ALDERIC POSTS:
Actually, I take that back - there is something I am going to say, only because it has been bugging me for a long time. This is directed at those who are religious:
Would it seem unreasonable to you, that evolution - even as it is mentioned by Darwin, etc. - is a tool of your God? Why does religion/God have to be so mutually exclusive toward evolution?
As to your first question, first let's agree at what Darwin's Evolution theory teaches...the term evolution has been used and is currently being taught in public schools to designate a biological change through which, in the course of billions of years, the amoeba, by passing from one species to another, "transmutation" finally becomes a human being.
What right reason and religion will not tolerate is the theory of evolution that assumes matter and motion have come into existence by their own power in some strange and yet undiscovered mode or way. It will not accept that in the course of time that inorganic, by some processes not even imaginable, became organic and that the organic by environment and by conflict, developed a physical structure like our own so that after a long length of time, man appeared as the highest development of the vertebrae, different in degree, though not in kind, from the ape.
(This is far different from the views of St.Augustine who taught that while God's Creation was instantaneous of each kind of creature, that over time it unfolded into the life forms that were always inherent within the original kind. This keeps God as the Creator of all form, matter, force, of laws, of life of man.)
As to God using evolution as a tool, I think you may be referring to what is called Theistic Evolution or Progressive Creation aka Theistic Intervention. Both these have conceptual and credibility problems that are untenable such as each "creation day" becomes millions of years long and instead of God creating effeciently in 6 days and then ceasing from creating, it would mean that God is creating right now.
From a geological viewpoint, the worldwide strata configuration and other phenomena such as polystrate tree trunks are not explained by intermittent (very long time periods) of cataastrophes. the evidence in the rocks and fossils is evident of only a one time Flood.
As to your second question and assuming we agree on the definition of Darwin's evolution as I have listed...
Why does religion/God have to be so mutually exclusive toward evolution?
It boils down to the matter of the immortal soul. Right reason, Scripture, and CC teachings rule against matter giving birth to the soul. Gen. 1:27 states that God made man in His own image, male and female. Mankind therefore being composed of body and soul has a material (physical) and spiritual nature. So each and every human body being produced from pre-existing matter by human generation, is therefore subject to the laws of growth and decay. But according to Gen. 2:7, man has a soul, "The Lord formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
The human soul being a spiritual substance is therefore indestructible destined for immortality. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the soul may be defined as the ultimate principle by which we think, feel and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term "mind" usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while soul denotes the source of our vegative activities as well.
So, the likeness of man to God lies in the conscious principle which animates the body with understanding and free will.
So as far as evolution is concerned, the chief distinction which separates mankind from all other creatures is his immortal soul..the life principle...the animal soul is generated with the body and perishes when the body dies. It's impossible to imagine that a perfect spiritual entity, a soul made directly by God when He made man, could ever have come from a body of an animal, like an ape.
Why on earth would God fall back on an animal species in order to borrow a body for a human person? God made the whole man all at once, self contained, cpmplete and independent of all antecedents.