Robert Sungenis on Akin's Evolution Part Two
To recap, the catechism's paragraph 337 citation of Dei Verbum 11's phrase "for the sake of our salvation" is at best suspicious. If the catechism is using the phrase the same way Catholic liberals do today, then it is logical why it insists on saying the days of Genesis 1 are symbolic, since if Genesis 1 is not inspired by the Holy Spirit and - as the liberals teach in all our Catholic academic institutions it is just a redaction of fanciful Mesopotamian creation literature - then obviously it cannot be interpreted as literal truth. The liberals think they have the license to teach these things because according to their distorted interpretation of Die Verbum 11, real biblical truth only applies to matters of salvation and Genesis 1 is not a matter of salvation. This is one of the biggest falsehoods ever perpetrated on Mankind and its home is right in the heart of liberal Catholicism which dominates most of Catholicism today.
As we have seen, the Catholic Church, the official church, has never taught such things. She has said precisely the opposite in every one of Her official statements on scripture. Nevertheless, Father Brown - who is the veritable spokesman for Catholic liberalism - claims in his New Jerome biblical commentary that "from the very first time the story of Genesis chapters 1 to 3 is told to kindergarten children they should be taught to think of it as a popular story and not as history even though the teacher may not wish at that level to raise formally the question of historicity." As with all attempts at indoctrination, the primary candidates for propagating one's views are children. Many of the Baby Boomers who went through the Catholic grade schools and high schools of the 1960's, 70's and 80's know this to be the case, since by that time the liberal hermeneutic had seeped far and wide into Catholic academia. They were taught that the creation story was a poetic myth, that Adam and Eve were not real people, that Moses did not write the Old Testament, and that Jonah was never swallowed by a great fish.
Why was this taught? If you did not know it then you know it now: that is, liberals like Father Brown declared that it was not the biblical author's intent to write history. Father Brown made up a new category of exegesis known as the "intent" of the biblical author. Thus he writes, "On the other hand, church writers interpreted the literal sense of the bible with great latitude for they did not have to justify a correspondence between the meaning they found in the text and the author's original intent. The latter outlook has echoes in the sophisticated reaction of some modern literary critics against the historical critical quest for the author's intent which they regard as unknowable." Notice that Father Brown feels no compulsion to match the words one reads in scripture with the biblical author's original intent. They are totally divorced from one another. Why is this the case? Because if a person such as Father Brown reads words in scripture which claim, for example, that the world was created in six days or that Goliath was a nine-foot giant whom David knocked out with a single stone, but he finds them too fanciful and hard to believe, he can simply dismiss them as being non-factual accounts similar to Aesop's fables and claim the author never intended otherwise.
As such, Father Brown cleverly tries to pass off fiction as one of the options available to biblical exegetes, and they can do so by comparing scripture to other human writing that used fiction. Thus he writes, "In the quest for the literal sense of any writing, it is important to determine the literary form the author was employing. In a modern library, books are classified according to the type of literature: fiction, poetry, history, biography, drama, etc. A history and a novel may treat the same person or event, but we expect different degrees of fact and fiction from them. Whereas in regard to poetry the issue of fact and fiction is irrelevant. Factual history is a type of literature. Fiction is another. Both exist in the bible. If one correctly classifies a certain part of the bible as fiction, one is not destroying the historicity of that section for it never was history. One is simply recognizing the author's intention in writing that section."
If one does not have his antenna on alert Father Brown's words might appear innocuous to the average Catholic. But Father Brown did something very tricky. He does not speak of the literal meaning but of the literal sense. What is the literal sense? Obviously it cannot be the literal meaning or Father Brown would be a conservative who takes the bible at face value and he assures us he is not. In Father Brown's world the literal sense is equivalent to fiction. Here Father Brown stretches the meaning of words to the breaking point. The divergence of what we normally understand between the symbolic and the literal Father Brown now bridges by claiming it was the author's literal intent to use fiction. In other words, the literal meaning of the text is no longer what we use to judge its meaning. Rather we judge the meaning based on whether the author intended to write fiction. If he intended to write fiction then writing fiction was what he literally intended and thus fiction becomes the literal sense of his words.
