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

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rossum said:
Eradicating smallpox was a lot worse because it frustrated God’s purpose in creating smallpox in the first place. At least that is how a few religious people argue. The same religious attitude is affecting polio immunisation in some places.

rossum
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What nonsense! Reference please, and I will clarify the matter for you.
 
Edgar said:
Throw God out the picture and a contiguous process of biological evolution is the inevitable conclusion - in which case, human and extant primates must share a common ancestor.
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There would be others but none so utterly fantastic and unbelievable as the idea that atoms and molecules haphazardly by their own efforts joined together to bring about something so utterly complex as a bacterium, let alone this here that we are currently engaged in.

Let’s ponder for a moment our existence, here and now, this moment. In comparison, walking on water, turning water into wine and raising the dead are but mere shadows of this miracle of miracles that except for some moments we don’t even realize. And, this just supposedly happened. Right. Give me a break!
 
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IWantGod said:
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Aloysium:
Random mutations and natural selection are features of this fallen world.
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I think you should state that this is your opinion and not the official teaching of the church so as to avoid confusion.
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I outlined an argument to demonstrate its truth. You might consider addressing the issue rather than appealing to authority. I’m just a random internet idiot, but what I say might be valid regardless of whether or not the church speaks to the points I have made.
 
Aloysium said:
but what I say might be valid regardless of whether or not the church speaks to the points I have made.
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Whether or not Evolution is true is a continuing debate usually among people who think that the idea of natural evolution is either consistent with or against church teaching.

If you are merely concerned with the scientific validity of the theory, then so be it. But my statement still stands as far as Church teaching is concerned…
 
IWantGod said:
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Aloysium:
but what I say might be valid regardless of whether or not the church speaks to the points I have made.
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Whether or not Evolution is true is a continuing debate usually among people who think that the idea of natural evolution is either consistent with or against church teaching.

If you are merely concerned with the scientific validity of the theory, then so be it. But my statement still stands as far as Church teaching is concerned…
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As I understand it, your claim would be that the Church has not said anything about random mutations not being involved in the creation of mankind, nor that natural selection wasn’t the means by which our body was sculpted, nor that these pillars of evolutionary theory are a consequence of original sin and the fall. I too haven’t seen those views explicitly stated although I feel it is reasonable to arrive at those conclusions.

But yes, the problem I see with evolution is that it does not represent what actually historically happened.
 
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Aloysium said:
There are a number of avenues we could follow in designing an experiment that would attempt to bring into existence a person using animal tissue. They would all fail,
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Ummm, we are animals (human animals, with souls) already. You don’t need to design an experiment, just observe God’s creation, how it is revealed, and what it says about us.
Have you heard of Theology of the Body by St John Paul 2? One of it’s main concepts is that the human body speaks a language. And it says many things about it’s physicality in relation to it’s spirituality.
Language pre-supposes a good listener…someone who can see, and hear, and accept, and distill the communication.
Science helps with that.
 
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goout said:
we are animals (human animals, with souls) already.
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I see this as a contradiction. An animal is in possession of, or better expressed, is a soul which allows it not only to grow (incorporate matter into the making of itself) and procreate (albeit made of matter, which does not reproduce itself), but to perceive in a complex fashion and react emotionally and physically in an instinctive manner. We go beyond that. Constructed of the same physical and psychological stuff, but rooted in eternity, capable of knowing and of acting of our own free will, our spirit organizes those structures in a completely different way which allows for the possibility of love, and thereby knowledge of our Creator.

My position is that irrespective of how one may classify our bodies, we are not animals. When we choose to act like animals, we are no closer to them; we become demonic.
goout said:
Science helps with that.
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I most heartedly agree. It is the theory of evolution and all the affiliated concepts, that step beyond what science can tell us, treading into the realm of the metaphysical (the nature of mankind and animals), that is the issue.
 
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As an aside. How do your see the resurrection of the body at the end of time? Is it going to be a random process governed by natural selection? Will we have to go through what is proposed by evolution to regain our physical form. Why would God not have done whatever He will do then, at our beginning, when He brought the first person, from whom all others are derived, into existence?
 
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Aloysium said:
As an aside. How do your see the resurrection of the body at the end of time? Is it going to be a random process governed by natural selection? Will we have to go through what is proposed by evolution to regain our physical form. Why would God not have done whatever He will do then, at our beginning, when He brought the first person, from whom all others are derived, into existence?
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I don’t know what process God will employ or allow at the resurrection of the body. Do you?

