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

[IWantGod]

Survival instinct as a goal-directed behavior can be described using the word teleological, in a way.

It is what it is. If you want to assert that i am mixing up terms and meanings, then you going to have to demonstrate that is in fact what i am doing.

The fact remains that there is goal direction in nature. That is what i understand to be teleological. I think you will find that Thomistic philosophers would agree.

 

[AndrewAxland]

Thomistic philosophers would agree.

They would not, because they are aware that you are using the word in a different sense than they do. Nor would they agree with your understanding of the word teleological, except within the realm of metaphysics.

You are quibbling, and that is why you are confused. Your train of thought is not going to get you anywhere you want to go because it’s simply not on the right tracks.

 

[IWantGod]

They would not, because they are aware that you are using the word in a different sense than they do. Nor would they agree with your understanding of the word teleological, except within the realm of metaphysics.

You are quibbling, and that is why you are confused. Your train of thought is not going to get you anywhere you want to go because it’s simply not on the right tracks.

Again you are just asserting that i am wrong.

 

[AndrewAxland]

You are late to the party.

Darn!!! I always am!

You mean to say that these people persist in presenting their claptrap as official Church teaching even when it’s been pointed out to them with reference to actual documents? Don’t they have any qualms about misleading the faithful?

 

[AndrewAxland]

Again you are just asserting that i am wrong

Fine. Go ahead. It’s no skin off my back if you waste time barking up the wrong tree.

 

[IWantGod]

Fine. Go ahead. It’s no skin off my back if you waste time barking up the wrong tree.

Again you are just asserting that i am wrong.

 

[buffalo]

Darn!!! I always am!

You mean to say that these people persist in presenting their claptrap as official Church teaching even when it’s been pointed out to them with reference to actual documents? Don’t they have any qualms about misleading the faithful?

In fact, over and over I have shown church teaching on why certain aspects of evolution cannot be true.

 

[IWantGod]

I don’t quite get what you mean. All Animals die eventually. But they reproduce.

 

[Techno2000]

edwest211:

These discussions have been going on for years.

Yes. And you still ask ridiculous questions as the one above about fish. I just asked my grandson why a fish might try to walk around in mud and he said ‘perhaps all the water went away’.

He can work it out and you can’t. And he’s 4.

Evolution doesn’t work overnight.

 

[Techno2000]

I don’t quite get what you mean. All Animals die eventually. But they reproduce.

The organism next transitional stage/ step would be a so-called reproductive advantage, and a reproductive disadvantage for the previous transitional organism causing it to die out .

 

[Techno2000]

Again, you are mixing up the two senses of “why”, and you are also quibbling on the word “teleological” in the same way.

You really have to distinguish the two meanings of the word “why” in your thinking.

Survival instinct as a goal-directed behavior can be described using the word teleological, in a way. But when you take a word that has a particular meaning and implications in the realm of metaphysics and use it to describe something in the physical world, you have to realize that some of the meaning, and all of the implications, are lost in translation.

Lol…I never even heard of this word until now.

 

[FiveLinden]

Genetic material is transmitted only by descent except in some rare circumstances irrelevant to this thread. We share genetic material with every species that has ever had its genetic material examined. In the case of plants it is about 50%. In the case of chimps, well over 95%. Therefore we and all species are related by descent. Now have fun arguing about the how - science is still working on that. But please can we give up arguing about what is now one of the most obvious facts in the world. And could Catholics who reject this obvious fact pause to consider the damage they do to their credibility in arguing things less obvious and less observable?

 

[Hugh_Farey]

And could Catholics who reject this obvious fact pause to consider the damage they do to their credibility in arguing things less obvious and less observable?

I thoroughly agree.

 

[Elf01]

Not always. Pre vaccines for example it would be an advantage to have a natural immunity to those diseases because many died in childhood because of them and would not reproduce.

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

They utilized science, describing what they saw in the world about them, how barren places gradually became filled with life.

It’s not fruitful to impose a genre on a text that was simply not written in that genre. All it does is distort what the writer is trying to communicate.
Yes, Genesis is observant and is trying to give meaning to the world around the writer, but it was never intended to be scientific in the manner you are linking it to.

We owe the writer, and God, to read Genesis in context. That is how inspiration is living.
If we lock it in 21sst century interpretations, we rob it of meaning.
(what you end up doing is making the atheists correct about scripture and faith…)

I’m not sure I conveyed my ideas clearly. The feedback you provide is somewhat off the mark in terms of what was intended. Let me elaborate.

From my perspective, it is imposing meaning on the text, to reduce it to theology/mythology/metaphysics. It’s a statement of fact, historical given a particular world view. It humbles us to realize that our current world view is simply a shared vision of reality that has been imposed upon us, if anything has been imposed, through an educational system that is far more interested in telling us what to think rather than how to think.