You have to hand it to Father Brown, this is an ingenious way of twisting the issue to get it to go where you want it to go. But, if as Father Brown says in his last sentence "If one correctly classifies a certain part of the bible as fiction" this just begs the question as to who is to decide when the biblical writer intended to write fiction. Well, it is liberal Catholics like Father Brown and the whole cadre of historical critical exegetes, of course. With what criterion will they judge whether it is fiction? On their scientific opinions regarding what they believe are the established facts of life. For example, that all life evolved over billions of years. That men are not swallowed by whales. That snakes could not talk to Adam and Eve. That a donkey can't talk to Balaam. That giants like Goliath never existed. That strong men like Samson are a myth. There wasn't enough water to create Noah's flood. There was not enough room for Noah to put two of every animal on the ark. The Angel of death did not kill all the firstborn of Egypt. And in fact, as Pius XII said in Humani Generis, these critical exegetes don't even believe in Angels. They also believe the Gospels are not accurate biographies of Jesus' life but are redacted by second or third generation Christians and thus are in error in many places. They believe biblical prophecy does not predict the future but only recalls the past but makes it look like prophecy. That miracles are merely exaggerated natural events created by the biblical author etc.
Basically anything that will do away with the supernatural will suffice as the criteria from which one can judge the biblical author's intent. This is a clever and effective way for liberals to deny the content of scripture and at the same time dress up their view in intellectual garb so that it can have the appearance of well-studied research. In reality, it is only Father Brown's subjective opinion on the meaning of scripture. We wonder what Father Brown would have done if we interpreted his New Jerome biblical commentary in the same way he interprets scripture. That is, by what we think his intent is. We could posit all kinds of sinister motives for Father Brown's teachings, none of which he would like. We could say that he is demonically possessed, or that he is hell-bent on destroying the Catholic faith. He would be the first to claim that we could never know his true intent.
Father Brown goes on to say, "Literary criticism, however does not view the text as a window onto a historical world but as a mirror reflecting a world into which the reader is invited. In other words the referent of the text as such is not the real world of history such as the exodus or the crucifixion but the literary world signified by the text. In the case of the biblical texts the literary world is generated by the theological interpretation of the reality such as the escape from Egypt as divine liberation for covenant life, the death of Jesus as salvific paschal mystery." -- taken from the New Jerome biblical commentary page 1159.
This is quite ironic. For all the descriptions of a primitive-thinking in cretenous culture that Father Brown and the historical critical exegetes voiced on the mentality of the biblical writers, they nevertheless allow the same writers to be quite ingenious in dressing up historical events so that the history is minimized and the so-called literary world radiantly blooms before our eyes. It seems odd that such primitive-thinking individuals possessed such intellectual acumen in ascending to this higher dimension of literature. According to Father Brown, the biblical writers have little ability to "write history in the Western sense of the term" and they are hampered with a "naive pre-scientific outlook." But Father Brown also believes they had no problem flowering their writing as if they were copies of William Shakespeare indulging their prose with "highfalutin" literary genres such as fiction, poetry, drama, biography, etc. Imagine how much intellectual and literary acumen it requires to alter the historical reality of an event and replace it with deep and penetrating philosophical or theological messages. Some of our best university students find this difficult to do but they usually have little problem in stating the bare facts of an event. To Father Brown, the biblical writers are so good at producing the world of make-believe one might think that they would have to be educated at Harvard or Yale to be so convincing. But the biblical writer's lack of such tutelage doesn't seem to hamper Father Brown and his theory. He can make the biblical writers adept or inept whenever he chooses. That is, whatever he can use to support his higher critical theories he will use.