What I do know is this:
As possessors of rational souls, and still in possession of intellect and the ability to observe…
if God reveals this information to us in a rationally approachable way, it will be the nature of a glorified intellect to be docile to what is revealed to the extent it is revealed. And to accept what is seen, or heard, or infused, rather than chafe at what is easily available to be seen.

As to the material nature of your speculation, I don’t know, and neither do you.
 
Aloysium said:
As an aside. How do your see the resurrection of the body at the end of time? Is it going to be a random process governed by natural selection? Will we have to go through what is proposed by evolution to regain our physical form. Why would God not have done whatever He will do then, at our beginning, when He brought the first person, from whom all others are derived, into existence?
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Right…and what about so-called rebirth/reincarnation how did that come about in evolution, did microbes have past lives ?
 
goout said:
I don’t know what process God will employ or allow at the resurrection of the body. Do you?

What I do know is this:
As possessors of rational souls, and still in possession of intellect and the ability to observe…
if God reveals this information to us in a rationally approachable way, it will be the nature of a glorified intellect to be docile to what is revealed to the extent it is revealed. And to accept what is seen, or heard, or infused, rather than chafe at what is easily available to be seen.

As to the material nature of your speculation, I don’t know, and neither do you.
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I’m thinking it will not be evolution. We will know exactly how He does all this, and it will be simple, something we intuited all along. Consider that the order that exists here and now, the totality of our being, is one that He brings into existence in this moment, and would not be if He did not do so. The same order exists in a different form in the zygote, but awaits the incorporation of matter, external to itself, in order to make that order manifest. In other words, God can create us whole at whatever developmental stage we are at. The material is simply that information that is available to the senses and can be understood and manipulated. We do not create ourselves nor reality around us, He does.
 
Aloysium said:
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goout:
I don’t know what process God will employ or allow at the resurrection of the body. Do you?

What I do know is this:
As possessors of rational souls, and still in possession of intellect and the ability to observe…
if God reveals this information to us in a rationally approachable way, it will be the nature of a glorified intellect to be docile to what is revealed to the extent it is revealed. And to accept what is seen, or heard, or infused, rather than chafe at what is easily available to be seen.

As to the material nature of your speculation, I don’t know, and neither do you.
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I’m thinking it will not be evolution. We will know exactly how He does all this, and it will be simple, something we intuited all along. Consider that the order that exists here and now, the totality of our being, is one that He brings into existence in this moment, and would not be if He did not do so. The same order exists in a different form in the zygote, but awaits the incorporation of matter, external to itself, in order to make that order manifest. In other words, God can create us whole at whatever developmental stage we are at. The material is simply that information that is available to the senses and can be understood and manipulated. We do not create ourselves nor reality around us, He does.
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And God has logos, because God has entered human history in Christ. Logs is reasonability. God expresses and reveals himself in different ways, including nature and science. Human beings can come to know God to the degree we are capable.
Science is good! It’s part of a wholesome perspective. And it’s fraught with messiness like any other human endeavor.
 
Kind of like how no computers should exist today other than those specific computers that were created by humans on first day humans created computers
 
We will be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:52

New International Version
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

New Living Translation
It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed.

English Standard Version
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

15:53

New International Version
For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

New Living Translation
For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

English Standard Version
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
 
Techno2000 said:
Right…and what about so-called rebirth/reincarnation how did that come about in evolution, did microbes have past lives ?
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People who believe in reincarnation would think so. It’s all in the karma that directs how the next life will be ordered. The universe is thought of as being alive and knowing, but fragmented in an illusion of multiplicity. Bacteria as a form of life are individual, but don’t have a self identity. They are being what they are but any one could replace another, where each human being cannot; this fact makes reincarnation untenable. The universe in terms of an evolutionary chain of reincarnations would be understood as coming to know itself in the process of creating a human being with all our intellectual capacities. The view doesn’t work because Love is at the Centre and the Source of everything that is. And everything that is, although it derives its being from God, is not God but a form of being He has brought into and maintains in existence. God loves His creation and through us, creation is able to know and love Him back, each of us having been given this life, this second shot at getting it right.
 
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