"Intelligent design" not science: Vatican paper

Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | 01/19/06 | Tom Heneghan

[peyton randolph]

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion...

A court in the state of Pennsylvania last month barred a school from teaching intelligent design (ID), a blow to Christian conservatives who want it to be taught in biology classes along with the Darwinism they oppose.

[linear]

"Is evil a product of evolution? Where did evil come from?"

"
What scientific theory addresses the problem of evil?"

You've given a great example of my point. Man's concept or understanding of evil will progress through time, much as our understanding of evolution will progress through time. If you accept God as the creator of all things, then God created evil, the same way he created evolution.

To accept evolution is the same as accepting gravity - it may not be a perfect description of how things happen, but its as close as we have right now. When you fall, is it because God pushed you down?

[jec41]

I'm not arguing against evolution here, but this seems kind of far fetched. Wouldn't slight mutation account for this, and not evolution?

Mutation is but one cause of evolution. Whether by mutation or any other cause if changes occur it is evolution.

[GLDNGUN]

I'll spoon feed you so you don't actually have to do any thinking for yourself...

Is that your usual opening line when looking for an opening to proclaim the merits of the Catholic Church?

I dunno, maybe it's just me...but I think it needs a little work.

In the meantime, are you suggesting that the Catholic Church is infallible and has never been wrong about anything in the past?

[xmission]

I hate to use the ole email line, but the absense of heat thing is a good explanation of the argument against "God created evil statement".

[linear]

What is the absence of heat thing? God created heat, but not its absence?

[BunnySlippers]

I went to Catholic school from kindergarten and graduating as a senior in high school. We were taught evolution, not creationism.

[xmission]

Whether by mutation or any other cause if changes occur it is evolution.

My understanding is that evolution is:

a:Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
b:The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

Why would a change of eye color, hair color, etc qualify as evolution, especially when it could simply not be a dominent trait in the next generation, and fail to appear again?

[ValenB4]

I know of that book from reading Thomas Woods' articles on LRC. I'm sure it's fantastic. I don't know when I'll get around to reading it though.

[xmission]

I'll see if I can dig up the original, and post it in a few minutes.

[linear]

I'd be careful making that analogy anyway. Unless you are absolute zero, there is always some "heat."

[jwalsh07]

Not to mention that mankind created the concept of time, not God

Mankind created the concept of time. Mankind created the concept of gravity. Mankind created the concept of space. Mankind created the concept of qunatum mechanics. Mankind created the concept of football.

My hats off to Mr. Mankind.

[xmission]

Here is the original email:



Does evil exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

"God created everything? The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

[DarkSavant]

Galileo didn't have the evidence to prove Copernicus' theory, but wanted the Vatican to change their interpretation anyways. A greak book on it was "The Sleepwalkers" by Arthur Koestler

[BunnySlippers]

How do they reconcile this with Creation?

AS I stated just a second ago I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through the end of high school. We were taught evolution. To answer yoiur question, we were taught that is okay to consider parts of the old testament as "parables" ... and not necessarily to be taken literally such as Noah's ark, walking on water et al.

[jcb8199]

Forgive me if it seemed flippant or rude, but when responding to "Ok, then enlighten me" is rather difficult. I mean, I'm supposed to sum up 2000 years of Church history in such a way as to convince someone who is obviously not Catholic?

Never said the Church is infallible, or that it hasn't made mistakes. It is made up of human beings, who are inherently sinful (infallibility, btw, doesn't preclude sinners, it is merely a pronouncement about faith or morals). Am saying, however, that often its wrongs are TERRIBLY overblown, and often downright lied about.

The Church opposed to slavery (i.e. the slave trade) as early as the 1300s;
The Church, during the "Dark Ages" (which were anything but, thanks to the Church) preserved and promoted education and literacy, starting with monks in scriptoria;
Universities began under the Church;
Science, art, literature, and medicine flourished under the Church.

There are countless GOOD things that the Church has done (and does) that are obfuscated or lied about when people say things like "GALILEO!!! INQUISITION!!! OPPRESSION!!!" Its GOOD history is too awesome to to be overshadowed by its failures (not failures due to the Church as an institution and faith, but rather due to the people who make up the Church).

Couple that with the preponderance of biblical evidence to back up every point of Catholic doctrine, and you'll see why "enlightening you" is no easy task, nor one that can so easily be accomplished on a message board.

If you are *actually* interested, please private mail me and I will send you some links or even send you a personal email of documents I have amassed on this very subject.

[Ichneumon]

[Gotcha thanks. that's what I thought you meant after having watched something on ID. The bacterial flagellum being the explanation/evidence of ID.]

Alright. Just keep in mind that the argument for irreducible complexity -- the cornerstone of ID -- ignores that a feature can come about through subtractive processes; that is, an organism starts with more than something like a flagellum and over time various parts are removed until the end-result is the flagellum.

Likewise, evolution can make "lateral" changes, where it neither adds nor takes something away, but alters an existing component.

The other gaping hole in "Irreducible Complexity" is that it overlooks the fact that features can have *different* functions as they change over time.

Behe's entire argument is predicated on the presumption that a) evolution only proceeds by *adding* components (not subtracting or making lateral changes), and b) that if a structure loses its *current* function, it's completely useless to the organism.

Neither assumption is correct, and *each* of them alone demolishes the line of reasoning that Behe uses to reach his conclusion that "Behe-style 'IC' things could not have evolved".

Oops!

Nor can these defects in his argument be repaired, because it would require total omniscience -- one would have to be able to rule out *every* conceivable (*and* inconceivable!) arbitrary-length evolutionary pathway (involving subtractions *and* additions *and* lateral changes, in every possible combination), *and* every possible alternative function which a structure *might* have had under a nearly infinite number of alternative variations. Good luck with that!

Furthermore, even if Behe *had* managed to prove something "unevolvable" by Darwinian evolution, that *still* wouldn't actually constitute "evidence of ID". All it would do is rule out Darwinian evolution as the origin of that structure. It would *not* provide positive evidence that the structure was therefore "designed", because any number of other natural processes (or non-Darwinian evolution), not yet discovered, which might have been responsible instead. Things in the real world don't work the way they do in Sherlock Holmes novels -- you can't find the truth by "eliminating all other possibilities", because there are an *infinite* number of other possibilities, including vast numbers you haven't thought of yet. The only way to actually have evidence *for* ID (as opposed to *against* evolution) is to find evidence which matches the characteristics that would be expected of designed things, specifically. For a trivial example, like a copyright notice embedded in DNA. Mere "complexity" or "functional complexity" isn't good enough, because various natural processes can and do produce this as well.

[jec41]

Question: Is evil a product of evolution? Where did evil come from? God (through the Bible) tells us where evil came from, and what the solution is to it. What scientific theory addresses the problem of evil?

Science does not address evil. Evil is determined by philosophy. What is evil in one tribe or society may not be evil in another and the reverse. If a thing is thought threatening or dangerous to a tribe or society their philosophy might dictate that it is evil.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

- Jack Handey

[jcb8199]

I'd make it a point to read. It is very well written, succint, and offers countless counters to claims that the RCC stifled intellectual inquiry and oppressed anyone who made them angry.

[jcb8199]

Why does God need to measure time? He is not in the past nor the future--"present" doesn't even encompass what God is. So why would God need to measure time?

Perhaps I should have said "mankind invented the measurement of time--as in minutes, hours, days, years..."