Catholicism and Evolution w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. & Prof. Jonathan Lunine

Comments · 93

• KA

  @karlarodriguez3449 · 3 years ago

  This is very interesting. Thank you Fr. Gregory and Professor Lunine!

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• AN

  @anthonyw2931 · 3 years ago

  I love catholicism.  This is a case in point.  Very broad perspective. Pursuit of truth should make us open to reason and evidence wherever it may be.  How God made  existence matters less than why.  We know the why... but isn't part of that the Pursuit of truth?

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• SH

  @Shevock · 2 years ago

  Interesting. Thank you.

• AL

  @alwilliams3628 · 3 years ago (edited)

  In many ways scientists seem to be like the writer of Revelation where a scroll is discussed, but nobody was worthy to open it so as to comprehend it&apos;s contents so as to gain an idea of the meaning of our human existence. For example it says: <br><br>&quot;And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open the book, nor to see it. And one of the ancients said to me: Weep not; behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.&quot;<br>[Apocalypse (Revelation) 5:5]<br><br>So, in relation to this we now recognize Jesus to be the one who was worthy to open the Divine Wisdom of God, and to reveal some of this wisdom, and meaning of life, &nbsp;to His followers and to their future disciples through them. &nbsp;That is to say, mysteries concealed from the beginning of the world have been solved by the various teachings and acts of Jesus Christ during and after His life here on Earth.<br><br>Regarding randomness, it would be interesting to conceive or calculate the infinitesimally small odds of St. Peter the &nbsp;apostle &nbsp;throwing a fishing line and hook into the sea and then consequently pulling out a coin from the mouth of the fish that he just caught, and then use that same coin to pay the obligatory &apos;temple tax&apos; that Jesus ordered him to pay. &nbsp;At least we know from this story that mere random events, such as a fish randomly swimming in the Sea of Galilee and mistakenly consuming a metallic coin.... can easily be foreknown by the likes of Jesus Christ. &nbsp;Maybe this example is just a single, minute portion of the contents of that scroll of Revelation that only He, Jesus Christ, was worthy to understand, and then to &nbsp;share &nbsp;some of &nbsp;the contents of that mystical scroll with us His ignorant and sinful disciples?

• AN

  @AncientNovelist · 2 years ago

  Terrific discussion! The contribution I would make, from a scientist&apos;s point of view, is that all of science is constrained by phenomenology, not entirely in the sense of the subjective nature of human observation through the senses, but more importantly in the fundamentally limited nature of the senses and observation. The way this is usually stated is that science can do nothing more than offer models of reality (&apos;theories&apos;) and can never describe reality itself. The only true thing we can say about science is that it does not derive truth, only facts, but logic and mathematics (themselves flawed and self-referential) can be employed in the development of models. I don&apos;t want to throw in the Thomists with the Encyclopédistes, but I&apos;d like to add that, as a Franciscan, I reject Linnaeus&apos; taxonomic consignment of all of human essence and potential to Homo sapiens. I don&apos;t understand intellect as the defining attribute of humanity. Rather, I insist the Imago Dei marks us first of all as images of the Creator, and therefore a more useful genus and species designation would be something like Fabricator universalis, since the builder (Fabricator) images the Architect or Creator. Thus we have a nearly illiterate young man building/rebuilding San Damiano, which is in essence the building/rebuilding of the entire Church. I&apos;m not saying my rope cincture is any better or more useful than your leather belt, but merely offering the idea that intellect is not the quality that we most closely share with the Divinity. We were given a mandate in Genesis, not so much an essence as a trajectory. We can apply our intellect to that trajectory, to be sure, and so, should we happen to meet someday on the road to Rome, we could certainly exchange belts, and both of us would benefit from the exchange. 🙂 PM 2024

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• DI

  @diggingshovelle9669 · 2 years ago

  How do you explain how &nbsp;life comes about in the first place in terms of evolution?

• KA

  @kamilziemian995 · 9 months ago

  There were no single mention of the Book of Genesis, which is disappointing all the way down. For me this is the most important question in whole debate about Christianity and science.

• TO

  @tonyhayes9827 · 3 years ago

  [29] And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: [30] And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done.<br><br>This part of the Genesis story is hard to reconcile with the fossil record that shows Dinosaurs ate each other.<br>As far as the intelligibility of the universe is n astronaut once said he had a moment in space on a space walk when he understood the whole point of the created universe was for human consciousness of it.<br>And so St. Paul could say We have no excuse not to know God from the things He has made<br>All very interesting

• JU

  @julio7656 · 3 years ago

  The fossil record can be understood as demonstrating the similarities in the way God made all creatures, not the progress of one species to the next. There needs to be observable physical evidence of evolution before anyone can begin to think about it as a theory that explains reality. Until then, we maintain what has been passed on to us by our fathers.

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• DI

  @diggingshovelle9669 · 2 years ago

  how do you get life from inorganisc matter?

• NO

  @notHere2928 · 7 months ago

  Death didn’t exist before the Fall. There are many other first principals that keep from believing in Evolution. It’s verrrry hard to be a Thomist and believe in Evolution.

• HY

  @HyperDulia · 2 years ago

  Hard to hear him arguing against intelligent design and then appealing to some higher order of self organization. More convinced that evolution is bankrupt as a tenable philosophy. Thanks for posting.

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