A rather cute article at the Catholic News Service says this:
In commentaries, papal speeches, scientific conferences and philosophical exchanges, the Vatican has been focusing more and more on the relationship between God and evolution.
From the outside, this may seem a reaction to the U.S. debate over creationism versus evolution, but it really has as much or more to do with the pope's interest in defining the legitimate spheres of science and faith.
Pope Benedict has weighed in several times on evolution, essentially endorsing it as the "how" of creation but cautioning that evolutionary theory cannot exclude a divine cause.
And yet, many people are under the vague impression that this pope has rejected evolution, or is getting ready to, or has serious objections to the science involved.
Is this right?
I'd like to believe so, that the Roman Catholic Church merely wants to assert a theological "why" to the scientific "how". Benedict might even believe that himself. But I don't think this is the right way to interpret the last few years.
Catholic intellectuals seem to be burdened with the notion that somehow evolution is a random process that contradicts providence, and therefore it has to be reinterpreted to be made palatable to believers. They may be right - there really is a random component to evolution, and there's not the slightest scientific hint that it has any kind of providential direction. But this is equally true of all scientific domains. It is true of gravity, subatomic physics, psychology, geology, and meteorology. Catholics and other believers need to deal with the fact that science just doesn't support theological virtues full stop. Not just evolution, but all science.
So, if a believer is going to deal honestly with science, they have to recognise that divine action and planning is something other than a physical process - it has to underlie it, or overlay it. This is a bit like Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy - that The Good is not a physical property. The [theologically] True is not a physical property either, so stop looking.
The pope's actions and statements over the past few years, and the support, tacit or otherwise for Intelligent Design, indicate to me that the Church hierarchy really do want there to be some physical property they can hook their theology onto. The Church has always tried this. The adoption of the hylomorphism (form-substance) of Aristotelian philosophy by the Church's theologians tried to argue that the Host really did turn into the body and blood of Christ, even though the outward appearance (the species) of the Host was unchanged. This is no longer tenable in the rejection of that metaphysics. Things are what their constituents make them, and the Host is just the atoms of bread and wine. One of the first things criticised by Catholic theologians after the adoption of Aquinas as the official philosopher of the Church, was, oddly, not evolution, but Daltonian atomism. Why? Because it was too close to the eternal target of the Aristotelians, Epicurean atomism, and because it undercut the metaphysics of the Host.
The notion that God as creator requires some hedging against evolution is, moreover, absurd even on the ideas of the Church itself. Jaques Maritain and his English promoter Eric Mascall revived a view of creation as the support for the existence of physical processes themselves, not the running of those processes. So there's no need to posit a conflict between evolution (or any scientifically explicable physical process) and creation, on their own account.
But the psychological fear of Epicurus and Democritus remains, and the idea of God as a first cause continues to push these less than stellar thinkers in the direction of something like Intelligent Design. It's the final refuge of the intellectually limited. Sure, believers have a problem with providence given the physical undirectedness, but that, too, can be treated the way creation is, as something that makes physical processes have meaning, rather than God as the Tinkerer of History.
So I see this as spin. The Church remains a partial enemy of science, just so long as it tries to interpose theology into scientific explanations. Either all out, or all in, I say, and at least if they were all in, we'd know what the agenda really was.
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Hi John. Good to read some sane writing again. I just read the first few chapters of Vox Day's book. Feel dirty. Need bath.
Anyway, the church is desperately trying to keep itself relevant. The need to make evolution teleological. And to put science "in it's box." are testament to that. I reckon it's cute that they still hold onto transubstantiation and other incoherent doctrines. Well, it would be cute if they didn't influence so many people.
One thing. I've been reading that book you recommended by Neil Levi. He says that the naturalistic fallacy isn't a fallacy as the logical form's OK. It's just a mistake to equate good with nature. Good book too. Cheers.
I know nothing of Catholic theology, but isn't their metaphysics further complicated by the "dark side" - i.e. how does "Satan" interact with the physical world? (hard to imagine Satan as a deist). I suppose one way out for them would be to assume dualism and say that both God and Satan operate in the mind where they can't be detected - if I remember correctly, C.S. Lewis believed something like that. Still have the Host problem, though.
Having seen Catholic theology at work close up, I'm not sure that all the thinkers who hold to it are limited. Instead it is more like a willing suspension of reason at certain points -- a fuzzing of reason at the intersection between the natural and supernatural world -- that, itself, is not altogether unreasonable when dealing with the consequences of a supposedly infinite being. It is reason based on a premise that, ultimately, human reason is not sufficient to explain the totality of existence.
It is reason based on a premise that, ultimately, human reason is not sufficient to explain the totality of existence.
Where is David Hume when you need him?
I have met many smart and educated Catholics, most of them Jesuits. But the people who are running this line in the Vatican, and people like Schönborn, are far from stellar minds.
People who are essentially bureaucrats and who are promoted mostly for their ability to hold an organization together, rather than their qualifications to deliver nuanced consideration of difficult concepts to a membership uninterested in complexity, have turned out to be less than stellar minds?
How unexpected!
