are best left to scientists. She has further taken the position that faith and reason cannot be in conflict. We are free to accept evolution, 6-day creation, or turtles all the way down as long as it doesn’t conflict with several points of doctrine. And that is the detail where the devil lives.

Yes, I agree that faith and reason are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. There should be no conflict.

Apart from certain… ahem… cranks there are folks here with serious philosophical questions. Personally I think that they have been well answered.

Let me ask you something. Do you, as a Baptist, feel that holding to a literal creation in the face of contrary physical evidence hurts your church as in casting it in an unfavorable light to outsiders or discouraging current/potetnial members who have a scientific bent? After all the Catholic Church is still taking flak over that Galileo thing so I can’t imagine what evolution is going to do to churches that can’t accommodate it.

As a Baptist (past tense) it didn’t matter to me what others thought of my literal interpretation of Genesis. My view was that if the Bible stated literally that the earth and all things were created in 6 days, then that’s what happened. No amount of science would persuade me otherwise. And, I naively pictured God “resting” on a rock or leisurely in heaven for a day because He was tired. I know that’s lame, but that was my juvenile thinking.

Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I know the vast majority of Christians, with the exception of certain literalists sects such as yours, have little or no problem with evolution.

I’ve never met a Christian who believed in evolution. I grew up in the South and there was only one small Catholic church in our town which very few people went to. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized Christians could believe in evolution. (I’ve had no study of evolution and barely any other science background).

Let me ask you one more thing. How is a literal creation any more appropriate/Godlike (for lack of a better word) than a 15 billion year process? Or is it simply at matter of “that’s what the words say so that’s what happened”?

No disrespect. I’m just curious. We really didn’t have Protestants where I grew up so I don’t know a whole lot about them.

For me it was simply a matter of “the Bible says it was 6 days and that’s what it was - end of story” mentality. I never studied evolution as I felt it was useless nonsense. I never gave it the benefit of the doubt.

I suppose it would seem to distance God from his creation a bit if He didn’t hand-make each and every plant, animal, human, etc. Somehow it would de-bunk how great He is. This was my feeling as a Baptist. I don’t hold that view now.

No disrespect taken. I thank you for your post. I suppose we have something in common. I grew up around all protestants and you grew up around Catholics, so this kind of thing is new for both of us. I hold neither view at this point. I simply don’t know the origins of all things and it doesn’t stress me either way.

Peace…

 

[ahimsaman72]

Isidore_AK:

If I may interject, my in-laws are fundamentalists, and I have argued this for a loooooong time with them. It is my experience with them that since they take a sola-scriptura view on everything, anything that could contradict their literal interpretation of the bible directly attacks their source of faith.

I guess a good way to put it is that if the Bible is wrong on anything contained within it, their faith is utterly destroyed. My father-in-law said something to the effect of ‘If the Bible is wrong on this, then I can’t be a Christian’. It really opened my eyes to how they view their faith & the world.

Yes, this was my view. The Bible could explain everything, from science to history, etc. If science seemed to contradict my Biblical knowledge, then the science was wrong.

Peace…

 

[ahimsaman72]

Orogeny:

You didn’t and I would bet that you are right about that.I would love to take credit for that, but it rightfully belongs to the late Pope John Paul II. You might be interested in this address he made in 1996.
newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

You are certainly welcome. And of course you are also welcome to ask questions whenever you have them.

Peace

Tim

I mourn the passing of His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Even as a non-Catholic I appreciated him and his life very much. He was truly someone who I wanted to emulate in my daily life. Your kindness is noted and I appreciate the invitation to ask questions. I’ve been privileged to come to know many Catholics and am very grateful for their helpfulness. It is a pity we haven’t crossed paths before now. I embrace dialogue with others as I learn so much from them.

Peace to you…

 

[PLP]

PhilVaz:

We’ve covered bats, pumpkins, humans, and now giraffs. There’s gotta be something abc can find that did not evolve.

The bacterial flagellum!

 

[PhilVaz]

steve << We are free to accept evolution, 6-day creation, or turtles all the way down >>

Hey that’s my line! Actually Stephen Hawking’s line about infinite turtles.

PLP << The bacterial flagellum! >>

Ah yes! forgot about that. Let’s see, abc could say using his english

Why flagellum thing can’t come from the evolution thing

First read this article from this very scientific site

http://www.contenderministries.org/evolution/irreducible.php

Then consider this:

there is a complex thing called this flagellum. don’t ask me to pronounce it. then there is this complex thing called mousetrap. mousetrap got 5 parts. base, spring, hammer, catch. i forget what 5th part is. but anyway. no way this thing can evolve since all part need be there. flagellum more complex than mousetrap. all part need be there. tank you bery much. god created mousetrap. god created flagellum thing. tank you. you evolutionist is loooosing.

abcedfg

 

[GoodKnight1443]

While it may be diffcult for some to accept the possiblility of what was taught as “fact” in school is still a weakly supported theory, it remains that the fossil “evidence” to the decent of man can fit in a shoe box.

