Why I consider evolution to be true

[SHW]

That is a possibility, as is this: What is death? It is ceasing to be or is the Inspired Narrator of this tale explaining separation from God? The moment Our First Parent’s got immortal souls is the moment they became human. Maybe other things had died, plants, monkeys, lizards, but, since they weren’t man, we’re not concerned about them being separated from God since they could never be with Him to begin with.

Possible?

bpbasilphx brings up a good point as well. I was taught (by a Full Bible Middle school) that all the carni/omni vores before the fall were all herbivores. Still, let’s say that wolves could survive on carrots and broccoli…they had to stop growing/living for that to happen.

If we are to take into account literal interpretations, maybe nobody had a need to eat before the fall. …Until Adam & Eve?

Yes, definitely possible. It will be interesting to find out on Judgment Day what all this confusing “stuff” actually means.

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Habilis and Erectus weren’t early stages of homo sapiens. They were Habilis and Erectus which are distinct species–from each other and from homo sapiens sapiens. You seem to be thinking that anything that walked on 2 feet was human. This is not true. I hope you’ll do some research before next term. If you understand the concepts better, your students will benefit. Tell me you haven’t been teaching them that habilis and erectus were human!!

Give me a break here, Kalt. I wasn’t teaching them that Erectus and Habilis were humans. Obviously Sapiens are human beings. Erectus and Habilis lived alongside each other and evolved differently. But you have no evidence that Homo Sapiens were not evolved from one of these either. We have no clue, there is no evidence period. Could erectus have evolved into sapiens? Of course…That was what I was saying. Erectus evolved into sapiens according to most theorists…And Homo Habilis evolved theoretically into Homo Ergaster which evolved into Erectus, which evolved through some lines into sapiens. So, human ancestry yes, were they exactly humans themselves at that time? No way. .So, yes, I have done my research and don’t fly by the seat of my pants and make things up as I go.
Check out the middle on this graph:

File:Homo splitter Version.png - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

I don’t appreciate the snide comments either about my teaching or the implications that I don’t know my job. I don’t presume to know your vocation or abilities, Kalt, so please don’t make such presumptions with me.

 

[NDfan]

1. Science. Science tends to be pretty good at scientific stuff. Granted, it’s not mathematics, but, still pretty accurate. Like gravity and stuff.

2. Human growth. Two organisms join to form a new organism; the egg and sperm join to form a human being. Also, the way the human being evolves in the womb.

3. Climate phases. “Global warming” and “global cooling” are political terms for the way our planet works and has always worked, from the very first days to today. The Earth evolves. It’s a necessary condition for life.

4. Human thought. Your thinking evovles, in the sense that you must go from one thought to another. And as you grow, so dose your mind. Some have defects, but God didn’t create a perfectly ordered world; He created a world on a journey to perfection.

5. Different species. There are a variety of different dogs, cows, fish, and bats, and it’s all because they benefit the ecosystem. If evolution wasn’t true, there wouldn’t be such a diversity. But what some creationists fail to understand is that an evolutionary diversity and God creating diverisity is the same thing; it was God who created the diverse species.

The key to your post is in the 5th statement. GOD CREATED diverse species. They didn’t evolve from something into something. The evidence of transitional fossils alone debunks the evolutionary chart. Dogs may have been descendants of wolves but cats certainly did not come from dogs. Also consider that many diverse breeds of dogs are man made and not as a result of evolution. Dobermans, bulldogs etc. But the bottom line is a dog will always be a dog. It will not over time evolve into another type of animal.

Additionally the things you are describing above are not evolution. They are adaptation. Our bodies adapt to our surroundings because GOD designed our body to do that. It doesn’t jump from one species to another. Our thinking adapts to the variables we have to deal with, that’s why our brain is so complex and is capable of processing things so quickly. GOD designed it that way.

 

[pipper]

I read in an old Boston Cathechism that true religion and true science cannot contradict each other, and I still agree with that.

I was raised in a very litteralsitic denomination, one that call’s itself (modestly) THE church of Christ. I thought that when I converted I would be leaving biblical literalism long behind.

