How do Christians deal with scientific theories, like we came from monkeys and the big bang?

This question is follow up from what ifscience contradicts scripture

Question
I've got two questions for you. A) How do we deal with the idea that we came from Monkeys? B) How do we deal with the idea that the universe just appeared?


AnswerA) How do we deal with the idea we came from Monkeys?

By in large, there is alot of resistance to the idea of "Macroevolution" -that is, whole new species coming from other species. Christians have no problem with 'micro evolution'- like that all dogs from chihuahuas to huskies can trace their genetic heritage to wolves.

But again, this is Science, so you can believe in Macroevolution if you like.

But Humans have an immortal nature which is different from monkeys or other animals. So you pretty much have to assume that if our bodies did evolve, then at some point God stepped in, and did something particular.

The requirement from the Church is that we have to believe in a first set of parents- at some point, there were 2 primates who were human, and thus capable of sin, and they did sin. we don't have to believe that they were named asdam and Eve, spoke to a talking snake, and ate a fruit. (see how that part sounds like myth?)

They did something that forever changed human nature, started original sin, and made us need a saviour. This is how the church accounts fro suffering and sin in the world- this part is very linked to the whole church teaching.

Fortunately, so far, science seems to support the idea that we are all decended from one mother, and to a lesser degree, one father, and that these lived in Africa.

B) That the universe just appeared is problematic for scientists. One of the traditional proofs for the existence of God, is that everything is caused by something else, but there must have been an original 'uncaused cause'. (The opposite of this is called 'infinite regress'- the idea that you can go back for eternity saying what caused that?, what caused that?) It's kinda like at camp when kids go "Who mad God?" At some point there has to be someone or something that was not made by anything else.

This, as St Tomas Aquinas says, is God. God is "existence"- that's why he said his name is "I AM". God is the only thing that by it's very nature has to exist, because God is existence. Someone once asked the question, what would happen if God ceased to exist... well, the question does not make sense since what we mean by God is existence. What would happen if existence ceased to exist? See the problem?

The big bang theory was first proposed (but not called that) by Georges Lemaître in 1927. The other popular theory was 'steady state'- that the universe had always been the same size, and was in fact itself the uncaused cause. Since that time, science has demonstrated that the universe is in fact expanding, and the general concensus is that there was at some point a big bang.

But this does not eliminate the need for a God to start it. As they say "I believe in the big bang. God said it, bang, it happened." If the Big Bang theory is correct- and Catholics have no problem with that- then what caused it? Unfortunately all the laws of physics break down when the mass opf the entire universe is condensed into a single point the size of a pin point- called a singularity- so we can only speculate about what was happening before the big bang. The theory is basically that the singularity was under so much pressure from gravity pulling it in, that eventually the pressure was so great that the singularity exploded- roughly 14 billion years ago. And it is still expanding. Some say it will one day start contracting again, and eventually form a second singularity, and start all over again...

So anyway, there could be a cycle of big bangs and big crunches, but again we end up with infinite regress! What started it all?

I should point out that many of the greatest physicists do think it is possible to eliminate the need for God to explain the universe. Fair enough. But Catholics have no problem believing in the big Bang, we would just say that God caused it. What is debated is to what degree God is guiding the development of the universe!

Again the problem for 'empirical scinetists' is that by definition (empirical means measure) they can only deal with things they can measure. Since God cannot be measured, they can't place God in the equation. So, they have to come up with theories that exclude God. But just because they do and are limmited to them, it does not thus follow that God does not exist. Their whole discipline makes the non existence of God a foregone conclusion, because he can't be a factor.

Imagine if God manipulated everything that happened, and was totally arbitrary about it. It would be impossible to posit a 'law' of physics, since things would never happen the same way twice! As Einstein said, The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I suspect that God deliberatley made science possible, for the same reason that a parent builds a playground. God wanted us to be able to play! I find it more blievable that an intelligent mind made a universe that intelligent minds could understand, than that a series of accidents resulted in beings that could actually figure out where they came from. But that's just my opinion- others would, and do, disagree.

What is the Church teaching on tatoos?

