Thank you!

Hi Dana Overall, thank you for your comment. We are not sure which side of the fence your father is on, but suggesting might help!

Hi Joseph, we are glad we could help and best of luck in the seminary!

Yeah try studying the bible.

Thank you so much for watching!

We are glad we could help. If you have not done so, please be sure to subscribe to our channel in order to be notified when new content becomes available!

Will do!

If creation is not true then Adam isn’t real and there’s no sin. The flood might also not be true. Maybe god didn’t become man born of a virgin. Die for our sin and rise from the dead? Millions of years of death and disease before man was good? You believe or you don’t. Don’t change God’s word to fit man’s word. Don’t teach this to kids and make liars out of them. The science supports the Bible. The atheists don’t own truth. Remember this.

@@stuartdodson6630 your statements rely heavily on the assumption that god is real and the bible is true, so it can't be taken as a correct assessment of what they said

You're very welcome!

We are glad we could help!

We are glad you enjoyed it.

Hi Joseph, we hope you will check out our other episodes!

@@CatholicCentralVideos Already have, and using several for my Freshman Theology class. Discovering more of them every time I look. Thanks for this great work! +++

P.S. The 8-bit Adam and Eve part is hilarious!

So glad to hear it!

Manuel Bardeux there’s so much amazing stuff in nature!

But god isn’t necessary for any of that.

Hi Pete Conrad, we respectfully disagree with your comment. We feel that God is necessary for all of it. If you have an issue with anything that the episode says, we welcome a cordial and pleasant debate. But if you prefer to just troll this site, perhaps your energies would be better spent elsewhere.

@@CatholicCentralVideos I agree that there needed to be a God to set everything off. But I doubt the intervention was to the degree as said in the bible. the bible is not accurate, the earth not being the center of the universe is proof of that. rather it is a basic guideline to potentially what a supreme being would want or wants. but large portions could be quickly overuled with mere speculation.

@@CatholicCentralVideos I like how u read ur comments and are respectful to others with a different opinion. I am an atheist and do not believe that there is a god due to a lack of evidence and scientific knowledge of the earth today, but I am willing to listenand learn more about this and if i find a good answer to this questio, i am not afraidto admiti was wrong. I would love to have a friendly debate about this subject and look forward to your response 😁

Thank you!

@Liberates God bless you, you made our day!

Appreciate it!

You're welcome!

Well yes, I 100% agree God did create everything in love, goodness and beauty, made us in His image. Evolution is the exact opposite of that. It puts Death before sin, it tells you Noah was not real nor the flood which is the largest and most detailed event in all of scripture. It also tells us that mankind did not exist from the Begining, thus we are not made in Gods image. So why be caught up in if it was literal or non literal? Well, Jesus died for a myth (Adam) then. Therefore non of it is true if Genesis is not true. Simple. Clearly this was not thought through when allowing the pagan theory of evolution into the church. Yes, it is pagan = "Fragments of Anaximander (610-546 BC) taught that ‘humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish. Today people believe life arose in the ocean and fish became man." The entire thing was invented, our modern day idea of evolution comes from Charles Lyell whos goal was to (in his words: rid the sciences of Moses). A clear agenda, not science nor persuite of truth. He said, If pushed as far as it can go, we can prove that men may have come from the orangutan." Later Darwin took this idea and ran with it. All of it was to push Christianity out ! Think about that.

Good for you!

Hi GameLeader, we can imagine that there must be some very interesting conversations at your dinner table. Hopefully, you and your family can come to a happy medium and we are glad that we can help!

Check out Pints with Aquinas and The Council of Trent podcasts on KZfaq. They both have great catholic content!

You are welcome!

You are so welcome!

Yes, God’s word is imperfect and we must substitute it for unsubstantiated ideas despite evidence to the contrary.

We asked our audio people and they are not sure to what you mean. Granted this is an early episode, but the balance in the audio is fine and there seems to be no problems with levels. That being said, we would like to congratulate you on your choice of career and welcome your return to your faith!

Mike Elsner thanks! Glad you think so!

Hi Butter Frog, thanks for you comments. We are glad you enjoyed this episode.

Hi Pookart, you're welcome and we hope your faith journey continues!

It's hard bro. Pray for God's help and he will help you understand.

Hi Caden, The curse of Genesis 3 is that Adam and Eve, not the animals, should die for their disobedience. In Part 1 of the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas affirms that from the beginning it was in the God-created nature of animals to die, to kill and be killed. In numerous places in scripture the behavior of predatory animals is described as part of God’s original plan (38:39, Job 39:29-30, Ps 104:21). Humans are a special order of being, with a conscience and an immortal soul, the only species into whom God breathed his Spirit (Genesis 2:7). Our death, then, is also of a special order. It’s not just a physical death like that of animals, but a spiritual death of eternal consequence called sin that begins long before we die. Regardless, the death of dinosaurs and thousands of other species who lived before the Fall is fully consistent with both the fossil record and Christian doctrine.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Okay thanks!

Because that is not literally true. Nor is creation at all. Animals died many times long before any “sin” Some creationist like to say that all life existed at the same time and died during Noah’s flood, however that has been proven wrong, not only did animals die millions of years ago, but Noah’s flood didn’t literally happen.

So your saying animals don’t have a Spiritual death and no consciousness , this just doesn’t make sense because they have the capability of experiencing emotion and suffering when us humans are apart of the animal kingdom the only difference being a higher level of intelligence. Honestly what evidence do you have of god in the first place why is your religion right over all the others?

No, not really.

...and we thank you for your comment.

Thank you, Steven!

We love that you love us! 😀

Buehler? Beuhler?

Hi Drike6923, the Hebrew word YOM does not necessarily mean “day.” This claim comes from both language and Biblical scholars as well as Judaism itself. The word YOM signifies a passage of time, which indeed can be a day or - as we explain in the episode - it can also mean an epoch, as well as other periods of time. We would also have to ask: how could there be a 24-hour day before the sun and earth were created? As pointed out elsewhere on this message board, the most authoritative linguistic source for biblical language over the last century and a half is Strong’s Concordance of The Bible, the latest edition of which is online and available on other links like biblehub.com and biblestudytools.com. Below is part of Strong’s entry for YOM, but we urge you to look it up for yourself and see how Hebrew words like YOM can have a range of meanings depending on their grammatical and literary context. Significantly, there’s no Hebrew word corresponding to "24" or to the word “hour” in the original language. To sum up, the word Yom in its 1200 or so appearances in the bible is translated over a dozen ways, some of which are suggested in the following excerpt from Strong: “From an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space or epoch defined by an associated term), and depending on context: age, always, continually, daily, end, evening, forever, life, perpetually, presently, season, since, then, time. Some of the Hebrew forms in which it appears are: בְּי֔וֹם בְּי֖וֹם בְּי֗וֹם בְּי֛וֹם בְּי֞וֹם בְּי֣וֹם בְּי֤וֹם בְּי֥וֹם בְּי֧וֹם בְּי֨וֹם בְּי֪וֹם בְּי֬וֹם בְּיָמִ֣ים בְּיָמֶ֙יךָ֙ בְּיָמָ֑יו בְּיָמָ֔יו בְּיָמָ֛יו בְּיָמָ֞יו בְּיָמָ֡יו בְּיָמָ֣יו בְּיָמָ֥יו בְּיָמָֽי׃ בְּיָמָֽיו׃ בְּיָמָיו֙ בְּיוֹם֙ בְּיוֹם֩ בְּיוֹם־ בְּיוֹמ֑וֹ בְּיוֹמ֔וֹ בְּיוֹמ֖וֹ בְּיוֹמ֗וֹ בְּיוֹמֽוֹ׃ בְּיוֹמוֹ֩ בְיָמָֽי׃ בְיָמָיו֙ בְיוֹם־ בִּ֣ימֵי בִּֽימֵיכֶ֔ם בִּימֵ֖י בִּימֵ֛י בִּימֵ֞י בִּימֵ֣י בִּימֵ֣י ׀ בִּימֵ֤י בִּימֵ֥י בִּימֵ֨י בִּימֵי֙ בִֽ֝ימֵיהֶ֗ם בִֽימֵיכֶ֞ם בִימֵ֥י בַּ֭יּוֹם בַּיָּמִ֑ים בַּיָּמִ֖ים בַּיָּמִ֣ים בַּיָּמִ֤ים בַּיָּמִ֥ים בַּיָּמִ֨ים בַּיָּמִֽים׃ בַּיּ֑וֹם בַּיּ֕וֹם בַּיּ֖וֹם בַּיּ֗וֹם בַּיּ֣וֹם בַּיּ֤וֹם בַּיּ֥וֹם בַּיּ֧וֹם בַּיּ֨וֹם בַּיּוֹם֙ בַּיּוֹם֩ בַּיּוֹם֮ בַּיּוֹם־ בַיָּמִ֔ים בַיָּמִ֨ים בַיּ֔וֹם בַיּ֖וֹם בַיּ֛וֹם בַיּ֣וֹם בַיּ֥וֹם בַיּ֨וֹם בַיּוֹם֩ בַיּוֹם־ ביום ביום־ ביומו ביומו׃ בימי בימי׃ בימיהם בימיו בימיו׃ בימיך בימיכם בימים בימים׃ דָּוִיד֙ דויד”

Thanks for the assist Oof man 98!

