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IWantGod
Guest
Well, the Church is certainly not in principle against the idea of natural evolution. If that were true you would provide indisputable evidence. But you can’t. Instead you have resorted to playing mind games.
Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true
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buffalo
Guest
My showing the long held and firm teaching of Eve coming from Adam are not mind games.
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goout
Guest
Are you aware that the Church has spoken about evolution?
What has been said? What is the most recent discussion?
You seem to be very proficient at researching material.
What has been said? What is the most recent discussion?
You seem to be very proficient at researching material.
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IWantGod
Guest
Is the church in principle against the natural theory of evolution. If it is, can you please provide indisputable evidence of this fact.
The belief that Eve was formed from the body of Adam is not something that science can either affirm or deny. If it happened, it is a miraculous act of God and as such is a matter of faith. But the fact remains that the Church does not dispute or in principle deny that the basic premise of natural evolution is true.
So yes, in my opinion, you are playing games.
The belief that Eve was formed from the body of Adam is not something that science can either affirm or deny. If it happened, it is a miraculous act of God and as such is a matter of faith. But the fact remains that the Church does not dispute or in principle deny that the basic premise of natural evolution is true.
So yes, in my opinion, you are playing games.
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buffalo
Guest
Yes
Don’t know
We agree
One thing I am sure of - the Church has always understood the world to be the product of and intelligent agency. The Bible as well as science depend on it.
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IWantGod
Guest
No Catholic on this thread has ever disputed the idea that God is the ultimate existential cause of physical existence. And neither does an atheist have cause or genuine scientific evidence to dispute that belief based only on the theory of natural evolution. So it’s irrelevant
What has been disputed is the idea that kinds or species were directly manufactured by God. God the builder, or the watch maker, has been replaced by Evolution.
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buffalo
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INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
COMMUNION AND STEWARDSHIP: 2000-2002
Human Persons Created in the Image of God*
69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles.…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).
COMMUNION AND STEWARDSHIP: 2000-2002
Human Persons Created in the Image of God*
69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles.…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).
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IWantGod
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It seems that you don’t really understand the things that you quote.
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buffalo
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I am all ears…
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Dan123
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I applaud you’re efforts to dig deeper, everything seems to be about sediment formation. If there’s anything specific about why fossils are sorted into a gradient I’m not seeing it. But I am chiming in just to say all buffalo did was paste the citations from here:
http://efficalis.com/sedimentology/paper/
The addendum is a nice mention of the long debunked Mt St Helens radiometric dating ‘issues’ where, just like the dinosaur fossils that someone tried to carbon date, someone else tried to K/Ar date something less than 6000 years old. Better summary:
https://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm
http://efficalis.com/sedimentology/paper/
The addendum is a nice mention of the long debunked Mt St Helens radiometric dating ‘issues’ where, just like the dinosaur fossils that someone tried to carbon date, someone else tried to K/Ar date something less than 6000 years old. Better summary:
https://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm
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buffalo
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The Truth of Christianity - Joseph Ratzinger
1999
The evolutionist theory became crystallized as the road to metaphysics’ definitive elimination, rendering “the hypothesis of God” (Laplace) superfluous and formulating a strictly “scientific” explanation of the world. An evolutionist theory that offers an englobing explanation of all reality has become a sort of “prime philosophy” that represents, so to speak, the authentic foundation of any rational understanding of the world. Every attempt to bring causes into play that differed from those elaborated by a “positive” theory, every attempt at “metaphysics” necessarily appears to be a relapse on reason’s part, the decline of science’s universal claim. Even the Christian idea of God is necessarily seen as non-scientific. This idea finds no further correspondence in any theologia physica: the only theologia naturalis is in this vision the evolutionist doctrine and it knows no God and no Creator in the Christian sense (or in the Jewish or Islamic sense). And it knows no soul of the world or interior dynamism in the sense of Stoicism. One could eventually, in the Buddhist sense, consider the whole world as a façade and nothing as authentic reality and thus justify the mystical forms of religion which are not in direct competition at least with reason.
So has the last word been said? Are reason and Christianity thus definitively separated one from the other? However things stand, the portent of the evolutionist doctrine is not in doubt as prime philosophy and the exclusive nature of the positive method as the only type of science and rationality. Both sides should embark on this discussion with serenity and willingness to listen, something which has only happened in a minor way so far. No one could seriously doubt the scientific evidence of the micro-evolutionary processes: Reinhard Junker and Siegfried Scherer say on this point in their Kritisches Lehrbuch on evolution: “These phenomena [micro-evolutionary processes] are well known principally as natural processes of variation and formation. That evolutionary biology examined them led to some significant knowledge being acquired on the living systems’ amazing capacity for adaptation”. They say that one can rightly characterize research into origins as biology’s supreme discipline. The question that a believer may ask when faced with modern reason is not about this, but about the spread of a philosophia universalis which aims at becoming a general explanation for reality and which tends not to allow any other level of thought. Within this same evolutionist doctrine the problem presents itself on passing from micro- to macro-evolution, a transition on which Szamarthy and Maynard Smith, both supporters of a revised evolutionary theory, also concede: “There are no theoretical reasons for thinking that evolutionary lines increase in complexity through time; there is not even any empirical proof that this happens.”