But when I got here I was shocked to learn that their are Catholic literallists. I even read of Catholics who still beleive that the Universe revolves around the sun, yes several years ago their were several threads on Heliocentrism!

 

[Michelin]

Soil is what the writers knew about. You plant seeds in soil, and things develop. I don’t think there’s any reason to insist on a literal interpretation of using clay, mud, dust, whatever to make man.

It seems that people assume that the men who wrote the Bible were simpletons who were capable of nothing more than writing literally.

Yes, some people do. The inspired author placed a sophisticated hint into the passage in question to signal readers of the passage in question that a blindly literalist interpretation was not intended. Unfortunately, the hint is lost in translation. (The difficulty so many people have with just this one small verse illustrates what good reason the Church authorities had to be wary of too-quick translations of the Holy Bible into local European tongues when Gutenberg’s invention suddenly made pressing out copies willy-nilly a source of easy money for printers.)

Genesis 2,7 (NAB)
the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.

The accompanying notes in the NAB for this passage include, “There is a play on words in Hebrew between adam (‘man’) and adama (‘ground’).”

Wordplay is characteristic of poetical, artistic, or fanciful works, not material that is intended to be taken solely in a literalist way (such as a modern technical manual). Perhaps the closest we can approximate the inspired author’s original words in English is to render the Hebrew adama as “mud,” a word that is close in meaning to adama and alliterative with “man.” Mere alliteration is a weak substitute, though, and wouldn’t communicate to the English language reader the significance of the wordplay in the original Hebrew.

Is it so hard to believe that the writer used something common (planting, growing) to tell about God? Because, in the end the Bible is about God, not us. Seems we forget that, too. Genesis is there to tell us about God not human origins. Or maybe I have it wrong. Opinions?

Well said, Kalt. That’s always worth remembering.

 

[abucs]

The way i view original sin is that it is part of the nature of humanity.
The same way flight is part of the nature of a bird. Of course you can always make exceptions - eggs and newly hatched birds and injured (or even evolved penguin) birds can’t fly but it is still part of their nature.

The original sin in the creation account of Genesis is the knowledge of right and wrong and the choice by humanity to choose wrong.

As such we need to be constantly redeemed or ‘put right’ about this and the incarnation of Jesus, the once and for all perfectly human righteous act in the Jewish sacrificial sense, held in memory by the church can claim to have done exactly that, if you are faithful to the Christian message of course.

Much of Genesis is an obvious metaphor - rhyming, repetition and day and night existing before the sun etc, so whether or not the choice of eating the fruit is also a metaphor for the choice of humanity to choose wrong when aware of right and wrong is i guess a theological question.

It we are overly literal on Genesis then i agree there are problems with statements of Christian theology, but looking at the writing, structure and historical interpretations of Genesis, a lot of it appears to be metaphorical and understood as such.

My 2c worth.

newadvent.org/bible/gen003.htm

 

[Michelin]

I read in an old Boston Catechism that true religion and true science cannot contradict each other, and I still agree with that.

I also agree.

St. Augustine taught that and later, St. Thomas Aquinas did also. Both are Doctors of the Church. So, you and I are in good company.

I was raised in a very literalistic denomination, one that calls itself (modestly) THE church of Christ. I thought that when I converted I would be leaving biblical literalism long behind. But when I got here I was shocked to learn that their are Catholic literalists. I even read of Catholics who still believe that the Universe revolves around the sun; yes, several years ago their were several threads on Heliocentrism.

It takes all kinds to make the Church founded by the Christ a Catholic Church, I guess.

Like you, I’ve been startled to discover an occasional bible literalist or Young Earth creationist among my fellow Catholic Christian churchgoers. The Church whose faith was that of Fr. Gregor Mendel and Fr. Georges Lemaître teaches that (depending on the details) a theory of evolution can be “in perfect agreement with the Christian conception of the universe; for Scripture does not tell us in what form the present species of plants and of animals were originally created by God” (Evolution, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907). But the Church doesn’t require that one believe a theory of evolution as a matter of faith or morals either.

Some folks, like me and maybe you too, find that the Church’s intellectual riches and perfect agreement with true science are part of God’s gift of grace that operates to open us to faith in Him. Some others, whatever their participation in the Mystical Body of Jesus, don’t seem to feel the need for that same kind of grace to keep their faith.

