Evolution in the bible, says Vatican

News.com ^ | 11/7/05 | Mikey_1962

[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.

[Dimensio]

I notice that you completely ignored VadeRetro's link. Which isn't surprising. Creationists ignore information that they don't like because they prefer picking easy battles and pretending that's all that ever challenges them.

[Elsie]

What do you make of Genesis 6:2-4?

 

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NIV

 

 

Genesis 1:26-27
26.  Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
 27.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

 

 
Genesis 5

 

 1.  This is the written account of Adam's line.   When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
 2.  He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them "man. "
 3.  When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
 4.  After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.
 5.  Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.

 

 

 

Genesis 6:1-8
 1.  When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them,
 2.  the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
 3.  Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with  man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
 4.  The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
 5.  The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
 6.  The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
 7.  So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them."
 8.  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

 

 

This verse...

 

 Genesis 6:4.  The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

 

...says NOTHING about the N  being the OFFSPRING of the SoG and the DoM: they were ALREADY there!

 

 

SoG are the offspring from the early Adam/Eve lineage and the DoM are the offspring from the LATER Adam/Eve lineage, nothing more.

[Havoc]

No, they won't be. Behe is a prime example. You think you can just state things in spite of the evidences to the contrary. That's the problem with your theory. It's also the problem you have with what's happened in Kansas - that this will be on parade more so than ever. I'm not the paranoid one here. That would be you and yours - going schizoid over the fact that America is fed up with the Trash pseudo-science of evolution.. Not just fed up - they're doing something about it.

Your problem is that you're side is largely a bunch of egotistical elitist intellectual snobs. And in being precisely that, the predictable outcome has arisin. You've all become far more abusive than people are willing to put up with any longer. You are the lords of paranoia.. shouting about how the sky will fall if your stupid theory
goes away.. LOL.

[bobhoskins]

No, they won't be. Behe is a prime example. You think you can just state things in spite of the evidences to the contrary. That's the problem with your theory. It's also the problem you have with what's happened in Kansas - that this will be on parade more so than ever. I'm not the paranoid one here. That would be you and yours - going schizoid over the fact that America is fed up with the Trash pseudo-science of evolution.. Not just fed up - they're doing something about it.

Your problem is that you're side is largely a bunch of egotistical elitist intellectual snobs. And in being precisely that, the predictable outcome has arisin. You've all become far more abusive than people are willing to put up with any longer. You are the lords of paranoia.. shouting about how the sky will fall if your stupid theory goes away.. LOL.

Perhpas it's time for a revolution of the common people where they get rid of all those elitist professors and teachers?

[js1138]

What about Behe? Behe accepts evolution.

[Junior]

You think you can just state things in spite of the evidences to the contrary.

What evidence to the contrary? That your guys aren't getting published? It never crosses your mind that anything they've come up with so far hasn't merited publication because it didn't rise to the level of actual research? Not every institution is a diploma mill like Patriot University; there are standards in publishing that have to be met.

[Havoc]

I think you'll have a revolution soon enough; but, it won't be over professors and teachers - it'll be over foreign labor and corporate greed. Thousands of people in my home town are among millions in the US right now staring at the uncertainty of what's going to happen to them in the face of foreign competition - only, here, they know that it's likely gonna mean losing their home. I hear it from Truckdrivers going through town - coming and going from all over the US. I hear it from retail workers on up to Salaried people and line workers. The rhetoric of politicians is giving way to the reality of wondering where food is gonna come from for the 3 kids who are used to automaker incomes..

Evolution is dying on it's own merits. Revolution will come on it's own merits. And they'll be income and rights related as surely as the first American revolution was.

[RunningWolf]

How about if all the scientists just step away from evolution (and some of their other pre-ordained conclusions) for a bit. If its a reality it will still be there a few years later. Take ID and religion out of the equation, cosmo-evo is still a weak description.

Evolution is much like cosmology in this regard. In cosmo they keep inventing new but undetected concepts to tie all the other theories together, they then 'search for evidence of these things' with tools and experiments that most likely will demonstrate 0 in either direction, a null result.

