The Pope Would Like You to Accept Evolution and the Big Bang

Smithsonian ^ | 10/28/14 | Colin Schultz

[SoFloFreeper]

.... Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, said that Darwinian evolution is real, and so is the Big Bang....

...the new Pope's quasi-heretical claim isn't anywhere near the first of its kind. The church first brought evolution into the fold in 1950 with the work of Pope Pius XII, writes io9. “At the same time, Catholics take no issue with the Big Bang theory, along with cosmological, geological, and biological axioms touted by science.”

[LearnsFromMistakes]

Remember, the Bible was written to give moral guidance to a pre-industrial tribe with little scientific knowledge.

I have never heard that before. You threw it out as a fact - where is that fact established?

Suppose life arose from non-living matter, ie. dust. This first simple life then evolved into more complex life, eventually leading to the physical body of humans.

If you want to go down that path, have fun. Or we can just go with what God said. A pastor of mine said something like 'Are you believing what you read, or reading what you believe'. I think a lot of people 'read into' the bible what they want to believe.

[LearnsFromMistakes]

It’s not a detailed explanation of the process, leaving a lot of room for speculation.

I would say that 'speculation' has gotten the church in more trouble than the 'not believing in science' accusation.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That wasn’t Church doctrine.

[P-Marlowe]

Similarly, if God used natural process, which He created, to produce humans,....

He created one Human from dirt and another from his rib. The rest of us are here as a result of "natural" processes.

Funny how many Catholics are perfectly comfortable accepting that the words of a Priest can turn a wafer into Christ's flesh, but cannot possibly believe that by the Word of God, Adam was created from the dust of the earth.

Obviously many Catholics are Cafeteria Scientists.

[paristexas]

“The Church theologized (geocentrism) for sure, but that was more because it simply accepted the science of the day...”

That seems reasonable and probable. The Biblical story of creation likewise no doubt reflects the “science” of the day. Do you think that where the Bible is in conflict with the science of the day, the Church should adjust its teachings likewise?

[paristexas]

Now that I think about it, I’m sure you are right. But I am fairly ignorant about what is Church doctrine and what is not. Is there a source you would recommend?

[Claud]

The Biblical story of creation likewise no doubt reflects the “science” of the day. Do you think that where the Bible is in conflict with the science of the day, the Church should adjust its teachings likewise?

The Church has stated on numerous occasions the Bible is inerrant, and while Genesis might not be a "history" in the strictest literary sense, it nevertheless truly describes what happened.

So no it should not. Besides...the science of the day is a chimera. In 1959 most readers of SciAm believed in a Steady State Universe. That changed awful quick.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/index.asp

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Another one.

http://www.proecclesia.com/page_becoming%20a%20catholic.htm

[Springfield Reformer]

Sorry, I don’t see your “simple” conclusion. But if Genesis is to be taken completely literally, the universe is about 6,500 years old, meaning either (a) huge chunks of science are completely wrong; or (b) God is an elaborate hoaxer who built a universe that lies to us. Neither conclusion is very compatible with faith.

Except that created things can only tell the truth they know.  Inanimate objects  don't "know" anything.  They just are what they are. The only one who would actually know how creation occurred would be the Creator.  If He created everything with, as Augustine suggests, rational principles of continuous operation, why is that incompatible with those same objects supernaturally coming into being ready-made with those principles? There is no lie in that. It's simply a model for design.  

For example, Jesus turned water into wine, a process that ordinarily takes significant amounts of time.  Does that make the wine a liar? No. But it does point us back to the Creator.  Do we believe Him when He tells us He made this wine just minutes ago? If we have the divine grant of faith, this is not a problem. And not only that, but the cause of a positive worship, to see His great power at work is a joy to every believing heart.  But if we are told incessantly, from childhood, that no such manufacture of instant wine is possible, with no exception made for God, and if we have a doubting heart, we may choose to believe the fallible creation babbling on about things they don't understand, rather than believe our Creator that He took ordinary water and in moments gave it the fullness of a long-established life.  

So nature cannot lie.  It simply is.  It can have no "intent to deceive," without which a lie is morally impossible.  And we know that the Creator did not lie, first because it is impossible for God to lie, and second because we have Him on record in Scripture telling us exactly what He did. So we have no excuse. Our only real problem is choosing who to believe, either our mortal, fallible, sinful teachers, or Him, the One who was there when it happened, the One into whose hands we have entrusted our immortal souls.  For me, this is a no brainer ...