As usual, Father Brown then has the audacity to seek support from the Catholic Magisterium for his flagrant illogic, claiming "the reference to the author's intention in the definition affirms that those who produced the biblical books had in their times a message to convey to their readers and that it is important for us to have this message in mind when we read the texts and ask what they now mean for us. The quest implied in the definition matches Pius XII statement in Divino Afflante Spiritu number 550 saying let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal so that the mind of the author may be made clear." What did Father Brown just do? By now you ought to be able to see it for yourself. Once again he twisted Pius the Twelfth's words. Before he extracted the Pope's words from the Divino encyclical, Father Brown asserted that the literal words we read in scripture may have nothing to do with the intent of the biblical author. But is that what the Pope said? No, a thousand times no! In fact, the Pope said just the opposite! The Pope said that in order to know the mind of the author we must discern and define the literal meaning of his biblical words. That is, we can only know the author's intent by understanding the literal meaning of his words. Pius XII puts no adjectives on his use of 'literal', that is, he does not say it is the literal sense. Nor does he mention anything about seeing fiction in scripture, nor about having some precognition of the author's intent apart from the author's literal words. Yet Father Brown pulls his magician's cape over Pius the Twelfth's words and utters his historical critical abracadabra and presto Father Brown makes Pius the Twelfth now agree with Father Brown.
Of course Father Brown's emphasis on intent eventually reveals its own insidious intent because it results in Father Brown's ultimate desire to limit biblical inerrancy only to matters of salvation. Thus he writes, "The distinction between the author's thought world and the message he conveys in writing is important in discussing the limits of biblical inerrancy." In other words, Father Brown is revealing that his interest in focusing on the intent of the biblical author is so that he can say the biblical author made mistakes in his historical account and as such it was never intended to give real, literal truth. Be that as it may, by referring to "matters of salvation" one might think Father Brown has at least salvaged some truth from the bible. However, being curious about what they really meant by this phrase, I once asked one of his astute admirers how one defines "matters of salvation." His reply was "Whatever is in the Nicene creed, that is all." Consequently, anything else in scripture is up for grabs and that is precisely why Catholic biblical scholarship has met its demise.
The remaining question is: what side is Mr. Aiken on? Does he believe, with Catholic liberals like Raymond Brown, that scripture is only inspired when it speaks directly of salvation? Or does Mr. Aiken believe the whole bible is inspired and inerrant, as it was taught in Catholic tradition? Curious minds want to know.
Aiken: "In its documents we don't see the Magisterium taking the attitude that many young earth supporters would wish. The Magisterium is not saying, well maybe we can kind of tentatively discuss the hypothetical possibility of evolution or an old earth. From Pius XII forward we see an endorsement of the old earth view. We see Pius XII and the Magisterium not having a problem with evolution in general and even supporting it and in recent documents we see the Magisterium not having a problem with human evolution and praising mainstream scientific studies contributing to our knowledge of the origins of humanity."
We must reiterate that Mr. Aiken once again fails to distinguish what Pius XII said officially and authoritatively in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis and what Pius XII said unofficially and non-authoritatively in his 1951 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science. Moreover, what Pius XII said in Humani Generis is far from an endorsement of evolution. At best it is a highly cautionary treatise to Catholics that they should not go beyond the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church in trying to support evolution. More importantly, Pius XII said that until evolution advocates such as Mr. Aiken can show how Pelagianism can be reconciled with Catholic doctrine then it is heretical for Catholics to hold to ape-to-man evolution. Additionally, unlike today's liberal Catholics, Pius XII said in Humani Generis that all of Genesis was inspired by the Holy Spirit and inerrant, as noted in paragraph 38 of his encyclical.
Aiken: "This has implications for our discussions today. What we see is that the Magisterium has issued a ruling, and a firm ruling given its repetition over the last century."
The modern Magisterium has issued no definitive ruling that decides the creation/evolution debate except to say that it has not ruled against either one at the present time. This is nothing new since the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission said essentially the same thing when it allowed the day of Genesis 1 to be interpreted literally as 24 hours or as a certain length of time. So it is wrong for Mr. Aiken to claim the Magisterium has endorsed evolution. It has only said that today we are blessed with more scientific information about the issues that concern the debate.
As we noted, however Mr. Aiken has already admitted his bias regarding what scientific information and interpretations he is going to accept. He then read into paragraph 283 of the catechism and concluded that the Magisterium is also not interested in hearing about the scientific information produced by Protestant creationists. If the Pope only knew that his close advisors were keeping all the creationist evidence from him we might have a totally different view coming from the Vatican than we have now.
