Posted on 11/07/2005 12:05:04 PM PST by Mikey_1962
THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly. His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".
This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better".
His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Why do you quote a book at me whose authority I don't recognize? You'd might as well use the Koran or the Book of Mormon to prove something.
Your proposition would be a logical fallacy called "Denying the Antecedent".
If p implies q, it does not follow that not p implies not q. Seriously, take a refresher course if your going to try and act all high and mighty regarding logic.
My whole complaint was that a member of the vatican stated the important message of Genesis was that the universe was not an accident. This is the wrong focus for a man of religeon. The correct focus is that man is not an accident. I think it is important to teach children that man has a purpose. This should be taught at home and in church. A man with a purpose acts very different than a man without a purpose.
I don't have a problem with teaching evolution in school. I have a slight problem teaching children that man is a product of evolution, but in reality this is only one small aspect of the deprogramming that I will need to handle. Why just last week, my son's 1st grade teacher told the class that she's sad when someone cuts down a tree and doesn't plant a new one. We had a good long talk about renewable resources and private property.
You do not have to be an atheist to believe in evolution.
The Bible says don't cast your pearls before swine .... Or putting it another way, argue with fools but I'll give this one more shot.
I said : BTW, Agnostic Scientist have now also changed the second law to imply it never stated disorder. They had to do that because Evolution violated the 2nd law.
Your reply:
Please explain how evolution "violated" the 2nd law. Be specific. State the 2nd law and explain exactly what evolution does that is in violation of it.
Answer ------ This is a joke right? You can't be serious! How? The second Law, Entropy, as it was originally written, states that all of nature seeks simplicity / disorder where simplicity means less complex. Another way to look at that would be to give an example. If we had a cube of water, divvied in half. One half of the water was yellow, the other half blue. Both are the same temperature. No outside influence a perfect environment. If you then very carefully pull up the divider so that the halves of water are now allowed to intermingle, the law states that over time, the water will become of one color, in this case green (because blue and yellow make green) Evolution violates this law because organisms, came from nothing, simple to more complex. We evolved from simple one cell organisms to complex organisms. A violation of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.
I wrote:
All through nature we see the second law at work, animals becoming less complex ---- man to be specific. Yet, we are to believe everything around us was all by chance? Give me a break!
Your Reply:
Do you have anything of substance to offer, or just irrational rhetoric?
Answer ---- If it's irrational to use science then my answer would be no. If using science is rational, then my answer is yes. Take one example: say a Miniature Wire-haired Dachshund. These dogs were bread to be this from the original Standard Dachshund. Years and years of breeding got the dog to the to become a Miniature Wire-haired Dachshund. The reverse, breeding 2 Miniature Wire-haired Dachshund's has not produced, nor can it produce a Standard Dachshund. The genes for that size dog are no longer present in the Miniature Wire-haired Dachshund's. The complex genes, which are present in every Standard Dachshund are not present in the Miniature Wire-haired Dachshund.
I wrote:
I'm just going to use one example, just one and it's a very simple one. The Human eye. There are 400 parts to the human eye. All 400 hundred must work in perfect harmony and in sequence or it will not work. Now the chances of that happening are pretty remote but just for argument sake let's see how remote. Using the alphabet, 26 letters, and a bowl, what are the chances of pulling an "A", putting the "A" back in the bowl, then pulling out a "B" so on and so forth? According to my calculator, there are 4.032914611 followed by 26 zero's to one chance in completing that feet.
Your reply:
Your analogy is invalid. No one seriously suggests that the human eye simply came together fully functional all at once from nothing as a result of all of the individual "parts" assembling simultaneously. As such, your statistics are totally meaningless.
Answer ------ I never said it happened all at once. I said for it to happen just once the odds would be beyond a mathematical possibility (Statistical math says that if the odds of an event occurring are greater than 1 in 100,000,000,000 it becomes a mathematical impossibility) What people are suggesting is even more remote, ie the odds can't even be computed. There is no way to put together the entirety of the problem. It's simply beyond comprehension. They are suggesting that over time, little by little, the eye evolved from nothing to become a bacteria. That bacteria stayed that way for a time then decided by itself that it needed to get bigger. Getting bigger, it decided it needed to see but since it didn't even know what sight was it tinkered until it found out the right combination of molecules to allow a sensation of the nerve endings (which by some miracle were created by itself earlier) that allowed it to sense light. Etc... Etc.... etc....
I wrote:
Are the leading scientist in the world today saying the world is only 14 billion years old????
Your reply:
Actually the age of the Earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years. If you don't even know this much, how can we trust any knowledge you claim to have about events occurring in even shorter time spans?
That was a mis-type on my part. I was referring to the age of the Universe not the age of earth. Scientist have recently discovered what they believe the oldest light, dawn of the Universe, 14 billion light years away. Bottom line, I do know "this much". Sorry you were unable to make the leap. I guess you were in to big a hurry for the personal attack.
