All the Fathers of the Church believed in the Biblical teaching of Genesis chapter 1. There is nothing contradictory between science and creation. However, there is definitely a contradiction between evolution and Catholic truth. And trying to have it both ways with theistic evolution which ultimately denies original sin since evolution requires eons of chance changes with interim organisms dying and new ones arising. At the ripe time of evolution, God then infuses a human soul into a creature that becomes in His image and likeness. (See my previous post on why evolution makes no logical sense to a Catholic believer.) Lots of problems. Theistic evolution denies the immortality of Adam and Eve as originally created and denies original sin as the origin of death, since death preceded Adam and Eve. Evolution is a direct attack on the faith and must be vigorously repudiated by serious Catholics!
Keep in mind that belief in evolution requires as much (or even more) faith than belief in God and creation. And this nonsense is making unbelievers out of generations of the young who are brainwashed into accepting an unproven hypothesis as absolute secular dogma. Scientists themselves admit that the fossil evidence is scant, especially with respect to links between the various life forms. What does that indicate? Think about it. If God created the species as Genesis describes, there would be no links because the species were individually created.
Some of the arguments in favor of evolution are truly ridiculous. I once saw an exhibit at the National Zoo in the reptile house. It showed a diagram of a lizard and used biological symmetry to "prove" that we had the same ancestor as a lizard. Of course, that is no argument at all and doesn't illustrate anything of the kind. Many plant and animal organisms from a flower to a honeybee to a snake to a bird, to a mammal illustrate the biological principle of symmetry. Even non-living objects like the planets show symmetry. That there is consistent order in the universe is more an argument for an intelligent designer than for evolution by chance. If all kinds of independent development was going on wouldn't diversity in design be more likely?
But I always come back to common sense. The weatherman can't accurately predict the weather even a few days out. Often what he does predict turns out totally wrong. So if a weather scientist can't accurately predict something so near in time , how can we possibly believe he knows what happened 200 million years ago? It's patently absurd on its face.
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If you believe all that I'll be happy to sell you the covered bridge at Meems Bottom at a bargain price.
Ok, I pop in occasionally because sometimes you post interesting things. However, I've noticed a trend over the last 1-2 years that you are increasingly negative and angry in tone and now... you think human evolution didn't happen. There is nothing incompatible with evolution and the Church. God is bigger than we can understand and His time is not our time. Denying science (like global warming, too) does nothing to promote the welfare of Him. So I'm just going to mosey up to my bookmark bar and delete. But I wish you well.
ReplyDeleteThere is no denial of science on this website, only denial of bogus science. It all comes down to the old adage, "Follow the money." More and more "scientific" studies are being withdrawn because they are fraudulent. In a culture characterized by dishonesty is it any surprise that people will lie in order to keep the grant dollars flowing.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-scientific-research-fraud-on-the-rise/
I wish you well also. Adios
Evolution is not only a theory but not a very good theory. It has a circular definition since it arbitrarily proposes a mechanism that has failed repeatedly in tests with such models as fruit flies. Apparently the alleged mechanism, random mutation then weeded by the "survival of the fittest mechanism" (fittest being arbitrarily defined as survival) sounds good but doesn't really work. It totally ignores the existence of extraordinarily complex mechanisms even at the cellular level. Of course one has to ignore those complex mechanism that exhibit single point failure (so they had to come about simultaneously to actually work), and there really isn't time, even with millions of years available, to evolve the level of complexity observed. The pre-Cambrian explosion is inexplicable on this model. Nor is the stability of the "evolved" lifeforms explainable on the Darwinian model. If the system is so malleable as to evolve than how is it possible to be so stable afterwards?
ReplyDeleteWhatever theory you want to adopt about the development of life, Darwinism only continues to exist for want of a theory that will actually work.
Mary Ann, respectfully, this is your opinion, not the official opinion of the Church. The Church says that God created the Universe. It does not take a stand on when all the planets and nebula's etc were created, all at once, or over time, but that God was the one who ultimately controlled this. On biological evolution the Church again takes no stand but says if it was so, again God was the one driving things. The only stance it takes on evolution is that the human soul did not "evolve" in any way. Did the human soul exist in say, "Lucy" or did it start with Homo Erectus or the Neanderthals or with Homo sapiens? My guess would be homo sapiens as you would need to know right from wrong to have a soul..but then babies have souls so as my Mom says, "God only knows!"(not in reference to evolution but anything that astounds her, usually it is why people where their pants low showing everything but.) As someone up thread said, "God's time is not our time," and our human brains can grasp very little of how He does what he does.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings us to Adam and Eve..a story that may have been created to explain to our puny human minds the how and why of original sin. I may have been reading you incorrectly but do you seriously believe two humans, a talking snake, an apple, etc.
