{"id":12653,"date":"2021-05-22T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T18:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/?p=12653"},"modified":"2021-05-26T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T16:06:38","slug":"kolbe-report-5-22-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/kolbe-report-5-22-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Kolbe Report 5\/22\/21"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-12653-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Newsletter05.22.2021_master.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Newsletter05.22.2021_master.mp3\">https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Newsletter05.22.2021_master.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Newsletter05.22.2021_master.mp3\" download=\"Kolbe Report 5-22-21\">Download MP3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,<\/p>\n<p>Christ is ascended into Heaven!<\/p>\n<p>In these days when so many Church leaders speak of ecology and sins against the environment in the context of theistic evolution, it is worth taking a few minutes to examine whether the molecules-to-man evolutionary framework actually makes sense as a way to understand the Earth\u2019s ecology.\u00a0 Environmentalists often speak of the importance of an ecological perspective and of the need to keep endangered species of plants or animals from becoming extinct, because of their role in the complex web of the environment.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet evolution-believing environmentalists necessarily believe that the whole array of different kinds of plants and animals never existed together with each other or with mankind and that microbe-to-man evolution took place over hundreds of millions of years during which huge numbers of species came into existence one after the other through a process of mutation and natural selection.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12656\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_world.jpg?resize=293%2C401&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"293\" height=\"401\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Ironically, God\u2019s account of His work of creation is much more ecological and holistic than the evolutionary myth of microbe-to-man evolution.\u00a0 According to the sacred history of Genesis, God created all of the different kinds of creatures\u2014the inanimate and the animate; plants, animals and humans\u2014in rapid succession, so that they existed together in perfect harmony, with man and for man, from the beginning of creation.\u00a0 St. Thomas Aquinas sums up the teaching of all of the Fathers of the Church when he writes of \u201cthe first perfection of the universe\u201d which he describes \u201cas the completeness of the universe at its first founding.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In this \u201cfirst perfection,\u201d all of the different kinds of creatures existed together, each one perfect according to its nature, all existing, with man and for man, from the beginning of creation, in perfect harmony.\u00a0 St. Bonaventure uses the term \u201cmachina mundi\u201d to describe the finished state of the universe after the creation of Adam and Eve.\u00a0 Just as a machine, like an automobile, may have useable parts as it goes through a factory on a conveyor belt, but will not run on its own\u2014as an automobile\u2014until it has received all of its parts and rolls off the assembly line, so, according to St. Bonaventure, the machine of the world did not function on its own with relative autonomy until it had received all of its parts on the sixth day of creation.<\/p>\n<p>Theistic and atheistic evolutionists flatly contradict this fundamental tenet of the traditional doctrine of creation.\u00a0 The former try to reconcile their evolutionary views with the traditional doctrine by arguing that all of the diversity of the biosphere was contained in the first matter produced in the Big Bang, just as the diversity of cellular structures in a human body are contained (potentially) in the fertilized ovum of a human mother.\u00a0 But this is a very poor analogy.\u00a0 The fertilized egg is a complete human being with a body and soul.\u00a0 As the \u201cform of the body,\u201d (as defined by the Council of Vienne in 1312) the soul organizes and animates all of the organs and systems of the developing human body from conception until death.\u00a0 This kind of development bears no resemblance whatsoever to the alleged \u201ccosmic evolution\u201d of Big Bang cosmology.<\/p>\n<p>The matter allegedly created by God at the moment of the Big Bang could not possibly develop through a natural process into the extant diversity of living things.\u00a0 In the first place, none of that original matter was alive, so it had no potential to become a living thing.\u00a0 In the second place, the hydrogen, helium and lithium that allegedly came into existence \u201cin the beginning\u201d could only produce a very limited number of chemicals through their interaction and certainly nothing even remotely resembling the \u201cbuilding blocks of life.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, the claim that the matter produced at the moment of the Big Bang can be likened to a fertilized ovum is as false as it could be.\u00a0 There is certainly nothing grand or even remotely plausible about the claim that matter produced at the moment of the Big Bang could naturally develop into the universe that we see, analogously to the way that a human embryo develops into a fully-developed human being.