At the end of this section Mr. Aiken then creates a strawman argument against Mr. Lazar as he raises his eyebrow in derision and says, "If you want to disagree with the Magisterium and say that scripture and tradition really do require these things fine, but the burden of proof is on you to show that the Magisterium is wrong." Once again Mr. Aiken throws the word Magisterium around whenever he wants to intimidate creationists. He concentrates on the modern Magisterium and interprets them as trumping any decisions that were made by past Magisteriums. For example, Mr. Aiken ignores the strong statements from Lateran council 4 and Vatican council 1 that both said God made all things in the creation by ex-nilo divine fiat. He also ignores the strong statements from the late 1800's from Catholic Magisterial authorities against evolution. In fact, evolutionary theory had been virtually silenced by the Church when the 1860 council of Cologne, which was affirmed by Pope Pius IX, condemned the idea of human evolution in very straightforward words: "Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that those who assert man emerged from spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect is clearly opposed to sacred scripture and to the faith."
As noted this condemnation of evolution by the council of Cologne was approved by Pius IX. It was followed by condemnations of evolution in the index of forbidden books and in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica (which journal was recognized by the Vatican as doctrinally authoritative since everything it said had to first be approved by the Vatican secretariat of state and then published). As noted by one author, "For the 40 or so years of this time period all Catholic textbooks for lower and higher education and all seminaries, priests and professors the world over studied Catholic theology textbooks in which it was explained that the Holy See had acted against Evolutionism based almost exclusively on information gleaned from La Civiltà Cattolica. The Catholic textbook stated that God formed the body of Adam directly and immediately without any evolutionary process. They also stress the lack of proofs in favor of evolution and in a section devoted to decisions of the Church, the cases of Leroy, Zam, Bonimelli and Headley were cited to show that the position of the Holy See was contrary to evolution." -- taken from the book "Negotiating Darwin the Vatican Confronts Evolution 1877-1902".
Mr. Aiken's excuse, of course, is that science has put doubt into the creation model and has shown that evolution in long ages are most likely, if not exactly what occurred. So much for faith in the Catholic Magisterium that is supposed to be guided into all doctrine by the Holy Spirit. In fact, as Mr. Aiken dismisses the consensus of the Church fathers against evolution in long ages later in the debate, he tells us that Mr. Lazar cannot appeal to the traditional belief that when the fathers are in consensus on a given theological or biblical issue we are required to follow their belief. To break us from this belief, Mr. Aiken's thesis is that the place in the council of Trent where it is said "we must adhere to the fathers" is stated in only the "disciplinary section of the council, not in the doctrinal section" and therefore it is not infallible and can be ignored. Irrespective of Mr. Aiken's flippant attitude toward the council of Trent, I have thoroughly examined his thesis and found it categorically false. For those interested in my written critique, please go to our website at the following address (https://www.robertsungenis.org/) or search under jimmy akin and "unanimous incentive".
Aiken: "In light of this ruling, the question becomes one that needs to be answered from the reason perspective which leads us to science. Scientifically numerous lines of evidence support both an old earth and biological evolution these findings come from fields including astronomy astrophysics geology paleontology biology and genetics. Of course there's no way to survey the evidences from each of these fields today but I will look at two pieces of evidence one of which deals with the age of the universe and one of which deals with evolution regarding the age of the universe we have strong evidence from astronomy that the universe is older than a few thousand years for example in 2008 astronomers observed supernova known as sn 2008 d footage of this supernova was captured in real time and you can watch the video of the star exploding. The supernova was in a galaxy that is 88 million light years away from us and that means that in 2008 astronomers were witnessing an event that took place 88 million years ago. You can go to my webpage and look at the supernova going off for yourself you can watch images of an event happening 88 million years ago with your own eyes and if events were happening in the universe millions of years ago that means we're living in an old universe not just one a few thousand years old. When it comes..."