I have seen arguments against Intelligent Design that applies human derived values on the creator. i.e in Time Magazine, August 15, 2005 Steven Pinker Harvard Psychlogy professor is quoted :

Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering: a retina installed backward, a seminal duct that hooks over the ureter like a garden hose snagged on a tree, goose bumps that uselessly try to warm us by fluffing up long-gone fur.
The moral design of nature is as bungled as its engineering design. What twisted sadist would have invented a parasite that blinds millions of people or a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? To adapt a Yiddish expression about God: If an intelligent designer lived on Earth, people would break his windows.

Now how arrogant can one get? Does this intellectual elitist actualy think he is too smart, logical or educated to believe in God? He is also arrogant enough to judge creation and the beauty with in it. Just beacuse our puny minds cannot get around what we do not understand it does not support a flimsy, poorly supported theory. Let alone that Pinker twisted the meaning of the Yiddish proverb. I have another adaptation of a Yiddish proverb for him: If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him your plans (theory).

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

PLP:

The Heliocentric theory of the solar system fails to explain the retrograde motion of the planets! If the planets move in ellipses, then how can they move backwards?! The evil heliocentrists cannot explain this simple fact!

Simple - the angels move them backwards. No one, ever, has at any time refuted the assertion that the heavenly bodies are moved by the angels. We may therefore regard it as an irrefutable fact.​

Angels 1 - Heliocentrism 0 - Gravitation 0 ##

 

[PhilVaz]

GoodKnight << it remains that the fossil “evidence” to the decent of man can fit in a shoe box. >>

False.

Read this response written in 1986-87. There’s even more now.

Relevant paragraph is this:

Just how many of these fossils have been recovered to date? Let’s look at the evidence.

In their 1982 physical anthropology textbook, Harry Nelson and Robert Jurmain tabulate the number of specimens. For the five South African sites alone there are some 175 cranial remains, 769 teeth, and 78 postcranial (from the neck down) remains for a total collection of 1,022 items representing some 121 to 157 individuals (1982:393). Elsewhere in their text, they tally data from the East African fossil localities in Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya—a minimum of 475 specimens (teeth and bones) representing at least 100 to 200 individuals (1982: 430-431). Similar data can be found in Eckhardt (1979:460-467) and Kennedy (1980: chapter 7) and can be obtained from the numerous original scientific reports of field investigators. More specimens are always desirable (and, in fact, are being unearthed regularly), but it is evident that we are not dealing with a mere handful of fossils.

Some books you might want to check out, as I have:

Bones, Stones, and Molecules: “Out of Africa” and Human Origins by David W. Cameron and Colin P. Groves (Elsevier, 2004)
The Human Fossil Record (volume 1, forthcoming in 4 volumes) by Schwartz / Tattersall (John Wiley and Sons, 2002)
Extinct Humans by Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey H. Schwartz (Westview Press / Perseus Books, 2000)
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution edited by Steve Jones, Robert Martin, David Pilbeam (Cambridge Univ Press, 1992)
The Search for Eve by Michael H. Brown (Harper and Row, 1990)
Guide to Fossil Man by Michael H. Day (Univ of Chicago Press, 1986, 4th edition)
Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey (Simon and Schuster, 1981)

GoodKnight on Pinker << Now how arrogant can one get? Does this intellectual elitist actualy think he is too smart, logical or educated to believe in God? >>

Don’t equate Pinker with all evolutionists. However he does raise an interesting question about the Problem of Evil.

Here is another evolutionist:

Evangelical Christian and geologist Keith Miller’s view is that “all natural processes are the personal, purposeful act of a creator God.” In an essay in the book Darwinism Defeated? (1999), Miller goes on to give his “confessional statement” on God’s creative action as follows:

– God is the creator of all things.
– All things were created through the Word who is Christ the crucified (John 1:1-3; Col 1:15-20).
– God is both transcendent over creation, and immanent in creation.
– God’s creative power is continually at work, even to the present day (Psalm 104:29-30).
– God is as active in natural events as in miraculous ones.
– God is intimately and actively involved in what we perceive as natural or law-governed processes (Amos 4:6ff).
– God is in control of random or chance events (1 Kings 22:17-38; Acts 1:21-26).
– God is revealed in the present creation (Job 38-41).
– God is active in the world, providing for the needs of its creatures (Job, Psalm 104, Matt 6:25-30).

He then concludes: “If one accepts the above theological statements, then it seems to me that a completely seamless evolutionary history of life would be entirely acceptable theologically.” (Keith B. Miller, essay “Design and Purpose within an Evolving Creation,” from Darwinism Defeated? page 111).

Let’s go with Miller over Pinker shall we?

Phil P

 

[abcdefg]

Our own bodies are riddled with quirks that no competent engineer would have planned but that disclose a history of trial-and-error tinkering

According to E"T", punishment for error is extinction. so if there’re signs of error, E"T" can’t be true.