I respect that you don't believe in evolution...(though I have no idea how you can deny the physical evidence of skeletons and tools) but please represent that as your opinion not the Churchs.
It is isn't just my opinion, Mack. It was the opinion of all the Fathers of the Church. I don't deny the existence of skeletons, tools, etc. but how does that refute creation? Check out the video below from Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Institute.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE6HovPjk0s
To answer your question about the talking snake, apple, etc. -- those are the parts of the story that don't really matter. What's important is that God created man; then He created a help mate for man who was "bone of my bone"; that our original parents were tempted by Satan (haven't we all experienced that?); that they disobeyed God and were driven from paradise and began to suffer the consequences of original sin. Their perfect bodies began gradually to suffer disease and decay; their darkened intellects lost their original perfection, etc. The famous evolution pictures of the man coming from a monkey should actually be reversed Man started out perfect, then declines to a more barbaric man over the years because of the consequences of sin. And then God intervenes again by calling forth the chosen people through Abraham.
ReplyDeleteYour post and the video are spot on! The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation does outstanding work and highly in line with traditional Catholicism with the Church Fathers to back them up! Deo gratias!
ReplyDeleteThe saintly Pope Pius XII reminded all Catholics in the frenzy over the always unproven theory of evolution that Catholics must believe in Original Sin and the two First Parents, Adam and Eve. Catholics may believe in micro-evolution but not in macro-evolution, i.e., Cormorants developed over time an extra talon on their feet in order to cling more securely to their perches on the Cliffs of Dover in England. The whole evolutionary myth is a diabolical attempt to convince that God the Creator does not exist, it is truly the religion of the devil. A similar false myth is all of the reports about Dark Matter in outer space. No scientist has ever examined Dark Matter in a laboratory to determine its characteristics. It is all the figment of the over-active imagination of men who are determined to prove that there is no God. Another example that baffles the minds of these Modernists is that the universe is not static, the universe with all of its stars and planets is expanding -- that reality really bothers them. These same space mythifiers keep speculating about aliens and inter-planetary civilizations -- all of which is more horse pucky to justify their animus against the truth that God the Creator IS. Unstated in all of their mental confusion is another spiritual problem; like Sigmund Freud they have a big issue with Moses and the Pentateuch...in their rush to be smarter than God, they latch on to the Gilgamesh Epic and other myths from anciant Mesopotamia. Like Saint Ignatius of Loyola, once you humbly acknowledge that God created you, then you are prompted to further recognize His Purpose, WHY He created you.
ReplyDeleteThanks Douglas, I've been reading Humani Generis and it's pretty clear that Pope Pius XII urged caution toward evolution. Since his time there are even more scientific objections to the theory. But in our politically correct times (Dare I call it the fulfillment of Orwell's 1984) truth is malleable and the lie is sacrosanct. Hence, scientists who dare to question the accepted doctrine of evolution or global warming get the bum's rush.
ReplyDeletehttp://boymeetsworldilluminati.tumblr.com/page/4
ReplyDeleteGood evening Mrs. Mary Ann Kreitzer -
The Page 4 on this site dedicated to the Illuminati has some valuable commentary on who Charles Darwin was. Thank you for your comments, especially with respect to Pope Pius XII and Humani Generis.
In Christo Rege,
Doug Valenzuela
Evolution does not stand at odds with the doctrine of Original Sin and the immortality of Adam and Eve any more than Original Sin stands at odds with the Immaculate Conception. When God made Adam and Eve, at the moment of the human spirit's first creation, they were immortal. In this way death did not precede them. This is because humanity did not precede them. They are, as you rightly say, the parents of humanity.
ReplyDeleteEvolution tells us that there must have been an evolutionary ancestor, and as such, it is important to acknowledge that the death of other species is not "precessory" to Adam and Eve's immortality. Adam and Eve's immortality was an attribute of their likeness with God. People take the mention in Genesis of the absence of death prior to the Fall to mean also the absence of material death in all things, but this is not specified. It is as likely, if not more so, that Genesis simply refers to the absence of death in Adam and Eve, and humanity by extension.
All that came before the creation of man (unless you want to deny that there was anything before man) and his likeness with God was not at all likely to be free from material death, as it was utterly material in its creation, and it is the law—not of the Fall—but the law of the universe by God's very will, that material forms perish. The mortality that man suffers as a result from the Fall is precisely due to his succumbing to the flesh—the material, which is impermanent. In fact, you might say that the Fall itself is proof of evolution, as it was our Fall into the weakness of flesh, our Fall into the rule of the laws and impermanence of material universe.