How can you say that God made things when the only thing that suggests that is the Bible, which is supposedly “the word of god” yet has been falsified by science. If god made faith and science, they would not conflict.

👏🏼

What was the man who had Galileo imprisoned for daring to prove that Earth is not the center of the universe? He was the Catholic Pope.

Hi Laszlow, We cannot look back 500 years and expect to see a mirror of our own understanding of things. Who were the people in the 1800s that thought Africans were an inferior species and therefore fit to hold in slavery? Scientists! The Catholic Church has formally apologized for the Galileo affair, just as we have formally apologized for the involvement we had in slavery. Times change; understanding changes. As a footnote, Galileo wasn’t put under house arrest for his theories but because he was making theological pronouncements (he got out of his lane, as it were). There’s speculation that the Church may have even been funding his research. Let us hope those in the future looking back at us are more charitable than we are sometimes to our forebears.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Conservatives still think that Africans are an inferior race and that Christianity is the only source of morality, that its self-appointed spokesmen are always right and may not be questioned. Fundamentalist Evangelicals are waging a war on science because they want to disable your ability to reason so they can dictate what reality is to you. Science corrects itself easily in the light of new evidence, but religion has a much harder time doing so. That's why science has earned a reputation for credibility that religion can only envy. You are trying to discredit science by claiming that it has been wrong in the past, but Catholic authorities have been more wrong, more irrational and more stubborn throughout church history.

The Big Bang theory was first published by a secular Jew and two atheists, but their religious beliefs or lack thereof had nothing to do with it. They were inspired by a Jesuit priest who published a paper in which he proposed that an expanding universe might be traced back in time to a "Primordial Atom"-- but his religion had nothing to do with his idea either, and he said so in susequent letters, so stop trying to give your religion credit for the "Big Bang theory" (a name which was never used by any of the men I just mentioned).

Can't blame you there!

Thank you for your thoughtful concerns. The key thing to remember about the Bible is that it did not appear all at once as a single document dropped from above. Beginning in the early Iron Age, it was written over the span of a thousand years in varying literary and pastoral styles by countless writers, each bound by the cultural limitations of their time. We cannot expect that any of these writers, though inspired by the Holy Spirit, could have known or comprehended that the nearest star to earth was 25 trillion miles away, or that the human genome would someday reveal the complexity of our bio-chemical inheritance, or that the millions of species inhabiting the earth at the time of the Flood would have required an Ark of inconceivable proportions. The Bible is God’s Word and all of God’s teachings are true, but they are sacred teachings, not scientific ones. Please see our episode, “The Bible,” where we discuss how biblical truth and scientific truth are separate by no means contradictory, and how scripture is a collection of genres - from poetry, to drama, to parable, to history, to biography - that reveal God’s Word in human words, in words understood by the people of their particular time and place. You’re right to point out that the New Testament writers refer to the Flood, but they do so, like all biblical witnesses, within their understanding of natural history and tradition. What’s important about the Flood - for them and for us - are its eschatological implications with regard to human sinfulness. This truth remains binding and undiminished whether or not the Flood occurred exactly as described in scripture. Likewise, the historicity of Genesis is distinct from the sacred truth it embodies, that of a passionately loving God creating human beings in His image and likeness. For the record, the magisterium of the Church leaves the historical value of these events in Genesis an open question, unlike other Christian denominations for whom biblical literalness is a matter of orthodoxy. We share your concern about the “havoc” these issues can create in our youngsters, especially with different scientific camps vying for primacy. But it seems to us that the potential for havoc is increased by trying to turn the Bible into something it is not, and for our young people to come to believe that if a single “fact” in the Bible is not true then none of it is true.

Your priest is wrong. Not “just a story”

Correct!

Doesn't matter

Hi Leftgrrl, Several of our episodes address what Catholicism has done over the past two millennia to investigate “where this all came from.” These episodes include “Faith and Reason,” “Proofs of God,” “Who Is God?” and “Bible Basics.” You might also check for other related topics on our Episode Guide which is linked to both our KZfaq channel and our website, catholiccentral.com. You may find from watching these episodes that the intellectual, academic, creative and spiritual energy that the Catholic Church has devoted to the question of our ultimate origin and our ultimate destination over the centuries is nearly incalculable in the magnitude of its range and depth, and certainly goes well beyond a stab in the dark like "because something universe-causing just is." As for “the particular god who was popular where I grew up” being the sole criterion for one’s faith, a critical stage in the development of any religious faith requires a stepping back and a putting aside of the innocence of childhood religion. Only by confronting the beliefs and practices of the religion as an adult, as if for the first time, in the bright light of accumulated personal experience, the sweep of religious history and the world as it is, can we go beyond a faith bounded by the simple categories of a child. St Paul puts it well in 1 Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, thought as a child, reasoned as a child, but when I became an adult, I put aside childish things.” It's also a fact that many of the most fervid Catholics have entered the Church as adults from no religious tradition at all. Thanks for watching, and we offer our prayers and good wishes for your journey forward.

We are not trying to be “politically correct”. We are presenting the established Catholic viewpoint on the intersection of what the Bible says about creation and scientific evidence we’ve accumulated so far. The problem with both sides of the continuing argument of Creation vs. Evolution is that people look at the Bible as if it is a science textbook when it is anything but (see our episode on “The Bible”), while many of our evangelical brothers and sisters reject the findings of science altogether. In Genesis, the Bible explains creation within the mindset of the people of that time. God's "let there be light" is an intelligible expression of the "Big Bang" with its explosion of concentrated matter, space and time occurring 13 billion years earlier, triggering the exponential expansion of concentrated matter, energy, space, giving rise to atomic elements like helium and hydrogen that formed galaxies, stars and other cosmic structures, leading finally to earth and earthly life and human beings. Would this have made any sense at all to a people at the cusp of the iron age? At the same time, however, the Genesis account uncannily mirrors the evolutionary sequence affirmed by science: a “firmament” (universe) followed by the planets and stars, earth with its seas and dry land, the growth of vegetation on land as the oceans breed “swimming creatures,” ultimately followed by creatures of land and sky, and finally humankind. But meantime we urge you to look to more than just one opinion on any issue, including this one. While many people hold Dr. Meyer in high esteem, there are other distinguished scientists of faith who contest his views but also support the theory of evolution such as Francis Collins, the former director of the National Genome Research Institute. You might want to check his book The Language of God. And there is a long list of Christian writers and thinkers across a wide spectrum from Billy Graham to CS Lewis to Pope Benedict XVI who see no contradiction at all between the theory of evolution and our Creator God who made the heavens and the earth and all that is in it.

Hi Andrew, Yes, the Church over time has responded as changes in our understanding of the universe and the human person reveal more of God's abiding Truth. Early in its history, as you point out, the Church believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old.... but so did everybody else! This changed as science unraveled more and more of Creation's mysteries. The Church acknowledged Darwin's work only 30 years after the publication of "The Origin of Species." As a matter of fact, the Church has helped to move this argument forward. As Libby informs us, it was a Catholic priest who helped to lay the groundwork for the Big Bang Theory. But to clarify regarding "dogmatism," at no time in its history has the Church proclaimed an official dogma having to do with the age of the earth or the universe. Check our episode "The History of The Church" and our Episode Guide on the website for related topics. Thanks for your contribution.

Glad to hear that!

Hi David, we appreciate your candor and thank you for the kind words.

As the episode states, Catholics don't see Genesis as a scientific text.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Well according to LIBBY option number 3 where you can believe in God as the creator and evolution as in beings evolving to a higher purpose seems to be the best option for a catholic... Lol not to mention that the big bang theory was invented by a catholic priest? So anyway, how do you reconcile evolution and literal descriptive scriptures of genesis explaining how God intelligently created everything?

@Follower of Christ Our episode is dedicated to that question: The spiritual truth of Genesis and the scientific truth of Evolution are, literally, the work of the same Divine Intelligence.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Evolution is a lie created by Darwin. The Bible on the other hand is the true word of God.There's no question to be dedicated upon!

