The Missing Link

Read from below.

From Fergail.

We can accept the idea of evolutionary changes within a species but not evolutionary change from one species to another. That's the crux of the matter. We must have clear definitions to avoid confusion and wasteful discussion.

From Ted:
I'm not a deist. I mean that God doesn't take obvious active roles in our affairs because He wants to preserve Free Will. He would appear to do certain key things like sending Christ into the world and the Resurrection, however they would appear to occur exceedingly rarely, if events the magnitude of resurrections occur more than once at all.
If He was constantly intervening and "micromanaging" world affairs right down to relatively insignificant individual events, then what would be the point of creating us? Where would be our dignity as humans if we're instead merely puppets dancing around to His every whim. I think he gives people free will to do whatever they want and He's willing to accept the consequences, knowing full well that there's going to be some serious suffering due to the imperfect nature of man. He may nudge events from time to time and intervene to keep the world's destiny on course, but probably to the least extent possible in order to make people's lives more real and more meaningful. The stakes are higher when we're all given the chance to make our own realities.

From: Fergail
Lars, I agree with what you say.

From: Lars.
Not sure if you're not reading too much into Ted's ...
"God of the last 2 thousand years, who pretty much sits back and let's the world roll whichever way it chooses roll. If He is taking an active roll in things He does it indirectly and very subtley.
With the huge exception of the Incarnation and Resurection and many assorted miracles and perhaps natural events such as tornados/earthquakes etc...it is reasonable to conclude that God does not intervene much in a physical way in the world. He clearly does intervene in a spiritual way on a routine basis in response to prayer etc. So God is indeed very active but not so much on a physical basis as in a more subtle, gentle spiritual way.

From: Fergail:
You say 'The God of the last 2000 years who pretty much sits back and lets the world roll whichever way it chooses to roll. If He is taking an active role in things he does it indirectly and very subtley'. If you really believe that, it places you in the ranks of the Deists who believe that God created the world and all in it and then 'walked' away and left it to its own devices. The Theists, including the Catholics, believe that God did indeed create the world and all in it but has 'not walked away and left it to its own devices'. On the contrary, He intervened dramatically in the world when He became man at the Incarnation, died as a ransom on man's behalf at the Crucufixion and rose again at the Resurrection. He continually intervenes in the physical world through the physical laws He gave the universe. He gave man a set of laws of belief and behaviour in Revelation and directs the world through man to the extent that man cooperates. The world is in its present misery and suffered all the miseries of history to the extent it has refused to do His will. Yes, the Church should stay out of purely scientific controversies like the Galileo/Copernicus affairs but the scientists likewise should stay out of purely religious/ metaphysical matters like man's origin. They have no expertise/ authority there.

From: Ted
Yes, I think arrogance is the operative word here. Pope JPII was very humble in accepting the fact that the Church can be wrong about scientific matters and pretty much stays out of them. There's a ton of symbolism in the Bible and even the most fundamentalist Christians believe that. The problem with Darwinism -- not just that he's most likely wrong about much of his theories -- was that his stuff was politicized by the Left and now the religious fundamentalists on the political right see Darwin as the Anti-Christ. Their reasoning is that, if he's right, then their faith is bankrupt -- the ultimate fear of all fundamentalists. So they'll fight to the death anything they perceive to be a threat to their faith -- even though much of Darwinism is consistent with the Book of Genesis -- if it's seen as symbolism and not literal fact. Again, God moves in mysterious ways, and Him actually reaching out of the sky and plucking a rib out of Adams chest and then froming Eve out of it sure doesn't sound like the God of the last 2 thousand years, who pretty much sits back and let's the world roll whichever way it chooses roll. If He is taking an active roll in things He does it indirectly and very subtley. To the concrete thinkers whose world and religious views are black or white, Darwin is a heretic (think Islamic Fundies to get the right mindset). Darwin actually believed in God, as his writings about the "wonders of creation" show -- although they appear to have been edited out by the equally militant pro-evolutionists like Stephen J. Gould in one of his books that quoted Darwin. Gould was protecting himself from his ultimate fear: that there could be a God.

From: Fergail
Very well stated, Illiteratti. I'm impressed by the maturity and wisdom you show on these complex matters.

