Robert Sungenis on Akin's Evolution Part Three

To this day no one on the evolution side has been able to reconcile evolution with non-Pelagianistic evolution -which is why most Catholic evolutionists have opted to disobey the Magisterium and believe in Pelagianism. Essentially then, the Catholic Magisterium has forbidden Catholics to believe in evolution and thus Mr. Aiken loses the debate. Unless, of course, Mr. Aiken can come up with a solution of which the Magisterium officially approves that definitively reconciles evolution with non-Pelagianism. Good luck Mr. Aiken.

Aiken: "A second strategy is to find anomalous pieces of evidence that point away from an old earth, and that's fine because every theory has anomalous data. No scientific theory accounts for all the data. The problem is that's also true of young earth creationism. It also doesn't account for all the data, and if we're going to judge a theory by how many pieces of data support it then the mainstream account is supported by way more pieces of data than young earth creationist."

We have already seen that what Mr. Aiken thinks is anomalous to creation science is actually not anomalous at all, such as the Vitellogenin protein. We wonder then how accurate Mr. Aiken's adding up of the anomalies really is. Although Mr. Aiken makes it appear that creationism has a mountain of data it can't explain, that accusation is categorically false. There is few, if any, scientific data that creation scientists have not explained. In truth, it is Mr. Aiken's evolutionists who have had a very difficult time explaining the data. Four of the more infamous examples we have already covered are Mount St. Helens (giving false positives for long ages), Dinosaurs with soft organic tissue that evolutionists refuse to carbon-14 date, the outright forgeries created to produce a missing link between apes and men, and last but not least is the phenomenon of irreducible complexity. There are literally dozens more that could be stated.

Aiken: "A third strategy is to propose speculative models that could account for the scientific data in another way. Like maybe the speed of light doesn't work at all like we think it does."

It is apparent that Mr. Aiken actually doesn't know how the speed of light works, since it is obvious he doesn't know that although Einstein's special relativity limited the speed of light to c, the general theory of relativity says that light can go any speed way beyond c. As we noted, general relativity is used by mainstream scientists to explain how fast the universe is now expanding since they claim it is expanding at four times the speed of light. And they believe it will accelerate even more as time goes on. Why can they do this? Because an expanding or moving universe is a non-inertial frame, and light or material objects can go at any speed in a non-inertial frame.

Aiken: "Problem here is that you can propose any kind of speculative model you desire to explain any data you want. If you wanted, you could speculate that all of the phenomena we see in the universe are actually produced by a race of invisible gnomes. But speculation is not proof and thus far the young earth community has not provided proof for their theories to compete with the mainstream ones. Young earth creationists would need to produce models that make testable predictions that then go on to be verified. Better than the predictions of mainstream models. But they haven't done that. Instead they use armchair speculation to try to explain away the data from mainstream science. In view of..."

Creationists have already produced testable models to explain the data, and the fact that Mr. Aiken is ignorant of them shows he has not done the proper research into creation science. Let's revisit one model we have already noted, namely, what model best fits the organic tissue found in dinosaur bones all over the world. The evolutionists' model insists the dinosaur bones are 65 million years old. The creationist model says the dinosaur bones at best will register no more than 10 to 50,000 years old. We can demonstrate who has the better model by reflecting on one incident in which the soft tissue of dinosaur bones was discovered by secular scientists. This is the case of Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who in 2010 found blood cells, blood vessels and collagen in a T-Rex dinosaur specimen. When the head of her university department, Jack Horner, the curator of paleontology and one of the world's foremost dinosaur authorities, saw her specimens he would not accept that they were organic tissue. As Ms. Schweitzer told the story in the December 2010 issue of Scientific American, "He took a look for himself. Brows furrowed, he gazed through the microscope for what seemed like hours without saying a word. Then looking up at me with a frown he asked, what do you think they are? I replied that I did not know but they were the right size, shape and color to be blood cells and they were also in the right place. He grunted and then said, so prove to me they aren't. It was an irresistible challenge and one that has helped frame how I ask my research questions even now."