@@davidw.4524 Evolution is Truth and Fact proven by archeologists and science, prove to me it’s a lie without using the Bible, tell me from your perspective on that. 🧐

Exactly! This affirms our main point about Genesis, how its figurative language and science's literal language do nor contradict each other. The Big Bang Theory and "Let there be light" is another striking example. Thanks much and God bless!

@@CatholicCentralVideos but did you not cite a genesis story as literal in a reply to another comment? You did, you are picking a choosing. You can’t just say that a non literal genesis verse such as “let there be light” means that it was not literally true, but it’s kinda like the Big Bang so god is real and did it. Wtf.

Dear Drike6923, Kent Hovind’s theories have been roundly dismissed by both creationists and evolutionists. He has been discredited by both sides several times over the years and most of what he has theorized is loose conjecture, at best. Our episode sets forth our position in full, and this message-board is not an appropriate forum for engaging in deadlocked arguments. We support your God-given right to believe Hovind's views and, in the spirit of Christian fellowship, trust that you will support our right to reject them.

@@CatholicCentralVideos why did God tell us in Genesis how He created the heavens and the earth if it was all a lie? You can believe what you want, but evolution is the single biggest force destroying the faith.

Also Kent Hovind has done hundreds of debates so I find it amazing you can say he's been thoroughly discredited because he really puts himself out there and I've never seen him lose a debate.

Drike6923, you should maybe actually watch the episode. Nowhere in it do we deny that God created the universe and all it contains. You are entitled to your opinions, but please do not comment on an episode you obviously have not watched. Also, Kent Hovind may have done "hundreds of debates" but that does not mean his teaching is correct. He has been denounced by individuals and societies on both sides of the argument, Creationists and Evolutionists.

I did watch the episode and I'm not exaggerating when I say I felt sick watching it. I believe true Catholics should courageously serve God and trust in His divine word instead of trying to make compromises with godless degenerates. You are trying to serve two masters. You may not directly deny that God is responsible for our universe, but you do deny the way God told us He created the universe and thereby you weaken the faith of other Catholics. Simply saying that Genesis was a metaphor is not even close to an adequate explanation. First of all, there isn’t adequate evidence that the Genesis story was just a big metaphor. Secondly, if it is a metaphor, you would need to explain what the metaphors mean in order to have a convincing argument. In 2 Peter 3:3-6, Peter writes that in the final days, there will be “deceitful scoffers” who deny the historical authenticity of Genesis (creation and the flood) through willful ignorance. In Romans 5:12, Paul writes that man brought sin and death into the world. Evolution claims that death brought man into the world. The two positions are diametrically opposed. Do you believe that we brought death into the world as God teaches, or that death brought us into the world as evolution teaches? Pope Pius XII writes this in Humanis Generis, an infallible papal encyclical: If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principal trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all this, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribed to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism. Such fictitious tenets of evolution which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences.

DC, Please see our episode called "The Bible" where we explain how its inspired writers used the existing literary forms available to them to express the Word of God. “History” as a genre that exists today bears little resemblance to history written in the Iron Age, where hearsay, word-of-mouth and fact were served up with generous helpings of myth and poetry. What’s hard for us moderns to understand is that nonetheless this rich and beautiful brew was and is an expression of TRUTH, but expressed in figurative rather literal language - the truth of our human sinfulness deserving of God’s eschatological judgement, the truth of a rainbow that’s a sign of God’s grace, the truth of a promise that anticipates Christ as the New Covenant come to save us from ourselves.

@@CatholicCentralVideos so you won’t answer my questions ?

DC, we did all we could to figure out what your question was implying. We could only assume that you were attempting to challenge the Bible’s authority by citing some of its “non-scientific” details, such as the claim in Genesis 30:39 that cattle who mated in front of tree-branches produced stripes on its young. If so, our reply to your comment addresses this issue directly, and we are strongly inclined to leave it at that. Perhaps if you had watched our episode on “The Bible” before replying a second time, as we recommended, you would better understand the line you tagged at 2:51 in your comment, where Libby says that the Bible and science don't conflict. This doesn't mean, as Libby points out at 4:30, that the Bible is a science textbook with the final word on everything from whales to moonlight. To repeat, Genesis is a 3,000-year-old sacred text about our relationship with our Creator God, using words and images that point to truth in figurative rather than literal language. Figurative language captures the general truth of something: “worldwide flood” figuratively captures the truth of the catastrophic event that affected the world of the writers, the world they assumed was all there was. Similarly, “Let there be light!” is the figurative equivalent of the Big Bang and does not contradict the literal reality of the event as a singularity of atomic expansion. You ask about “human evolution,” DC, but have another look at the first chapter of Genesis which traces, figuratively, the arc of Darwinian evolution: first there were the oceans, then sea-life and birds, then animal life on land, then human life. Science and scripture do not conflict. As Kai says, God is the God of scientific truth and the God of sacred truth. Neither cancels the other, even if we read in Leviticus that rabbits chew their cud. As it turns out, though, we’ve learned that rabbits, similar to cows, do in fact chew on previously digested food. The ancients noted the cow-like movement of rabbits' jaws but did not choose to differentiate between recalling food from one stomach to chew and re-digest it in another stomach, as cows do, versus rabbits chewing on their own excrement, which also aids in digestion.

@@CatholicCentralVideos except we can’t test god. We have no evidence for god. On human evolution. It would have been better if the Bible didn’t say the dirt man and rib women. The points I made are valid . It shows the book isn’t perfect. I could pull the Noah’s ark and the world wide flood didn’t happen card if you’d like.

No, we can’t test God, but there are a lot of things that exist, and that you probably believe in, that you can’t test. Love, for example. You can’t weigh it or measure it. You can’t use a test-tube to prove that honesty is better than lying. As for evidence of God, see our episode called “Proofs of God.” One of the most beautiful things in Genesis is Adam’s name - “earth person,” or if you insist, “dirt man.” We are all made from the dirt of the earth, the stardust that forms everything in the known universe - the spinning atoms born of the Big Bang. We are still not sure what your point is. We agree that the “book is not perfect” as a literal account of the origin of cosmic, geologic and organic life, but that is expecting Genesis to be exactly what it is not. It’s like saying that Einstein’s theory of relativity is bad poetry or Harry Potter is bad political science. You have already “pulled the world wide flood,” but it seems you missed our answer.

Thanks Ze Rom, we agree! This is why evolution is still called a "theory." How come life-forms evolve and don't devolve? After all, devolution or "entropy" is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Science has never explained this, and some cosmologists like atheist Richard Dawkins even suggest that aliens might have sprinkled those evolutionary seeds (no joke). And although evolution traces the genetic development of organisms it doesn't account for the actual creation of species. These gaps by no means rule out evolution, but there's obviously more to it than blind crazy chance. As you say, this distinction is important!

@@CatholicCentralVideos deevolution is a thing

@@oliverjudson1834 extremely rare. Everything we have up to this day is from evolution

@@CatholicCentralVideos you need to look up what a scientific theory is. A scientific theory is tested and confirmed under the scientific method, and it has support from evidence. Evolution is a proven fact, the theory is the why and how. It’s called “The (Theory) Of Evolution (Through Natural Selection) the “It’s just a theory” argument is long debunked and was never valid in the first place. Animals do not “Devolve” that’s not how biological organisms or evolution works. Evolution does not violate the Second Law of Thermodyamics, because Earth is not a closed system. The entropy of the entire solar system increases over time, but Earth is a small part of that and so there is plenty of room for increasing order over time on our planet. Richard Dawkins never serious suggested that aliens had anything to do with it either. Evolution and Abiogenesis are different things, you seem to get them confused.

we don't even know if Adam is the same person as the man that was created out of dust

Hi Alexander, please check Genesis 5:5: “Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.” In biblical terms Eve would probably have lived more or less to the same age. However as we emphasize in our episode, Genesis is not a science textbook and today’s technology dates earth’s creation to about 4.5 billion years ago.

Hi Bernd, you might find it interesting that the name Adam actually comes from the Hebrew word “adamah” meaning clay or earth. Adam basically means Earth-Man, which suggests a pretty strong connection between the “person” and “man” you refer to.

Father Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain and is often called "The Father of the Big Bang Theory."