From: Illiteratti
Here's my 2 pesetas on the email traffic re the fishy evolution article Ted posted:
1) Some people actually hate poetry so the poetry of it would more likely dissuade than persuade them.

2) The ultimate conspiracy is the one between satan and his slave minions -- if Hawkings is an atheist, perhaps, this evolution stuff is one of satan's disinformation projects designed to lead people from God.

3) The Catholic Church's magisterium is the horse's mouth which should be informing you of every Catholic teaching, Ted. Note use of the word "teaching" -- the Church does not have "positions." The very word "position" implies a changeability which is foreign to Church teachings, which are permanent and reliable. If Jesus didn't care whether people were reliably taught the truth, He could just have let Protestant ministers do their thing, rather than set up His own Church.

4) Good question on when souls are made, Anna. I believe the general rule is this: God doesn't have a bunch of pre-made souls sitting around up there, waiting for couples to make zygotes so He can drop the souls in. Rather, when a couple has intercourse during the woman's fertile time, assuming the man's sperm level and health are good, etc., God procreates the person with the couple. This means the man contributes the y+22, the woman contributes the x+22 and the use of her womb and necessary nutrients, and God makes a soul right then and there, specifically for this new little person.

Regarding twins: It's nice to think that when the parental contribution is sufficiently wonderful, God wants to get maximum beneft, so creates an extra soul but I doubt that the magisterium would agree. What seems more likely is that, as an intrinsic part of the process of embryo separation into two, God creates a second soul, in the same manner in which He created the first one. in other words, only one soul is created during conception, and then God makes a second one as the physical matter separates into two human embryos.

5) Why does God make twins? Three reasons (again, only my opinion since the Church has no teaching on this question): 1) as a cross for some to bear ( 2) as a gift for some to receive and 3) as a reminder that in God's eyes we're all the same, ie, equally important to Him, though obviously unique and irreplaceable.

6) Lars, I like your comment that the ultimate human arrogance is to think we can figure everything out. Which all reminds me of a question I raised a few months ago: what is the teaching of the Church as to when the soul is "put into" an individual person? Can it really be at the moment of conception? The only reason I ask is that, if so, how do identical twins end up with two souls, and when do they get two? Do they get two souls with conception and then once the flesh divides into the two individual twins, one soul "moves" with each little body?? It's a bit of a mind-bender of a question, isn't it?!

From: Lars
Agreed. The crux of the matter involves when and how the soul was "put" in man. It doesnt make sense that God watched man develop from a chimpanzee-like creature until it became intelligent enough then one day picked two of these creatures called Adam and Eve and popped a soul into them. What makes more sense is that God was creating progressively more and more complex creatures as time went by using the previous creature as a "template" for the next but with added "features". This would explain why we have features both anatomic and physiologic in common with other animals and biologic entities. This also dovetails with the 7 days of creation in Genesis, that God created the simpler life forms first followed by the more complex. Creation was hard work since we know God rested on the 7th day. If it was "hard work" (I suppose that is a relative and quirky term when applied to God) then it would make sense that God would use existing creatures as "templates" rather than create an entirely new form of life. Any other way would be wastefull. So it does all seem to fall into place and make good sense.

From: Fergail
Ted, It depends on what you mean by evolution. One always has to have precise and accurate definitions of things and avoid sloppy definitions. If one means materialistic evolution, macro-evolution, that man derived from a primordial soup and from animals or from a kind of pre-Adam man, the Pope certainly could not and did not accept anything remotely like that. Man derived from a created Adam and Eve regardless of what the scientists proclaim so glibly and confidently.

From: Ted
Pope John Paul accepted evolution. What's the current Pope's position?

From: Fergail
A clear case of Darwinian Fundamentalism

From: Lars
More evolutionary nonsense... that the fish grew arms and legs and walked up on land and then turned into man.I am afraid these people just cant seem to grasp the 2nd law of thermodynamics....that the natural tendency is towards more not less disorder in the universe...something called entropy.