Mr. Aiken's citation to a supernova provides him no proof of evolution or long ages. First of all, Mr. Aiken makes it appear as if there is an actual film in which one can see the star exploding. There is no such film. It is a picture of the star taken in 2007 that suddenly is much bigger in a picture taken in 2008. Second, Mr. Aiken claims the star is 88 million light years away and therefore must be at least 88 million years old, but this is an assumption built on other assumptions none of which Mr. Aiken can prove. Stellar parallax is the only empirical method of measuring the distances to stars but at present it can only measure stars from 300 to 600 light years away from earth. Obviously, 88 million light years does not fit into parallax measurements. The only other way that modern science assumes it can measure the distance to stars is by using red-shift (a shift of the starlight to the red end of the spectrum for most of the galaxies in the universe). The modern interpretation of redshift is that as the balloon universe expands it takes the galaxies farther and farther away from earth. The farther the galaxy is away from earth the more redshift it will have, but this is just a theory. It has been challenged by even mainstream secular cosmologists, especially since there are literally dozens of other explanations for why the galaxies have redshift.
One of the alternate explanations was from late astronomer Halton Arp, who said redshifts gave no indication of time or distance, especially since most galaxies had quasars right next to them that had very high redshifts compared to the low redshift of its galaxy neighbor. Obviously since the galaxy and the quasar were in the same vicinity (which was verified by long stellar filaments that connected the quasar to the galaxy) redshift cannot be a measure of distance or time. But mainstream science, of which Halton Arp had been a longtime member, ignored his evidence because it did not agree with the Big Bang theory. To silence Arp, they banned him from using telescopes in the US and rejected his peer-reviewed papers. So much for the fairness, objectivity and honesty of men in white lab coats. Moreover, we already saw how dishonest Edwin Hubble was when he invented his expanding Big Bang balloon universe. Since Hubble saw only redshifts and no blueshifts, Hubble knew that the ubiquitous redshifts put the earth in the center of the universe. The only way out of that "horrible dilemma" (as he called it) was to do away with Euclidean geometry altogether and turn the universe into a two-dimensional Romanian mathematical balloon structure so that he could put the galaxies on the skin of the balloon and have them expand so that they would stretch the wavelength of the light and thus produce redshifts. Ask yourself is that any way to run a universe?
Hubble made up things out of whole cloth just to escape having the earth in the center of the universe and suddenly redshift becomes an indicator of time and distance so that modern science can have its Big Bang. Another reason Mr. Aiken's claim from the supernova is dubious and unprovable is that it assumes the light traveling to earth would take millions of years to reach us. Because, according to Einstein's special relativity theory, light can only travel 186,000 miles per second and since these modern scientists think the universe is multi-million light years in size and thus the stars are multi-million light years away from us then the light from the supernova could not reach us for millions of years. But what they don't tell you is that in Einstein's general theory of relativity the speed of light and material objects is not limited to 186,000 miles per second. They can travel at any speed. In fact, the superluminal speed afforded by general relativity is how they explain why their expanding Big Bang universe is accelerating way beyond the speed of light! They use special relativity only on the inside of the universe, where they claim no expansion of the universe is occurring and thus the speed of light must remain at 186,000 miles per second and thus the speed of starlight must be limited accordingly.
Of course this just begs the question that if the universe is expanding at its edge but not inside the edge, how can that be? When they've already told us from Edwin Hubble's analysis that all the celestial objects such as stars, galaxies, quasars or even black holes are all placed on the edge of the balloon universe and thus everything sitting on the balloon universe should be expanding. These are just some of the contradictions modern cosmology has experienced by inventing the Big Bang expanding universe so that they could get out from under the central earth that Hubble originally found in his telescope. Since we on earth and the Milky Way galaxies surrounding us are supposedly on the surface of the Big Bang balloon universe, then all the celestial objects in our vicinity should be expanding. That means that all the constellations we have seen in the same size and proportions for thousands of years should have been expanding apart and thus they would no longer be the same recognizable constellations. But we don't see anything expanding do we?
The constellations are the same size and proportions they have always been. Otherwise the Big Dipper would have turned into the Big Dish. Even the bible thousands of years ago recorded the existence of the same size and proportions of the constellations that we see today. As it says in Job 9 verse 9 "God who made the bear in Orion and the Pleiades". Irrespective of that issue, modern science also uses general relativity for the Big Bang. If they had tried to use special relativity there would not even be the possibility of a Big Bang. Why is this so? Because if the speed of light and material objects is limited to 186,000 miles per second and nothing can exceed that speed, the speed of the Big Bang could never explode fast enough to produce the size universe that evolutionists need! So the Big Bang scientists using general relativity decided to allow for a super-fast explosion in the shortest time possible (otherwise known as "inflation"). With inflation, energy and matter could move way beyond the normal speed of light. And now in the present day, since the universe is said to be still expanding at an accelerated rate, energy and material objects can still travel way beyond the normal speed of light.