Whereas Jack and Mary should have both been beside themselves with astonishment and ready to go wherever the empirical evidence led them, instead we have one of the clearest examples of the agenda-driven side of modern evolutionary science. That is, ignore any evidence that refutes the status quo and seek to turn all evidence into support of it. Hoping that Dr. Schweitzer would be more forthcoming, our team of scientists wrote to her and asked if we could do a carbon 14 test on her T-Rex bone. This would have readily shown how old the specimen was. All other times we had done carbon 14 dating shows dates in the range of 15,000 to 30,000 years but Mary, who was -shall we say- quite contrary, refused our offer and has continued to refuse it for the last 12 years. And here's another interesting fact. On her website Mary says she is a Catholic. Perhaps she was afraid of losing her job, as Dr. Richard von Sternberg lost his job when after he wrote an article in 2007 for the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington that was favorable to intelligent design. He was subsequently fired by the Smithsonian Institution because his employer said his article "does not meet the scientific standards of the proceedings." Interestingly enough, Dr. von Sternberg is also a Catholic.

Let's also look at fossil evidence. The mainstream secular authority for this is G. Brent Dalrymple. In his seminal paper on radiometry, Dalrymple reveals precisely who his targets are, that is, those who believe the bible's short chronology of the earth. This is his opening paragraph of his 76-page paper: "Scientific creationism as represented by Morris, Kofahl and Segraves and others is a model for the creation and history of the universe based on a literal interpretation of parts of the book of Genesis. These authors claim that scientific creationism is a legitimate scientific theory that explains extant scientific observations about the history of the universe, the earth and living things as well as if not better than the current theories and concepts of chemistry, physics, biology, geology and astronomy." -- taken from the article Radiometric Dating Geologic Time and the Age of the Earth, a Reply to Scientific Creationism 1982.

We can see at the outset that like Mr. Aiken, Dalrymple is not going to give any credibility to research done by creationists. His consistent practice of putting the word scientific in quotes in his paper when he is addressing creationists Morris, Kofahl, Segraves and Slusher shows he is biased. Only his scientific interpretation is worthy of our time. Let's see how this bias develops. On page one-a, Dalrymple shows a chart of what he believes represents the long ages of the earth. See the displayed chart. In the note at the bottom of the table, Dalrymple says, "Precambrian. No worldwide divisions of the Precambrian have been devised, although various local classifications exist. By definition the Precambrian embraces the time between the origin of the earth and the beginning of the Cambrian period." Dalrymple's statement is understood by the fact that although his chart shows "4550 million years" (which is four and a half billion years) as the beginning of the earth, he skips over the 4030 million years prior to the Cambrian period that started 570 million years ago. In other words, Dalrymple skips over 89% of earth's history. Why is he forced to do so? Because these years do not show any fossils.

The fossils from his own recording of history do not appear until the Cambrian period and don't appear appreciably after the Cambrian period. This is why, in scientific parlance, the rapid appearance of fossils is called "the Cambrian Explosion", since almost all of the fossils appear in this single time frame. But doesn't that seem odd? If evolution continued at the same rate it first appeared, as required by the belief in uniformitarianism that Dalrymple holds to, then why do almost all of the fossils appear in one tiny part, only 11% of the multi-billion year evolutionary process? The obvious answer is that something cataclysmic must have happened on earth during the so-called Cambrian Explosion, sending millions of animals all over the earth to a quick death and an even quicker burial -and under tremendous pressure, otherwise the fossil would not make an impression in the mud or soil. In fact, such a cataclysm would be the only possible way to explain such a sudden worldwide change in the fossil record. But Dalrymple and his cohorts will have none of that bible stuff muddying their waters. That is, don't bother telling them that the global flood described in Genesis 6 to 9 offers the needed cataclysm to make these fossils in one short time period.

In fact, scientific experiments with flumes and sediment in moving water that have been done by Guy Berto, Stephen Austin and many others show that the geological column, which evolutionists claim was made over millions of years as each strata was deposited horizontally, can actually be made in a matter of weeks by a worldwide flood that forces sediment deposits to be made both vertically and horizontally over a short period of time. Numerous peer-reviewed papers have been written on this phenomenon but Dalrymple and his colleagues dismiss it out of hand because it doesn't support evolution and long ages. Even though his own Cambrian explosion screams for the need of such a cataclysmic event as the cause for limited fossil formation, the problem for Dalrymple is that if he admits to such a cataclysm then his theory of uniformitarianism (which is necessary for both his radiometric and sedimentology measurements) must be tossed into the proverbial trash can, and then all the evidence he has been depending upon for evolution and long ages vanishes. As you can see, this is an all-or-nothing game,

Aiken: "and to follow the catechism when it concludes that mainstream scientific studies have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms and the appearance of man. Thank you."