The Galapagos, that which is touted as proof of evolution, in fact reveals creation. An open mind looking out sees more than Hubble images in the sky. There is an enormous blue dome that covers the earth upon which are fixed heavenly bodies - the sun, the moon the stars and planets. The blueness above, separated from the blueness below, the land separated from the water. The order of creation in Genesis does reflect the reality of how life begins and flourishes on barren rocky places.

This is how things are, as much as there are bosons, galaxies, and proteins. It all speaks to our relationship with reality, the mystery of who we are, what things are in themselves and the connection between us. To simply see stuff out there, what we imagine matter to be, disconnected from the true forces that underlie what is happening right here and now, is a reductionism that deprives the encounter with existence of meaning.

Atheists will not be convinced by my agreeing with their generally short-sighted visions of reality.

 

[goout]

goout:

It’s not fruitful to impose a genre on a text that was simply not written in that genre. All it does is distort what the writer is trying to communicate.
Yes, Genesis is observant and is trying to give meaning to the world around the writer, but it was never intended to be scientific in the manner you are linking it to.

We owe the writer, and God, to read Genesis in context. That is how inspiration is living.
If we lock it in 21sst century interpretations, we rob it of meaning.
(what you end up doing is making the atheists correct about scripture and faith…)

I’m not sure I conveyed my ideas clearly. The feedback you provide is somewhat off the mark in terms of what was intended. Let me elaborate.

From my perspective, it is imposing meaning on the text, to reduce it to theology/mythology/metaphysics. It’s a statement of fact, historical given a particular world view.

Mainstream Catholic Scripture scholarship does not view Genesis as a statement of fact. The accepted view of Genesis…the view that takes the context of the writer and what he wanted to convey…is that of Inspired poetry. Yes, the writer is speaking about the world around him, but not from a factual point of view as we understand it. Genesis conveys Truth using that genre.

It humbles us to realize that our current world view is simply a shared vision of reality that has been imposed upon us, if anything has been imposed, through an educational system that is far more interested in telling us what to think rather than how to think.

There have always been those who conflate science and faith. Ironically, what you are doing is the flip side of that same coin.

The Galapagos, that which is touted as proof of evolution, in fact reveals creation.

And evolution. Evolution is a real process. God can do that, he has the power to order his creation how he wishes.

An open mind looking out sees more than Hubble images in the sky. There is an enormous blue dome that covers the earth upon which are fixed heavenly bodies - the sun, the moon the stars and planets. The blueness above, separated from the blueness below, the land separated from the water. The order of creation in Genesis does reflect the reality of how life begins and flourishes on barren rocky places.

Sure, but it is not a scientific statement at all. Science has uncovered the processes by which these things happen. The “how”. Genesis reveals the “why”, the meaning. The will of God.

To simply see stuff out there, what we imagine matter to be, disconnected from the true forces that underlie what is happening right here and now, is a reductionism that deprives the encounter with existence of meaning.

False dicohotomy.

Atheists will not be convinced by my agreeing with their generally short-sighted visions of reality.

When you insist that Genesis is scientific fact, you give skeptics valid reasons to reject Christianity.

 

[Aloysium]

It is actually an assumption that we are related to other living beings by decent.

We are descended from other human beings. It is our being mankind that makes us who we are, the genetic coding a mere aspect of the information that goes into the building and maintaining of our physical form. The over-riding structure that governs the being of our constituent parts, organ systems, cells, molecules, and the subatomic within the context of universal time and space, is the human spirit. The unity of our existence, which we intellectually divide into body and soul, is created and developed through the incorporation of what is other to us, physically and psychologically. We are brought into existence here and now, as we were in our first moment of conception, an expression of a humanity that began with the creation of the first man.

As to whether that first man began as a single cell within a hominid womb or was brought into existence without an umbilicus fully formed, there can be no proof. What is clear is that Adam was a new creation, whose physical attributes utilized the information required to participate in the word. Correlation is not the same as causation.

 

[goout]

Aloysium said
From my perspective, it is imposing meaning on the text, to reduce it to theology/mythology/metaphysics. It’s a statement of fact, historical given a particular world view.

And let me address this misunderstanding of Inspiration.
Senses of scripture in addition to literal are not less, they are more. Inspiration is always more, never less. Incorporating poetry and other genres of literature into the Word is more, not less. Reductionism is the insistence on modern materialist senses of scripture. The Church does not read scripture as a scientific or historical fact, in a literalist sense. There are elements of both.

Genesis was never intended by the original people as a statement of scientific fact.
Why should we impose that paradigm on it, if the original writer never intended it? That is the reductionism you fear.

 

[rose321]

Sorry wrong post have a great day!

 

[buffalo]

Therefore we and all species are related by descent. Now have fun arguing about the how - science is still working on that. But please can we give up arguing about what is now one of the most obvious facts in the world. And could Catholics who reject this obvious fact pause to consider the damage they do to their credibility in arguing things less obvious and less observable?

Common design explains this better. The issue at hand is the lack of credibility of evolution.

The truth matters.