 

[thirdn6]

Here’s my raw take on this (please understand that I am not a scientist or a theologian. I am a construction worker and English is not my major)…

Before the creation of man the universe and the earth was. And the fowls in the air… and the fish in the oceans… and the beasts on the ground… including micro-organisms and germs and bacterias, and so on and so forth. The earth was created that it may also sustain life… even that of the smallest insects and creeepers. He created them and saw it was good (raw, not the best or perfect)!

Life begun… BUT also death (although not mentioned in Genesis as far as I know). We know the nature of the beasts. The stronger kills the weaker in order to have food and survive. From pre-historic times to the present times. Whether in the water, in the air, or on the ground. Physical death came long before the creation of man (if a day = a thousand years, taken literally). Natural catastrophies also cause death - landslides, lightnings, floods, falling rocks, etc. and of course, snake bites. Whether this nature of the beasts of feeding from the same specie is considered SIN by the Creator - we do not know. But most certainly not. We do know that the wages of their deaths is not from sin. We also know that there is no redemption of animals or plants from death and we know that there is not a thousand years life expectancy of these beasts so death will eventually come to them. Death, therefore, was ever present. Then finally… decomposition. Whether by micro-organisms or germs or bacterias or by something else I believe God allowed that to happen, too. It will be a bad design or lack of creativity on His part if He allowed dead animals become scattered all over the places without decomposing. (This earth was meant to become paradise not some place of horrors). If i am not mistaken I believe micro-organisms or germs or bacterias or viruses have the ability to multiply in so short a time, that is, to evolve(?) rapidly. Yep, that is I think their nature. They multiply or evolve(?) rapidly in order to take care of the dead… or sometimes the living if the living doesn’t take care of the dead for lack of conscience. (But don’t get me wrong. I do not believe these germs would eventually evolved(?) into human beings).

So then… the creation of man. God created man to inhabit this earth. To have dominion over all the previous creations and creatures. He created man in his own image. He created man and breathed upon him so he may have life. But this life that was given to him is not meant to be an ordinary life. Not to be like an animal’s life or a mere bug’s life. He breathed on him so he can have a soul. A soul so he can live and maintain that life to be an eternal image of an eternal (Who chose to become invisible) God. But the plan wasn’t successful. Why?
Man, oh woman, the man got lonely, too… and followed his own will. And so now we have a very complicated history!:banghead:

But still, we praise God, we came into being and became Catholics!

 

[Bill_Pick]

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

 

[kalt]

Give me a break here, Kalt. I wasn’t teaching them that Erectus and Habilis were humans. Obviously Sapiens are human beings. Erectus and Habilis lived alongside each other and evolved differently. But you have no evidence that Homo Sapiens were not evolved from one of these either. We have no clue, there is no evidence period. Could erectus have evolved into sapiens? Of course…That was what I was saying. Erectus evolved into sapiens according to most theorists…And Homo Habilis evolved theoretically into Homo Ergaster which evolved into Erectus, which evolved through some lines into sapiens. So, human ancestry yes, were they exactly humans themselves at that time? No way. .So, yes, I have done my research and don’t fly by the seat of my pants and make things up as I go.
Check out the middle on this graph:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homo_splitter_Version.png

I don’t appreciate the snide comments either about my teaching or the implications that I don’t know my job. I don’t presume to know your vocation or abilities, Kalt, so please don’t make such presumptions with me.

This is what you said earlier -

“But evolutionary theory shows humans at different levels of evolution living side by side. For example, Homo Habilis living at the same time as Homo Erectus. Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals also lived at the same time”

As I said, Habilis, Erectus, and Neandertals were not human. If you are telling your students that Habilis is a human at a different level of evolution, you are giving them inaccurate information. They are different species. All species are related.

You later said -

“They were the early versions of homo sapiens on a ladder of evolution.”

They weren’t early versions of Homo Sapiens, they were different species. Related, but different. All species are related, but that doesn’t mean that they were early versions of a later, distinct species, as if they were Homo Sapiens 1.0.

Hominid but not human.

If this is the language you are using with your students, they are getting incorrect information.