What a vivid exchange! So many aspects that I am tempted to reply to (from my background as physicist); it would take me hours, and explode this thread.
GerardH, thanks for putting some important things straight!

Since I've told students to critique science on science-valid grounds:

100% agreed, and that is the very problem we encounter with many arguments here.
I'll just pick a few:

put all the parts of a watch in a box and shake it... then report back to me when it finally shakes into a fully functioning watch. That is exactly the claim of evolution.

No, it isn't, and that's known for ages; I already read about this strawman fallacy as a teenager: Hoimar von Ditfurth, "Im Anfang war der Wasserstoff", 1972.

The law of entropy destroys any semblance of the slightest possibility of evolution.

Incorrect. Start out with any system with some concentrated energy, in most cases you'll get a lot of complex dynamics that evolves 'out of the blue', only at end at there is thermal equilibrium. That only means that evolution will be followed by distruction. Hardly controversial. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The problem with this [...] macro evolution demands that major changes are possible [...] can only happen very slowly, they are also incredibly unlikely [...] work out the energy input needed [...] impossible because the biologists have not worked out how many missing links and intermediates there are [...] worried that the number may be so big to become effectively impossible

There is no scientific value in pointing out that a theory in progress does not explain (yet, at the desired detail level) the big question that it is aimed at. That isn't even exceptional for established, uncontroversial theories when applied to real-world observations (ask any scientist; I could provide examples in quantum theory).
The relevant question is: The things that the theory DOES explain, do they fit into the big puzzle at which the theory is aimed, or are they at odds with it?
Sciences (or popularizations thereof) are not always good at pointing those things out - lack of philosophy as discussed earlier.

I have learned that science is, like everything else in our modern world, run more by politics than by the quest for truth. Scientists are driven by the quest for institutional and foundation funding and nothing too controversial or favorable to faith claims or other impolitic things gets funded. Hence, the unpopular research will not be funded

My experience is quite the opposite (except that convincing a funding commitee does involve politics). Insinuating general dishonesty concerning the 'real' vs. 'proclaimed' goals of scientific research is not helpful, and eventually fires back; at worst at religion in general.

I'm tempted to start a thread about what people think of Harry Potter.

Nah, let’s do vaccines next.

We can speculate as to God's motives, perhaps, but to my mind it's futile.

If I were in God's position, I might wake up one day bored and decide to create the universe - but how do we reconcile that with an existence which has no concept of time and, in fact, defies what we would usually understand as an "existence"?

Chris, I'm pointing out that those kinds of ideas rely on God as being perhaps more anthropomorphized than is actually the case. Our ability to speculate on a being's actions is stymied by that being transcending every aspect of our lives and experiences of the universe that we usually take for granted.

Lots of motives / outcomes at play in these beliefs.

(0) Actual scientific doubt of the commonly-held models currently in vogue. This is a little outside of the scope of this conversation, since we're talking more about its concomitance with a certain kind of traditionalism. It does exist, though, and that should be acknowledged.

It is very relevant to this discussion inasmuch as these questions and doubts are sometimes used by people with other motives to simply dismiss that science has anything to say at all, and then introduce their own perspective on the basis of some warrant outside of the scope of scientific inquiry, e.g. "the science is not settled, so Catholics have to abide by the certainty of [document x] and [pope y] (and reject [pope z's concession to the growing scientific consensus]) on this matter until it is."

(1) Suspicion of modern science, modern thought, due to its negative (moral) consequences on society, and a desire to discredit it, even on merely scientific grounds, as unrigorous, erroneous, and unreliable.

(2) A conviction that resolving this scientific question in favor of the classical model of the Universe will lend credibility to the Church.

(3) A conviction that believing in this model of the Universe is de fide (I seem to recall a lot of this kind of idea in Kolbe center materials).

[This, on my view, is the most potentially divisive way this view can be held, since it impugns the orthodoxy of those who do not accept geocentrist / YEC views, and questions the validity of the Magisterium and its representatives that permit these opinions.]

(4) An addiction to red pills. I feel like coming to these views can be the natural path for people of a certain cast of mind. If these ideas get cast as "more conservative" or "more traditional," regardless of their truth or falsity, that's going to be attractive to some people.

Andrew... you also might listen to Holst's Planets. Then again there is always the music of the spheres!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPFU41Jf17Q

Liam... that is a nice video. Is that Bach in the very center of which all musical notes rotate around?

