I as a recent convert have spent a lot of time trying to learn the Catholic faith and have made major progress. (I was for most of my life a deist)
If any Catholic brother could help me on the following subject I would be very grateful.
I have a problem in the area of science.
Evolution was taught to me as fact in public high school and I also read a lot of books on this subject from authors like Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, Charles Darwin etc.
Evolution is as of now still a fact to me and I did not find any convincing arguments against it.
All I saw was this Kent Hovind who is illiterate in science and claims to have a "Dr" title.
I would be very grateful if anyone can point me to a book or website where a serious scientist with academic credentials shows good arguments for the concept of Intelligent Design/Creationism (whatever you want to call it) and is a devout Catholic. Scientists who subscribe to the Protestant position are heretics and I don't trust any of them for one second regardless of how "good" they might be.
Dear guest, I ask why you need 'a serious scientist' to answer your question regarding the credibility of evolution. Macro-Evolution is a theory not a fact so it is up to each individual to chose whether to believe in it or not. I too, was programmed by many 'serious scientists' to believe in evolution. On reading a little however, it only takes one twenty minutes to realise macro-evolution is a religion, a belief, a choice.
First I will tell you of a book written by a great Catholic that has it all, written by a friend of mine, lord rest his soul, Gerard Keane, an Australian. The book is called CRERATION REDISCOVERED,
https://www.google.ie/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Gery+Keane%27s+creation+rediscoveredGoogle in and read all about it.
then I can show you a little on the subject here and now.
1859 Darwinism
Darwin’s theory came about through observation. He concluded certain species were formed by their environment or change in surroundings brought about by many different causes. For example, finches evolved certain shapes of bills to adjust to the food found in certain areas, and animals evolved white coats in the arctic to blend with the snow. The most famous evolutionary example of them all was the change in moths from white to dark during an era wherein the emissions from coal fires darkened the environment. The brighter the moth the more likely it was seen by predators and devoured. Accordingly the darker ones tended to survive and breed. Thus over time the species went from white to dark. Science has long confirmed the genetic make-up of any creature has the ability to allow micro-adjustments to survive changing situations. In all cases however, finches, foxes and moths all remained finches, foxes and moths.
‘Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact.’ --- Wikipedia.
We see however, that Darwin and like-minded men went further, much further in their interpretation of the ‘evidence’ for evolution, confirming for them a transmutation of living creatures. They claimed if species can do this micro-evolution, why not a macro-evolution, mutate from one kind to another, a theory that has living cells evolving and mutating to things like sponges, then fish, then mammals, with moths, finches and foxes somewhere in between, and finally man. Now there is a very simple way of discerning the real value of the ‘scientific’ worldview of evolution. It lies in the law on entropy or energy decay; especially that called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law can be observed in action by anyone, and examples are everywhere. We see it in an old building fall to bits over time, observing metal rust into dust, and even a supernova, a star disintegrating. The whole universe, our senses, physicists and chemists assure us, is like a gigantic clock winding down, all order in a process of decay into disorder.
If we move on into the science faculty in the Open University however, we find biologists, geologists and cosmologists telling their students that all organised matter, including life, arose from a big bang and evolved into the order of the whole universe, and is still evolving. In other words, they are telling us the universe is like a gigantic clock winding itself up. And how, we ask, do they know it has been evolving upwards for billions and millions of years? Because of the supposed evidence the decay rates reveals to them. Not, mind you, ‘generation rates’, as one might have expected for upward evolution, but decay rates. Now isn’t that a laugh? They measure the duration of upward evolution by the very means of entropy that falsifies it. Such a curriculum, teaching students to believe in the cosmos as a clock winding itself up while accepting at the same time the fact that it is a clock winding down, is an insult to human intelligence, but instead it is perveerted to prepare each generation as psychologically prepared Copernicans and evolutionists.
‘If your pet theory is… found to be contradicted by observation – well these experimentalists do bungle at times. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.’ --- Sir Arthur Eddington.
The evolutionists respond by saying the introduction of solar power can thwart the second law of thermodynamics by providing the energy needed to build up the various order of things. The fact is however, that solar radiation will accelerate the second law unless there is present the ability for photosynthesis, that is, the ability to convert and utilise solar radiation to other forms of energy. The evolutionists’ problem, of course, is to explain how inanimate matter obtained this incomprehensible formula of photosynthesis that supposedly enabled solar energy to assist its theoretical evolution from chemicals into plants, animal-forms and intelligent man.
It was however, the proposed evolution of man from primate that challenged the very fundamentals of Catholic belief. The whole concept and nature of man would have to be abandoned or reviewed if such a theory were to be tolerated. In the first place we would have to accept man has a transient nature, that is, it must have a temporary state in the progress of evolution. True man, they say, did not exist in the beginning, neither in type or nature, and if their theory is taken in its entirety, neither will he exist, either in type or nature, at the end, which evolutionists tell us will occur when the sun burns out in a few billion years. According to Catholic dogma, man was created intelligent, speaking a full language, and educated by God from the beginning. Every civilisation, no matter how primitive, living or gone, was found to have a language, perfect and complete, as grammatical as Greek, as fluent as French. No human-type animal ever existed. Such creatures, depicted endlessly in ‘scientific’ journals, pictures of gorilla to man, are invention; evolutionary art forms, intended to programme the viewers with such ideas. Nevertheless, Catholics over the last century have been taught that this gorilla-to-man picture is Catholic in that the last gorilla, or gorilla’s dead body, was zapped with a human soul created by God.
