Posted on 08/28/2004 9:10:46 PM PDT by AskStPhilomena
In what appears to be its latest capitulation to worldly wisdom, the Vatican apparatus now assumes (contrary to the teaching of Pius XII in Humanae Generis) that the evolution of men from animals is a proven fact.
On June 24, 2004 Zenit.org reported that "Vatican Observatory has convoked a range of experts to reflect on a question that at times seems to be forgotten in scientific research: Is there purpose in evolution?" That is, evolution is now assumed to have occurred, and the only debate is over whether it has a purpose. The Vatican called a symposium of experts to meet on June 24-26 to discuss whether evolution has a "purpose."
The Vatican Observatory’s announcement of the symposium states that "in scientific circles, there is a very deep-seated distrust of teleological language, even though researchers may occasionally use the word ‘design’ in an attempt to grapple with the often astonishing adaptive complexes they study … Put crudely, the widely accepted scientific worldview is that human beings or any other product of evolutionary diversification is accidental and, by implication, incidental."
Well, that’s right, of course. And what is the Vatican’s response to this worldview? Read it for yourself, if you can believe it: "The purpose of this symposium is not to dispute this worldview, but to inquire whether it is sufficient and, if it is not, to consider what we need to know and ultimately how we might discover the requisite information with one or more research programs." So, the Vatican does not dispute the view that the emergence of human life is merely incidental to the process of "evolution," whose truth is now apparently assumed.
The symposium (whose results have not yet been published) was asked to address five questions:
-- Can we speak of a universal biochemistry?
-- How do levels of complexity emerge, and are they inevitable?
-- Can we properly define evolutionary constraints?
-- What does convergence [different species displaying the same traits] tell us about evolution?
-- What do we mean by intelligence? Is intelligence an inevitable product of evolution?
Notice that every question presumes that evolution has, in fact, occurred, even though there is abundant evidence showing no gradual transition from one form of life to another (as evolution supposes), but rather the sudden appearance of every basic form in the fossil record, which is precisely what one would expect to see if God directly and specially created each kind, as the Book of Genesis recounts.
In Humani Generis Pope Pius XII warned that "the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own."
Moreover, Pope Leo XIII taught in his encyclical letter Arcane Divinae Sapientiae (Christian Marriage) that Adam and Eve, and they only, are our first parents and that Eve was created from Adam's body:
We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated, and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.
The Church says that no one may doubt these things. Yet how can these things be reconciled with the view that Adam and Eve (and who knows how many other humans) "evolved" from apes and that Eve was not formed from the body of Adam, as the Vatican now seems to suppose, in calling for a symposium to discuss the "purpose" of evolution.
So the question must be asked: Do those who are in charge of the Vatican’s approach to "modern science" still believe in what the Church teaches concerning the origin of the human race? Or are we witnessing yet another sign of the great apostasy in the Catholic Church beginning at the top, which was predicted by the Third Secret of Fatima?
***Did God create the dinosaurs already extinct and fossilized?***
Please read the following and get back to me...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i1/dinosaurbones.asp
Thanks - I needed the laugh!
That'll tide me over until the new issue of the Onion comes out....
I see you took less than two minutes to read it AND respond!
Inquiring minds...
Doesn't take long, as soon as you realize that they think dinosaur bones are weeks old.
Garbage stinks from a long way off, my friend.
Thank you both for your replies relating to radiometric dating.
However, I am quite familiar with the theory of these techniques and find them severely wanting because they are based on a number of false premises.
If we take the commonest example of K-40 to Ar-40 decay:
1) The first assumption made is that igneous rock contains a constant base ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 on solidification. There are no grounds on which to make this assumption.
2) The second assumption made is that the only factors which effect the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 is the decay of the former isotope. Again this is groundless - even in granite, K-40 bearing salts are leached or washed out of the rock when it is submerged in water thus affecting the recorded ratio.
3) The third assumption is that the product of decay - in this case Ar-40 - remains in the rock and available for detection. Again this is groundless as anyone in Cornwall with granite-built houses will tell you. Even granite is sufficiently porous for Ar-40 gas to escape (causing sufficient health hazard to affect your insurance premiums in such areas!), which again causes the ratio of decay products to be affected.
4) The fourth assumption is that the rate of radioactive decay is constant and is not affected by environmental conditions. This may well be a correct assumption, but as radioactivity was only "discovered" in the last 100 years or so, we have not had long to determine the stability of putative half-lives stretching into hypothetical billions of years.
The first three assumptions alone have produced the most crazy results whereby igneous rock, known to have been deposited from underwater volcanic eruptions within the last 200 years, has been "dated" at ages varying from 200,000 to 30,000,000 years!
The same criticisms apply to the other radiometric dating systems.