1999
The evolutionist theory became crystallized as the road to metaphysics’ definitive elimination, rendering “the hypothesis of God” (Laplace) superfluous and formulating a strictly “scientific” explanation of the world. An evolutionist theory that offers an englobing explanation of all reality has become a sort of “prime philosophy” that represents, so to speak, the authentic foundation of any rational understanding of the world. Every attempt to bring causes into play that differed from those elaborated by a “positive” theory, every attempt at “metaphysics” necessarily appears to be a relapse on reason’s part, the decline of science’s universal claim. Even the Christian idea of God is necessarily seen as non-scientific. This idea finds no further correspondence in any theologia physica: the only theologia naturalis is in this vision the evolutionist doctrine and it knows no God and no Creator in the Christian sense (or in the Jewish or Islamic sense). And it knows no soul of the world or interior dynamism in the sense of Stoicism. One could eventually, in the Buddhist sense, consider the whole world as a façade and nothing as authentic reality and thus justify the mystical forms of religion which are not in direct competition at least with reason.
So has the last word been said? Are reason and Christianity thus definitively separated one from the other? However things stand, the portent of the evolutionist doctrine is not in doubt as prime philosophy and the exclusive nature of the positive method as the only type of science and rationality. Both sides should embark on this discussion with serenity and willingness to listen, something which has only happened in a minor way so far. No one could seriously doubt the scientific evidence of the micro-evolutionary processes: Reinhard Junker and Siegfried Scherer say on this point in their Kritisches Lehrbuch on evolution: “These phenomena [micro-evolutionary processes] are well known principally as natural processes of variation and formation. That evolutionary biology examined them led to some significant knowledge being acquired on the living systems’ amazing capacity for adaptation”. They say that one can rightly characterize research into origins as biology’s supreme discipline. The question that a believer may ask when faced with modern reason is not about this, but about the spread of a philosophia universalis which aims at becoming a general explanation for reality and which tends not to allow any other level of thought. Within this same evolutionist doctrine the problem presents itself on passing from micro- to macro-evolution, a transition on which Szamarthy and Maynard Smith, both supporters of a revised evolutionary theory, also concede: “There are no theoretical reasons for thinking that evolutionary lines increase in complexity through time; there is not even any empirical proof that this happens.”
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IWantGod
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A Brief Exploration of the Catholic Position on Evolution
There is a great misperception in the culture that Catholicism is anti-science. Many college students confront this error when they encounter reductionism, rationalism, and materialism through their professors. These students do not know how to respond–and far too often–dismiss Catholicism...
catholicexchange.com
[T]he Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter — for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church.
So in principle the church is not against natural evolution. What they are against is the philosophical belief that natural evolution is not ultimately something that happens according to the power of God. But at the same time the church does not deny secondary causes, In other-words, the church does not deny that “natural events” is the process by which evolution unfolds.
So whatever you think your quote is affirming, it is certainly not denying natural evolution.
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buffalo
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and then the final smack by the Pope:
Now, it is a fact that when the evolutionary theory risks expanding and becoming a philosophia universalis, it is trying to establish a new ethos on the basis of evolution. But this evolutionary ethos, which inexorably finds its key notion in the model of selection and, therefore in the struggle for survival, in the survival of the fittest, in successful adaptation, has little of comfort to offer. Even when effort is made to make it more palatable in various ways, it is always, ultimately, a cruel ethos. Any effort to distill rationality from a basis of reality insensate in itself is a failure and spectacularly so. None of this is of much help to us in our need: for the ethics of universal peace, of effective love of others and the necessity we have to go beyond the detail.
Now, it is a fact that when the evolutionary theory risks expanding and becoming a philosophia universalis, it is trying to establish a new ethos on the basis of evolution. But this evolutionary ethos, which inexorably finds its key notion in the model of selection and, therefore in the struggle for survival, in the survival of the fittest, in successful adaptation, has little of comfort to offer. Even when effort is made to make it more palatable in various ways, it is always, ultimately, a cruel ethos. Any effort to distill rationality from a basis of reality insensate in itself is a failure and spectacularly so. None of this is of much help to us in our need: for the ethics of universal peace, of effective love of others and the necessity we have to go beyond the detail.
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IWantGod
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How is this an argument against natural evolution? It is an argument against philosophical systems based on natural evolution.
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goout
Guest
To admit you don’t know what the Church says about evolution and what the most recent discussion is negligence on your part, because you claim to speak with authority about a subject you admit you don’t have authority in, let alone basic knowledge.goout:
Yes
Don’t know
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Hugh_Farey
Guest
I’m sorry, Buffalo, but frankly, you must be joking. However, out of respect for your tenacity I’ll read one; I’ll even buy it if it’s behind a paywall. Which one do you think best supports the idea that Noah’s flood is responsible for global geology?
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buffalo
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I do not know and have not been privy to the most recent private Church conversations on it. Have you?
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buffalo
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Natural evolution is philosophy.
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edwest211
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Thank you. An important quote.
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edwest211
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Thanks again. Blind unguided chance is the worldview being promoted here. It is the wrong way to view creation.
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