Question Levitiucs 19:28 says that we should not get Tatoos. I've heard that what the Bible was getting at was that it was a costomery thing to do where they would tattoo pagan things on those ready to die or dead to prepare them for death or something like that, and this violated the first commandment about not having any false gods. Does that make sense to you?

AnswerI think it's good to look at the passage in context:

27“‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
28“‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.
So, if people take seriously the admonision against tatoos, they would also have to believe that men should all have beards, and long hair at the sides of their heads (like Orthodox Jews). Most people, Protestant and Catholic alike, would agree that these rules were to set the Jewish people apart, as a seperate people, who lived differently from the rest of the culture. They are like the rules of Kosher foods, or circumcision. In Acts 15, the Church specifically dealt with these things and said they were not binding- especially not on non Jews who were becoming Christian! So those laws are not universal moral laws, but rather customs for a certain people in a certain period of history. Christians need to learn to distinguish between these.

(That's part of the debate about homosexuality and womens ordination- are they universally binding laws, or just customs for the time? Without someone to answer that question difinitively, that's how you end up with the wide range of beliefs among protestants, and churches like the Anglican one splitting over it!)

If Luther did believe that Jesus was physically present in the Sacrament of the Alter, then how come protestants today don't belive this?

Question If Luther did believe that Jesus was physically present in the Sacrament of the Alter, then how come protestants today don't belive this?

Answer Lutherans still believe in the true presence, and so do most Anglicans. The problem with Sola Scriptura is that everybody decides for themselves what they believe...so other protestants dissagreed with Luther. Zwingli was a famous protestant who lived at the same time as Luther, and this was one of their big debates. Even if you talk to Anglicans, though they are all part of the same church, they can't agree on what they believe (even though the Anglican book of common prayer says that transubstantiation is 'repugnant to holy writ").

The problem with protestants is that no one has any real authority to translate for anyone else. You should hear this guy on the radio called the 'Bible Answer Man'- people ask him questions and he answers as though he knowsd the answer, but often he speaks out against what other famous protestants teach.

The homosexuality quesition is so big that it's causing the Anglican church to break up- and the head of it, the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently lamented that he needed the authority to teach like the Pope has. But since he doesn't have it, all he can do is try to govern the varied opinions- he can never settle a debate.

What if science contradicts scripture? What about evolution?

Question I was reading in your blog and you said that St. Augustine said that if science contradicts scripture then we need to re-interpret scripture. How can this be? What then is the Catholic Church's teaching on evolution? If everytime there is a new scientific discovery we have to re-interpret scripture, it seems to me like it won't be very long and scientific "proofs" (like in the 1960s how black people were scientifically proven to be dumber than white people because of their head shape) will contradict the entire bible, and then what?

Answer Evolution is the perfect example.

Evolution is science- not faith and morals. The Church- and indeed, even scripture- purport to be authorities on faith and morals, but not on science or history, or these other things which can be known without the dirrect inspiration of God. So if science were to 'prove' that evolution happened, then the Church would have no problem with that since it is very easy (in fact easier) to inrterpret the creation story in Genesis as poetry than as science or history.

Read Genesis 1, and you will quickly discover that it is written in a very poetic style, complete with repetion and timing, etc. A literal interpretation begs someimportant questions. If we were meant to believe that each day was a 24 hour time period, then how do we know this when there were no people to measure the time, and no sun to rise and set? If God told Moses that that is what happened, (which is what most literalists believe), well scripture also says that to God one day is like a thousand years, so who is to say that it was literally one day?

There are Christians, and even Catholics, who believe that the world is literally 6 thousand years old, and was created in 6 days. They have to account for things like dinosaurs and the extreme ages that people lived before thf flood, by what is generally considered to be 'pseudo science'- and claims that maybe dinosaurs were mostly killed off by the flood, but of course some God on tha ark (2 of each kind), but when the flood receded climate had changed so drastically that they couldn't survive, as the iceage was now started, so most dinosaus died out, but maybe the occaisional ones survived in Africa or Peru, where the Ice Age didn't effect the climate as much. Then some of Noahs decendents went to cold places, like England and America,
and became Cave Men, where as other people went to warm places where farming was possible, like Egypt and India and Babylon, and built great civilizations, so that these great civilizatioons and cave men lived on Earth at the same time. It is a facinating discussion, which I do not have time to delve into here. (Note the picture of the human riding a dinosaur, purportedly a 500 year old image from Peru)

Evolutionary scientists have a different bias. They want to explain the existence of everything, but cannot use anything imeasurable (science only deals with measurable things) so anything which is pure spirit, like God, is outside the realm of science. So they try to explain how everything got here but they absolutely cannot entertain the idea of God- so evolution is really the only theory that works.