C-14 is particularly unreliable as it also depends on the assumption that the rate of C-14 production in the upper atmosphere by neutron bombardment is constant. This is plainly a false premise as there is no reason whatsover to believe that cosmic ray bombardment of the atmosphere occurs at a constant rate.
Consequently the statement:
"In effect, all carbon in living organisms contains a constant proportion of radiocarbon to nonradioactive carbon."
has no provable basis in fact. It is again mere conjecture and science is not equipped with the tools necessary to go back in time and verify that C-14 to C-12 atmospheric content has always been a constant ratio.
***dinosaur bones are weeks old.***
Are you a person who trusts or distrusts the Bible?
Perhaps you should join a few of the science threads and learn something.
I don't believe that the Earth was created in six days. That simply doesn't match the evidence.
And I don't believe in a God who likes to trick his children just because He can.
***And I don't believe in a God who likes to trick his children just because He can.***
And apparently you don't like to give a straight answer to a simple question.
Or maybe He didn't do it that way at all. Maybe he created us from scratch and that is why all 40 something body types appear simultaneously and suddenly in the fossil record.
Ping me when you do, I would like to read it.
40 million years is "simultaneously"? You have a funny sense of time.
"Perhaps you should join a few of the science threads and learn something."
No thanks - I get all the dogma I need on the religion threads.
E.g., scholars believe that 2 Timothy (one of the three "pastoral epistles"), which you quote, was not written by St. Paul but instead by one of his followers decades later.
Another example:
I've read inerrantist apologetics concerning these two verses: they suggest that Judas fell headlong and his guts spilled out because he hung himself. But there's a direct contradiction here: Judas buying a field with the money vs. Judas tossing the money away in the temple and leaving. A wise and sensible response to this contradiction is to understand that there were conflicting stories in circulation in the early Church, one of which found its way into Matthew, the other into Luke/Acts. Therefore, the Gospels (which are second and third-hand accounts of the life of Jesus) are a product of the early Church -- just as Roman Catholics and Episcopalians teach.
Catholics, of course, teach that the Church is the source of authority in teaching, not the Bible. Because the Protestant reformers understood the Church was in serious error on such matters as the sale of indulgences, they decided the Church was not a trustworthy authority. They then arrived at the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, relying only on the Bible. This unfortunately became the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, which I believe is a form of idolatry.
"Uranium-thorium-lead dating is not subject to some of these problem."
I think you will find that Uranium salts are surprisingly soluble - and if you have ever seen people whose drinking water is delivered by lead piping in soft water regions, then you will know that lead and its salts are also very soluble.
"In a vacuum each method has problems, thats why we have refereed journals."
Refereed journals are only as good as the basic dogmas which authors and referees all hold in common. Every so often a widely held scientific dogma is trashed and everything is up for grabs again - such is the nature of science when minds are not closed too tightly.
While the system of peer review is probably the only workable one, it does have in-built bias toward self-selection, and marginalisation of those whose work challenges any prevailing "orthodoxy".
At the moment geology is still trapped in a XVIIth century time warp when Alexander Stenon formulated his theories of sedimentology. These are now being blown apart, and a similar shift will soon occur in this discipline just as Einstein moved the world on from Newtonian mechanics and Quantum theory moved the world on from relativity.
All current geological dating methods will be thrown into serious doubt. Have you come across Guy Berthault's (University of Denver, Colorado) research yet?
"Or maybe He didn't do it that way at all. Maybe he created us from scratch and that is why all 40 something body types appear simultaneously and suddenly in the fossil record."
I'm not an anthropologist, having had only one course in it it college, but I do read pop anthropology occasionally...and I don't have the foggiest notion what you mean by 40 "body types."
The fossil record is so meager that we don't even know for sure what happened to Neanderthal man, or whether he and Homo Sap could interbreed. Just a couple of months ago, the date for the appearance of modern man (Homo Sap Sap) got pushed back from 100,000 years ago to 150,000 years ago...or maybe somebody will show that false.
So, I really doubt that the fossil record is informative enough to show anything like "40 body types" emerging simultaneously.
The thing is, you see, that even if man's physical body did evolve gradually over millions of years, passing through Australopithecus and Homo Erectus and the rest along the way, THAT STILL CONSTITUTES GOD CREATING US FROM SCRATCH.
It just doesn't matter whether he did it in an eyeblink, or whether he decided to do it over a period that looks like millions of years to us...He still created us from scratch, either way.
"This unfortunately became the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, which I believe is a form of idolatry."
Sorry to disappoint you but Catholics believe in the inerrancy of Scripture just as much as any good fundy.
It is the interpretation, not the inerrancy, of Scripture which we disagree on. The belief in Scripture's inerrancy was around a long time before the Reformers' version of sola scriptura came to light, so the latter cannot be a contributory cause of the former.
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