The secular calendar in the Western world starts on a Monday because it’s the beginning of the trade and work week. In both the Catholic and Jewish calendars, the first day of the week is counted as Sunday. But whichever day we wish to call the “first day of the week” is ultimately the product of human convention. Historically the Babylonians were the first to create a calendar based on a seven-day week because of the length of time the moon takes to transition between phases. The Hebrew people got their idea for the seven-day week from the Babylonians. By the time the Hebrew Bible entered the mainstream of early Greek culture, the Greek calendar was already in place, based on the yearly interval between vernal equinoxes. As a result, no real historical correlation exists between a so-called first day in our modern calendar week and the first day of Genesis. And nowhere do we say the seventh day "slowed down," which could be calculated only if the duration of each prior day were precisely known. Which brings us to the issue of duration and "Yom." Brown-Driver-Briggs did indeed cite this instance of Yom as day defined by "evening and morning." Apart from the fact that this definition does not rule out any interval of time with a figurative beginning, middle and end, it represents only one of the many expansive definitions that Brown-Driver-Briggs associates with words having Yom as their root, a wide range depending on grammatical and literary context, including: life-time, reign, length of days, length of time, month of time, four months of time, days of old, former times, ancient times, and "expressions of time." As for our bible at Catholic Central, it's the New American Standard translation, and it uses “day” to translate the Genesis “Yom.” A majority of contemporary biblical scholars and theologians understand this translation of “yom” to be figurative in light of modern science, the layered subtlety of Hebrew linguistics, and the historical context in which the bible was written, millennia before the theory of evolution was remotely thinkable. Empirical information has enlarged our understanding of how God’s creation developed, and it is remarkable, even uncanny, how close the bible comes to sequencing that development, from “Let there be light” (the Big Bang) to the creation of stars and planetary bodies, then the earth, biological life and finally human beings. However, it would have been impossible for the iron-age authors of Genesis to conceive of the millions of years each of these stages required. We suggest you have a look at our episode “The Bible” for further discussion of historical context and authorship, with its reminder that this book of sacred truth is not a science textbook. Finally, we don't see how you can say we put down God's abilities. We attest that God is the architect of the universe and everything in it. An ability so sublime, so intricate and complex, that the human mind cannot imagine it: commanding infinitesimal atomic structures born of the Big Bang to create human life in an evolutionary unfolding that connects us with each other, with all living things, and with every object in the vastness of space and time. Put down God’s abilities? To the contrary, we celebrate them!

@@CatholicCentralVideos Thank you for your response. Fist off why does a church worry about a secular calendar? And as far back as I remember the week always started on Sunday. I have had hundreds of calendars published by many nonreligious companies that always started with the week on Sunday. Did not God create the seven-day week and not human convention? The six days of the week came from Genesis 1 and the seventh day came from Genesis 2:1-3. and a Hebrew calendar came about around 1446 BC as in Exodus 12:2. But let us go on. You said that the Babylonians had a seven-day calendar because the cycle of the moon? There is 29.5 days between the cycle of the moon. In my research I found this paragraph, "You’ll notice I used the word “approximate” a lot in there. This is because the moon phases don’t line up perfectly with this schedule. As such, as far back as the 6th century BC (which incidentally is also around the time the Jews were captives in Babylon), the Babylonians would sometimes have three seven-day weeks, followed by an 8-9 day week, presumably to re-synchronize the start and end of the weeks to match the phases of the moon." It also states that they started around 500 BC. I cannot see where this statement comes in, "As a result, no real historical correlation exists between a so-called first day in our modern calendar week and the first day of Genesis." I cannot see that. The week that was in Genesis was the same that was in Exodus and the same one that comes from "The Convert's Cathecism of Catholic Doctrine" by Rev. Peter Geiermann. Starting on page 49 it says, "3. The Third Commandment. Q. What is the Third Commandment? A. The Third Commandment is: Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. Page 50 Q. Which is the Sabbath day? A. Saturday is the Sabbath day. Q. Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? A. We observe Sunday instead of Saturday be- cause the Catholic Church, in the Council of Laodicea (AD. 336), transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday. Q. Why did the Catholic Church substitute Sunday for Saturday? The Church substituted Sunday for Saturday, because Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday, and the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles on a Sunday." So, I am not even sure why you try to make any point that the days could have changed at all. Now you try to argue that a day cold be longer then 24 hours. And also claiming that it was from evening and morning being a day. That would mean that half the earth would under sun light for that amount of time and the night side would not have the sun. That would mean the dark side would get no warmth from the sun for long stretches of time turning it very cold and the other side would get extremely hot for an extended period of time. Now taking the time for man to evolve in a one-day period of time and that the dark side would be under darkness and extreme cold that would kill off all that was done on the 3rd day. Then adding the gravity forces on the earth would be much for anything to grow also. So, please explain if the seven-day week of Genesis was more than evening and morning was a day. That would make the Bible a lie if a day was not a day. As for Bible translations I am sure that all say day for yon. It still amazes me that you do not give God the power to create. Because how can you raise people from the dead, but not create life by just speaking it. Because if He just created a single cell instead of the full person you give Him no credit. Even your iron-age authors of Genesis are off. the iron age was between 1200 and 600 BC. Moses lived between 1525 and 1406 BC. And even saying authors is puzzling. And yes, the Bible is not science textbook, it is the word of God, inspired by God. And again, you cannot celebrate God ability when you cannot even give Him the Credit of being the creator. And just think all he did was the big bang and step back complete rejection of God. I also love how you manage to comment without one verse from scripture.

Hi Roger, we think it’s time for all of us to take a deep breath and remember that the most important thing for us as Christians is our profession of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. But here we are, spending a lot of time and energy talking about phases of the moon and whether the entire bible can be turned into a “lie” based on the interpretation of a single word of scripture. We are content to acknowledge how important bible literalism is to you, even though it differs from the way Christian folks like us understand the Bible as God’s sacred Word in human words. That difference should not blind us to the fact that we are both following in the steps of Jesus and both doing what we can to live his life of self-giving love. The point is that the center of our worship is Jesus, not the Bible, and it is Jesus who saves, not the Bible. Neither of us will be saved by being right about the translation of Yom. If we think otherwise, haven’t we turned the bible into a false idol? What is important about the “days” of Genesis is not whether they were 24 hours long or 24 million hours long but that “in the beginning” the God who is Absolute Love brought the universe and ultimately humankind into glorious existence, a God who remains the ground of our being and who is with us in every breath we take, a God who is present in nature and the cosmos, in the spinning energy of each and every atom, and who at no point has “stepped back” from his magnificent creation. We thank you for watching, Roger, and suggest that you have a look at some of our other videos just for your interest. Perhaps ‘What’s Catholic?” “The Bible," "The Gospels,” “Who Is Jesus?," Revelation,” “Being Human” and “Everyday Discernment.” Do we expect any of these will change your mind? Can’t say, but that’s not our purpose. What we hope is that it might lead us together to Paul’s vision in Ephesians 4:1-6, “the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."

@@CatholicCentralVideos Claiming Jesus Christ as our Saviour is very importance but claiming Him as our Creator is also very importance as in the 4th commandment (your 3rd for some reason). The law that God gave use to live by. Because it does not say that in six days God created the Big Bang. And as far as understanding, they would have understood just as easily as being created from nothing. When you think about it you are saying that God does not have the power to create from nothing that all he can do is make a big bang and let the process go from there. Instead of what was written throughout the whole Bible. Bible literalism is more important to God and is said best in Isaiah 40:28 and 1 Peter 4:19. People need a God of power to bring forth out of noting not a God of happenstance. This is taken from a article, Science and the Catholic Church: A Turbulent History published in 3/11/13. "As late as the 1950s, the church maintained a neutral position on the subject, but by the end of the 20th century the Catholic Church showed general acceptance of 'theistic evolution,' which states that God created a universe where cosmic and biological evolution occurred." If the church believed in it, why did it take 100 years for them to come out and back it. Did they shirk their reasonability given to them by God? I am so sorry to say this, but it does not pass the smell test. Also, when saying things like this, "We are content to acknowledge how important bible literalism is to you, even though it differs from the way Christian folks like us understand the Bible as God’s sacred Word in human words." You really need to say Catholics instead of Christians. I mean just to keep a little honesty in this. Jesus is the one how saves, but the Bible is our guide. We should not rely on a group of Bishops (the Magisterium) to interpret the Bible for us. We should get that from the Holy Spirit through prayer and studying. This is another statement that is impossible to believe your said, Neither of us will be saved by being right about the translation of Yom." One is believing in God's true self and the other is not. Does not Mark 11:23 tells us to believe in Christ completely? Because if just believing in Christ will give us the power through Christ to move a mountain, how much more power does Christ has then. If you truly believe the Bible is the word of God, it can never even be considered a false idol. And for someone that goes to church that is full of idols to say that is hypocritical. Again, sorry. I am trying to answer as I read. So, if I repeat myself, it is that I am just answering you. I had to say that because you came up with this. "What is important about the “days” of Genesis is not whether they were 24 hours long or 24 million hours long but that “in the beginning” the God who is Absolute Love brought the universe and ultimately humankind into glorious existence, a God who remains the ground of our being and who is with us in every breath we take, a God who is present in nature and the cosmos, in the spinning energy of each and every atom, and who at no point has “stepped back” from his magnificent creation." I am trying to get my head around why you say you have faith in God and thinks that he created the world but took forever instead of doing like the Bible says. I just cannot wrap my head around why you would think the almighty God would sit around for millions of hours/days/years instead of just doing it. Again, you are putting man/scientist over God. How you also claim created the scientist. I see no logic in your theory. Because a God of love as you say does not take pride in watching our single cell being taking millions of whatevers to grow into what we became. That is more like your god that will let people suffer forever. There is no love in that kind of god. I try to say this with respect, but if your other videos are as far removed from God's word as this is you do not want me to watch them.

