THE CATHOLIC CHURCH EMBRACES EVOLUTION!!!!

MuscleHead Revolution ^ | 11.14.2005 | Kevin McCullough

[jodiluvshoes]

In a remarkably odd statement this past week, the Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin!

In fact Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture said that "if the Bible were read correctly" that the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible."

"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".

He went on to advocate that the idea of creation is a theological one, while the substance of origins is a scientific one and that Catholics should "know" how science sees such things so as to "understand better."

[Cronos]

Luther was a drunk who violated all of his vows,

I don't believe that. As far as the story goes, he was a sinner who got ill and was saved -- while sick he vowed he would become a religious of cured and he did so. A man of his word. I don't think there's any talk of him being a drunk after his priesthood or even when he left the Church.

As for the other bits, yes, he did chop and change the Bible and yes, he was on the side of the German Princes against the Peasants which resulted in serfdom for the northern Germans.

[muir_redwoods]

"Just give it a few more years, and you'll state the same about homosexuality, and all the "understandin" that entails."

I'll give you a few more years and watch as you build the camps for the people who don't think as you do.

[jscd3]

And why are there Gregorian Chants from the 9th Century reffering to the Earth as an Orb?

Because the world is round? As was known since the time of the Greeks? Who, using differential shadow lenghts at noon in two cities calculated that the world was about 8000 miles in diameter several hundred years before Christ was born?

Are you sure you meant to direct this question at me?

[jscd3]

I don't think there's any talk of him being a drunk after his priesthood

I would agree - after marriage and leaving public life he seems, based on what I have read, to have settled into a life of quiet domesticity.

Hard to believe that this started out as a thread on evolution, eh? ;-)

[swain_forkbeard]

"Things can appear random but be part of a plan for those who don't know or can't see the plan".

Your own words. So the genetic mutations, which seem random from the limited perspective of homo sapiens, and which constitute the differentiating mechanisms of natural selection, do not preclude the existence of God.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

Twice is it recorded in Scripture that God viewed His creation as good.

If the creation was good, then we would not sin. Since we do sin, then the creation was not good. Therefore God need not have used his son as a sacrifice to remedy his original mistake, that of creating imperfect people. God is not a perfect God.

We can argue this until the cows can home, but let's just agree to disagree on religious matters.

The thing that I find most curious, is why the seemingly fanatical absolute insistence upon the teachings of evolutionary theory as being the unimpeachable truth

Adam and Eve are just as much a fairy tale to me as the "theory" that a bunch of molecules kept colliding in the primeval sea and through those accidental collisions evolved up to us.

Life cannot be an accident.

[HamiltonJay]

No, you're offended, because you are unable to seperated an adjective from a noun. That failing is yours to run with.

[SoothingDave]

How does reconcilling creation with science increase your faith and dependence on God?

I'll let the answer already given above by Liberal Classic another chance to strike you:

From a Jewish perspective, the conflict over the Kansas school board decision is ironic. Maimonides wrote that science is one of the primary paths to knowing God, and for that reason the Bible commences with a description of the Creation. Throughout the Bible, knowledge of God is compared with the wonders of nature, as stated so well in Psalms (19:2): "The heavens tell of God's glory, and the sky declares his handiwork."

We may learn about God from the study of nature (science). God is not opposed to science, He is revealed through it. Anyone who studies creation and fails to marvel at it is missing a crucial sense.

Isn't that what Adam shows us that God's provision is more important than our"aquiring the knowledge"?

That cat is out of the bag. We can not go back to a state of animal-like ignorance. Especially since God has, since Adam, gone out of His way to provide us with special revelation about Himself, culminating in the Revelation of Himself as Jesus Christ.

What we must do, as fallen humans, is attempt to use our intellects to further our understanding of God. We do this both through the study of His direct revelation to us (Scripture, etc.) and through the study of His indirect revelation through His Creation. If there is some conflict you find between the Creator's words and his Creation, the problem lies somewhere with your understanding of one or the other or both.

To believe in a God who created according to the literal interpretation of Genesis is to believe there is a God so set on deceiving people into disbelief in Him that He planted fossil evidence and warped the behavior of carbon in order to "test" the faithful.

That's codswallop. God's Creation is not a huge game of "gotcha" where we're supposed to believe not our senses, but a particular literal understanding of a figurative text.

SD

[todd1]

I think God knows each of our hearts. So what, I eat and drink the body of Christ and go to confession. So what if my friend gets full of the Holy Spirit and speaks in tongues. God is so awesome that he gave us more than one way to worship him. We can worship with song and prayer or by helping a neighbor in need. God wants us to love each other as he so loved us. That is a message that we all can agree on.

[todd1]

What he created was good. God gave man free will. We can choose to obey God or we choose to be our own God by doing what we want to do. When we sin we are making a choice to serve ourselves other than God. That is why sin brings us further from Gods grace. I know because I do this everyday and find myself repenting over and over again.

[SoothingDave]

What you said is absolute utter farcical nonsense.
First off, man has both a physical and spiritual body. The latter being the soul. The soul lives eternally. Spiritual death is that of eternal and infinite separation from God. This occured immediately at the fall. That is the greatest distance in all of the universe and heavens: between man and God. That physical death did not occur immediately is immaterial.

If I understand you correctly, you seem to be making some argument about soul annihilation. That's heretical poppycock. Secondly, that animals don't have souls is immaterial if not irrelevent and whether or not their bodies live or die is not even germane. What is at issue is whether or not physical death existed prior to the fall.

