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

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LeafByNiggle said:
The Bible also does not mention e = m c squared. But I firmly believe that God created the laws of nature, fully aware that e = m c squared was part of it. Do you find fault with my attributing that law of nature to God too?
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It would have been all cleared up if the Bible told us Adam and Eve were animals selected by God to become human. Oops, it doesn’t. It is pretty clear with some detail.
 
Did you catch these?
  1. The first man was created by God. (De fide.)
  2. The whole human race stems from one single human pair. (Sent. certa.)
 
Then we have this:

The Continuous Preservation and Governing of the World​

  1. God keeps all created things in existence. (De fide.)
  2. God co-operates immediately in every act of His creatures. (Sent. communis.)
  3. God through His providence, protects and guides all that He has created. (De fide.)
 
Techno2000 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Do you find fault with my attributing that law of nature to God too?
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No…do you find fault with me in believing God can suspend his laws of nature.
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Absolutely not! In fact I believe that too.
 
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IWantGod said:
So while one might not want to take evolution as fact, i think one can think that it is the most likely origin of species when compared to the biblical 7 day creation explanation…
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I’m just going to skip 3,310 posts and reply to the OP 😉

The trouble with evolution theory is the idea of random mutation and natural selection (RM&NS). If that was really how things work, we should see evidence of species “in transition” everywhere. But the fact it is that of all the millions of animal species we see, most appear to be pretty “finished”. They don’t exhibit any “half-formed” characteristics. Sure, there are a handful of species that could be interpreted as having vestigial wings, tail, eyes, whatever, but those are an extremely small fraction. If RM&NS were true, we would expect species in transition to be the obvious norm, not the rare exception. And even those few cases where we think we see evidence of evolution happening, it’s hard to say for sure because we could equally well be misinterpreting what we see. We don’t know if that “obvious vestigial wing” is actually going to evolve into a wing, or that it will evolve into someting else, or that in fact it’s not something evolving at all but rather a characteristic that we don’t understand. So in summary, the “evidence” for evolution based on RM&NS is actually… nil.

(Evolution driven by something other than RM&NS is a different story, but such ideas get ignored by evolutionists lest the notion of an intelligence behind it sneak in the back door. For most evolutionists RM&NS is part and parcel of evolution theory, which gives the impression that the choice is between that or literal Biblical creationism. But this isn’t so. Other theories exist that allow for the possibility of one species becoming another in a way that does not diminish God’s role in creation.)

So, there you have it: “Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is… specious.” 😉
 
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Nothing is ever ‘half formed’. So your conclusion is based on an incorrect premise. It’s a premise that the majority of people who are creationists are confused about.

There are lots of creatures that can glide or fly very badly - compared to a bird. But they are not ‘half way’ to gaining wings. They are all the way to evolving an ability that allows them to survive longer than those without it. It’s not the ‘aim’ of evolution to continue developing that ability into fully formed flight. If it’s not required then it will remain as-is. Fully formed.
 
buffalo said:
Science says our genome is in decay.
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No it does not. Ancient human genomes are well within the limits of variation of modern human genomes, for example Ötzi the Ice Man and various Ancient Egyptian genomes. Your claim here is incorrect, buffalo. We have sequenced ancient genomes, and they are not less decayed than modern genomes.

Natural selection will remove what I think you mean by "decay"in a genome.

rossum
 
Bradskii said:
Nothing is ever ‘half formed’. So your conclusion is based on an incorrect premise. It’s a premise that the majority of people who are creationists are confused about.
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Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil, with features clearly intermediate between those of non-avian theropod dinosaurs and birds.

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en.wikipedia.org
 
Bradskii said:
They are all the way to evolving an ability that allows them to survive longer than those without it.
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Vague, can you elaborate on what exactly is it that’s causing there demise ?Those without it.
 
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It’s easy to make a chart with pictures showing the stages of an evolving species but if you try to imagine what takes place in between you end up with impossibilities and questions that can’t be answered. To show how ridiculous the theory of evolution is, here is just one unanswerable question that debunks evolution entirely: Imagine the very first human. It would have to have been birthed by a human so it couldn’t be the first. The first would be the human giving the birth - but how would she have become pregnant? Lets just say it didn’t need to be birthed. It just appeared somehow through evolution and it’s the very first human infant. It would just lay there and die rather quickly with no one to look after it. Evolution is IMPOSSIBLE and I can’t believe that rational intelligent people buy into it.
 
SpecialGuest said:
It’s easy to make a chart with pictures showing the stages of an evolving species but if you try to imagine what takes place in between you end up with impossibilities and questions that can’t be answered. To show how ridiculous the theory of evolution is, here is just one unanswerable question that debunks evolution entirely: Imagine the very first human. It would have to have been birthed by a human so it couldn’t be the first. The first would be the human giving the birth - but how would she have become pregnant? Lets just say it didn’t need to be birthed. It just appeared somehow through evolution and it’s the very first human infant. It would just lay there and die rather quickly with no one to look after it. Evolution is IMPOSSIBLE and I can’t believe that rational intelligent people buy into it.
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They are going to say… (almost, but not quite human like creatures ) wound be the parents who would take care of the baby.
 
mVitus said:
At the beginning you have the Big Bang, laws of physics. All that. Eventually we have the rise of the first life on this planet.
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This is a huge topic. I will take it a step at a time.