Roger, we believe we have both had a fair opportunity in this thread to witness to our faith. Even though we feel you have not understood us, we feel that we have clearly understood you, though we respectfully disagree with both your biblical and theological interpretations. Your foregone conclusion that we are "far from God's word" makes it difficult to hope that anything can be gained by continuing. We wish you God's blessings on your walk of faith, and may you be a beacon of Christ's infinite love for a world that needs it more than ever.

Well expressed, Stephen, thank you!

@@CatholicCentralVideos no problem. Because of the SOLA SCRIPTURA invented doctrine by the Protestants, they came to odds with science and violate the intended purpose of the Bible.

At least im not the only one because the bible only tells the truth about who and why and science shows evidence about when and how.

Then why haven't they

Evolution is a scientific theory. It's either supported by evidence or not. It's not to be taken on faith. There's a lot about the development of living things that we still don't fully comprehend. But, the Catholic Church supports the ongoing efforts of science to answer these questions -- within the context of believing in the existence of God, of course.

Hi F2F, as Catholics, we are not "literalists" nor do we ever imply that in any episode of the series. As we say in the episode and have said in numerous responses to similar comments, the story of creation in Genesis was told in such a way that the people of that time could understand.

@@CatholicCentralVideos you do not state and you do not imply that you are “literalists” either, so that makes things very confusing. You would think that it’s important to make things clear, Especially when there are thousands of religions and variations to choose from. Wouldn’t you say it would be easier to make it literal and crystal clear of what the meaning of a sentence is? Even then, that still doesn’t answer the huge gap between the last dinosaur fossil found and the first human one.

Hi F2F, we agree that it can be confusing. You must remember that these stories were passed down orally, from generation to generation. The creation stories are not meant to be science or history, but an exploration of the covenant God has made with us. While we believe this is the “Revealed Word of God”, you must realize that all of this was revealed between the 10th and 5th century, B.C. It was revealed to a primitive mind that had no ideal of galaxies or atoms. They also would have had no idea of the existence of dinosaurs or any way to understand them. Yet, if you look at the structure of the first creation story, it very closely follows the order in which the universe would have been created and how life on this earth would have started. If you were to look at the “days” in the story as epochs (see our explanation in the video) then the story takes on a whole different dimension. It seems to us as if you are using the Book of Genesis as a textbook and we use it as a book that shows us the development of God’s covenantal love for God’s creation, a story told to a people in a language they could understand.

@@CatholicCentralVideos As I said before, how convenient! In a world so divided with many wars and the increasing number of religions, don’t you think we could use more than stories from 2000+years ago? I mean, there’s Islam and Hinduism that have a completely different story of the creator(s) and how we must live life. They all talk about peace, which I’m not opposed to that, but they also have a manipulative concept telling you how to live your life in order to be “saved” in the afterlife, same as Catholicism. It just seems like a very easy way to keep people ignorant, “don’t ask questions, just have faith” or “you can’t see God but he is there, and the stories from 2000 years ago are true even if there is no factual evidence because the book is not meant to be literal, but have faith anyways”.

We’re curious what specific truth of the universe you think Christianity is trying to keep us ignorant of. How exactly would it benefit the Church to perpetuate a “manipulative concept” that they knew was false? Who in the religious hierarchy is the chief perpetrator? Is Pope Francis just an unbelieving cynic who keeps people in ignorance so he can wave at crowds and sleep in the guestroom of the Vatican? No Christian we know is trying to keep you in ignorance, F2F. Is there anything in our own discussion of the Creation debate that we have tried to hide from you? Jesus himself says “The truth will set you free.” That is what we believe and what the Church believes. But truth suffers when we indulge in absurd and demeaning caricatures of others who, like yourself, are simply trying to seek the truth in the best way they can. The Bible is one way that the Christian seeks truth. We use the Bible as a point of departure for forming our conscience. The process is neither manipulative nor a mode of perpetuating ignorance. As Catholics, we are invited to think for ourselves using Scripture, thousands of years’ worth of Tradition, and advice from those we trust in making moral decisions. As for Islam and Hinduism, each of these faiths has beauty within them, but as Catholics we cannot speak as to how their believers are expected to act. Nor can we speak with authority on other Christian sects or the “increasing number of religions” you mention, though we’re not sure what exactly you’re referring to. It’s important to understand that Catholics aspire to a single spiritual goal: a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. It’s not about an ideology or membership in a club or “proving I’m right.” It’s about being transformed by an Eternal Love that can transform a broken world. In opening our eyes and hearts to Christ, to Love Incarnate, the Church seeks to scatter ignorance, not impose it. The Bible is an essential source in this quest, but arguing about this or that biblical text is a sure way to miss the Bible’s great arcs of meaning: God made us and loves us, our lives are not a random mistake, God sent us Christ so we may live in the fullness of every minute, even as we live the “difficult love” of willing the good of the other. The Church exists for the sole purpose of helping us accomplish what we hope for. We can reject it in ignorance or embrace it in faith.

Hi. The official Catholic position is that Catholics can believe that Adam and Eve are real, or that the Adam and Eve story is a metaphor for humanity. Hence the quote from Pope Benedict XVI.

But if one believes that Adam and Eve are just metaphors what about the last Adam? The expression "last Adam" seems to convey the idea that Jesus came to earth to give up his life to counterbalance what the real "first Adam" did wrong, if the first Adam never lived he never sinned so it would be pointless to talk about the last Adam

@@CatholicCentralVideos The Catholic Church does teach that humanity must find it's origin in 2 first parents. Seeing how many evolutionists want to go with evolution, there is becoming the popular theory of humanity being derived from more than 2 first parents: polygenism. This has been condemned by the Church. "37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own." w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html See also: www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+5%3A12-19&version=RSV And also: www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch5.htm

@@CatholicCentralVideos No - sorry but this is completely false. The Catholic Answers link you posted in reply to another comment directly addresses and condemns the option of believing Adam and Eve weren't real, indivdual humans. The quote in the article is from Pius XII, Humani Generis: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own”

I think they were real because God put a genealogy in his book that included them. Also catholic. Also reject atheism. Also believe in science. Do not believe science can prove evolution. I don’t pretend to know how old the earth/universe are and I don’t believe I need to care about it. I’m past the needing to know everything part and just at the part where I can just let God take the wheel. If he wants me to know that, He’ll reveal it too me. Science became a way to get your name on something instead of the way to test things and find accurate information. It also became a way to say this group was smarter than this group. The theory of evolution says women are less evolved than men, and black people are less evolved than white people. It was the reason Hitler thought killing Jewish people, people with disabilities, and black people was ok. So I’m not very fond of it at the moment. Maybe, it’ll find a way to redeem itself, but I’m against it for now.

Yes, we call it ‘Creation and Evolution.’ Thanks William!"

It’s called ‘Evolutionary Creationis’ for a reason pal, if God did in fact create the universe and earth then he used Evolution as a natural source

Hi Dan, we’re not sure what gaps you think we are filling with God. We don’t believe in a God of the gaps any more than you do. As Kai says in the episode, stating its central theme, we believe in a God of All, an All that includes evolution as well as the still-unfolding story of the human person.

@@CatholicCentralVideos You have no more evidence for your god than those that believe in any of the other thousands of man made gods through history. And therefore he is no more likely to be true than zeus or thor of Mohammed ect.

@@trumpbellend6717 You sound triggered. Take a deep breath and calm down. I know its hard with this topic and you atheists. Now, you say there is no evidence yet clearly you have not even remotely investigated the subject. But one thing we can all agree on, there is no about of evidence that will convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. The fact you rehased the same atheist talking points found all over online shows you came ready to fight and not discuss anything. No wonder they didn't bother replying.