In Gen 2:17 the Lord spelled out the rules. He stipulated that this means death. The Hebrew word used is Müth. According to Zhodiates, this word means

to die, to kill, slay, bring to death, have one executed. Scriptures present death as being unnatural as something which God did not to happen, but which is very necessary. God takes no pleasure in it (Ez 18:342). But it is [emph. mine] a result of sin (Gen 3:3). A holy God must separate Himself from anything which is not in harmony with His character.

---

You don't understand what I was saying, and I fear you never will.

At least as long as you insist on stripping any allegorical meaning from the text. Yes, it says "death" and yes the Hebrew word means "death."

I don't think that was even a matter for debate. The question is whether the tale is just about physical death of the body, or whether we are to take a larger meaning from it.

To read the tale as concerning physical bodily death and how it "entered the world" is to utterly miss the point of the exercise. This is about spiritual death, the "eternal and infinite separation," as you put it.


SD

[redgolum]

Very interesting question. I assume you mean "Saint" by the Roman Catholic definition. While I am not 100% familiar with the requirements, I will give it a shot.

As I understand, to be canonized requires that the person perform a visible ministry, have miracles attributed to them after their death, and be recognized by a council or the pope. Since the last one doesn't apply, we will skip it.

Lutheran's in particular and Protestants in general value a lot of Luther's theology. He wasn't perfect however, and some of what he wrote about was not considered right. However, when you read about some of the early church saints, they also have some beliefs that are not quite square with modern theology. I don't mean that they were really off, but that some expressed beliefs that were later rejected in councils.

The second one is kind of a hard one. There have been a very small number of Lutheran stigma's, and at least one I am aware of that had visions of Luther in heaven. There are also other stories that I have heard of a type of "saintly intercession" by what would be considered Lutheran "saints", but the thing is we really don't have a system to document such things.

So, assuming that for some reason that the schism of the Reformation didn't happen like it did, I suspect Luther could have become a saint. But since the elector princes got as stubborn as Leo X, we won't know on this earth.

[Blessed]

>To believe in a God who created according to the literal interpretation of Genesis is to believe there is a God so set on deceiving people into disbelief in Him that He planted fossil evidence and warped the behavior of carbon in order to "test" the faithful.

To believe in a God who created according to Evolution is to believe there is a God who is so set on deceiving people into disbelief in him that he lied about how he spoke the world into existance and intentionally tricked people into thinking creation was random and without purpose.

By the way carbon dating is only reliable to about 10,000 years.After that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Blessed]

>How do they contradict reason?<

Let's go back to your original statement if you are intent on being obtuse.

>If I could not reconcile my faith with science, then I would conclude that my faith is false. Faith cannot contradict reason.<

Reconcile the resurrection and water to wine with science.And just for fun explain why these events are any more scientificly "reasonable" than a 6 day creation.

[SoothingDave]

To believe in a God who created according to Evolution is to believe there is a God who is so set on deceiving people into disbelief in him that he lied about how he spoke the world into existance and intentionally tricked people into thinking creation was random and without purpose.

Like I said, if your belief in God is so tied into the interpretation of one episode in Scripture, then you should be scared of science.

Don't try to make this God's fault. He did not leave us alone to try to muddle out our own impressions of what truth should be taken from Scripture. He left us a Church to guide us.

The behavior of atomic particles appears random and without purpose. We can't even say for sure where a given particle is at a given moment. This doesn't mean there is no God. It is not the realm of science to speak about God's existence, only to observe what is in nature.

SD

[SoothingDave]

Faith cannot contradict reason.<

Reconcile the resurrection and water to wine with science.And just for fun explain why these events are any more scientificly "reasonable" than a 6 day creation

Is it outside of reason to believe that the Creator of the universe can rearrange matter as He sees fit? If you said you could turn water into wine on your own fiat, that would be unreasonable. To say God can do it is not.

In the case of water into wine, we are provided with evidence, namely the wine that proves the miracle occured.

In the case of a young earth brought into being in 6 literal days, we are left with evidence which contradicts. It is not reasonable to think God planted fake dinosaur fossils that appear milions of years old, created stratas in the earth's layers, etc. just for a laugh.

You want God to be One who says "don't trust your eyes or ears or your senses and what they reveal about what I have created. Trust what I tell you otherwise."

We believe God says "Your observations of nature lead you to Me."

SD

[Blessed]

>He left us a Church to guide us.<

No he left us the Holy Spirit and his word to Guide us.When did the church that is supposed to guide us cease to believe in a literal 6 days of creation?

[SoothingDave]

No he left us the Holy Spirit and his word to Guide us. When did the church that is supposed to guide us cease to believe in a literal 6 days of creation?

When did they dogmatically believe it?

The Baltimore Catechism, from the 19th century, does not make mention of a literal 6 days of creation. I am not aware of any official teaching of this.

We are free to believe this or not. It's not a linchpin.

SD

[little jeremiah]

Keywords "CAN APPEAR". The TOE states that they don't "appear" random, they ARE random. There's a difference between appearing and actually being random.

If the TOE is correct, everything is random, iow meaningless and planless.

If it is not random, it is not evolution. It is something else. The effort to squish the TOE into a God centered creation is pretty funny. You guys are like Chinese contortionists, only not as limber!

[aNYCguy]

If the TOE is correct, everything is random, iow meaningless and planless.

The theory of evolution does not state that "everything is random," as you assert. Can you back up this assertion with a citation? I want positive evidence that biologists believe the TOE states that "everything is random."

You have also not provided any evidence whatsoever that the TOE denies your particular god's existence or hand in things. The TOE, being a scientific theory, does not address the supernatural in any way. The supernatural is simply outside the scope of science.