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12654\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_plants.jpg?resize=465%2C465&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"465\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_plants.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_plants.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_plants.jpg?resize=100%2C100&amp;ssl=1 100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_plants.jpg?resize=32%2C32&amp;ssl=1 32w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Evolution is Eco-logical Nonsense<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is amusing to think of how many times I have seen Catholic intellectuals dismiss the traditional reading of Genesis in the light of the science of evolution when the scientific data fit so much more logically\u2014and <em>ecologically<\/em>\u2014into the traditional Biblical framework.\u00a0 For example, according to evolutionary mythology, insects evolved 480 million years ago; but birds did not evolve until 150 million years ago.\u00a0 According to this science fiction fantasy, insects ranged over the Earth for 330 million years with no birds to keep them in check!\u00a0 While it is true that some insects eat other insects\u2014like dragonflies and lady bugs\u2014it would be quite a stretch to imagine that insects could exist for 330 million years without birds or mammals to keep them in check!\u00a0 In a recent publication in <em>The Science of Nature, <\/em>a team of scientists calculated that:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\" \"><p>Birds around the world eat 400 to 500 million metric tonnes of beetles, flies, ants, moths, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets and other anthropods per year. These numbers have been calculated in a study led by Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland. The research, published in Springer\u2019s journal <em>The Science of Nature<\/em>, highlights the important role birds play in keeping plant-eating insect populations under control.<\/p>\n<p>Nyffeler and his colleagues based their figures on 103 studies that highlighted the volume of prey that insect-eating birds consume in seven of the world\u2019s major ecological communities known as biomes. According to their estimations, this amounts to between 400 and 500 million tonnes of insects per year but is most likely to be on the lower end of the range. Their calculations are supported by a large number of experimental studies conducted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2018\/07\/180709100850.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">many different research teams in a variety of habitats<\/a> in different parts of the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These hard facts indicate that 330 <em>days<\/em> without birds would be enough time for insects to turn the whole green Earth into a desert.\u00a0 Yet we allow most of our children and grandchildren to be taught that insects existed on Earth without birds or mammals for <em>330 million<\/em> <em>years<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Ecological Zonation and the Flood<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The evolutionary misinterpretation of the fossil record reveals another serious ecological blind spot.\u00a0 According to the microbe-to-man evolution myth, the remains of the different kinds of organisms buried in the sedimentary rocks all over the Earth succeeded each other over hundreds of millions of years, as one kind of creature evolved into another, with new organs and systems of the body being generated by a process of mutation and natural selection.\u00a0 Since sedimentological research has revealed that the sedimentary rock layers all over the Earth were laid down rapidly; and cutting edge genetics has established that mutations do not produce any new functional genetic information; and since there is no evidence in the fossil record that one kind of organism has ever evolved into a different kind of organism, with different organs and bodily systems, it makes much more sense to see the fossil record as a reflection of the <em>ecology<\/em> of the Earth at the time of the watery global cataclysm of Noah\u2019s Flood than as a record of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.\u00a0 Kolbe scientists discuss this concept in the DVD series \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/foundationsrestored.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Foundations Restored<\/a>\u201d under the heading of \u201cecological zonation.\u201d As the <em>Teacher\u2019s Guide<\/em> explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\" \"><p>Ecological Zonation\u201d refers to the presence of different types of animal and plant life at different elevations or vertical zones on land and in water.\u00a0 The presence of ecological zones means that during a global Flood, the plant and animal life would have tended to be buried in a manner that more or less reflects the elevation and ecological zone in which that plant and animal life was most commonly found, especially if the species was not very mobile.