While God would create events, they have a structure, which we can describe in terms of the laws of physics:

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This is how we understand the world at the quantum level, among the first things, or better yet relationships, that were created and that we label as material. As His creation progressed, the next layer of order was brought into being, that which we study in chemistry:

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The structural relationships, the material activity that had previously existed, we might in modern times describe as having been brought together into new wholes, consisting of newer forms of relating, created from nothing, on a second day.

The atomic and molecular interactional principles were subsequently used to construct the next level of being that constitutes life, the cell:

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Here we discover a new form of existence, a new whole which has the capacities of incorporating external matter into itself in order to grow and reproduce itself. In these simplest expressions of life, we can see the beginnings of the psychological in the chemical reactions that take place as individual members of that kind of being interact to food and danger and one another within the environment that they constitute.

Cells with their capacity for interaction are united to form the next hierarchical layer of life - multicellular organisms.

An example of the complexity involved in this strata of life is the nervous system:

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The order that is mind characterizes the soul of the kinds of creatures that we call animals, which in addition to those qualities that define the simplest forms of life, are able to instinctively perceive, feel, think in a rudimentary fashion and react to get food, avoid danger and mate. These souls are yet another system of order, that was not present previously but was brought into being by God from nothing.

And then, we have mankind, with our eternal souls and a brain that fully functional has the capacity to express all the features, to varying degrees in accordance with God’s blessings, individually what is the spiritual nature of our kind of being.

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I don’t think that the word design captures the beauty, definitely not the love inherent in this process, which is most definitely not evolution, but creation, from beginning to end, all of it happening from God eternal, here and now as in every moment.
 
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mVitus said:
As that life starts its journey, it splits and multiplies and in a way it does so on its own. At the same time it is participating in God’s plan. As time goes on and mutations occur, mutations He knew were going to happen at such and such time, His creatures continue living their lives an acting in his plan.
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Mutations cannot explain the huge jumps in the sort of relationships that exist to form the universe. The universe unfolds as it should once those aspects have been brought into being. Different kinds of plants and animals had to be create before they could diversify and fully express the grandeur, beauty and infinite creativity that is God. Catholicism is very, very different from Deism. God is not only transcendent, but became one of us, to allow us to return to what we discarded in the Garden, to make Him our very centre and save us from the consequences, all variations of death, that our original sin produced.
 
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Aloysium said:
This is a huge topic. I will take it a step at a time.
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What you have is, in scientific terms, not sufficient. Basically is it, “Wow! Look how complex that is. It must have been designed.”

Your big problem is when you apply the same argument to your proposed designer: “Wow! Look how complex the designer is. He/she/it/they must have been designed.”

You explain complexity by proposing that we start with… complexity. That is scientifically and logically a very obvious error. You are assuming what you need to prove. For example:
  • Aloysium owes rossum $1,000
  • Therefore Aloysium owes rossum $1,000
You can pay what you owe me to the charity of your choice. 😃

rossum
 
mVitus said:
The sperm reaches the egg and life begins, but this life has a difference from its parents. Instead of an animal soul, God has given them a rational soul. They are a true human.
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We are not essentially a body with a soul, but rather a soul that possesses a body, which we will all discard in death. Our human spirit is the organizational principle that brings together matter that is external to the self, in the formation of a unity that is the person. We are the breath that gives matter, life.

The concept of a gamete is a piece of information that describes biological events. It is an aspect of the relationship we individually and collectively have with the natural world. If we consider the objective reality to which these ideas relate, we can think of it as information-in-action. The information that is the reality of an ovum and sperm is combined in the bringing into existence of a person at conception. The person has a whole set of other qualities not belonging to the gametes. What we see physically happening is the expression of that potential as the zygote develops into a child, and once born, into an adult, the material form being the tip of the iceberg, that which can be perceived through the senses and their extensions, that is the existential reality of the person.

Adam was created in Eden, which is not ony symbolic of a pure relationship with God, but an actual physical reality, eventually damaged by original sin. The first person would not have inherited any genetic abnormalities, viral inclusions and such, from a pre-existing animal parent.

Genesis is written to be understood through the grace of the Holy Spirit, by anyone with the capacity to understand, in any age and culture. It was not written for the specific zeitgeist of our times. What I see in evolutionary thinking is a move away from the revealed truth of our beginnings. Unless one is skeptical of one’s own capacity to understand and treads humbly, always returning to scripture and the Catechism to remain on a solid foundation, I would suggest not being an apologist for evolution. Better to focus on the reality of creation, God at the centre of everything.
 
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rossum said:
Basically is it, “Wow! Look how complex that is. It must have been designed.”
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That’s not what I was getting at but I understand that this would be an issue the reader might be dealing with. Addressing this statement, I would first point out that the tense of the statement would be incorrect. If design is to be the metaphor one is using to understand creation, a better way to express the idea might be “Wow! Look how complex that is. It is designed.” God creates all time from eternity. Everything does exist and the universe is structured as a hierarchical system, materially-speaking with what we understand as quantum events at the lowest layer. As we go up the hierarchical order of existence, there are new wholes composed of elements belonging to lower strata, and acting as constituent parts of a greater holistic system, until we get to the Beatific Vision that includes all time and space, in communion with God its Creator. This all does exist and is brought into being, all of it from nothing by Existence itself, the Triune Godhead.

As to the complexity, it remains simple - one person, although that unity that is you and me, relating here, exists as a hierarchy of existential systems. One whole existing in relation to what is other, bringing together a series of systems, whereby we can see the screen, pick out words and consider their meanings, have a feeling about them and choose to express them in some manner or other.
 
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