Peace,

SR

[SoFloFreeper]

+1

[Bill Russell]

Interesting info on the archeological stand point of the beginnings in the Sumerian plain. It is a period that is far outside of any claim I may have on historical knowledge.

Ref the time question, a priest in PA once told us a joke.

A man had the opportunity to converse with God, and asked him: “God, is it true that a minute to you is like a million years to us?”

God said “yes.”

The man asked “and, God is true that if I give one dollar to your service, that it is the same as a rich man giving a million dollars?”

God said “yes.”

The man then asked “God, would you give me a million dollars?”

God answered “In a minute...”

[Bill Russell]

Ethan,

Thanks for finding the actual quote from Francis. For some reason, many writers seem to have it out to misquote and set Francis up as though he is at odds with all of the traditional teachings of the Church.It seems that every time he says something “controversial,” the controversy springs from what people report that he said as opposed to what he actually said.

[Claud]

LOL...awesome I like that.

[ZULU]

The existence of God and Evolution are separate issues. I believe in God, the Bible as the sole and ultimate source of faith and Evolution.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Because "evolution" usually refers to some naturalistic process by which man arose without any supernatural act.

"Usually," huh?

If the entirety of man's appearance, to include his development from single-celled organism to a being with a soul made in the likeness of his Creator, was set in motion by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God from nothing, with no other agent of influence upon it other than that Creator, then ALL of it is supernatural.

Your false differentiation of "naturalistic" as something separate from God's will, knowledge or plan seems absurd to me.

[Impy]

I’m not religious but my family is Catholic. I’m reluctant to get into doctrine stuff cause I don’t know much about it and am not very interested.

But I think it’s nice for the Pope to acknowledge science isn’t at odds with God, I think creationism is dumb.

But imo this is about the only good thing he’s done. Just from my secular POV, the guy is a commie, soft on queers and other social issues, climate change, worst of all no understanding of economics, typical social justice BS. And it looks like the jerk he appointed the new Archbishop of Chi is cut from the same cloth.

My mom (devout) thinks he’s the “last pope” (meaning end of the world coming?).

Too bad he can’t be impeached. ;p

[Springfield Reformer]

If the entirety of man's appearance, to include his development from single-celled organism to a being with a soul made in the likeness of his Creator, was set in motion by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God from nothing, with no other agent of influence upon it other than that Creator, then ALL of it is supernatural.

If everything is a miracle, then how do miracles serve as signs of the special providence of God?  Under that reasoning, no act of God can be distinguished from any other act of God.  The word "natural" loses its meaning completely.  Or conversely, the word "supernatural" and "natural" refer to the same thing, and there really are no miracles that can convey the intervention of a personal God.  

But we see in Scripture that miracles are those things which DO convey a special action by God.  That is their whole intent in the narratives in which they appear.  It is not natural for a man dead and buried four days to come back to life.  It is not natural for a pot of water to be suddenly filed with high quality wine.  It is not natural for a man born blind to suddenly begin seeing.  So then according to the testimony of Scripture, "natural" and "supernatural" are distinct after all. There can be no supernature without there first being nature. A pot of water is minding it's own business, just being water and sloshing around in the pot. Then the Son of God speaks and the water's materiality is exposed as an unclosed system, that there exists a back door through which the Creator can, without violating natural law, introduce unexpected causation by a short cut, and bring new things into being ex nihilo, and make them part of the things that already have their being, which is what we normally mean by "miracle."

Which is precisely why they are part of the narrative of Immanuel, God with us.  Miracles are the signature of God's presence with us. Only God can make that which never was, and call it into being for the first time.  But after it has it's being, it is real.  It has it's own existence.  It is distinguishable from the Creator. It is creature. And it behaves according to the principles of it's being reliably.  Unless a miracles occurs, unless the Creator takes a lump of already created dirt and breathes life into it.  He might have breathed life into anything, or pressed upon any creature the image of Himself, as those creatures were already there, all created before man.

But that's not what the narrative says.  He ignored all those other created, already living things, wonderful as they were, and set his focus on a lump of dirt.  And it was this dead dirt which He formed into a lifeless man, and into that stillness He breathed the breath of life, and Adam came to be, as a living soul. If we take that narrative seriously, we cannot see some precedent chain of lesser living creatures, but only dead dirt, created ex nihilo some days ago, but now having it's own continuous and rather boring existence, and coming suddenly to life only after God intervenes ex nihilo once again, by a new miracle, a miracle of intervention in the existing order of nature, and therefore an act of supernature.