Oj Boże. This thread is why I try to steer the conversations at parish coffee hours toward less-controversial topics like Extra ecclesiam nulla salus and Pius VI's condemnation of the Synod of Pistoia.

And don't tell me that raccoons who eat from garbage cans in the Big City have "evolved." They adapted, yes.....but that's not "evolution."

Is Outrage!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51MI7LaXIgL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

When science is honest it provides a method for testing and uncovering a great deal of knowledge. However, science is frequently placed at the service of those who have a position to defend or possibly an ax to grind relative to their parents, the church in which they were raised, etc. Science is a method of inquiry and testing phenomena in the pursuit of increasing our knowledge of the universe around us. It uses inductive method (specific to general) rather than deductive (general to specific) means to achieve its ends.

When a hypothesis is presented that is not supported by the necessary data it must be rejected. Micro evolution is demonstrable. Macro evolution is not. Those raccoons, however modified by adaptation they may be, are still raccoons. Discoveries yet to be made may find evidence one way or the other, of course, but cows can't have kittens at this point.

I do not present this as an argument for any particular position in this discussion. I only say that pseudo science is alive and flourishing in the world today and it will be massively funded in favor of serious research that does not support the zeitgeist!

There are many honest researchers out there who work to benefit us all. However, many scientists live and die on research grants. Without those grants, they can't raise their families, pay mortgages, and etc. As I have often heard in a take on the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules. So yes, there is plenty of junk science, aimless research that's a fling at the moon, and funds wasted on research directed for political outcomes. It happens. You take the bad with the good. In practice, there doesn't seem to be a good way to separate the two as long as funding sources stay the way they are.

No, in the first place you try to gather data that may or may not support the hypothesis; it is when new data is systematically against it, in the (more common) case of inconclusive data you are going to modify the hypothesis rather than reject it altogether.

Having a hypothesis definitively rejected (especially a very general one, like macro-evolution) is a rather complicated process - as science history shows over and over again.

Thank you for your knowledge on this subject.

Please share with us data that supports the hypothesis of evolution?

Also, please share with us data that supports the hypothesis that the earth rotates around the sun?

We would like to see this data.

Hi Mark... that is the theory... I want to see supporting data behind it... for example, in a scientific paper or a book that clearly proves it. Thank you for your short.

Chris, if you can't see the obvious differences between an inanimate object that is fabricated by humans and a living, breathing organism, then I'm not sure what to say.

Cambrian explosion and the other two... lots of hand waving but very little explanation as to why the number of beneficial mutations increase and decrease... Most importantly no experiments to prove the theory. Sorry I am biased, in my science if we waved our hands around in front of a black board we then had to go into the lab to show our hand waving was not a pile of hot air.
Anyway I teach that macro evolution is probably not an accurate description of the evidence in my science lessons. If my students have further questions I pass them on to a biology teacher friend of mine that is involved in 'Daylight'.

He was just like me, he accepted evolution because other scientists said it was a good explanation. Well he teaches in a Catholic school and was asked by the Religious instruction dept. to give a talk on Evolution. He decided to read up on a topic he had not really studied, well when he came to give the talk much to the surprise of the Religious teachers, instead of trashing Genesis, he pointed out all the flaws in evolutionary theory. I now follow his lead. Fortunately evolution is not really taught in the exam syllabus in the U.K. we have one or two lines that are true when applied to micro evolution (adaption)

Young Earth Creationism is false. Geocentrism is false.

I don't think science is able to prove this... balance of probabilities yes, but that is in a state of flux. I saw above comments about scientific TRUTH, I do wonder what that means? While we have Laws of Gravity, thermodynamics, motion... just because they are laws does not make them true.

an interesting quote from Lawrence Krauss

"But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe."

This has the effect of a pause and think moment

Schoenbergian,

I don't mean to suggest that there's NO difference by which the LP-DVD can't be distinguished from organic life. Nevertheless, since I intended it by analogy, let me use an analogy of organic life.

In our own time we see large dogs and small ones. The small ones sometimes are immature versions of the big dogs, such as when a litter of pups is born. In other cases, however, the small one is,.... a small dog which will never develop into something significantly larger because it is already the adult form of its kind of life.