In general modern science could do a lot more for itself if it acknowledged something like 'the truth is, there is a lot we don't know, this is what some of us think and here is why', rather than much of what I have seen here.

Wolf

[js1138]

I can't hear you. The whistling in the dark is too loud.

[RunningWolf]

standards in publishing that have to be met.

And those are that one lays his mind and integrity at the alter of cosmo-evo in the church of materialism.

Wolf

[pby]

Talk about pretending and ignoring information...look in the mirror!

It seems that...it is you, VadeRetro and many other evolutionists, that live in a pretend world, while being blinded and seduced by your desire to support current [avian] evolutionary "theory" despite the evidence (or lack thereof). This seduction leads to wrong-headed assumed conclusions that smack of Lyshenko-type science.

I read the link.

Obviuosly, you (and VadeRetro) haven't paid attention to some of the newest information out on the subject of dinosaur "feathers".

A team of scientists (Dr. Feduccia, Dr. Lingham-Soliar, Dr. Hinchliffe and others) recently conducted research and study (reported Oct. 10), which can be found in the latest Journal of Morphology.

"They found that fossilized patterns that resembled feathers somewhat also occur in fossils known not to be closely related to birds and hence are far more likely to be skin-related tissues [so much for protofeathers!].

In his October 10, 2005 press release on the subject, Feduucia said, "The strongest case for feathered dinosaurs arose in 1996 with a samll black and white photo of the early Cretaceous period small dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, which sported a coat of filamentous structurtes some called "dino-fuzz". The photo subsequently appeared in various prominent publications as the long-sought 'definitive' evidence of dinosaur 'feathers' and that birds were descended from dinosaurs...Yet no one ever bothered to provide the evidence--either structural or biological--that these structures had anything to do with feathers."

"In our new work, we show that these and other filamentous structures were not protofeathers, but rather remains of collagenous fiber meshworks that reinforced the skin."

"Current dinosaurian dogma requires that all the intricate adaptations of birds' wings and feathers for flight evolved in a flightless dinosaur and then somehow became useful for flight only much later...That is close to being non-Darwinian."

"Also, the current feathered dinosaurs theory makes little sense time-wise either because it holds that all stages of feather evolution and bird ancestry ocurred some 125 million years ago in the early Cretaceous fossils unearthed in China. That's some 25 million years after Archaeoptyrex, which was already a bird in the modern sense."

"With the advent of 'feathered dinosaurs', we are truly witnessing the beginnings of the meltdown of paleontology...Just as the discovery of a four-chambered heart in a dinosaur in 2000 in an article in Science turned out to be an artifact, feathered dinosaurs too have become part of the fantasia of this field."

Your commonly made hasty (and incorrect)-generalizations about me and some/all creationists ("Creationists ignore information that they don't like because they prefer picking easy battles..."), given this thread, may more appropriately describe you than me.

And I wonder if the above-mentioned study will be archived on the list-o-links.

[VadeRetro]

Feduccia, while not a creationist, is a crackpot. He is increasingly marginalizing himself.

"The strongest case for feathered dinosaurs arose in 1996 with a samll black and white photo of the early Cretaceous period small dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, which sported a coat of filamentous structurtes some called "dino-fuzz".

This is silly. Here is a large color photo.

Here is a definite dinosaur, related to the above but more birdlike. It is either a juvenile Sinornithosaurus or a closely related species.

Here's the reconstruction.

The fossil, one side of a two-slab specimen:

Detail of a tuft near the shoulder:

Now, let's look at the early bird Confuciusornis:

Note that the closeup is of a forelimb, which does a good imitation of a saurian claw with some feathering.

A clear progression, and I didn't even use the classic case of Archaeopteryx. (Archy, by the way, is a very close relative of the middle one, Sinornithosaurus, but with enough feathers to be able to get off the ground.) Gets kind of dumb to invent wave-aways for the obvious, doesn't it?

[balrog666]

Ignornance-of-the-evidence-is-no-excuse placemarker.

