Posted on 07/25/2007 12:57:22 PM PDT by mngran
Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.
The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.
“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”
Benedict also said the human race must listen to “the voice of the Earth” or risk destroying its very existence.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I spent a lot of time in Israel and made it a priority to understand the region and its people history and politics. As with anything, you need to know where something has been, as well as where it is now to be able to know anything abut its future. It is important because I have a good enough grasp of history and Christianity to know that our future is linked to the future of Israel. I also know that the history of conflict in the middle east is littered with the consequences of those who accepted a shallow and uninformed view of their faiths as the word of God spoken only to them.
You have a good night’s rest and say your prayers to your Creator. Ask Him to extend your days, since you are still having problems with reverting to ‘man’ for answers. Ask Him to show you The Truth - He will. So you can spend some time on earth knowing The Truth and receive all His blessings. If that’s preaching, ignore it. If’s it’s good wisdom, grab it.
I really felt like that post of yours was not sincere.
You’re protesting too much to deny what we can see and learn about the world. You put words in my mouth I didn’t say and then you say “it’s not good to pass off deceit as truth..”
I see no other conclusion than that you are deceiving at least one of us. I hope, for your sake its only me you deceive. If you are aware of what you are doing at least you can change but without even the awareness of denying reality... it doesn’t look hopeful.
Anyway, I wish you the best and you may certainly have the last word if you like.
That changes the dynamics of the conversation more than slightly if you ask me, and I think such behavior in a debate format reprehensible.
Courtesy ping to post #185
How did he do that?
Folks seem all upset about this. Sounds like he's saying what the Church has taught all along, that we need to be good stewards of God's creation.
I'm always amused at this. Why do folks arguing this always assume that God made the universe, and everything in it, in six EARTH days? Why not six Saturn day or Mars days. Or here's one, how about six of GOD'S days. Who knows how long that would have taken?
A bat isn’t a bird, as DEU 14:11-18 insists. What’s up with that?
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Huh! What is up with that? Maybe ancient Israelites didn’t have the same classification system we have? Really makes you wonder!
I assume we are both relying on authority in that we aren’t paleontologists ourselves doing direct research.
That said the paleontologists and biologists recognize there is a problem with the gradualist evolutionary view (natural selection) in the fossil record. You could as easily put a chimpanzee skull in the mix of photos you gave after a. aferensis. Your chart stops at a. aferensis as well, three million years ago according to the scientists in the area.
Look at some quotes to see where I am coming from in my understanding of the issue, and my view that something big is missing from the theory of gradual evolution:
From Gould:
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution. Gould, Stephen Jay Paleobiology, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1980, p.127.
From a critic of natural selection:
“It takes a while to realize that the ‘thousands’ of intermediates being referred to have no obvious relevance to the origin of lions and jellyfish and things. Most of them are simply varieties of a particular kind of creature, artificially arranged in a certain order to demonstrate Darwinism at work, and then rearranged every time a new discovery casts doubt upon the arrangement.” Hitching, Francis “The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went Wrong” Pan: London, 1982, p27
“Darwin’s early scientific experience was primarily as a geologist, and much of what he had to say about the nature of the fossil record (summarized in the passage quoted above) was an accurate and insightful early contribution to our understanding of the vagaries of deposition and the preservation of fossils. But his Chapter 9 (first edition) on the imperfections of the geological record is one long ad hoc, special-pleading argument designed to rationalize, to flat-out explain away, the differences between what he saw as logical predictions derived from his theory and the facts of the fossil record.” (Eldredge, Niles, Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History, “Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria”, Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp.27-28.