In reality, Mr. Aiken accuses creationists of doing exactly what he and his evolutionist cohorts are doing, a common tactic that takes the focus off of their own problems and tries to put it on their opponents. Additionally, Mr. Aiken's consistent twisting of what the Magisterium has said is just another instance of his inability to look at the evidence fairly.

Now there is just one more thing to cover. We are going to look at a recent interview Mr. Aiken had with host Matt Fradd concerning Pelagianism. Since Mr. Fradd became aware that Pius XII's 1950 condemnation of Pelagianism and Humani Generis disallowed Catholics from believing in evolution, Mr. Aiken is desperate to show that it might be possible to get around this doctrinal obstacle. Let's see how Mr. Aiken fares.

Fradd: "I want to ask you maybe just in under a minute how might somebody explain um Pelagianism Adam and Eve and original sin. How might they combine them together, if they were trying to explain that?"

Aiken: "Two ways that have been tried. One way is to say, okay there was an original couple um and so you have the first what you could call theologically modern humans. They have a human form and they've got the full modern human soul that God has created. Each one of them is given a modern human soul. Now all life forms have souls, that's what keeps them alive, you know. Aquinas talks about how even plants have souls. They have vegetative souls. Animals have sensitive souls. Humans have rational souls. Well, so there were apparently from the archaeological record near-humans. In fact um one of the things that paleontologists are happy to acknowledge, most of them, is that around 100 thousand years ago there were what are called anatomically modern humans. You look at their bones, you look at their DNA, it looks like ours..."

Mr. Aiken's attempted explanation of how Pelagianism can fit into the Catholic doctrine that prohibits belief in Pelagianism immediately goes into the logical fallacy of "petito principi", or what is commonly called "circular reasoning" or "begging the question", or using as proof the very thing one is trying to prove. In other words, Mr. Aiken is using evolution to prove evolution. That is, he is using evolution's belief that there were pre-human beings who looked almost exactly like humans in order to claim that these pre-humans developed into theological humans from mere anatomically near-humans.

Despite Mr. Aiken's logical fallacy, we will examine what else he has to say since this issue is very important. It's importance lies in the fact that unless Mr. Aiken or someone else can come up with an answer as to how Pelagianism can fit into Catholic doctrine and then have it approved by the Magisterium, then no Catholic has the right to believe or teach evolution. It is as simple as that.

Aiken: "...or at least their bones um but they don't display the behaviors that uh modern humans do."

Mr. Aiken's scenario is invariably what comes next after the theorizer must explain how to support his hypothesis. In this case, Mr. Aiken focuses on the behavior of so-called pre-humans and says that it was not the same as the average human. He does this so that he can claim the non-human behavior of these pre-humans then evolved over thousands of years into normal humans with normal human behavior. Of course, this is little more than pure speculation. We saw earlier that one typical example of such a proposal by evolutionists was given the name Neanderthal Man -from the place in Germany that his bones were found. From those bones Neanderthal Man was deemed to be the missing link between pre-humans and humans, mainly because his brain capacity was said to be a little smaller than a chimpanzee. But later evidence showed Neanderthal Man had a brain capacity larger than modern man. It was also discovered through artifacts that Neanderthal Man believed in the supernatural, that he buried his dead in ceremonies, and he intermarried with others of his own kind.

Much to the chagrin of his discoverers, it was also revealed that Neanderthal Man walked upright the same as humans today. If one researches Neanderthal Man on Wikipedia (which makes no equivocation that it supports evolution) it gives us details of so many human characteristics of Neanderthal Man that one wonders how Wikipedia can maintain a distinction between them and humans. Wikipedia states: "Neanderthal technology was quite sophisticated. It includes the Mousterian stone-tool industry[28][29] and the ability to create fire[30][31] and build cave hearths,[32][33] make the adhesive birch bark tar,[34] craft at least simple clothes similar to blankets and ponchos,[35] weave,[36] go seafaring through the Mediterranean,[37][38] and make use of medicinal plants,[39][40][41] as well as treat severe injuries,[42] store food,[43] and use various cooking techniques such as roasting, boiling,[44] and smoking.[45] Neanderthals made use of a wide array of food, mainly hoofed mammals,[46] but also other megafauna,[26][47] plants,[48][49][50] small mammals, birds, and aquatic and marine resources.[51] Although they were probably apex predators, they still competed with cave bears, cave lions, cave hyaenas, and other large predators.[52] A number of examples of symbolic thought and Palaeolithic art have been inconclusively[53] attributed to Neanderthals, namely possible ornaments made from bird claws and feathers[54][55] or shells,[56] collections of unusual objects including crystals and fossils,[57] engravings,[58] music production indicated by the Divje Babe flute,[59] and Spanish cave paintings contentiously[60] dated to before 65,000 years ago.[61][62] Some claims of religious beliefs have been made.[63] Neanderthals were likely capable of speech, possibly articulate, although the complexity of their language is not known."