;-)
I disagree that evolution is God�s method for Creation. An omnipotent, omniscient God does not need a crutch. Of more significance, however, is that if evolution were part of the equation, it also means that in His humanity, He too would have been subjected to the evolutionary process of being evolved from a random assemblage of components originating in a pool of slime with ancestry from apes. Somehow, that is not the God that I wish to worship! Scripture tells us that we are made in His image and likeness not in the image of an evolved ape.
2) Evolution and Creation are antitheses and cannot be complimentary. One says that God created, the other that it was a random process with God having no part. Either He Created or not. Evolutionists attribute the evolutionary process of natural selection as the magical instrument by which plants and animals are transformed from something to something altogether different and by a random process couched by unimaginable and incomprehensible periods of time. �Survival of the fittest� is used in explaining how natural selection functions. Using the accepted premise that birds evolved from reptiles, and using some imagination, consider that transition in mid phase, however long it took. Apart from thousands of physiological changes necessary for this transformation, there would be a time when its forelegs could neither function as legs or as wings. Thus impaired, it would soon become unfit for survival and unable to ambulate, feed and certainly propagate, would succumb to the fate of the unfit. Natural selection would therefore be the cause of its demise. This has been a hypothesis of mine that �natural selection�, rather than be the mechanism causing evolution , is in effect the reason why evolution can not occur. At some phase in the evolution of every species, there would be a period of extreme weakness while the myriad of physiological stresses were accumulating, rendering that species vulnerable to becoming unfit.
3) I do not believe that natural and physical laws are self formed. God has established the laws to give order to His Creation and nature has no choice but to follow them.
4) Evolutionists would have us believe that science and religion are mutually exclusive. God is omniscient. Religion is not void of science. Our faith and Creation are fully scientifically supportable. Science and religion can only co-exist if science is dealt with as science. There is overwhelming scientific support for our faith in Creation. Evolutionists will label such as �Creation science� so that it can be denigrated as pseudoscience and subsequently ignored.
5) Belief in evolution is the blanket which allows atheists to find comfort in their rejection of the Lord. It is the greatest deceit in the history of man and science. The mandated teaching of evolution in our public schools is shameful and a disgrace for which all Christians should consider themselves liable to God.
Well said.
John, you're are certainly right, to the extent that the current pope seems content to let Schonborn, of all the Cardinals, be the one to take on the issue.
It's clear from his First Things articles, as well as his book Chance or Purpose, that the Cardinal simply does not understand how biologists understand the random component of genetic variation.
The Cardinal seems to truly believe--although biologists like David Schuster (if I recall his name correctly) who have been invited to make presentations to the Vatican have shown him otherwise--that the randomness at the heart of genetic variation is an ontological randomness. And for that reason, he rejects it.
This makes absolutely no sense at all, and explains the embarrassment that many Catholic scientists expressed (in public and private) after his ill-considered op-ed for the NYTimes back in 2005.
Who are you to instruct God how to go about his/her/its business?
That's an argument from consequences and, to boot, awfully cheeky. Since when do you get to choose which God to worship?
Really? What chapter and verse mentions apes? And do you really think God is a carbon-based biped? If not, the "image" bit must mean something other than our physical body.
Don't have to ...
Since birds evolved from dinosaurs that already had an upright, two-legged stance, that wasn't much of a problem ... similar to T-rex getting along without forelegs of much use.
You do know that something like 99% of all life forms that ever existed are extinct, right?
So what's your problem with evolution? It follows directly from the laws of nature.
Strange ... I thought it was you that came in here proclaiming the evolutionary theory was incompatible with your God. Some people who accept science agree with you as to their incompatibility, but many do not, such as Ken Miller and Theodosius Dobzhansky.
As for the rest, "creation science" is absolute crap that demands not only disbelief in biology but physics, astronomy, geology and about every other science. Worse, it demands disregard of the very method of science that permits you to instantaneously spout nonsense that can be seen the world over. Your delivery of your screed is, in fact, self-refuting.
As to Richard Dawkins' and other atheists' feeling of intellectual satisfaction arising out of a naturalistic account of the origin of species, some of us may think they are missing the point but, in any event, that's no more an argument against evolution than your feeling of disgust at the idea that you may be related to apes. Fortunately, science has better tools to work with than people's feelings.
[Sorry, John. The old talk.origins instincts took over.]
[While John gets around to checking his moderation file ...]
Hey, I got to sleep sometime. Don't forget, you Merrycans are on the wrong side of the world - JSW
Who are you to instruct God how to go about his/her/its business?
That's an argument from consequences and, to boot, awfully cheeky. Since when do you get to choose which God to worship?
Really? What chapter and verse mentions apes? And do you really think God is a carbon-based biped? If not, the "image" bit must mean something other than our physical body.
Don't have to ...
[Google "Archaeopteryx"]
Since birds evolved from dinosaurs that already had an upright, two-legged stance, that wasn't much of a problem ... similar to T-rex getting along without forelegs of much use.
You do know that something like 99% of all life forms that ever existed are extinct, right?
So what's your problem with evolution? It follows directly from the laws of nature.
