Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[LeafByNiggle]

From Arcanum:

“Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep.”

Leo XIII is wrong.

 

[WileyC1949]

_. 3. To classified a thing as being equivalent to its component, is to deny its existence.

I do. To call the leg of a table a “table” and refer to it in the same way that you would refer to a table is to undermine is function as a leg. It is to deny it’s existence as a leg.

 

[edwest211]

Yes, well, I agree with him and what he writes is what I was taught.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Yes, well, I agree with him and what he writes is what I was taught.

You have the right to do that, just as I have the right to disagree for what I believe are very good reasons.

 

[edwest211]

The Pope was offering solid Church teaching. Church Teaching always comes first, not science. And I follow science almost daily.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The Pope was offering solid Church teaching.

In the passage you quoted, he was not.

 

[edwest211]

You know better than the Pope?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

You know better than the Pope?

Not me. The current Pope knows better.

 

[edwest211]

Interesting. I don’t think so.

 

[PickyPicky]

Side note… how many of you from public schools were taught that Hubble was the one to come up with the “Big Bang Theory”? He did not. He confirmed that the universe was expanding as the theory speculates. I have heard that many science books never mention Georges Lemaitre as the originator of the theory (not its name). Usually the reason for this omission is the fact that Lemaitre was a Catholic priest!)

More likely the reason is that Hubble was American.

 

[rossum]

God is existence. He is not a created thing. Existence is relational and not something in isolation. God creates out of nothing, which means that He does not fashion things from His own being.

More irrelevant waffle. Still no answer to my question. Why on earth do you think that such obvious content-free puffery and refusal to answer questions will convince me?

I will ask again, just in case your avoiding an answer was accidental:

Does your earlier statement #1 apply to God or not?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

rossum

 

[Metis1]

And the Church says that accepting evolution, as long as it’s viewed that God caused it all, is quite acceptable. If it didn’t, I’d leave in a heartbeat because any religion or denomination that cannot accept basic scientific principles I have to consider as being bogus, which is one reason I left my fundamentalist Protestant church almost 60 years ago.

 

[Metis1]

I see Genesis 1 agreeing with 5 different modern scientific theories!

Let me offer another approach.

There are some archaeologists that believe that the creation accounts may be a reworked part of a Babylonian epic that was altered to fit Jewish beliefs. An indicator that this could be the case is a Cuneiform tablet of this Babylonian creation narrative found in northern Israel that was written roughly a thousand years before Genesis was put to writing.

So, what Jews may have done is to do what all societies do, namely borrow from another society and then alter what’s borrowed to reflect domestic beliefs. A more modern-day example is “Santa Claus”, who went from a pious priest, St. Nicholas, to a secular clownish jolly old fat man that better sells products in December here in the west. Check out the Wiki article on “Santa Claus”, as it’s actually quite interesting.

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

God is transcendent, Existence itself and in His works we witness the glory that He, in His simplicity of being, creates. Think along the lines of Divine and eternal Mind, the supreme perfect Relationship and Act of Love, from which all being, relational in nature as a reflection of its Maker, is brought forth from nothing.

So, are you telling me that your #1 was false, are you telling me that your #1 was true or are you just waffling?

You claimed:

If something exists, then it must have some form that makes it what it is.

Does that statement apply to God or not? If not, then your claim is false (assuming that God exists). If yes then we can explore the topic further.

rossum

Aloysium:

God is existence. He is not a created thing. Existence is relational and not something in isolation. God creates out of nothing, which means that He does not fashion things from His own being.

More irrelevant waffle. Still no answer to my question. Why on earth do you think that such obvious content-free puffery and refusal to answer questions will convince me?

I will ask again, just in case your avoiding an answer was accidental:

Does your earlier statement #1 apply to God or not?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

rossum

If I can sort out what you are asking, it boils down to if God exists, then He must have some form that makes Him what He is.

You would have derived that question from my assertion that if something exists, then it must have some form that makes it what it is.

I tried to explain that your question does not apply to God because He is not “something”. He exists in the sense that there is One true ultimate Reality or Ground of all existence, the Source, the Father of our own being.

Now, let me ask you a similar yes-no question. No waffling now, yes or no, after death, does a Buddha continue to exist?

 

[Aloysium]

what Jews may have done is to do what all societies do, namely borrow from another society and then alter what’s borrowed to reflect domestic beliefs.

I’d leave in a heartbeat because any religion or denomination that cannot accept basic scientific principles

Friend, you may have already left. And, it would be not because the church has not failed to accept basic scientific principles, but because you would be following a distortion of those basics, found in the theory of evolution.

Evolution is not science at all, but rather a story, a mythos that reflects and justifies modern secular values. The actual evidence rationally better fits the idea of creation. There may be issues regarding the time-frame, but design seems a better model describing the appearance and diversity of life on earth.

 

[stoplooklisten]

Single-cell amoeba have a larger genome than humans. It seems like the genome of the single-cell amoeba must contain code for more than one lifetime. Could it be that an organism evolves in the next generation because it was programmed in the code of the genome of one or more earlier generations?

Human beings have around 3 billion base pairs in their genome. Amoeboid have 670 billion base pairs. See Genome - Wikipedia

Even uncompressed, the human genome is less than 1 gigabyte of data. Software doesn’t code itself. Who was the software developer who coded the genome of amoeboid and humans?

Could it be that evolution happens because it was coded in the genome to happen?

Could it be that evolution appears to happen because it was coded that way?

 

[Aloysium]

evolution happens because it was coded in the genome to happen

Again we see the slipperiness of the term “evolution”. The theory proposes that mutations are random and occurring at the level of the genome, but here, still calling it evolution, we consider mutations to occur at the level of the phenotype, with any accompanying genomic changes resulting from a pre-existing program. Note that we’re still dealing with microevolution, that is the cause of those changes that result in differences between amoebae, rather that such phenomena as the presumed emergence of more complex offspring that defines macro evolution.

 

[rossum]

If I can sort out what you are asking, it boils down to if God exists, then He must have some form that makes Him what He is.

Correct. You asserted that form applies to all existing things.

You would have derived that question from my assertion that if something exists, then it must have some form that makes it what it is.

Yes. I am applying your assertion to God.

I tried to explain that your question does not apply to God because He is not “something”.

If God is not “something” then He is “nothing”. The opposite of something is nothing.

You were attempting to make a universal statement, but your allegedly universal statement does not apply to your God. Hence the statement is not universal. It is contingent on the object to which it is applied.

Because God has so many special properties it is often the case that an alleged universal fails in the case of God. Such is the case here. You need to be more careful with your universals.

Now, let me ask you a similar yes-no question. No waffling now, yes or no, after death, does a Buddha continue to exist?

No.

rossum

 

[Bradskii]

WileyC1949:

Side note… how many of you from public schools were taught that Hubble was the one to come up with the “Big Bang Theory”? He did not. He confirmed that the universe was expanding as the theory speculates. I have heard that many science books never mention Georges Lemaitre as the originator of the theory (not its name). Usually the reason for this omission is the fact that Lemaitre was a Catholic priest!)

More likely the reason is that Hubble was American.

Hubble came up with the term. And he was using it in a derogatory way. And now we are left with so many people thinking it was an explosion of some sort.

 

[Aloysium]

No

Does a Buddha then not exist after death?