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

Smithsonian ^ | 10/28/14 | Colin Schultz

[Steamburg]

I can’t decide if all this angst comes from the insistent twisting of Darwin’s original observations or the twisting of statements by the Pope or simply the mendacity of the Atheists to make excerpted assertions about both. I don’t think a one liner is going to get it.

[Bender2]

Re: “At the same time, Catholics take no issue with the Big Bang theory, along with cosmological, geological, and biological axioms touted by science.”

Hey, it is like climate change, science fact! So... Fergetaboutit!

Had they made me Pope, when they had the chance... we'd all be not eating fish on Friday!

Gadzooks-- Don't pull me... into this!

I only go to Temple... to get change from the collection plate--

http://nationwideradiojm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pope-francis.jpg

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/nj1015.com/files/2013/03/Screen-Shot-2013-03-14-at-7.40.04-AM.png?w=600&h=0&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/robot-religion2_5081.png

[NCLaw441]

You posted:And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read in the Scriptures that God created them from the beginning and made them male and female.” (Matthew 19:4, Mark 10:6)
Jesus didn’t believe in evolution or the Big Bang and neither do Christians.
***

I don’t know that the scripture you cite contradicts evolution or the Big Bang theory. I believe God created the universe and everything in it. Just how He did it remains something of a mystery. Neither evolution nor the Big Bang theory contradict God’s existence nor His power, in my view.

As for the literal nature of the Genesis story, creation certainly could have occurred as Genesis describes, but even if the mechanism was different, Genesis is still TRUE. Many stylized or even fictional accounts contain great truths. For example, there was no such person as Tom Sawyer, but the story of the whitewashing of the fence (getting his friends to pay him for a job that he despised by acting as if it were fun) describes a truth that no one denies. Genesis stands for the truth that the creation of the universe and all that is in it was accomplished by God through His infinite power.

I’ll add this to my list of questions to ask in Heaven, if I ever get an audience with the Holy One.

[P-Marlowe]

full-fledged humanity as we know it began

Are there any examples of humanity that are not "full fledged"?

Is a fetus a "full fledged" Human or a developing evolutionary potential human?

At what point does a fetus join the ranks of us full fledged humans?

[GBA]

The six days of Genesis could just as as easily have been 6 trillion years.

Exactly. Are those days in God Time or our time?

What is our day? One rotation of our Earth.

What is a day in God Time? One rotation of...?

Hmmm, how does He mark time? What is one cycle, one Genesis day for Him?

[Trailerpark Badass]

Wow. He didn’t ensoul apes, He created Man from the beginning, using a process you apparently disapprove of.

[Trailerpark Badass]

May be a billion, I wouldn’t presume to know. But I would not constrain Him by time, so why couldn’t it be a billion steps?

[Claud]

I’m not speaking developmentally but evolutionarily. A fetus is human from the instant of conception.

It’s pretty obvious that whatever Australopithecus is, it isn’t a human being.

And it’s pretty obvious that Sumer is the dawn of humanity as we know it, with religion, agriculture, commerce, art, music, poetry, history.

In between you have creatures that are hard to classify right now. What I mean by not “full-fledged” humanity would be putative human-looking beings who were not descended from Adam and Eve. Augustine casually mentions the possibility of such races in his discussion of the Antipodes.

[stremba]

I tend to agree with you. I don’t see why people think that a God who set up the laws of science, started it all with the big bang, and let it play out is problematic. It is still true in that case that God created man (and everything else in the universe). The Bible is not a science textbook. It is a book on morality originally written for a pre-industrial tribe who had very little actual knowledge of how the natural world works. It would not have made any sense at all for the Bible to speak about population genetics, changing allele frequencies, natural selection, etc.

Besides, the physical atoms that make up our bodies are not really that significant; we are human because we are made in God’s image. That, IMHO, refers not to physical appearance, but rather to intellectual capacity and the presence of a soul. God created man when he ensouled the first man, Adam. What difference does it make where the physical body came from?

I would ask those who are skeptical: why could an omnipotent and omniscient being get everything started (ie Big Bang), set up initial condition (laws of science), and let it all work out, all the while knowing what the inevitable result will be? Why would God need to step in and make changes along the way? Would that not imply that God did something wrong to begin with? Would that not contradict God’s omnipotence and omniscience?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

He didn’t ensoul apes, He created Man from the beginning, using a process you apparently disapprove of.

