Catholics now believe in evolution???

"God made pre-humans into people, Vatican newspaper says." This was the headline to an article in the Catholic News I just read. This article also stated that evolution was a real natural process. Are we seeing a merger between the two theories?

This is a rather interesting turn of events regarding the official public stance of the Catholic Church. In a nutshell the Vatican is stating that evolution is a real and natural process. As a scientifically minded individual I like to see the progress. It reminds me of when the churches had to change policy in the past when new astronomical data proved we weren't the center of the universe. But, should the leader of the catholic church be downplaying their only ace card. Let's face it, if the Bible is just a story book, then what is the pope supposed to be peddling? Why does he even have this job if his whole business/religion is built upon stories? Note: I am not a catholic, I am simply a scientifically minded individual who believes in a God.

Can the two theories of evolution and creation coexist?

Yes they can, and it's not such a stretch. You might need to re-define a few things but it's worth the time. For instance:

• The Earth was not created in six literal days. This misunderstanding is at the root of a lot of errors in thinking. God's creative "days" were in effect before our 24 hour cycle was even established (read Genesis carefully with focus on the original Hebrew understandings of the word 'day' etc). The apostle Paul said we could still enter into God's day of rest, so God's seventh day is still in effect (much longer than 24 literal hours). God's time frame is different from ours. The actual elapsed time for God's creative actions could have been millions of years. In saying this I am not speaking about the creation of the universe itself (which is obviously billions of years old). I am referring to the creation of life forms here on Earth.
  


• The first creatures, according to both evolution and the Bible, were located in the oceans. These first lifeforms were simple one celled entities. If you understand two areas of study (genetic encoding and computer programming) you will understand what I am about to say. I use this analogy because it works very well to describe what I believe God's creative process essentially was.
  
  
  
  • We are simply long strands of DNA/RNA code. These code sequences (or functions) can be re-used for other projects, much like computer code. Scientist can take a 'glowing' gene (a particular code sequence) out of a jellyfish and place it into the embryo (existing DNA code strands) of a puppy. The results - The puppy will glow under certain light just the jellyfish does! So in actuality, the creation of lifeforms was as simple as writing (and re-using) code.
    
  
  In the beginning, God created the universe and all the various laws and particles that build the atoms. But physical life was not yet created. Earthly life was originally created as a single cell in the ocean. This simple DNA code sequence was to be the building block of all future life. In programmer terms, the void(main) function if you will. One can easily imagine each particular gene sequence as a new programming function. This also enables the code (DNA sequences) to be reused. This would explain why humans and animals share so much DNA...it's "boiler plate" code. This is code that is used quite often, so it's written once and re-used when needed.
  
  God would eventuality add new code to this one simple function and new creatures would be formed. In doing this, God would eventually write some interesting code (DNA sequences). As time went on (millions of years) God would have made many new creatures and introduced many new features that would be sure to reappear in later lifeforms. For instance, the hinged jaw. At some point God was making little fish and got the idea for a hinged jaw, so he wrote the code (DNA sequence) for a hinged jaw. Now, any creature that He wants to have a hinged jaw, He simply plugs in that code. We humans have that same code within our DNA that God originally wrote for some little sea fish.
  

What I am saying is this, I do believe that God worked incrementally. He started small and worked his way to more complicated life forms over long periods of time. Both science and the Bible indicate this. I do not think he started from scratch each time he wanted to make something new. He took existing DNA sequences and re-wrote some of the code to change it. This invisible process is what we now see as 'changes over time', or evolution.

I still don't buy the monkey theory!

I do not however, believe that we came directly from primates! At the point that God had created the primates but not yet made humans, He was aware of what He wanted humans to be. God knew what man was to look like and what features we were to have. Most of the necessary genetic material was already written. I believe that God simply re-used a lot of boiler plate code when making us. For instance, He didn't rewrite the gene sequence for a hinged jaw when it came to making ours. How do we know, because we have mapped our DNA and we know which sequence is responsible for this feature; We can then locate the exact same sequence in other animals. The code is identical. When God made man, he reused a lot of pre-existing code. We have identical functions as a number of other lifeforms, but this does not mean we came from them. It simply means that the Creator liked the feature, and decided to use it again in later creatures (even us).