As we can see there is no behavior here that is not human. In fact, Neanderthal Man is as human as some modern tribes in Africa, or in the jungles of the Amazon rain forest, or in the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, or the deep recesses of China or India where they still worship cows, or the American Indians that covered all of North America before the days of Columbus. Perhaps Mr. Aiken never read National Geographic when he was a kid.

Aiken: "Then, say around 50,000 years ago, they start acting like us. Out of the blue, you get all these new cultural innovations..."

From Mr. Aiken's own words, the so-called anatomical pre-humans acquire the behavior of humans because "around 50,000 years ago, they start acting like us. Out of the blue, you get all these new cultural innovations." So we are supposed to believe that this grunting knuckle-dragging ape, without explanation and totally out of the blue, suddenly took on human behavior. We are supposed to believe that it took evolution millions of years to produce something even close to humans, but we are then supposed to believe that out of the blue he suddenly acted like a human. All we can glean from this explanation is when evolutionists want things to go slow they go slow, when they want them to go fast they go fast. Whatever works to patch up the theory.

Aiken: "...innovations and so those are called behaviorally modern humans but because biologically the same you could have a behaviorally modern human breed with an anatomically modern human..."

How is it that the new-and-improved behaviorally-modified pre-human, who as we were told suddenly took on human behavior that dramatically distinguished him from the mere anatomical pre-human, would want to copulate and live with a subspecies of pre-human that was so different from him? Didn't his behavioral modification show him that he should be mating with his own kind? The whole thing gets rather silly at this point, but since Mr. Aiken has to find a solution to the dilemma Pius the Twelfth gave him, he's not the slightest embarrassed by giving us these ridiculous scenarios. Hang on it gets worse.

Aiken: "So one way of accounting for how original sin might work is you could say, okay God took a couple of behaviorally modern humans and gave their children uh full human souls of the modern rational type and so they..."

I hate to point this out but it looks like Matt Fradd is either in total disbelief or he is about to fall asleep listening to Mr. Aiken's explanation. No wonder! Mr. Aiken just told us that God decided to put a human soul into the child who was born from the union of a male and female pre-human couple. Let that sink in for a minute. Yes, this sounds a lot like the sequel to the movie Planet of the Apes, and a sequel that might be on the next episode of Jimmy Aiken's Mysterious World. But Mr. Aiken is so desperate to save evolution from its obvious demise that he will dream up just about anything that sounds the least plausible. Yet this is the same man who says that scripture's description of various events such as creation in six days, or Eve being formed from the rib of Adam, or a talking snake in the Garden, are simply too fanciful to believe and therefore must be symbolic. Go figure.

Aiken: "...they became behaviorally modern at that moment and that started what paleontologically is called the great leap forward where you have this sudden evolution in human culture and they were the first true theological humans, but there were only two, but then..."

So now we have a twist to the story. Even though the pre-human couple was not yet human they became quote "theological humans" but apparently they still weren't human because only their child is infused with a human soul. So we have theologically astute pre-humans running the show. Perhaps Mr. Aiken believes that since God gave the pre-human couple's child a soul then this pre-human couple will necessarily have to raise their human child to love, know and serve God so it is better if we give them the label of "theological humans". How it is that this pre-human couple came to know God, or even knew to teach their human child about God, Mr. Aiken does not say.

Conversely, if this pre-human couple who never knew God and still don't know God due to their pre-human soulless condition, then how can they be expected to teach their human child how to know God? Most importantly for all the pre-human-to-human machinations that Mr. Aiken proposes, he still doesn't tell us where original sin comes into the picture (which was the very reason Mr. Fradd started this conversation).

Aiken: "But then because they were behaviorally modern and they had a more advanced culture, their their bloodlines came to dominate and so very quickly by today all humans are descendants of that original couple even though they they married with behaviorally modern humans who didn't have a fully human rational soul. They would have something close to it, but not the same thing..."

So instead of telling us how original sin came into the picture, Mr. Aiken tells us that this pre-human couple, assuming after they had their first child produced other children, and it is assumed that God infused a soul into each child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and so on and thus produced the rest of the human race all from one pre-human couple.