In your view, then, apes already had human souls?

[stremba]

I don’t think any Catholic believes that God could not have turned dust into the flesh of Adam. Catholics certainly believe in God’s omnipotence. That is not the claim. The claim is that in actual fact, Adam’s flesh arose from an evolutionary process. Do you deny that God could have produced Adam’s body via evolution?

[old and tired]

At the risk of sounding like Hillary Clinton, "What difference does it make?"

Everybody knows that Catholics don't read the Bible literally, particularly the stuff in the Old Testament. We believe God created Heaven and Earth. That much is clearly stated in the Bible. The details, while cool, just don't matter that much to Catholics. I'm no physicist and to be honest, I don't care when exactly God breathed life into Man and gave us all souls. We know the body of the Man was created before he had a soul. For the life of me, I cannot understand why some Christians get so hung up on this stuff.

How long was a "day" to the writer of Genesis? Let the scientists figure that stuff out. The Pope's not a scientist, nor does he expect to be taken as one.

[stremba]

I tend to agree with your theological views, but your science is a bit off. There were modern humans of species H. Sapiens long before Sumer. Modern humans first emerged about 300,000 years ago according to the best available scientific evidence, and this occurred in Africa, not Sumer. Sumer is generally accepted as the first example of civilization, which includes among other features the presence of a written language, a centralized government, and extensive agriculture. It’s not correct to state that the people of Sumer were the first humans, however.

[GBA]

Maybe when God spoke in to the "vacuum" that was before He spoke to create this world, the closest we can come to describing the sound of His Speaking creation into existence is "The Big Bang". It's the best we can do.

And what is the dust we are created from? My guess we'd call that dust "Atomic particles", neutrons, electrons, protons, etc.

Science is just a language we are developing to describe, and write down the recipes for, God's creation.

Both scientists and theologians will end up at the same place with the same answer, they just take a different paths to get there.

[rwoodward]

Evolution does exist..but has nothing to do with the creation of the homo sapien.

[old and tired]

Is a fetus a "full fledged" Human or a developing evolutionary potential human? At what point does a fetus join the ranks of us full fledged humans?

Bible 101. Adam he breathed life into after he was already made. The rest of us were "formed in the womb."

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

why could an omnipotent and omniscient being get everything started (ie Big Bang), set up initial condition (laws of science), and let it all work out, all the while knowing what the inevitable result will be?

Deism was condemned by Vatican I. Also, there is no reason to believe that the universe works like a deterministic mechanism. Why should people believe in a 19th century view of the physical universe as some kind of spiritual truth?

[LearnsFromMistakes]

Mi> But if Genesis is to be taken completely literally, the universe is about 6,500 years old

In a complete literal interpretation, how old was Eve when she had a son? My answer - we have no clue. Was there a gap between 'in the beginning God created' and 'the earth was formless and void'. 'Formless and void' - what kind of creation was that? We don't know, we can't know. I guess we can make bad assumptions...or trust God.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

In communion, are there a billion steps that God takes to change a wafer into the body of Christ? Or is it a single step?

magic?

transubstantiation

[Claud]

It’s not correct to state that the people of Sumer were the first humans, however.

We ought to distinguish the biological species Homo Sapiens from the theological concept of "human". Being human as far as Genesis and St. Augustine and Humani Generis are concerned means being descended from Adam and, therefore, sharing in Adam's original glory and Fall. That's the sense in which I am using "human".

What you are talking about from 300,000 years ago is anatomical "humanity", which is a different thing. I don't see how Homo Sapiens in the Rift Valley can be descended from Adam given the context in Genesis. The Tigris and Euphrates are by the Garden. Adam is doing agriculture before and after the Fall, and his sons live in a world where there is already intensive farming and herding. Cain builds a city. The context of Genesis 2 and following points to civilization and the Neolithic in Mesopotamia.

Now what exactly to make of contemporary populations around the world and previous versions of Homo Sapiens I do not know, and it is something I am studying intensely. But at least we are getting away from the "ensouled ape" idea that the sound mind tends to rebel against.