So we do not exist as a result of the ordinary, natural behavior of dirt, mixing with lightening and water and whatever else the "primordial soup" is supposed to have contained, all running along their natural, predictable path of being.  We exist as a result of God intervening in His own created order to introduce something that order could never otherwise expect to see.  We are the surprise package snuck in through the back door.  Nature, even as God created it, never saw us coming. Born of a miracle, and born again by an even greater miracle, by the God of infinite surprises.

Peace,

SR

[Trailerpark Badass]

Sorry, creating all of existence, including the souls of all sentient beings, from an infinitesimally dense, infinitesimally small bit of matter, according to a program in which everything is known at the beginning, and right now, and forever, is pretty darn miraculous to me.

Maybe all y'all have some other standard of "miracle," you're welcome to it.

So we do not exist as a result of the ordinary, natural behavior of dirt, mixing with lightening and water and whatever else the "primordial soup" is supposed to have contained, all running along their natural, predictable path of being.

Again, "natural" and "predictable" to whom? You? WHom do you think made those things "natural" and "predictable?"

[Springfield Reformer]

Sorry, creating all of existence, including the souls of all sentient beings, from an infinitesimally dense, infinitesimally small bit of matter, according to a program in which everything is known at the beginning, and right now, and forever, is pretty darn miraculous to me.

Maybe all y'all have some other standard of "miracle," you're welcome to it.

Words mean things. If I use "miracle" to describe all of nature, I have basically defined it out of existence.  Maybe you're OK with that.  I'm not.    Anything God does is amazing to us, but miracles are more than just God acting.  They are God revealing Himself to us by showing His supernatural authority over natural things.  He created us in a miracle and then told us about it in another miracle.  Yes, the revelation of God's mind to us through Scripture is a miracle too. Scripture would not have happened had God not intervened directly to create it. That's what we mean when we say it is inspired by the Holy Spirit.  It would not have happened as a byproduct of natural processes, but only happened because he led men of God to write specific things.  And in that revelation He tells us we were not the product of any other preceding living thing, but were made directly from dirt. I can live with that, because I have no problem with God occasionally bypassing the secondary causes of nature and taking things in some new direction right here and now. 

SR: So we do not exist as a result of the ordinary, natural behavior of dirt, mixing with lightening and water and whatever else the "primordial soup" is supposed to have contained, all running along their natural, predictable path of being.

TB: Again, "natural" and "predictable" to whom? You?  Predictable to you.  Yes, really.  Try this.  If you point a loaded .45 at center mass of some innocent person and pull the trigger three or four times, what will happen?  Is that really so hard for you to predict? No, it's very deterministic.  And it's that very determinism which allows you to form a moral judgment about whether you should do it in the first place.  Many other things are presumed reliable in your life (and mine and everybody else's).  You get in your car and drive to work.  A million things had to work predictably for that to happen.  Someone you love gets a terminal illness. They will die. And we all get old and die anyway.  Very predictable. So I don't know what you mean by "predictable to whom."  Natural things are natural because they are predictable as secondary causes to most any rational mind.  Once you know the rules, you can tell what will happen.

WHom do you think made those things "natural" and "predictable?"

Of course God made them that way, but that's the way they are now, and if God intervenes on those things after they've already run for a while on their own, then what's wrong with that?  The whole point of modern creationist study is to show that natural processes work within predictable limits, and that no matter how far back you run the clock, those processes, by themselves, do not explain our current state, that necessarily God must have intervened in His own created order as a way of giving us a clue it was really Him doing it, and not just some giant, soulless machine running it's course.

So He made these things predictable for us, for our benefit, so we would understand it was Him speaking when a true miracle happens.  Look at the time Jesus was with His disciples on the boat and it was being battered by the weather.  He simply says, "Peace, be still," and what happens?  Even the winds and the waves obey Him.  But what happened to the disciples?  They start to get it.  Jesus is no ordinary prophet.  He's way past that.  He's able to act in nature with the full, supernatural authority of the Creator Himself.  

Bottom line, it is God who has established this contrast between nature and supernature, not me. We just have to decide whether we want to believe it when He tells us He made us from dirt. I don't know. Is that just too big a miracle for some to believe? If, as you rightly say, He can make the whole universe out of nothing, why then is He suddenly NOT able to make us straight from dirt if He wants to, and then tell us about it in a book?

Peace,

SR