[pby]

The specific issue being addressed was the evolution of feathers, and birds as a whole, and you addressed some alleged/assumed discrepancy between Feduccia's quote about a 1996 black and white photo that was used at that time and the color photo you posted today.

What is the original date of the photo you posted today (and is it pre 1996)?

Do you have specific evidence that Feduccia's claim about the photo and events in 1996 are inaccurate?

No. You don't.

Instead of listing the oft debated and inconclusive "clear progression" that you posted, directly address the experts' (not just Dr. Feduccia...the others too!) specific conclusions related to the fact that the "protofeathers" are not feathers at all and the fact that the timeline does not make sense (birds existed prior to the small bird-like dinosaurs).

Fedducia and the others are hardly marginilizing themselves. They seem to be willing to look at the evidence for what it is instead of forcing the evidence to fit their assumed conclusions...They conduct scientific study as it should be conducted and in the process they marginilize the TalkOrigins (list-o-links) type crowd.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Fedducia and the others are hardly marginilizing themselves. They seem to be willing to look at the evidence for what it is instead of forcing the evidence to fit their assumed conclusions...They conduct scientific study as it should be conducted and in the process they marginilize the TalkOrigins (list-o-links) type crowd."

Fedducia in no way is against the ToE. He has nothing but contempt for creationism.

[pby]

I never said that Feduccia was against the ToE.

Go back through the thread, the issue was evidence (and lack thereof) for feather evolution and feathers on dinosaurs.

Martin (Kansas State University), Ostrom (paleontologist, Yale University), Ruben (professor of zoology, Oregon State University), Olson (curator of birds at the National Museum of Natural History) all agree with Feduccia and his team relative to Sinosauroptyrex ,specifically, not having feathers and/or "protofeathers", in general, not being feathers at all.

Olson wrote, "...protofeathers exist only as a theoretical construct..."

Is this fine group of scientists marginalizing themselves as well?

Only in VadeRetro's/Dimensio's little world (and at Darwin Central, of course).

[pby]

Mark as Exhibit "D".

[VadeRetro]

The specific issue being addressed was the evolution of feathers, and birds as a whole...

... And whether they originated in dinosaurs. Thus, evidence that several different species of theropod dinosaurs and not just one was feathered would seem to be relevant.

What is the original date of the photo you posted today (and is it pre 1996)? Do you have specific evidence that Feduccia's claim about the photo and events in 1996 are inaccurate?

I have evidence that a better photo than the one whose discrepancies he decries has been around for some five or six years. I threw away the National Geographic I scanned that stuff from but it was from sometime around 2000. I have a good picture, why doesn't Feduccia?

Instead of listing the oft debated and inconclusive "clear progression" that you posted...

Why wouldn't the direct, hard evidence, or at least pictures thereof, be admitted as evidence? "Oft-debated?" Where? Here? The "controversy" is mostly between Gish, Sarfati, Meyer, etc. and mainstream science.

If Sinosauropteryx were the only data point out there, it would be ambiguous. It isn't the only data point and thus doesn't deserve to be treated as ambiguous.

[VadeRetro]

(birds existed prior to the small bird-like dinosaurs).

One "bird," Archaeopteryx, unless you're trying to ressurect the crushed-bone-pile Eoavis, whose conjectural nature fits the description creationists try to apply to fossils in exquisite preservation but which they don't like. Archaeopteryx is a bird for two reasons, the main one being purely historical. It had feathers, and when it was discovered (1860) feathers were considered diagnostic of birds so that was that. The other one is it could probably fly. Skeletally, it was very saurian. Flat sternum, unfused hand bones (like Confuciusornis), toothy (beakless) jaw, lots and lots of tail vertebrae. You know what you're ignoring, so don't make me drag you through the same old crap, OK?

[VadeRetro]

Thus, evidence that several different species of theropod dinosaurs and not just one was feathered would seem to be relevant.

And any other line of evidence that birds originated from theropod dinosaurs would tend to resolve arguments from the ambiguity of any particular single data point.