5 ms·

Your comment suggests evolution is an open question. It is not.

clock_tower 11y ago
Writing as a practicing Catholic, I'd say that your tone sounds too peremptory, but what you're saying is right. The Church, at least, isn't in the business of second-guessing the fossil record -- and besides, there are two contradictory Creation-myths in Genesis anyways, so they must not have been meant to be taken literally. (The Church traditionally allowed and encouraged two or three different ways of understanding Biblical texts figuratively; insisting that the surface meaning is the only meaning is a Protestant thing.) For the curious, look up _Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?_ by Guy Consolmagno SJ and Paul Mueller, which discusses this and other science-y subjects.
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  It's not an accident that my tone is peremptory. There is a push from certain religious groups to paint the theory of evolution as being scientifically controversial. It is not. Evolution is a fact. There is no scientific debate about that. There are only some people who read the Bible as contradicting science, and who therefore attempt to cast doubt on science so as to defend their interpretation of the Bible. You are correct that the Catholic Church is not one of those groups, and hasn't been for many years. The Church's official position is that God is the architect of evolution.
  - craigds 11y ago
    I'm a (protestant, FWIW) Christian and I also believe evolution. This has taken some wrestling over the years. My current understanding is that the creation myths in Genesis are non-literal stories, intended to be taken in ancient Mesopotamian context, primarily describing that the cosmos is God's temple. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative#Mesopotamian_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative#Mes... ) My main problem at this point is that a central theme in the Bible as a whole is that death was caused by original sin, and wasn't originally part of God's creative plan. Obviously by the time mankind had evolved and sinned, death must have occurred, so I'm struggling to reconcile this one. How do other Christians resolve this discrepancy?
    - meagain20000 11y ago
      Easy, God has a specific meaning in mind but we are still too young to understand it. Or the meaning got lost in translation. Listen, if christian people (disclosure: I'm catholic) can rationalize genocide and enslavement of other people then rationalizing something like this should be easy.
    - rwallace 11y ago
      Agnostic of Christian cultural background here: I think part of what is meant is that murder was caused by original sin. Sure, death from other causes would already have occurred in any case, but murder is still part of our world because we evolved as K-strategists in desperate competition with other members of our species; that original sin that we are struggling to leave behind, had to be the case because such competition is what drove us to evolve intelligence in the first place. As for creation myths, we have a document written several thousand years ago which says the universe began in a flash of light and developed through several stages of increasing complexity, which I think is pretty impressive given that it wasn't until the mid-20th-century that science established this is indeed the case.
      - acqq 11y ago
        "As for creation myths, we have a document written several thousand years ago which says the universe began in a flash of light and developed through several stages of increasing complexity" Stages are named as days, and the "omnipotent" god even gets tired and has to rest (!) the whole day after 6 in which he makes the whole word, including the "firmament" to keep the water on the heaven from not raining down all the time. Doesn't have sense. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
        rwallace 11y ago
        The use of the English word 'days' is effectively a mistranslation. As for the seventh day, that's a context switch for some life advice: after work must come rest, trying to work a seven-day week is stupid and harmful - something quite a few people nowadays would do well to remember.

Writing as a practicing Catholic, I'd say that your tone sounds too peremptory, but what you're saying is right. The Church, at least, isn't in the business of second-guessing the fossil record -- and besides, there are two contradictory Creation-myths in Genesis anyways, so they must not have been meant to be taken literally. (The Church traditionally allowed and encouraged two or three different ways of understanding Biblical texts figuratively; insisting that the surface meaning is the only meaning is a Protestant thing.) For the curious, look up _Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?_ by Guy Consolmagno SJ and Paul Mueller, which discusses this and other science-y subjects.

redthrowaway 11y ago
It's not an accident that my tone is peremptory. There is a push from certain religious groups to paint the theory of evolution as being scientifically controversial. It is not. Evolution is a fact. There is no scientific debate about that. There are only some people who read the Bible as contradicting science, and who therefore attempt to cast doubt on science so as to defend their interpretation of the Bible. You are correct that the Catholic Church is not one of those groups, and hasn't been for many years. The Church's official position is that God is the architect of evolution.
- craigds 11y ago
  I'm a (protestant, FWIW) Christian and I also believe evolution. This has taken some wrestling over the years. My current understanding is that the creation myths in Genesis are non-literal stories, intended to be taken in ancient Mesopotamian context, primarily describing that the cosmos is God's temple. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative#Mesopotamian_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative#Mes... ) My main problem at this point is that a central theme in the Bible as a whole is that death was caused by original sin, and wasn't originally part of God's creative plan. Obviously by the time mankind had evolved and sinned, death must have occurred, so I'm struggling to reconcile this one. How do other Christians resolve this discrepancy?
  - meagain20000 11y ago
    Easy, God has a specific meaning in mind but we are still too young to understand it. Or the meaning got lost in translation. Listen, if christian people (disclosure: I'm catholic) can rationalize genocide and enslavement of other people then rationalizing something like this should be easy.
  - rwallace 11y ago
    Agnostic of Christian cultural background here: I think part of what is meant is that murder was caused by original sin. Sure, death from other causes would already have occurred in any case, but murder is still part of our world because we evolved as K-strategists in desperate competition with other members of our species; that original sin that we are struggling to leave behind, had to be the case because such competition is what drove us to evolve intelligence in the first place. As for creation myths, we have a document written several thousand years ago which says the universe began in a flash of light and developed through several stages of increasing complexity, which I think is pretty impressive given that it wasn't until the mid-20th-century that science established this is indeed the case.
    - acqq 11y ago
      "As for creation myths, we have a document written several thousand years ago which says the universe began in a flash of light and developed through several stages of increasing complexity" Stages are named as days, and the "omnipotent" god even gets tired and has to rest (!) the whole day after 6 in which he makes the whole word, including the "firmament" to keep the water on the heaven from not raining down all the time. Doesn't have sense. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
      - rwallace 11y ago
        The use of the English word 'days' is effectively a mistranslation. As for the seventh day, that's a context switch for some life advice: after work must come rest, trying to work a seven-day week is stupid and harmful - something quite a few people nowadays would do well to remember.