At the end, besides wondering whether Mr. Aiken is pulling a joke on us, we still don't have a single explanation of how original sin entered the human race. Pius the 12th's teaching in Humani Generis and all other Catholic doctrine on this topic says that original sin came from one man who was infused with a human soul the moment he was created. Obviously then, original sin could not have come from a pre-human couple that God is said to choose from the behavior modified pre-humans since they don't have human souls.

Aiken: "So that's one okay possibility that's been proposed. The other is that uh Adam and Eve so Adam means man or mankind humankind uh to use the highfalutin politically correct term and but it does in Hebrew it means more than just a male I mean it means both genders okay um the um and Eve is derived from the word for life because she's the mother of all the living so you have these care these figures named mankind and life..."

No, they are not mankind and life. Mankind and life are merely what their names mean as common nouns when they are not being used as proper nouns. This is easily demonstrated if we consult scripture. No writer of scripture ever refers to our first parents as mankind and life. Rather they are always referred to in their proper names Adam and Eve. For example Genesis 4 verse 1 says "Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and bore Cain, saying I have gotten a man with the help of the lord" or Saint Paul says in First Timothy 2 verses 13 and 14 "For Adam was formed first then Eve. And Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor" or as saint Paul says in Romans 5 verse 14 "Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam."

Aiken: "...and you have them in a text that otherwise is pretty easy to show contains some symbolism in these early chapters of Genesis, so you could say well..."

Why didn't Mr. Aiken give us some examples of symbolism if as he says "it is pretty easy to show that it contains some symbolism"? That's because it is not easy to show it contains symbolism. If one part of the story is made to be non-literal it gravely affects the rest of the narrative. Since the narrative of Genesis 2-3 is a continual cause and effect sequence of events, any event that is removed or made into a symbol without a literal meaning will destroy the whole narrative. If, for example, one were to say that the talking serpent is only symbolic and not literal then that removes from the story how Eve was deceived and it also destroys the whole dialogue between God and the serpent which specifies God's judgment on the serpent and from which God makes the prophecy in Genesis 3 verse 15 about the coming of Christ. Moreover without Eve being deceived by the serpent then she cannot tempt Adam to eat the fruit and thus Adam does not sin. As we can see, everything ties together and nothing can be removed or made non-literal.

If, however, one wants to say that various parts of the narrative of Adam and Eve have, in addition to the literal meaning, an allegorical or symbolic meaning he can do so, but no allegory or symbolism can dismiss any part of the literal narrative about Adam and Eve. Moreover, no allegory or symbolism can be turned into doctrine. Allegory and symbolism can only explicate or demonstrate an already-made doctrine that was interpreted from the literal reading of the text, as Saint Paul, for example, did with Sarah and Hagar in Galatians chapter four.

Aiken: "Maybe Adam and Eve are a symbol for the early human community, which then as a whole turned its back on God and that's what original sin was - it was a collective turning away from God by the early human community even though he offered them um original innocence and and and so forth with him um..."

But it wasn't! Scripture, tradition and the Magisterium say that original sin came from one man, the same as Pius XII said in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis.

The whole reason Matt Fradd brought up this topic was to find out if Mr. Aiken had found a solution to explain how evolution could allow only one ape-to-man transition that would be required by Catholic doctrine. Obviously, Mr. Aiken cannot reconcile the two disparate beliefs, which is why he has to propose that it wasn't one man but a large group of men who rebelled against God.

Aiken: "So you could have just one couple that turns away from God but that we're all then descended from, or it could be the early human community as a whole turned away from God and we're all descended from them. Those are two ways that have been proposed to try to square and remember I'm not advocating any of these ideas I'm just saying these are what people have been talking about um that uh that those are two ways of trying to square original sin with the idea of Pelagianism..."

Neither of which work to settle the problem. So if Mr. Aiken is not advocating any of these two ideas, that means he has no answer to the problem of Pelagianism since he offered no other solution to the problem. Since that is the case, Mr. Aiken should not be holding to evolution nor teach it as vociferously as he has been. Not only must Mr. Aiken come up with a solution to the problem of Pelagianism, he must have it approved by the Magisterium before he can safely resume teaching evolution as a possible explanation for origins. As for now, Mr. Aiken should always preface his remarks with the fact that Catholic doctrine prohibits any Catholic from embracing the theory of evolution since evolution's belief in Pelagianism does not allow for the Catholic doctrine of original sin from one human person. If he doesn't, then he is deceiving his audience into thinking that they can believe in evolution without any prohibitions from the Catholic Church.