Strange ... I thought it was you that came in here proclaiming the evolutionary theory was incompatible with your God. Some people who accept science agree with you as to their incompatibility, but many do not, such as Ken Miller and Theodosius Dobzhansky.
As for the rest, "creation science" is absolute crap that demands not only disbelief in biology but physics, astronomy, geology and about every other science. Worse, it demands disregard of the very method of science that permits you to instantaneously spout nonsense that can be seen the world over. Your delivery of your screed is, in fact, self-refuting.
As to Richard Dawkins' and other atheists' feeling of intellectual satisfaction arising out of a naturalistic account of the origin of species, some of us may think they are missing the point but, in any event, that's no more an argument against evolution than your feeling of disgust at the idea that you may be related to apes. Fortunately, science has better tools to work with than people's feelings.
[Sorry, John. The old talk.origins instincts took over.]
The problem is that the vatican doesn't do soundbites, so is blasted by both sides in the evolution wars because Catholics distinguish between philosophy and science.
But in a nutshell, evolution as science has been a valid explanation of how life came into being since the days of St. Augustine. No problem.
But the Philosophy of blind evolution is not science, but philosophy. A Catholic would say materialism/scientism (i.e. that there is no reality but the concrete that can be measured by our senses, or by machines that extend our ability to measure stuff) is a poor philosophy. You might disagree, but remember, you are arguing philosophy, not science.
Catholics figure that God made the laws, started the program, and then lets it run...but every once in awhile he tweaks the program...so that meteor that killed the dinosaur was God's fault, not blind luck for our mammalian ancestors...
But the Philosophy of blind evolution is not science, but philosophy. A Catholic would say materialism/scientism (i.e. that there is no reality but the concrete that can be measured by our senses, or by machines that extend our ability to measure stuff) is a poor philosophy. You might disagree, but remember, you are arguing philosophy, not science.
No, we are not. The claim that chance in evolution is blind is a specific and non-philosophical claim, one that has been explained to Catholics and other theists time and time again. It means that the randomness in evolution is simply change not correlated with future needs or success. Nothing uncaused, no Epicurean "swerve", just a lack of direction towards fitness.
But if you have trouble with that notion, what on earth do you do with normal distribution curves of ensembles of objects? In short, how can you live with statistics? As I said, this either applies to all science, or you can live with it by taking science as science and not trying to erect a philosophical opponent.
You know, I thought this had all been settled back in 1996, when John Paul II said that evolution was quite compatible with Catholic teachings regarding the place of man in the universe.
And yet people persist in trying to be somehow more Catholic than the pope. Well, former pope.
I mean, let's be serious here - science can't make a comment on anything supernatural. By its very nature the supernatural is not fully amenable to natural measurement, and therefore can't be confirmed or denied or even probability-adjusted through scientific inquiry.
The worst that science can do is pull the rug out from under someone who's trying to make an analogy to the natural world to make some religious point. For some people, that's enough to get all up in arms.
Wrong! Catholics fail to distinguish between philosophy and theology.
The politics might have a lot to do with it. The ID movement is linked to the evangelical churches, to whom the catholic church is losing a lot of believers.
Dysteological natural selection contradicts teleological God. Selectton is its own boss; so, God is out of work!
So, here as with creationism, science disconfirms this kind of God.
Natural selection only rules out God's actions in (i) biological evolution, (ii) for likely or confirmed cases. If one is not opposed to God of the Gaps, there remains plenty of room for God's teleological intervention, and in particular in the general case of the existence of the physical world,
But of one does not want a God of the Gaps then one has problems if God's providence includes biological change over time.
If you're not opposed to non-repeatable or unobservable or unknowable (supernatural) events in principle, a putative God could even interfere in biological evolution - just not overall in the general case, or when you're looking ;) If you're a strict, absolute positivist, the vast majority of your implicit assumptions about the laws of the universe are never actually brought into sharp focus, or tested.
(be nice if the universe came with a disclaimer like that, printed on it somewhere)
John, Who are you to instruct God how to go about his/her/its business?
I am not instructing God. He is omnipotent and omniscient (all knowing and all powerful). I deduce from that, that He needs no outside help.
That's an argument from consequences and, to boot, awfully cheeky. Since when do you get to choose which God to worship?
I have a free will. Are you equipped to help me choose?
Since birds evolved from dinosaurs that already had an upright, two-legged stance, that wasn't much of a problem ... similar to T-rex getting along without forelegs of much use.
Thats a long way from disuse to flight
You do know that something like 99% of all life forms that ever existed are extinct, right?
So What! If environmental factors change that cause the demise of a species, what correlation does that have with evolution?
"creation science" is absolute crap
Brilliant scientific convincing statement.
So are you saying that he has to do it without help? Maybe he wants to do it that way for his own reasons. Who are you to tell him that he can't? But work out your own theology. Just don't expect anyone else to take it seriously as an argument against science.
But you brought up the supposed "problem" of the transition between dinosaurs and birds because their forelegs could neither function as legs or as wings. So now you're just moving the goalposts.
I never said it was. It was a simple observation based on crap like your argument about the forelegs of the dinosaur/bird transitionals.