@@trumpbellend6717 - Sounds like a claim, do you have any way to substantiate that Christians have no more evidence than ancient Greeks or any other conceptions of God? In order to be convincing, you’d need to articulate several of the best evidences Christian apologists use, why you don’t believe they qualify as evidence and/or are no more persuasive than claims of other religions. If you can’t do that, then in the words of a famous atheist “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” - and I summarily dismiss your claim. Note well - I am not even slightly interested in defending or explaining what I believe the best evidences for a Christian God are. I did not make the initial claim, and I refuse to accept the burden of proof to refute your currently baseless claim. The burden of proof currently rests with you.

We agree that arguments of substance are more constructive than sweeping generalities.

Actually Yu Yo, we are not vague. Most translations of the word Yom in the Bible have been translated as "day" but the word has several different meanings from a "measure amount of time" (such as an epoch) to a "period of darkness to light" to a "twenty four hour calendar day". As such, we cannot know for certain what was meant in the original texts which were after written many hundreds of years of oral traditions.

@@CatholicCentralVideos dont mean to be that condescending guy but you spelt yom backwards in hebrew lol its actually יום (simple mistake though)

@@CatholicCentralVideosso are you saying oral tradition before Moses wrote it down is unreliable? That the Word that Moses received may be in error? Who is to say the books written by and after Moses are reliable, since scribes are prone to error as as much as oral traditionalists? This is a rotten line of thinking.

Hi Jeff, as we say in the episode, you can believe in both and that position is supported by both Catholic doctrine and scientific research. Also, we never say that Genesis is wrong.

Just because that’s what the Catholic Church believes and teaches doesn’t mean it’s correct. You either believe everything was created by God or you don’t. Again, evolution was founded on the belief that God had no input or role in what has came to be. If you cannot believe that God created everything as the Bible clearly states (as a narrative writing not poetic) in 6 days how can you believe Christ rose from the dead after 3 days. Again, if 1 word of scripture is wrong/a lie, then the whole book is worthless.

Hi Jeff, we totally agree that everything is created by God… including evolution! Atheists can’t convince us differently. Darwin - Mr. Evolution himself - was not an atheist. We also agree that God created the Bible. Please see our episode on The Bible, where Kai and Libby explain how the Bible is God's but was not written all at once or dropped as a single volume out of heaven. They describe how the Bible is a collection of books inspired by the Holy Spirit and written over the course of a thousand years by different people for different readers, the earliest of whom lived in the iron age. These writers used available forms of literature - from allegory to poetry to historical narrative to personal letters - because it revealed Truth in a way that made sense to themselves and to others of their time. As mediators of God’s living word, nothing they wrote is a “lie.” But to turn the six days of creation in Genesis into an absolute is to ignore last night’s starlight, light that started its journey to earth millions of years before the landmass known today as the Holy Land had even taken its present shape by the Mediterranean Sea. We must realize that as our perception of the natural world has changed, so must our understanding of the way Scripture has told God’s story - a story of the Infinite Love that created everything, that made us in His image and gave us the eternal Absolute of our salvation: His Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Yes you do. The creation account directly contradicts what we know to be true

@@degew9367 The "creation account" is very vague, it doesn't give any specifics that could contradict anything. It's just a fable.

@@moseshoward7072 the story of Adam and Eve is part of the creation myth

@@degew9367 Adam and Eve are metaphorical characters, the fable of the Garden of Eden describes the human condition in symbolic terms. It isn't a scientific treatise, it isn't supposed to be taken literally. Fundamentalists assume that since science is "the" way to define reality then the bible must be a science book.

@@moseshoward7072 so then why take other parts of the bible literally and not the creation myth

Once again, the Hebrew word "Yom" which can be used to signify a 24 hour time period can also be used to signify a number of different time periods including epochs. In the Gospels, Jesus references the creation stories in Genesis, but keep in mind he is explaining things to a 1st century audience who knew nothing of the working of the cosmos.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Yet He made it very clear that it was six days of creation or else you would have rewrite everything else in the Bible that says things happened in amount of days plus God is outside of his creation which time doesn't effect Him so our time and God's time are total different. Yet with everything within his creation were literal 6 24 hour days since Jesus said He created male and female from the very beginning. The word day is mention 2,000 times throughout the Bible and I don't think anywhere in the Bible tells anything of the Earth being millions or even close to billions of years old. You would be saying that Jesus is a liar if the creation wasn't a literally 6 day creation, and that would make Jesus a sinner which wouldn't make Him God. A 6 day creation makes plenty of logical sense for all of life to coexist together to have diversity and an ecosystem, which God said everything was good after his creation so it was all perfect for life so there's no need for evolution to develop new life forms since God already created everything over their own "Kinds" and made all animals male and female so that they can be fruitful and multiply. There's no need for millions of years at that point once he said everything was good with his creation. Then you would have say that death came into the picture long before man sinned which the Bible tells us that man brought sin and death onto the world after he disobeyed God.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Do you want me to help clarify with you that there's 20 different verses that say Creation was in 6 days? I can give you the actual verses from the Bible that makes it very clear it was a 6 day creation.

You could but it does not change our reply. The word used for "Day" (Yom) does not necessarily mean "day". We have addressed this numerous times in previous comments, please read those before replying to this one.

@@CatholicCentralVideos It shows that you don't believe in God's word then, if you keep make this claim that has never been proven which it still makes it very clear in Genesis what a day is when God says that light is day and dark is night. No where in the Bible does he state the Creation days were different from any other word of day throughout the entire Bible. So you must not believe in the flood waters came from the ground and the sky for 40 days and 40 nights, Jericho's walls came tumbling down in 7 days, Jesus going out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, and most importantly when Jesus died and rose again from death in 3 days too. See, your still listening to man's opinions about the 6 day creation rather than going off of God's Word from the Bible. Genesis makes it clear that it was a 6 day creation, the Laws of Moses also makes it very clear that it was a 6 day creation, and Jesus even clarifies that the laws of Moses was a true account for a 6 day creation as well. You are just misinterpreting what God's word says in this video and deceiving people of the truth here. Plus you are also contradicting when death came upon the Earth because nothing died until after man's fall which Abel clarified that when he sacrificed a lamb for his sins to God.

Hi @mysterioussoup3393 your question is a little vague. Why should we consider the Bible a valid source of what?

@@CatholicCentralVideos When creationists refer to evidence of God or "proof" they often quote the Bible. They seem to think that the quote is proof merely because it has originated from the Bible. My question is why anyone should care what the Bible says? I've never believed in anything the Bible said (as in the stories like Noahs Ark, creation etc) and everything has turned out fine for me. No guilt, no visions of Jesus, no sudden need to follow blind faith. What makes the Bible a valid source of information, more so than the natural world?

We never say that the Bible should be used as a science textbook or as any other textbook. Catholics and other faiths believe that this is the revealed "Word of God" and use it as a source of strength, comfort, and inspiration as well as a moral guide. You may want to watch our episode on "Proofs of God."

@@CatholicCentralVideos Well what proves the Bible is the word of god?

Yes, Catholics believe it to be the revealed Word of God but written by human beings.

Hi keytron 9000 , we would suggest you watch our episode titled “The Bible.” God did in fact "tell us" with no intention of "making it really vague." You must remember that the books of the Old Testament were originally spoken to a civilization whose understanding of life and the cosmos was very limited. To use one example, would a "literal" explanation of the Big Bang as a singularity of neutrons, protons, and electrons have meant anything to a people who had just entered the Iron Age? By looking at the context of the passage and the time and audience when it was written, we can begin to see how "Let there be light!" tells us the “truth” (God creates the universe) without being a literal description of the event. As for "teaching us how to be morally right," there is actually very little vagueness in God’s teachings: the ten commandments, the beatitudes, the heroic conscience of the prophets, the psalms and wisdom books, and every detail of the life and words of Jesus. Keep reading, ketron, and check out our other episodes about the bible which include“The Pentateuch,” “Prophets” “Gospels,” “Pauline Letters” and “Revelation.”

You're welcome.

A Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaître, proposed the Big Bang Theory. Refer back to the episode to see the Catholic take on evolution. Thanks for watching!

@@anthonypuccetti8779 How do you know? Were you there? The answer is no, you were not there. So you do not know. All you have is a believe. You believe it to be true.

Only YEC's believe in this 7-literal days garbage. Orthodox Christian Teachings reject Creationism.

It isnt 7 literal days

@@bb1kari Correct. However, It ain’t epochs either.

@@bb1kari where does it say that on the Bible?