'Link' Between Fish and Land Animals Found

Discovery Called Key Evidence Of Vertebrates' Ocean Origins
By Guy GugliottaWashington Post Staff WriterThursday, April 6, 2006; Page A03
Scientists yesterday reported discovering an evolutionary "missing link" between fish and land animals -- an ancient, river-dwelling predator with arm joints in its fins, an alligator-like head and ribs heavy enough to support its body on dry land.
Researchers found several fossils between four and nine feet long. The creature was a fish -- with scales, fins and gills -- but it moved its head independently of its body, could drag itself along on land as today's seals do, and may have walked, although the research team did not find fossil hindquarters to test that hypothesis.

Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago examines the cast of a Tiktaalik roseae fossil that he and a colleague found in Canada. (By Dan Dry -- University Of Chicago Via Associated Press)
Graphic
The Missing StepResearchers have found the fossil of a key transitional creature that blurs the distinction between fish and land-living animals. This river-dwelling predator, Tiktaalik roseae, could stand up on mud flats river bottoms. It provides the closest look yet at the moment when life first crawled from water to land.

The discovery provides the best evidence yet that fish emerged from the oceans and rivers of the early Earth between 380 million and 360 million years ago and evolved into terrestrial vertebrates beginning with amphibians and reptiles, and ending up with mammals and, ultimately, humans.
"This is extremely significant, because while we have been amassing evidence for years on the link between fish and tetrapods [four-legged animals], there was still a gap," said Hans Sues, associate director of research and collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "This link is one we would have predicted, but it's nice to see that it really exists."
A research team led by paleontologist Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago and Edward B. Daeschler of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences found the fossils locked in red siltstone in the windblown Arctic wilderness of Canada's Ellesmere Island, about 600 miles from the North Pole.
The fish lived 375 million years ago in what had been an equatorial river delta before continental drift moved the land mass northward. The team dubbed it Tiktaalik roseae . "Tiktaalik" is an Inuktitut word for "large, shallow water fish," and Shubin said "roseae" refers to one of the patrons of the project who wants to remain anonymous. The research was reported today in the journal Nature.
Scientists for decades have been gathering evidence that four-footed, vertebrate land animals evolved from fish sometime in the latter part of the geologic period known as the Devonian, after the emergence of insects and spiders.
Researchers for years had collected Devonian fossil fish with bones and muscles in their fins. The fish were regarded as forerunners of the land animals that soon made their way to solid ground. Today's coelacanth is such a "lobe-finned fish," a holdover from this early period.
" Tiktaalik is adapting," Shubin said in a telephone interview. "It could stand on the water bottom in the shallows, or it could stand up in the mud flats. It's a fish tetrapod or a 'fishtopod.' "
Sues, also speaking in a telephone interview, said scientists first subscribed to a theory that the red sedimentary rock where most of the transitional fossils were found indicated an ancient desert climate, and that legs evolved because fish were trapped in evaporating ponds and "had to move out or die."
"That became passe, when scientists in recent years found good lakes for the creatures," Sues said. "It seemed likely that they never left the water, and instead evolved limbs for the purpose of running along under the surface. One idea is that they developed limbs to navigate lakes choked with vegetation."
Shubin said he and Daeschler set out to find transitional animals in the far North, because large Devonian deposits are exposed to the weather there without civilization, vegetation or dirt to conceal them. "Up there, it's either rock or ice," he said.
They discovered Tik taalik embedded in a deposit in the southwestern part of Ellesmere: "There were all kinds of carnivorous fish -- big and small" -- and Tiktaalik was one of the top-line predators, Shubin said. "This was a fish-eat-fish world -- you're either big with giant teeth, or you're small and armored."
Shubin said the team understood immediately that they had found what they were looking for. Tiktaalik may have been a fish, but it had a remarkable set of land-animal characteristics, from its flat, alligator-like head with eyes on top to its ribs -- suitable for both heavy lifting and, perhaps, breathing with lungs.
"But the truly remarkable thing is the internal skeleton preserved within the fin," vertebrate paleontologist Hans-Peter Schultze of the University of Kansas said in a telephone interview. "It looks like a tetrapod limb, and you can see that it was used to walk on the ground."
By examining the pectoral fins extending from Tiktaalik like arms, the team could easily see the outlines of bones and joints -- shoulder, elbow and wrist -- powerful enough to support the animal on land.
And once on land, "opportunities were available," Sues said. "They've found [fossil] scorpions about two feet long in Scotland, and that would have made a good meal for this animal. Like eating lobster."