Evolution & Catholicism Are Mutually Exclusive

Pro says that if the Church allows discussion & research of something, it means the Church accepts belief in whatever the 'something' is. To support his point, he says the Church doesn't allow research of abortion and says it's because it doesn't accept abortion. He provides other examples, such as murder, warfare, theft, & rape. This is a non-sequitur. It's also false. The Church doesn't permit intentional killing of an unborn baby, but that doesn't mean researching abortion requires performing abortions. In fact, the Church had to have researched abortion to know anything about it. You have to research something to understand it. How else would the Church be able to make the decision that abortion is not permissible? Here is a quote from a page on the Vatican's website where it permits research and discussion of warfare in order to make sure it's used only as a last resort: The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration.[...] The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.(5) How will the conditions for war be evaluated without research and discussion? This is a de facto endoresement by the Church for the research and discussion of war. When Con says, “In other words, the Church would not permit the research and discussion of something that is not compatible with Church doctrine. But as the Catholic Church permits evolution along these terms, we must conclude that they are compatible.” He makes a non-sequitur. Acceptance of research and discussion into a topic is not the same as acceptance of the topic itself. e.g. Just because I'm discussing evolution in this debate, and researched it in order to debate it, doesn't mean I accept evolution. Because I obviously don't. Con says evolution says nothing about the first woman. This is simply false. Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that a woman 'evolving' or whatever out of the rib of the first man while he was an adult is wholly incompatible with modern evolutionary theory. Con says the word translated as 'birds' in Genesis might mean just 'flying insects.' By arguing so, he puts himself in an even more absurd position, because now it's not birds-before-dinosaurs that must be reconciled with evolutionary theory, but flying insects. Since land creatures, in Genesis, didn't appear until after the 'flying insects', and the only life so far created was fish, Con is de facto arguing that modern evolutionary theory is consistent with insects evolving from fish. What an absurdity. Con says, “The modern synthesis provides nothing on what drove the process; the capacity for some superintender to superintend the process cannot possibly be discounted on the modern synthesis.” That's not the point. The point is that the mechanism of human evolution, as posited by the Modern Synthesis, is not “stem-cell in a rib of an adult male growing into a woman which then mates with the male she evolved from to start the human race.” I've provided 2 reasons why Catholicism & The Modern Synthesis of Evolution are not compatible, but either one is sufficient to prove my case standing alone. I never thought I'd one day have to argue that fish didn't evolve directly into flying insects. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (5) http://www.vatican.va...