@@f2f923 it dosent, but considering when god created the world the days would be much longer or shorter no? there wasn't a concept of time and clocks back then so we can't say that their days lasted 24 hours meaning it wasn't 7 literal days. ☆

We would love to know why you think that.

Hi jeffstarrunner1, nowhere in our episode do we declare that the Pope denies the Bible. As a matter of fact, what Catholics believe about the Bible has less to do with the Pope than it does with respected theologians, Tradition (upper case “T” intended), and (gasp!) science. What we do say is that over the years, our interpretation of the Bible has changed. Catholics believe it to be the “Revealed Word of God”, but it was also first related orally and then written by human hand in terms that the people of that time could understand. This does not deny that God is the creator of the universe, nor does it make any part of the Bible fictitious, but as our knowledge of Creation evolves, so must our interpretation and understanding of the Bible change. For us, the first creation story in Genesis is proof of God as a creator and that it is His revealed word: how would somebody in the Iron or Bronze age have the knowledge to understand the perfect order in which the universe was created? Yet the “days” of creation in Genesis are in that exact order. As for one man causing death to come into the world, no evidence has yet been uncovered to suggest an instantaneous appearance of the human species on Earth. But there is plenty of evidence for original sin - just look around! Only Jesus the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, can undo our loss of innocence, save us from sin, and lead us to union with God both now and hereafter.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Evidence does not need to be uncovered to make a Christian believe what the scripture clearly says. If the Bible says there was no death until adam there was no death until Adam. Also I found it curious that this supposed allegory specifies an evening and morning for each day. And do Catholics not believe the Pope is infallible when speaking on matters of faith? You can believe Jesus literally becomes the bread when he said "this do in remembrance of me" and in hebrews "by one sacrifice made perfect forever"... but when it says "he made man of the dust" it's an allegory. Jesus can become bread but can't make man of dust in an instant.. besides the order is wrong anyway, evolutionists will tell you that birds came after land dwelling dinosaurs.

Hello again, “jeffstarrunner1, we think it would be of interest to you to check out our episode on The Bible. Feel free to also delve into our videos on the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Gospels, Pauline Letters, and Revelation. These episodes reflect the Catholic Church’s current teachings on scripture. In them you will find many things that bear on your comments and that have been introduced here in this episode on Evolution. For example, the Hebrew word for “day” is “Yom” which can mean many things, including “epoch.” We also reiterate that the Bible is not a science textbook. Genesis doesn’t present the universe in terms of an atomic substructure created by an explosive event of nucleosynthesis. That would be science. As a work of sacred text, Genesis uses more poetic terms and broader strokes (“Let there be light!”) to describe the same world and everything in it. The two descriptions complement each other and do not contradict. As Kai says in the episode, God is the God of scientific truth and the God of sacred truth. God is God of all. In fact, within two decades after the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” Pope Leo XIII famously said, “Truth cannot contradict truth.” This, incidentally, was not intended as an infallible statement. If you watch our episode on Popes, you will see that infallibility is invoked not nearly as much as people outside the Church believe it is. The last two statements considered dogmatic (infallible) had to do with Mary and those were made in 1854 (Immaculate Conception) and 1950 (Assumption). There have been no dogmatic statements about evolution. Popes make many statements about things such as creation - our present pope has often done so - but these statements are not considered to be infallible and are open to change. We understand that your chief concern, though, is Bible literalness. That is dealt with at length in our episode on the Bible. The Bible did not drop from heaven as a finished volume. The Bible is God’s Word in human words, written over a span of 1500 years. As a result, there is a radical difference in the levels of cultural development between the writers of the Old Testament and those of the New. As we explained in our earlier reply, the book of Genesis was written in the closed world of the late iron age, and its only linguistic tools were a fiery mix of myth, epic, legend, hearsay, fact and imagination. By the time of Christ, Palestine through trade and colonization had come into the orbit of Graeco-Roman civilization, a culture steeped in its historic achievements in philosophy, literature, history, science and mathematics. The Apostles, though mostly native Aramaic speakers, were fluent in the language of that culture, Koine Greek, by then the common language of the entire Mediterranean region, using it to spread the Good News in written and spoken word. Paul confronted the Athenians not only in their own language but within the intellectual framework of Greek thought, and Jesus himself probably spoke a reasonable amount of Latin, enough to converse with Pontius Pilate in one of the greatest dialogues in history. This, then, was a world radically different in its scope and literacy from that in which Genesis was written one and a half millennia before. When the evangelists quote Jesus saying "this do in remembrance of me" or we hear in Hebrews that "by one sacrifice made perfect forever,” it is conveyed to us within a climate of personal witness, accountable testimony, verbal expression and even corroboration that in many ways foreshadows our current standards of biography. So, it is not just a matter of arbitrarily picking and choosing what biblical passage is literal or which is figurative (the term used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for non-literal language). It is a matter of respecting the historical time, place and culture in which the words were inspired, who set the words down, and for whom they were written. The important thing to remember is that all of it - whether literal or figurative - reveals God’s truth. Finally, it somehow feels to us that you are targeting biblical literalism as the mark of a true Christian. It is instructive to remember how Jesus answered the young man who observed all the commandments and yet still asks: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, looking at him with love, tells him to give everything to the poor and then follow him (Mark 10: 17-22). This is what marks us as Christians. We are united by our simplicity, by our love for each other, our love for Jesus and our zeal to imitate his life. Jesus does not call us to worship the Bible, or the Church. He calls us to worship God.

@@CatholicCentralVideos I know the word of yom can be a period longer then a day, but like I said, not when qualified by "the morning and the evening (were the first day)" And like I said even in your broad stroke scenario there is already a contradiction between truth and "truth." Even if we allow for millions of years between one "yom" and another it can't be argued that they aren't in chronological order. I'm willing to bet the Hebrew word for first means first etc. So genesis has birds existing before land animals contrary to science. Or as Paul would call it "science falsely so called." I just don't understand though, doesn't the Catholic clergy have a reputation for being bright, I heard the Jesuits study like mad and know several languages. But no one looks into the possibility that maybe Moses inspired by the spirit or possibly even just by himself was not really that ignorant. Are you aware of the soft tissue found in dinosaur bones that can't possible be millions of years old. Or the hammer and bell found within coal formations? Or the accurate representations of dinosaurs in artwork before the age were paleontology was common? The founders of this movement that you seem to want to get along with, they don't want to get along with you. They have the spirit of Charles Lyell who wanted to "free the science from Moses." Not harmonize it. But worst of all is the fact that when you sit and read Genesis you don't believe Adam was a real person, or that sin brought death into the world. This is more significant because this messes with deep theological issues about what sin is. If you allowed millennia for every other creature but still confirmed that Adam was the first (as Jesus did btw) the error would not be as bad. Your whole premise is wrong, you say that someone in the iron age was incapable of talking without using myth, legend, and hearsay. Yet I don't see this in the actual words of Moses, Abraham or any of the other ones he spoke of. What do you not believe to be literal. The rod that budded? The manna from heaven? Jesus raising the dead? And also lastly how limited is God in using man? Is the author of scripture primarily man or the words of the spirit. "No scripture is of private interpretation, but holy men of old wrote as they were moved by the holy spirit." (slight paraphrase)

Thanks, jeffstarrunner, we appreciate your continuing interest. Since both you and ourselves have presented our views in full, we don’t feel there is much purpose in pursuing our dialogue. It may interest you to know that the Catholic Church leaves the choice of a strictly literalist interpretation of scripture up to the individual. It is true that a prevailing majority of Catholics do not feel that the Creation account in Genesis, for example, can be reconciled word for word with the findings of contemporary science. That does not make Catholic literalists better or worse Christians. It is hard to believe that our salvation hinges on whether birds or dinosaurs came first. Your intensity on this subject suggests that you may feel otherwise. If so, we embrace our difference as “one in Christ” in whom no differences exist. We wish you His light and grace as you continue on the pilgrimage.

Catholicism is all about the both/and ... so love to learn from the past and imagine the future.

Umm if thats true then why does mu Catholic Church taught me robotics then? Ironic isnt it?

We know a theology professor who likes to put it this way: "When I die and if I go to heaven, would I be surprised if there was no Adam and Eve? Probably not". "Would I be surprised if there were? Probably not." So maybe we can add a third option to that statement.

@@CatholicCentralVideos third option we all just magically came to be i guess cause im tierd of this game 😑😪

With respect, Catholic Central is a serious forum about the meaning of our lives, our place in the universe, and the eternal destiny of our souls. It is not a game. And In the discourse between faith and reason, “magic” plays no part. We feel sure you know this and we’re sorry if your intention was just to mock and disrupt. We’re equally sure that the spirit within you seeks the "something more" that life promises, and for your ultimate happiness we wish you Godspeed in that life-long and life-saving quest.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Thank you 🙂in the past few weeks ive found my answer and you've played a big part in it 💓

@love like you rose: we are glad we could help. God bless you in your continued faith journey.