Be that as it may, what is even more interesting is general relativity's geocentric universe. Yes, you heard that correctly. General relativity readily admits to the viability of a geocentric universe, and because a geocentric universe is similar to modern science's claim for the Big Bang, accelerating and non-inertial general relativity says that light and material bodies in a geocentric universe can exceed 186,000 miles per second - which allows the universe to accelerate daily around a fixed earth in about 24 hours. In fact, in the Einstein geocentric universe the farther something is from the central earth the stronger the gravitational and inertial forces and thus the faster light and material objects will move in that location. As such, in Einstein's geocentric universe it would not take long for light from a supernova to reach earth. In fact, with a central earth in a rotating universe the light from supernova sn2008d could reach us in less than 24 hours, based on the principles of Einstein's general relativity.
Unfortunately, Mr. Aiken doesn't know about these things because he only listens to those from the mainstream of modern science who obscure this information from the public in order to support evolution and long ages. Likewise, but not by choice, Pius XII did not have this knowledge and would never have had it because those controlling the halls of academia dare not let it out. But you can read all about it in books written about general relativity. Here's one from physicist William Rosser written in 1964. In his book "An Introduction to the Theory of Relativity": "If gravitational fields are present, the velocities of either material bodies or of light can assume any numerical value depending on the strength of the gravitational field. If one considers the rotating roundabout earth as being at rest, the centrifugal gravitational field assumes enormous values at large distances and it is consistent with the theory of general relativity for the velocities of distant bodies to exceed 300,000 meters per second under these conditions." -- taken from "An Introduction to the Theory of Relativity" by William Rosser, 1964 page 460.
The ironic thing about this whole story is that in 1905 Einstein invented special relativity in order to counter all the experimental evidence of the 1800's that showed the earth was not moving in space. Such as those done by Dominic Arago in 1818, George Erie in 1871, and Albert Michelson in 1881, 1887 and 1897. Instead of accepting this evidence and allowing the earth to be fixed, to make a long story short, Einstein decided to make the speed of light fixed so that the earth had to move. But 10 years later in 1915, Einstein had to invent general relativity to compensate for the inadequacies of special relativity, but when he did so Einstein discovered that general relativity allowed for the very things he tried to eliminate in his special relativity - namely, a fixed earth and a speed of light that is not fixed. In addition, general relativity forced Einstein to accept ether as the substance of space whereas he eliminated ether in the special relativity theory.
That is the real history. Unfortunately, Mr. Aiken is either oblivious to it or refuses to accept it.
Aiken: "How do birds and reptiles make egg yolks for their babies? As you'd expect this is determined by their genes. Birds and reptiles have genes that allow them to make a kind of protein known as Vitellogenin which is the main source of nutrients in an egg yolk and the genes that control the production of the telogen are known as vit genes. Now here's the thing it isn't just birds and reptiles that have vit genes even though we humans use placentas rather than egg yolks to feed our unborn babies humans also have vit genes in us they don't work because placentas but we still have the genes so what explains why humans have the genes to produce egg yolks like a bird or a reptile even though we don't use eggs to house our unborn babies. It's the same reason that a brown-eyed child can have blue-eyed genes even though they're not manifesting a child with blue-eyed genes got them from blue-eyed ancestors even though he's not blue-eyed and since humans have genes for making egg yolks some of our ancestors must have laid eggs even though we don't do today."
Mr. Aiken's argument about Vitellogenin proteins is false and unprovable. Just because humans have the Vitellogenin gene does not mean that birds producing yolk sacs with Vitellogenin were our ancestors. Although Vitellogenin is certainly an essential ingredient for the process of making nutrients in egg yolks for birds, Vitellogenin has also been found in human physiological processes and therefore we can understand why the human genome has a specific gene for Vitellogenin production. According to Dr. Michael E Baker in the article "Is Vitellogenin an Ancestor of Apolipoprotein B-100 of Human Low-density Lipoprotein and Human Lipoprotein Lipase?" Baker shows that Vitellogenin is not just a protein used for yolk production but that the human form of it is used for human physiology in the form of human apolipoprotein B-100 that is so close in gene structure to the original Vitellogenin and that the odds of the human lipoprotein not being produced by the Vitellogenin gene is 6 times 10 to the minus 23, or in colloquial language it is impossible. Obviously then we can see why the human genome contains the Vitellogenin gene. We should also note that Dr. Baker is an evolutionist and thus has no acts to grind against saying there is a human variety of Vitellogenin since he believes that the human variety evolved from the original variety.