A Living Cell
First a NUCLEUS has to evolve in the ‘pre-bionic soup,’ that is the pot-puree of matter and chemicals. This is the control centre in the heart of the organism and operates the cell through complex molecules of NUCLEIC ACID (DNA) and the GENES that make up those molecules and act as the units of heredity. Each of these carries the code for some characteristic of its natural form. This code is spelled out by hundreds of smaller units called NUCLEOTIDES that are arranged in highly specific sequences within the gene. Now these genes are constructed in strings called CHROMOSOMES, and are strung in precise and specific sequences. In the human cell there are 46 chromosomes arranged in paired arms, twin arms. In the nucleus of any cell the chromosomes contain the coded blueprint for structuring the body. A MEMBRAIN encloses the cell, structured so as to allow certain chemicals only to pass through it. Inside this is a fluid called CYTOPLASM in which countless bodies carry on the life lasting business of the cell. An OUTER-MEMBRANE encloses and protects the cell; it in turn again allowing only certain materials to enter or leave by a method unknown to science. Inside the cell there is an ongoing production building new PROTEINS. Each type of protein is determined by a code in the gene. An ENZYME is triggered which examines the gene and builds an RNA-MOLECULE in the image of the blueprint, When this is completed it receives a signal to stop. This RNA brings this message into the CYTOPLASM where it is captured by one of thousands of RIBOSOMES, so complex as to defy understanding so far. These build up the protein by linking various AMINO ACIDS in the specific sequence of the blueprint. To do this, TRANSFER-RNA catches amino-acids, each using special enzymes. Each of the mechanisms of the cell would need a computer to regulate, and even the simplest cell contains several thousand kinds of proteins and many billions, yes billions, of each of those kinds. The information contained within any first cell at its emergence from the stew-pot would have to be equivalent to 1000 volumes of 500 pages, or the amount of information needed to monitor a city the size of New York.
Now it is one thing proposing such a unit as a cell evolved into existence from a mixture of biochemical matter, another to get it to operate itself, that is, acquire ‘vitalism’ or life. The source and cause of animation; be it of flora or fauna, lies outside the realm of human science. Try as they did, do and will, they will never breath life into anything for that ability belongs solely to God. As Pasteur showed, you can only get vitalism in something already living.
Real science has long established that a cell does not have the ability to do more than it is designed to do. It cannot add to its function, becoming something more than itself. In other words, it cannot evolve into a more complicated cell structure as Darwinian evolution requires it to do. That is impossible. Nevertheless they proposed ‘mutation’ to achieve this ‘miracle’ and belief in evolution continued. We are asked to believe a living cell evolved, multiplied itself at random and ended up as a functioning beautiful flower, insect, fish, or animal, leaving aside a human for the moment.
Let us now ask what stages of any creature evolved first? Can one essential part of a living creature exist without the other? By this we ask which evolved first in the evolution of an animal. Was it the body, the head, the legs, or what? Which system evolved first, the circulatory system, the digestive system, the endocrine system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the immune system, the lymphatic system, the muscular system, the skeletal system, the urinary system, the reproductive system or the senses? Could any creature function with an evolving endocrine system, an evolving digestive system, evolving senses etc? The answer is no, it is all or nothing.
Now let us consider design. First let us start with the Big Bang. If evolution had a beginning with the Big Bang and that living creatures ended up by chance, we now have to give ‘chance’ ability on par with the almighty thinking God. Take for example an eye, the ability of anything that sees to see. What an amazing organ, structured to take in images, light and darkness, colour and shapes, pass on such images to the brain whereupon the creature can ‘see it.’ Did an eye evolve by chance? Did eyesight evolve by chance or by design? If anybody believes the ability of a creature to see came about by chance then they believe in natural magic. And that is what debating the subject of natural evolution is; absolute nonsense, an insult to human intelligence and reasoning. Yet, thanks to 'serious scientists', they have managed to convince the vast bulk of the human race to believe it is all true, that science has evidence that it is true, that all evolved naturally. Then there are the theistic-evolutionists. To them the ‘theory’ meets a theological and philosophical brick-wall. Suffice to say that evolution never ends, which means that God never finished His Creation. This of course contradicts the Scriptures that clearly state God finished His creation ‘on the sixth day and rested on the seventh.’
Darwin claimed the fossil records would show billions of these evolving bit-things and that his theory would fall or be proven in time as they were found or not. As it has happened, contrary to propaganda that thousands of fossils giving evidence for evolution have been found, the truth is that apart from a coffin full of fraudulent ‘transient’ fossils of would-be evolving bits, the billions of missing-links necessary for evolution to be a scientific plausibility are simply not in the fossil record. Our favourite ‘missing link’ is the humanoid skull on show in a museum that was recognised by a biologist as an elephant’s knee-cap. It quickly disappeared when exposed for the fraud it was. All fossils found are of complete kinds, just as God said He made them.
That men, without a single piece of confirming data, and in this we include those shams purporting to have created ‘the building blocks of life,’ could even postulate such a living mechanism evolved naturally from an inanimate pre-bionic soup of chemicals is beyond comprehension. That any intelligent human being could fall for such absurd nonsense is equally unbelievable, and that a compromise could be devised wherein God is supposed to have endowed nature with the ability to naturally evolve such working complexities is also to beggar belief, like stating God can give nature the ability to evolve square circles. Alas, many thousands of otherwise intelligent school and university professors, researchers, scientists, scholars, and theologians did believe, do believe, and indoctrinate millions of others with their nonsense.