Alternatively, there are two kinds of snakes which could easily be mistaken by casual observers as the same kind of snake. They aren't related to each other, i.e., cousins, nor are they joined by familial bonds (fathers and sons or even "more developed" forms of each other. Rather, they're completely distinct. That the fossil record shows simple organisms in one level and more complicated organisms in a "later" level doesn't, by itself, show the causal connection which is absolutely necessary for "evolution" to be taken seriously as a scientific theory.

Thank you Charles, for beginning to put forward empirical data of some sort.

Are you implying that we are the center of the 'axis of evil' by coincidence and not the intention of a Creator? I am unclear.

Most scientists therefore prefer to speak about succesful vs. failing theories (and the so-called 'laws of nature' are in fact parts of theories, they cannot even be expressed without reference to the framework of a theory), and accepted/controversial/rejected hypotheses.

In communicating with a non-scientific audience, the latter is usually called 'false' or 'wrong', which covers it sufficiently well in everyday language.

Well, I am sorry to be speaking non-scientifically... so if I must ascend to the level of "science speak", then I will oblige and would suggest that there is new empirical data that begins to make the present widely-held and unchallenged view negatively successful and perhaps more positively failing.

But I am still open minded (with a mind that thinks for itself) BTW... I am not buying anything of anyone's view at this point in time... except God's.

It is fascinating to discover that most of "scientific fact" is just theory upon theory.

Which brings me right back to what I thought when this thread was begun:

"God interposes and shews from the things he hath made, that man cannot comprehend his power and wisdom.

[1] Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind, and said: [2] Who is this that wrappeth up sentences in unskillful words? [3] Gird up thy loins like a man: I will ask thee, and answer thou me. [4] Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell me if thou hast understanding. [5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

[31]Shalt thou be able to join together the shining stars the Pleiades, or canst thou stop the turning about of Arcturus? [32] Canst thou bring forth the day star in its time, and make the evening star to rise upon the children of the earth? [33] Dost thou know the order of heaven, and canst thou set down the reason thereof on the earth?"

60 years ago I wanted to be a cosmologist. At the time the big bang theory was in the ascendant, and astronomers told us the expansion of the universe was slowing down. Now they tell us that the expansion is speeding up. Then we understood, in a general way how gravity held galaxies together. Now we are told that we need a double helping of dark matter to hold them together, and we have no idea what dark matter is.
But the fact that people shoot their mouths off when they have only just nibbled at the edge of a question does not invalidate science.
I did study cosmology as a sideline to other things for a while. I met and talked with Stephen Hawking, and concluded that there were much cleverer people than me (and much more single minded), and that I should devote my time to something of more immediate use.
I have used my phone today to show me the whereabouts of the bus I was intending to catch. That depended on Einstein's theory of general relativity, and quantum mechanics both working, at least to a good approximation..

Well, if I must ascend to the level of "science speak", then I will oblige and would suggest that there is new empirical data that begins to make the present widely-held and unchallenged view negatively successful and perhaps more positively failing.

Don't get your point, except if it is intended as mockery ... I repeat that I have no formal training in philosophy.
I am also open minded, but I am aware that thinking for myself is no substitute for learning from experts.

Don't get your point, except if it is intended as mockery ... I repeat that I have no formal training in philosophy. I am also open minded, but I am aware that thinking for myself is no substitute for learning from experts.

It is not mockery, really... just a little jab taken at the 'scientific thinking plane' from a 'non-scientific thinking plane'. (which one is higher than the other? Niether! There is no up or down in the universe! ...well, relatively speaking...)

As far as learning from 'experts' (higher plane?), as the years and decades go by I have come to realize that there really aren't any out there except the Saints. 99.99% of the 'experts' are usually representing a "school of thought". I much prefer to read the works of Saints and holy men and women.

There is an entire universe of knowledge and wisdom on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus and the Catholic Faith. And it is all TRUE... not built on theories.

If you are open minded, then can I assume you are also open to the possibility that the 'axis of evil' is the universe pointing to the earth?

Interesting to read on your distant past, hawkins!

I met and talked with Stephen Hawking

lucky you, I only walked over his ashes recently after the Evensong ... wonder what he would have said that his remains would be treated on this fine sacred music on a daily basis ...

Now we are told that we need a double helping of dark matter to hold them together, and we have no idea what dark matter is.

An interesting way of saying "our best accepted theory has a huge problem, and we really have no clue what's going on". Interesting times, like fundamental physics around 1900.

Francis

Duck Duck Go is your friend.