But Mr. Aiken's argument is that there is no use for Vitellogenin in humans since he thinks it is only used for egg yolk production in birds. Dr. Baker is saying the evidence does not support that conclusion. Even better is an article by Dr. Jeffrey Tompkins titled "Evolutionists Lay an Egg; Vitellogenin Super Gene Debunked." Tompkins showed what the use was for the Vitellogenin protein in humans. He writes, "In a detailed research report recently published in a technical journal I show that the alleged Vitellogenin fragment in humans is not a pseudo-gene remnant but rather a functional feature called an 'enhancer element' toward the end of a genomic address messenger, a gamgene. This gamgene produces long non-coding RNAs that have been experimentally shown to control the function of other genes, a majority of which have been implicated in a variety of human diseases. The RNA products from this gamgene are also known to be expressed in a variety of human brain tissues that span from infant to adult." In reality, if Mr. Aiken had done more research into the Vitellogenin gene he would have discovered that creationists don't need miracles to explain it. Since Vitellogenin has uses in human as well as non-humans, he would have also seen that it is he who is the one not doing science because he refuses to use the scientific research of creationists, even faulting others for appealing to it. As it stands, Mr. Aiken is allowing his convictions toward evolution and long ages to determine how he is going to interpret the scientific data and even what data he is going to consider in his evaluation.
Moreover, the one who is depending on miracles appears to be Mr. Aiken. Either that or Mr. Aiken believes that biological specimens can function properly without all their parts, otherwise known as the problem of irreducible complexity. That was brought to center stage by William Behe in his book "Darwin's Black Box". Since biological entities cannot function without all their parts, it is at this point that Mr. Aiken will have to depend on some kind of intervention from God to smooth things over. Either he will need to resort to claiming that God programmed huge unnatural jumps in evolution, or he will have to claim that God intermittently intruded into natural processes to steer them into the right direction. In either case God is doing something outside of normal and natural processes, which is otherwise known as a miracle.
Aiken: "...scientific data. And there's a problem, because the Magisterium has ruled you don't need to do that. So you also need to be honest about the fact you're disagreeing with the Magisterium when you say the sources of faith require young earth creationism."
Here we see another straw man argument by Mr. Aiken, since he makes it seem that Mr. Lazar is "requiring" his audience to accept creationism and reject evolution. Mr. Lazar is doing no such thing. Only the Magisterium can require someone to believe in something. As we have noted, however, in this case Mr. Aiken is hoist by his own petard, for if Mr. Aiken wants to use the Magisterium as the criterion for who wins the creation versus evolution debate, the Magisterium drew its line in the sand at the time of Pius XII when this Pope wrote his encyclical Humani Generis. In it, the Pope stated that Catholics could only entertain evolution if evolution's belief in Pelagianism (which is that many ape-to-man evolutionary events occurred during the same relative time) could be reconciled with Catholic doctrine (which holds that at best only one ape could have evolved into a man, at which time God would have infused a soul into that one man and from that one man all the rest of the human race would have been produced). This necessarily requires that all other potential ape-to-man evolutions could not have taken place, since only one ape-to-man event would be permitted by Catholic doctrine even if evolution were true.
To this day no one on the evolution side has been able to reconcile evolution with non-Pelagianistic evolution -which is why most Catholic evolutionists have opted to disobey the Magisterium and believe in Pelagianism. Essentially then, the Catholic Magisterium has forbidden Catholics to believe in evolution and thus Mr. Aiken loses the debate. Unless, of course, Mr. Aiken can come up with a solution of which the Magisterium officially approves that definitively reconciles evolution with non-Pelagianism. Good luck Mr. Aiken.