jay_a2j wrote:PLAYER57832 wrote:
While I am not Roman Catholic (think I have made that clear more than once), both the Roman Catholic Church AND mainline Protestant churches all, universally accept evolution and the Bible.
Documentation please. I think this is a LOAD of bs. Of course if "mainline" = your church, it's quite possible.
Had you bothered following any of the links I provided, you would have found it already.
Here is a discussion, rather pointed.
Why Jews and Roman Catholics aren't upset over evolution
Vail Daily News ^ | March 4, 2005 | Rev. Jack Van Ens
Posted on Wednesday, March 09, 2005 11:01:18 PM by StJacques
(full article: http://www.ask.com/web?q=Do+Roman+Catho ... &o=0&l=dir )
[i]Up-in-arms Christians who think evolution is of the Devil want to plaster stickers on Miller's textbook that warn students: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
These critics twist the meaning of "theory" to buttress their case against evolution. When a person has his head in the clouds, we may dismiss his silly wisps of nonsense as "too theoretical." We mean that this person spins wacky ideas that have no anchor to what's factual and real. "Merely a theory," we say dismissively.
Science uses "theory" in an entirely different way. Students taking geometry must memorize theorems, a cognate to the word "theory." Theorems are neither guesses nor outlandish surmises. They serve as bedrock facts. When critics of evolution dismiss it as "merely a theory," they refuse to admit that scientific theory is of an entirely different order. Scientists repeatedly test hypotheses in laboratories. They use these tests to substantiate the facts upon which their experiments show to be true.
What's curious is that neither Roman Catholics nor Jews get riled about evolution. They read pretty much the same Genesis as conservative Christians who reject evolution. Why don't Roman Catholics get angry over Darwin? Besides, most Roman Catholics hold a high view of the Bible as God's Word. They interpret it conservatively.
One reason is that Roman Catholics respect biblical scholars like Pope John Paul II who does not read Genesis in order to discover a scientific explanation for human origins. Pope John Paul II in 1996 wrote a very clear letter to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He endorsed the scientific theory of evolution, stating that the idea is compatible with Christian faith. For the Pope, evolution also complements the non-negotiable Christian conviction that creation is God's work.
In his Oct. 23, 1996, message to the Pontifical Academy of Science, the Pope said he believed in a physical evolution of humanity and other species through natural selection and heredity adaptation.
[/i]
More recently, the Roman Catholic church has began to allow more openings for those who don't necessarily accept evolution. HOWEVER, and this is clear, it is not an endorsement of the young earth ideas. In fact, it is merely a refinement of the "theistic" view of evolution. Most recently, Bishop Schonborn has given people some pause on this issue:
Another excerpt (full article: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/ar ... ligion.htm )
Judged by the content of Schönborn's op-ed and by subsequent reporting on the intellectual sympathies between the cardinal and the Discovery Institute, it does appear that the cardinal finds the intelligent design argument compatible with his understanding of Roman Catholic teaching. But despite outcries of many scientists and others that this represents a dangerous break with the church's far more "enlightened" stance on evolutionary theory, it is possible to see Schönborn's views as being largely, if not entirely, consistent with the past 55 years of Roman Catholic teaching.
Consider Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, the document that officially made peace (or, arguably, a qualified peace) between the church and Darwin. The relevant lines:
The teaching authority of the church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter–for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
Note that Schönborn endorses the same part of Darwinian theory that Pius XII did: the evolution of the physical form of the human species from pre-existing species. He does not, at least in his op-ed piece, emphasize the Roman Catholic position that God immediately creates the soul, though he could have argued so by drawing on a lively Roman Catholic intellectual tradition that includes Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin and his theory that consciousness–a crucial part of the soul–was itself the highest realization of divine intelligence in the physical cosmos.
In all of this the only real question regards the evolution of human beings. As much as anything, this is about the evolution of the spirit, rather than the physical body.
That said, no one denies that the evidence for human beings is rather loose. I gave the position in my answer above to Lionz , so I will not repeat it.
Essentially, here is the part most young earthers just try to bypass. First, yes, as I explained the idea that we came from the same branch as apes does have reasonable evidence. It is, however not 100% certain.
So, let's take this. Say some discovery is found to, say, prove that aliens or angels came down to Earth and that is how this monkey species became human OR that we simply descend from these aliens.
That still would not alter the rest of the evolution theory. It still would not leave room for the young earth theories!
The problem with most of what creationists put out is not that they challenge "darwinism". The problem is that they are false. False or very, very misleading. Again, I took a couple of articles and did a "point by point" analysis in my earlier thread with Lionz. I have done this at various times to various articles put forward, particularly by the Institute for Creation Research.