“In point of fact, the number of modifications in reptilian structure which the birds have managed to effect in order to adapt themselves for flight is so large as to constitute a real problem and deserves our further attention. To begin with, many modifications serve to reduce its weight. The bones are hollow, the skull very thin. It has abandoned the heavy tooth-studded jaw for the light but rigid beak. The body is condensed into a compact shape, the reptilian tail being abandoned, as also the reptilian snout. The centre of gravity has been lowered by placing the chief muscles beneath the main structure. Where organs are paired, like the kidney, and the ovary, one has been sacrificed. the pelvis has been strengthened to absorb (allow me the teleology) the shock of landing. The legs and feet have been reduced to minimum the muscles operating them have vanished to be replaced by muscles within the body. The brain has been modified: a larger cerebellum to handle problems of balance and co-ordination, a larger visual cortex now that vision has become more important than smell. Less obvious but even more remarkable is the change in bodily metabolism. To produce the energy for flight the bird must consume a lot of fuel and maintain a high temperature. Not only do birds eat a lot, as anyone who grows fruit or has seen the bullfinches systematically remove every bud from a treasured shrub knows, but they have a crop in which they can store reserve fuel. So that it can handle more blood, the partitions in the heart have been completed. The lungs too have not only been enlarged but are supplemented by air-spaces within the body. In land creatures like ourselves, much of the air in the lungs remains static; we exchange only a very small proportion of it in a normal breath. The bird, by passing the inspired air right through the lung into the air-sacs, contrives to exchange the lot with each breath. This system also serves to dissipate the heat generated by the muscles during flight. It strains the imagination to visualise so many beautifully apt changes occurring by chance, even when one considers that 150 million years elapsed between the emergence of life from the sea and the appearance of the first birds. For my part I can imagine that each change might have occurred by chance during that time, what I find hard to swallow is the accumulation of different changes integrated into a single functional pattern.” (Taylor, Gordon Rattray, former Chief Science Adviser, BBC Television], “The Great Evolution Mystery”, Abacus: London, 1983, pp.70-71.
Etc. Etc.
My argument is that where there is a lack of evidence, and as far as I know, no fossils showing one thing becoming a completely different thing which show the gradual change posited by Darwin, where there is a lack of evidence, wedding yourself intellectually to one explanation of evolution and creation is scientifically inappropriate.
I think the critics will be proven right. Some other mechanism is at work. The current theory/explanation is that animals become isolated, change in an isolated area, and then burst out suddenly fully developed as “another animal” so the transitional fossils are in a small area only (Dawkin’s subscribes to this I think). The problem with that is that in 150 years of looking they haven’t found one of these transitional areas.
This favorite argument against evolution shows a lack of imagination. Evolution can go backward as well as forward, in the sense that parts that are simple and no longer functional can be lost, within a complex structure—like the eye, which is usually given as an example. E.g., an elementary cell that registers light and dark only would be lost when a more complicated cell evolves.
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The problem imo is with the theory itself. The theory says that each gradual change makes the creature more likely to survive, which is why the adaptation spreads. To have an elementary cell that registers light and dark, and then to lug around a completely useless piece of the future structure of the eye while the other structures don’t exist yet, makes the creature less likely to survive, not more. The structure has to exist in full before the various parts increase the likelyhood of survival.
I figure that the pope is onto something. You can believe and also believe in evolution. That's how I see it.
“Please read http://www.2ndlaw.com/evolution.html";
I read it and while it’s fun to read I’m unimpressed as to its application to evolution. My money, and yes I am a gambler, is on the Second LAW dictating that everything (including the sun and the universe) is winding down which prohibits mechanisms like evolution from happening.
And what would that be, exactly?
The phrase "listening to the voice of the earth" is like saying, "listening to Mother Nature." The pope is certainly not a pantheist.
OTOH, I think the pope's personal judgement regarding the scientific evidence in favor of evolutionary theory is wrong. The evidence in favor of evolutionary theory seems to be ambiguous, at best.
We simply don't know how Man came to be. God could have created man instantaneously (Creationism), gradually (evolutionary theory/St. Augustine), or in successive stages (St. Thomas). The former and latter seem to be the most logical theories. The logical tension between evolutionary theory and aristotelian/scholastic realism seems to border on incoherence.
The fact that species, as a rule, enter and exit from the fossil record without any change in form, also weighs strongly against evolutionary theory. This evidence flatly contradicts Darwin's predictions regarding the fossil record. But the scientific evidence also seems to contradict young earth Creationism. Some kind of succession of special acts of creation is the most likely possibility at the moment, but the debate regarding man's origins is wide open right now. Perhaps it will always be so.
“I know, I know, my time would be better spent arguing with a brick.”
Likewise.
In Revelation 3:7, we see that Jesus is the eternal King of the House of David, and that He is the "power behind the keys."
Finally, in Matthew, we see Jesus change the name of Simon to Rock, while at the same time presenting Rock with the "key of David."
The parallelism of these verses is especially striking:
Isaiah 22:22I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
"These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open."
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Theories have greater standing than laws (no matter how it is capitalized.)
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