I Wrote:
At any rate, for the human eye to come out perfect just once, the probability is beyond the ability of my calculator to compute but I've been told it's a number with over 100 zero's following it. That's just the human eye, a 1 followed by 100 zero's to 1 chance for it to work just once. And it doesn't have to work once, it has to work twice .... to perpetuate the species.
Your Reply:
Except that, as I said before, your starting premise is faulty. The human eye did not simply spontaneously come together from all of its individual components at once. Your analogy is thus meaningless and your conclusions worthless.
Answer ------ See my answer from your first attack on statistical analysis.
I Wrote:
Evolution vs. Creation, you tell me which one takes greater faith?
Your dazzling come back
Why would it matter, when you clearly don't understand evolution at all?
Answer ------ I understand the so called Evolutionary argument far better than those who stake their very reputations on it, and far better than your feeble grasp of the so called science which is quite evident by your 'dazzling' questions and retorts
Fact: not fiction, not rhetoric, and not a personal attack, Every "So called" piece of evidence which proves evolution has been proven a fake or a mistake. Every Single One!
If you want me to define my terms, open a copy of the Syntopicon and look under "animal" and compare and contrast that with the term "man".
My logical fallacy was a genuine but insignificant cause, that can be easily counterbalanced.
"Every "So called" piece of evidence which proves evolution has been proven a fake or a mistake. Every Single One!"
Name one.
"You really need to get out more."
You need to stop reading Creationist pamphlets.
" From "Java Man" to "Lucy""
Neither of these are *fakes*, so you can save yourself the effort of sending over the titles of your creationist fantasies. I can see they will not be worth the effort.
Besides, I was asking YOU for the info, not a bibliography of creationist. Can't YOU think of some of these *fakes* and argue why they are *fakes*?
You feel free to believe you originated from primordial ooze and later developed into an ape and evolved into what you are today. Yet, you can't see the fallacies of the theory of evolution because you came from a lower intelligence. However, there are others like me that believe a higher intelligence developed humanity with all the complexities that plain old evolution doesn't answer.
Genesis 2:2 --
On the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (WEB)
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (ASV)
And on the seventh day God came to the end of all his work; and on the seventh day he took his rest from all the work which he had done. (BBE)
And God had finished on the seventh day his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (DBY)
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (KJV)
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (WBS)
And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. (JPS)
Numerous versions, all say that He rested. And we aren't talking Hebrews, we're talking Genesis...
So does that mean that people who believe it was God who instituted evolution (or some other such genetic/biological mechanism) and gave only mankind a soul have higher intelligence than you?
Isn't it science that tells us that humanity is at the top of the food chain?
"What exactly didn't die before the Fall? Was it just whole organisms that didn't die, or did individual cells also not die before the Fall? Did single-celled bacteria not die? Did individual cells inside our bodies not die?"
That is something we can only speculate about.
"Also, if God's plan was for there to be no death,"
I think it was more the case that God wouldn't force death on us, it had to come about by our choice. The tree of knowledge was his creation as well.
"Okay, let me rephrease "Where does evolution say that, or that it's impossible for a species to evolve to a point where death is no longer a certainty?""
That has nothing to do with it. The point is that without death you don't have natural selection and the Bible put the earth's initial state as being one where there is no death. Going by that, evolution could only take place over the past 6000 years.
"What is the perfectly correct interpretation of the Bible, may I ask?"
You don't have to have a perfectly correct interpretation of the Bible to know that deliberately interpreting it to reach a pre-chosen conclusion is intellectually dishonest.
Sure you could have natural selection without death, or at least the starts of it. If a creature doesn't die, but never breeds, there will only be one of it, ever. While creatures that breed rapidly will fill the earth with their offspring ...
You don't have to have a perfectly correct interpretation of the Bible to know that deliberately interpreting it to reach a pre-chosen conclusion is intellectually dishonest.
Sure, but the same should apply to science as well. People are getting their science from their pre-chosen interpretation of the Bible ... so no matter what scientific evidence presents itself, their interpretation of what science shoudl say remains the same.
And shouldn't we allow for the Bible to be interpreted in such a way that it coincides with the physical evidence of the world, or is this just a one-way street?
"Actually, it doesn't require death. All that it requires is that the individuals with "inferior" genetics be unable to spread them. A creature that lives for 3000 years but never reproduces during its life is an evolutionary dead end."
But a creature that can not die will still be around if it can reproduce or not. Bottom line is that we see no immortal lifeforms around today, so by evolution there have never been any around. This is contrary to the fall as recorded in the Bible again showing the two ideas are not compatable.
"Evolution in the Vatican" says bible? (duck'n & run'n)
Adults, when they see two different expressions (corners and circle) about the same thing will not go storming off with their nose in the air like you do.
Wasn't the first evolved Homo Sapiens Sapiens one man?
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