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

[buffalo]

Remember the formal and final causes in addition to material and efficient is the best way to do science. Scientism has pretty much disregarded the formal and final causes which we know call methodological naturalism.

This way of studying the universe and its workings is severely deficient.

 

[Edgar]

Yes, but a body is not inherent to their nature like it is to humans.

My point is, if angels can at times find themselves in physical bodies that can partake of physical food, are such bodies capable of mating with “the daughters of men”, thus producing the Nephilim (Genesis 6)?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Technically yes, but in order for the angels to have bodies, God would have to actively will and allow it.

I highly doubt God would do so for the fallen angels. They don’t have the capacity to create the bodies themselves, and anything they are going to do is going to be wholly and completely opposed to God, so it would essentially require God to will something that is against Him, which is impossible.

 

[edwest]

That is the issue.

 

[Edgar]

Ermm… Jude 6-7 don’t event remotely suggest that the Nephilim were fallen angels… There’s absolutely no reference to the Nephilim in that passage. All is says is that the fallen angels were bound, and that Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped out for their evils.

On second thoughts, perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the meaning of the words “In a similar way …”, which I’ve taken to mean as, the sins of the fallen angels were “similar” to the sins of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is perhaps a misconception left over from my Protestant days.

 

[Aloysium]

To remind ourselves of what the church teaches:

II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE” (CCC)

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:
Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people “wholly”, with “spirit and soul and body” kept sound and blameless at the Lord’s coming. The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul. “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.

368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

When you add in verse 5, it makes the meaning a lot clearer.

I wish to remind you, although you know all things, that [the] Lord who once saved a people from the land of Egypt later destroyed those who did not believe.

These verses are specifically dealing with false teachers and what happens to people who turn their back on God.

The Church has no position on what the Nephilim were, but I believe the interpretation that they are children of fallen angels is specifically a Protestant one which is not supported by the text.

To remind ourselves of what the church teaches:

The Catechism supports my position. The two are a composite, there is no way they can’t influence each other.

 

[Edgar]

“evolution” and “the theory of evolution” are different things

No, I don’t think so. Some definitions of “the theory of evolution” I’ve seen include the history of life on earth, but my understanding now is that such a conclusion is not appropriate in such a definition. So the definitions of “evolution” and “the theory of evolution” should be the same.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Here it is again. Science, which cannot study the supernatural, is being used as an explanation for supernatural events.

Where? What specific supernatural event do you think is being used as an explanation by science?

There are people with Neanderthal DNA. Neanderthals were fully human.

Do you mean “human” in the anthropological sense (as in science) or in the theological sense (as it religion)? They are not necessarily the same. In particular, I don’t think you can prove from revelation alone that Neaderthal were fully human in the theological sense. I think that is an open question.

 

[Edgar]

When you add in verse 5, it makes the meaning a lot clearer. These verses are specifically dealing with false teachers and what happens to people who turn their back on God. The Church has no position on what the Nephilim were, but I believe the interpretation that they are children of fallen angels is specifically a Protestant one which is not supported by the text.

Yes, I agree. I just read the whole thing and I have to conclude that reading the Nephilim into verses 6 and 7 is wrong. I’ve held that mistaken interpretation for about twenty years (can’t remember which Protestant sect taught it to me - I went through quite a few), so thanks for putting me straight.

 

[edwest]

The creation of Adam and Eve, which appears to be wrong as far as some unknown science is concerned. I say unknown because there is no science to back up or challenge Church teaching. Souls don’t exist since they are supernatural.

 

[buffalo]

No, I don’t think so. Some definitions of “the theory of evolution” I’ve seen include the history of life on earth, but my understanding now is that such a conclusion is not appropriate in such a definition. So the definitions of “evolution” and “the theory of evolution” should be the same.

and then there is evolutionism.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The creation of Adam and Eve, which appears to be wrong as far as some unknown science is concerned. I say unknown because there is no science to back up or challenge Church teaching. Souls don’t exist since they are supernatural.

The creation of Adam and Eve has two aspects. One is physical and the other is spiritual. While science has nothing to say about their souls, it does have something to say about their physical creation. And what it says about their physical creation does not challenge Church teaching.

 

[IWantGod]

At the end of the day Science is not relevant to your salvation, so you’re are free to believe what you want about the physical world. Just know that as far as evolution is concerned, there will come a time when there will be not more than a handful of people who don’t accept evolution. And when this minority of people are asked what they think of you, they will say that buffalo is the Great Father, the founder of our movement…So it won’t all be for nothing in the end.

 

[buffalo]

about their physical creation does not challenge Church teaching.

Evolution now agrees that Eve came from Adam’s side.

 

[Aloysium]

What my imagination tells me is that we will come to know the truth, and in that day we’ll realize that we had known it all along, so simple that we will laugh. And, freed of convoluted stories upholding the illusions we chase in life, that knowledge will be of creation itself, wondrous and eternal.

 

[edwest]

I doubt that.

 

[Richca]

Thanks for the link, very interesting.

 

[Aloysium]

For anyone interested, I’m trying to get at one of the driving forces behind these discussions:

God creates from eternity. While we exist in a past-present-future moment as an aspect of our free will which sets our choices in stone, so to speak, there exists but one Moment encompassing all time space and everything in it, eternally brought into existence. All this is determined including what we freely do, all made right, justified in accordance with God’s will. I am suggesting then, that this world as we know it is brought into being as a result of a choice made by humanity at its creation in one first man. Eden has vanished, replaced by this vale of tears, from its beginnings in time to its end, reaching out towards its resurrection. In a sense it has all happened, but the reality is that it is all happening Now, all of it emerging into existence, resting on the eternal Ground which is Existence itself, triune in nature.

Imagine ourselves as analogous to a family Christmas dinner within a brick house. That house representing the body has been constructed from the clay of the ground, shaped into bricks and mortar, brought together to form a foundation, floor and walls. It is all happening in four dimensional space-time, the clay formed into the component parts of the physical structure to the family gathering inside. We can approach the reality in terms of the architect and builder, or focus on the materials themselves. In the latter case, what we will find is that the bricks and mortar contain the potential for assuming the form of a house, that it is in their nature, as much as they will exhibit the tendency to crumble and fall. These are different perspectives on what happens, the interpretation depending on how we choose to understand.

In the article Statistical physics of Self-Replication published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, Dr. Jeremy L. England proposes that the emergence of self-replicating nucleic acids as well as that of cells themselves is fueled by entropy. It’s basically saying what my analogy was getting at. It came out some time ago and I don’t know of any follow-up. However, whether it pans out or not, he is suggesting that the forces of nature are sufficient in producing living organisms. The fact is that life has arisen from the earth, as everyone quoting Genesis or evolution would hold. We have a choice, we can either use science as a means to grow closer to God or use it to push ourselves further from Him. The decision is ours, which direction we take. Does He bring all this into existence? Is it all about God or not?

 

[Aloysium]

Statistical physics of Self-Replication published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, Dr. Jeremy L. England

Reading between the lines of this article, we see that he is actually proposing that what has occured over time is not random, but built into the structure of matter, that the laws of nature make life inevitable. I’m trying to give something here to evo-Christians. And, natural selection would play only a minor role as entropy drives the formation of molecular structures that are one with their environment. But the reality remains that all this is more than a collection of atoms; what we have are different forms of being with their inherent nature, made up of constituent parts having their own particular properties. We ourselves are an example of this that we know intimately, being ourselves and consisting of specific psychological and physical structures all together as one unity, with the capacity to know and act with a free will.