It's simply an artist rendering. God has no static physical form. We don't know what Adam and Eve looked like but scientifically were most had a black skin color very similarly to Africans. Although we don't know that for sure.

@@thomasbryant2486 Yes, indeed. It's not meant to be taken as an actual depiction of anyone.

Hi Chris, technically we got the idea of the seven-day week from the Babylonians and from them through the Greeks and Romans to the Gregorian calendar we use today. The Hebrews also got their idea for the 7-day week from the Babylonians, but by the time the Hebrew Bible entered the mainstream of early Greek culture, the Greek calendar was already in place. Another important point, as you heard in the episode, is the broad definition of the Hebrew word “day” (YOM) in the creation story. See our reply to Anna Dare’s comment on the Creation and Evolution page. When we say that the Bible is speaking “figuratively” we mean it in a sense that there was no way for a person in the late bronze age or the iron age to wrap their head around the idea of evolution. God’s revelation had to be able to be understood so he revealed this information by creating myths. When we say “myth” we are not using the 21st century definition as meaning an untrue story or belief. Rather, we speak about a myth in a more classical definition of being a story that simplifies a complex topic while retaining the essential truth. (See our episode on The Bible). There could indeed have been seven “days” (YOM) or “epochs” (YOM) that defined the creation of the universe. And the concept of those seven divisions of time reflects their origin in the Babylonian calendar, the basis of both the Jewish and Greco-Roman seven-day week along separate lines of development.

Hi John. Most historians do agree that the Babylonian version of the Adam and Eve story, recorded on such artifacts as the Adam and Eve Cylinder Seal in present-day Iraq, date from the 22nd or 23rd century before Christ. Genesis dates from the 5th or 6th century BC, around the time of the Babylonian exile. So it’s very likely that the Jews took the Adam and Eve story back home to Judah after King Cyrus released them from exile in 539 BC. This brings to mind what St Paul said of revelation in the opening of Hebrews, that “in times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors…” In this case, the Babylonians may have only understood God's revelation in "partial and various ways," which is why the Adam and Eve story as revealed to them failed to emerge as a core feature of their religious belief and practice. It was obviously different with God’s people, the Hebrews, who found Adam and Eve to be a divine revelation of profound significance that explained both the glory of creation and the destiny of humankind. Later figures like Mark, Paul, Jude and Jesus himself were neither “deceived” nor “confused” about our first parents who lived “in the beginning.” As we said in our first reply, they were working within the knowledge available to them in that day and time.

the 7 day weekly cycle came from the Babylonians, when they first created their calendar. they decided a week would have seven days because it's how long the moon takes to transition between phases.

The former has a mountain of evidence and the latter has zilch.

@@zigongosaurus5274 so ?? We ... People were never not even once just atoms and their for dust. Yet science would say including astrophysics guy that everything on this planet was Atomic energy and has always been here. And of course he'd . Even after studying for twenty years?? Ok How many degrees do you have???

The relationship between the Catholic Church and the theory of evolution has evolved over time. The Catholic Church does not see a conflict between belief in God as the creator and the acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory. The Catholic Church acknowledges theistic evolution, which is the view that God guided the process of evolution. Pope Francis, for example, has stated that evolution and the Big Bang theory are consistent with Catholic teachings. The Catholic Church does not interpret every part of the Bible literally, and it recognizes that the Genesis creation accounts are symbolic narratives that convey theological truths rather than precise scientific details. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the "spiritual" interpretation of the creation account does not exclude the use of symbolic language. Regarding Jesus' references to the Genesis account, Catholics generally understand these references in a way that respects the literary and cultural context of the time. While Jesus and the apostles may have referred to the Genesis account, it doesn't necessarily mean they endorsed a literalistic interpretation of every detail. The Catholic Church emphasizes the need to consider the genre, historical context, and intent of the biblical texts. In summary, the Catholic Church does not necessarily see a conflict between belief in evolution and the teachings of the Bible. It emphasizes that faith and reason can coexist, and that the Bible should be interpreted in light of its literary forms and historical context. Theistic evolution is an accepted perspective within Catholic theology, allowing for a synthesis between faith and scientific understanding.

The reconciliation of the genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels, particularly those tracing back to Adam, is a matter that has been discussed and interpreted by theologians and scholars within the Catholic tradition. It's important to note that there may be variations in interpretation among different individuals and denominations within Christianity. Catholic teaching generally allows for a more flexible interpretation of the age of the Earth. The Church does not require a literal interpretation of the age of the Earth as 6,000 years, and many Catholics accept the scientific understanding of the Earth's age. Within the Catholic tradition, there is room for a variety of interpretations regarding the genealogies of Jesus. Many Catholics emphasize the theological and symbolic aspects of these genealogies, recognizing that they convey deeper spiritual truths rather than providing a strict historical record. The Church's teachings also allow for an understanding of the age of the Earth that is compatible with scientific findings. Some Catholics take a more symbolic or theological approach to the genealogies, suggesting that they may not necessarily represent a strict chronological or biological lineage but rather convey spiritual or symbolic truths. In this view, the genealogies emphasize the continuity of God's plan and the connection of Jesus to the entire human family. Jesus is believed to be fully divine and fully human. While the Gospels do not explicitly mention Jesus' awareness of his genealogy in the way modern genealogical charts might, it is generally accepted that Jesus had a deep understanding of his mission and connection to humanity. As for the disciples, the Gospels themselves include genealogies, and it is likely that the disciples were aware of Jesus' lineage, which was an important aspect of Messianic expectations. The Gospel writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, included the genealogies to emphasize the fulfillment of prophecies regarding the Messiah's lineage.

Thanks for being so informative about this subject, it really means a lot. Many people these days don't put this much effort into explaining things.​@@CatholicCentralVideos

Because the Bibles account of creation isn't accurate. At all.

​@@zigongosaurus5274 Does solid evidence exist that macroevolution has occurred?

Excuse us, but we do.

@@CatholicCentralVideos then you did a very poor half-assed explanation.

Hi William R, see Michelle Scully's comment on this page and watch their episode on the Bible, and the one about Faith and Reason.

Hi Brian, we hate to argue with our viewers, but the Catholic Church not only agrees with the idea of evolution, there are many members of the Church who have been in the forefront of its study, beginning with Pope Leo XIII way back in 1893, just a few decades after Darwin published his Origin of Species. As we note in our episode “Faith and Reason,” it is Pope Leo who said “Truth cannot contradict truth.” What did he mean? It is true that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, including us humans - a truth we fully profess! We also believe it is true that the preponderance of scientific evidence points to an evolutionary pattern in God’s creation of that cosmic and earthly life. Evolution was and is a part of God’s magnificent creative plan. Truth cannot contradict truth! And as we say in this episode, the truths of the bible and science point to one and the same truth: God is God of all.

@@CatholicCentralVideos Couldn't have been said better! Hope the protestant brothers and sisters get back on the right track one day.

If you watched the episode, you would see that Catholics can embrace both Creation and Evolution.

Hi Said, thanks for watching our episode! Please see our episodes on the Bible, which may help you understand what our beliefs are regarding interpretation of Holy Scripture. These episodes are titled The Bible, The Pentateuch, Revelation, The Letters of Paul, and the Gospels. As you will learn from them, we don't think of the Bible as a science textbook. Case in point; there are two creation stories and we don't believe God created us twice! We have to remember that people in the 5th Century B.C. had no way to understand the concept that the earth was round, that the closest star to us is 40,208,000,000,000 kilometers away, or that it is atoms, not clay, from which human beings are created. Our ancestors had to make sense of things in the way they could, and certainly God would not have tried to explain his mighty works to them in 21st century scientific language. It would have been incomprehensible. Did God personally create the earth, the stars and human beings? Absolutely! Did it happen exactly the way it does in the Bible? We have learned from science that the answer is No. Does that mean the Bible should be rejected? Absolutely not!

We are with you on that one, Ozzyman. Unfortunately the reverse can also be true: people who learn science first and then read the Bible are often turned off because they wonder "Where's the science?" They just don't get the idea that scripture is not science but that both explore the same Truth from different directions.

But creationism is true so is parts of science

@@CatholicCentralVideos Well thanks, good to have allies. Science is the best way we know to get to the truth. Anything supporting that is welcome along.

@@bx9608 except creationism is NOT true.

@@bx9608 except creationism is NOT true.