<\/p>\n<p>Based on this concept, one would expect that the first types of fossils to be found in the record established by the flood would be bottom-dwelling marine life, and this is what is found. Geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling explains:<\/p>\n<p>In the lowermost fossiliferous strata (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian), the contained fossils are almost exclusively shallow-water marine invertebrates, with fish and amphibian fossils only appearing in progressively greater numbers in the higher strata. The first fish fossils are found in Ordovician strata, and in Devonian strata are found amphibians and the first evidence of continental type flora. It is not until the Carboniferous (Mississippian and Pennsylvanian) and Permian strata higher in the geologic record that the first traces of land animals are encountered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <em>Teacher\u2019s Guide<\/em> goes on to explain how, working with ecological zonation would be a factor called \u201cdifferential escape.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The <em>Guide <\/em>explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\" \"><p>This refers to the reaction and mobility of animals to rising waters during the flood.\u00a0 Animals who sensed the need to escape and who were relatively mobile would move to higher ground as the flood waters rose.\u00a0 This concept is confirmed in areas such as the Grand Canyon where footprints of amphibians and reptiles are seen at lower levels of the geologic column, yet their fossils appear at higher strata.\u00a0 Even higher are the dinosaurs and mammals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12655\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/creation_of_sun_moon_stars.jpg?resize=318%2C436&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"436\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Traditional Creation Theology Supports Sound Ecology<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We have seen some of the ways that the empirical data harmonize much better with the sacred history of Genesis than with the myth of molecules-to-man evolution.\u00a0 But there is another reason why the traditional doctrine of the first perfection of the universe acts as a safeguard against evolutionary pantheism.\u00a0 In the sacred history of Genesis God reveals Himself to be completely transcendent.\u00a0 He is able to make a complete and harmonious universe out of nothing, but He Himself exists above and beyond His finished work of creation\u2014even as He holds it in existence with His infinite triune love.\u00a0 As soon as one denies the first perfection of the universe and sees the universe as incomplete, and only \u201con its way\u201d to the \u201comega point\u201d of perfection, it becomes necessary to divinize the universe or to identify God with His creation, as that is the only way to explain how an incomplete, imperfect, and disordered universe can \u201cevolve\u201d to a more highly-ordered state of completion and perfection.<\/p>\n<p>This is exactly what Bishops and theologians do who embrace Fr. Teilhard de Chardin\u2019s evolution-based pantheism.\u00a0 Because they have not received the doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, with its clear teaching on the \u201cfirst perfection of the universe,\u201d they must grant to the universe itself a divine power to produce new and higher kinds of organisms so as to attain that perfection which (in their distorted view) never existed \u201cin the beginning.\u201d\u00a0 Here we can see the absolute necessity of heeding Pope Pius XII\u2019s exhortation in <em>Humani generis <\/em>to bring the traditional metaphysical principles of Catholic philosophy to bear on any examination of the evolutionary hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/metaphysical-impossibility-human-evolution-chad-ripperger-catholic-creation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fr. Chad Ripperger has demonstrated<\/a>, when we apply these principles to the molecules-to-man evolution mythology, we see that the ENVIRONMENT cannot make inanimate matter come alive or change a tree-dwelling creature into a land-dwelling one\u2014no matter how many mythical millions of years one wants to assign to these fabulous processes\u2014because \u201cthe effect can never be greater than the cause.\u201d\u00a0 Only the traditional doctrine of creation explains how a transcendent Creator could bring a complete and harmonious universe into existence out of nothing with all its parts, so that the <em>machina mundi <\/em>could function with relative autonomy, yet remain a creature, totally dependent for its existence upon its transcendent Creator.<\/p>\n<p>It is high time that Church leaders who have embraced the evolution-based Teilhardian cult of the environment stepped back and re-evaluated the scientific basis for their view. \u00a0Then they will see that the only account of the origins of man and the universe that makes sense, logically and ecologically, is the one revealed by God Himself in the sacred history of Genesis.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Hugh Owen<\/p>\n<p>P.S.\u00a0 I will be speaking at Mater Dei Latin Mass Parish in Irving, Texas, on Sunday, May 23; at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church in Covington, Louisiana, on Monday evening, May 24; and at St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, evening, May 25.\u00a0 Please see the Kolbe Events Page for details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Download MP3 Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center, Christ is ascended into Heaven! In these days when so many Church leaders speak of ecology and sins against the environment in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[341],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kolbecenter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}