So, literalists have to believe that everything in the bible is literal. Athiestic evolutionists have to account for the universe without the possibility of God. Catholics have the advantages of both schools of thought, without the dissadvantages. We are not required to believe that everything in the Bible was even meant top be taken literally, much less that it should be. the first 12 chapters of Genesis are generally considered to be possibly more myth than literal history. However, discerning what should be requires mature and honest inspection. If you read Lukes account of the story of Jesus, it is very obvious that it was meant to betaken literally, and as Catholics we obviously do take it literally. You can't lump the whole Bible into one genre of literature.

In short the Church does not have a teaching on evolution, excpet that it is a possible and highly respectable idea, because the Church is not and does not claim to be an authority on science. Incidentally, there were many who though a heliocentric (sun at the center) universe was contrary to scripture, and this is what caused some of the problems for Galileo. (The Pope he had a conflict with, though, just said he should present his views ballanced with the traditional view that Earth is at the center. Galileo refused, and effectively printed documents where the pope was being called a simpleton. The Pope was a worldly authority, so had him arrested. Galileo was never tortured, that's a myth.)

Science cannot possibly 'disprove' matters of faith and morals, simply because faith and morals are about things which are immeasurable, which science cannot deal with. So science and theology are 2 completely seperate disciplines, but they both lead us to truth. That is the Catholic standpoint- if it is the domain of science, listen to science, if it is the domain of faith and morals, listen to the Church. That way you get the fullness of truth!

What is the biggest difference between Protestants and Catholics?

I'd say the biggest difference is the authority of the Church. Protestants believe in 'Sola Scriptura"- only the Bible is the source of truth. Catholics believe in the Church as well. Amongst protestants, there is a huge variety of ideas, because they all interpret the Bible differently. If Sola Scriptura worked, all the protestants would agree. But by in large, they can't figure out if homosexuality is wrong or not, or whether they should divorce, have women pastors, how much money to give, sacraments, who gets saved, honour Mary..... etc. Protestants are really all over the place! Jehovahs Witnesses even use the same bible, and come to completely different conclusions, like that Jesus was not God, and only 144,000 people go to Heaven. So the bible alone is not only unscrpitural- it has been demonstrated to not work! Whereas in 2000 years, all over the world, the catholic Church has always (officially) taught the same thing. (I say officially because there are always wack jobs who claim to be Catholic, but teach their own opinions instead of truth.)

How can the Church teach things not explicitly in Scripture?

Question- If purgatory isn’t explicitly biblical where does it come from and why do we believe it to be absolute truth?


Answer The Trinity is not explicitly biblical either. The idea that something has to be explicitly biblical came from Luther, because he didn't believe the Church was inspired the same way the Bible is. The problem is, the Bible was never written to teach us everything we could know about God, and the idea that everything would be in the Bible is not in the Bible, so it is actually self contradictory!

Catholics do not believe that all of revelation is explicitly in scripture. That would actually pose major problems- for example, where in scripture does it tell you which books belong in scripture? It doesn't- someone needed to decide that! (There were other books written about Jesus in the time of the apostles that did not make the cut, for example.) Because the Catholic Church is inspired, and can't make mistakes, it chose the books which are now in the Bible. By the time they did so- 300 years after Jesus- people were already arguing about stuff like the Trinity. However, it should be noted that stuff like purgatory and the honour of Mary and the true presence in the Eucharist were already well established!

So, in short-

The authority of the Bible does not make sense without the authority of the Church who gave us the Bible. The authority of the Church also taught us about purgatory.