Jamison
Cadet
They did have more children, but to procreate would mean that continually incest would have to occur. With brothers and sisters or brothers and mothers or sisters and fathers mating, then how come we haven't seen massive amounts of mental and physical retardation? It's fact that if two people who are closely related (such as brother and sister) breed then their children will be much more likely to be born with disabilities. Then if those children breed with their family members it continues on. A population would not be able to survive thousands of years if the people doing the breeding were that closely related.
Let's not forget that evolution didn't just occur during the primordial soup phase. Evolution, though very slow, is occuring every day. How else do you explain skin pigments? If we all came from Adam and Eve then shouldn't we all basically have the same color skin? Evolution has caused people who live in Africa where they get more sun to have darker skin, while someone who lives in Europe has lighter skin.
The Catholic Church began when Peter went to Rome about 45 AD (though I've heard 60 AD as well). The Catholic Church has been around longer than any other Christian denomination, even if it might not have exactly been called that (Catholic is just a word that means "universal" for Jesus' vision of a universal church).
And no, I'm sure the early church didn't teach evolution, but just because they didn't teach it doesn't mean it didn't exist. I'm sure schools hundreds of years ago didn't teach quantum physics, but it's very much a subject in today's world (trust me, my boyfriend is studying it). The Catholic Church does believe that biological evolution is possible, but has happened because of God. They feel that He is the driving force behind biological evolution, and feel that they cannot ignore the evidence that is out there.
I've studied biology extensively and I don't understand how someone can turn away from evolution after studying it. I definitely see how complex we are, and think it's absolutely amazing and wonderful that we turned out the way we are, when so much could've been different. To think that if just one little thing went wrong millions of yeas ago we might not be here today is utterly fascinating, and quite honestly makes me appreciate life so much more (but that's just me). I've studied evolution in my classes and I find it extremely plausible it all makes sense (and you really must not just look at Darwin for this, there are many other scientists out there who have studied evolution extensively). I've read books and watched documentaries and to me there seems like no other way. How else can you explain the transitional species they've found? Just one example being the whale they recently discovered that actually descended from a wolf? (It's true, I watched an entire documentary on it...very fascinating too). Or if Adam and Eve were placed here by God thousands of years ago, then how do you explain that dinosaurs existed millios of years ago? These are questions that I don't think creationism has the answers to.
As far as the evolutionist and creationist goes, I wasn't there so I'm not sure about the arguments that were presented. But I feel pretty confident that someone who saw the same debate who believed in evolution would feel that the creationist babbeled on, while the evolutionist presented very strong and valid points. And even if not, let's not forget that these are just two people in the whole scheme of things.
Of course there are going to be gaps in how life got it's start. Evolution is a fairly new concept in the scheme of things. We're talking about going back billions of years. And actually, that book must be a bit outdated, because scientists have been able to create the primordial soup. They created it by smashing together different elements. Studies are still going on, but it's looking very promising.
I'd be interested again of the date of that book and the context that those two sentences were taken out of, because I feel that I'm missing something.
I visited that website and glanced over their evidence for creation. All of those arguments have another scientist somewhere else who says that those statistics are wrong or that they are naturally occuring, or even point towards evolution. Just depends on who you ask. As well as the fact that some of the arguments that were presented where just backed up because it would be extremely rare for something like that to occur. Extremely rare things do happen.
