I've always been intrigued by the Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science and intellectualism in general. On the one hand, the church's history is not one anyone who cares about reason would be proud of, what with the Inquisition, its opposition to Copernican theory and whatnot. On the other, the Jesuit tradition of intellectual inquiry has produced some sharp fellows, many of whom have gone on to embrace a secular approach to politics, e.g. Pierre Trudeau. But every now and then we are reminded that religion is not the best context to foster a love of science. Case in point: the Vatican's approach to evolution.
It came as no suprise to anyone that the latest pope, should not quite get the whole Darwin thing. The Economist, playing catchup on a now well-explored subject, , as is its conservative druthers,recently noted that
...the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has made clear his profound belief that man has a unique, God-given role in the animal kingdom; and that a divine creator has an ongoing role in sustaining the universe, something far more than just "lighting the blue touch paper" for the Big Bang...
But the RC Church's problem is deeper than just stubborn refusal to give the laws of nature their due. Even their best science-oriented dissidents, like the now famous Father Coyne, who lost his job as Vatican astronomer for not toeing the party line, didn't understand the theory of descent through natural evolution.
For Father Coyne, belief in man's unique status is entirely consistent with an evolutionary view of life. "The fact we are at the end of this marvelous process is something that glorifies us," he says.
This sort of statement betrays a fundamental misunderstand of what evolution is all about. Homo sapiens is not at the end of an evolutionary line, nor is any other specie,. Evolution is not, in philosophical terms, teleological -- heading for some ultimate goal. Natural selection is simply about gradual change in genotypes to suit ever-changing environments.
Much of the time that leads to increasing complexity -- such as bigger brains and the ability to compose symphonies -- but not always. Sometime it means losing abilities and a simplified phenotype. Are cetaceans, which once all had four propulsion-related limbs but are now use only a single fluke, with a couple of limbs left for steering, closer to perfection after returning to an aquatic environment, or did they go backward? Neither concept has any meaning to an evolutionary biologist.
Time may have an arrow. Evolution does not. Only when academics the likes of Father Coyne demonstrate they truly get evolution can the RC Church claim it has embraced science and reason.
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The problem is that Coyne uses a sentence that could be ambiguous "The fact we are at the end of this marvelous process is something that glorifies us,". He could be using the term *end* in its teleological sense, meaning culmination of a finished process. OTOH, the term *end* simply may mean that we are at the current terminus of a time-line. Or, being the clever Jesuit, he knows that it can have both meanings and purposefully left it that way for different levels of consumption.
While I agree that the Vatican under the current pontiff is in one of its periods of regression relative to science, Father Coyne makes a pretty good case that he wasn't exactly forced out. He had submitted his resignation quite a bit earlier.
As natural cynic notes, we are in a sense at one "end" of this process of evolution, as is every other extant organism. The other termimus being the initial formation of life 3.8 billion years ago (give or take).
Although I can hardly imagine Father Coyne saying "The fact Caenorhabditis elegans are at the end of this marvelous process is something that glorifies them".
We're all transitional species.
Dear James,
The Roman Catholic Church has a long standing history of developement and support of science.
Here is just one site were you can start learn about that history.
http://libraries.luc.edu/about/exhibits/jesuits
God bless you,
Joe
The Catholic Church has a long-standing history of hostility towards free inquiry, the scientific method, and letting conclusions follow only from evidence rather than belief.
It is innately incompatible with science.
It's my view that the main reason why Catholic Church never got into evolution denial in a big way is that when Origin first came out, the Vatican was rather distracted by secular political concerns - i.e. the ultimately unsuccessful struggle to preserve the existence of the Papal States against the rising tide of Italian Nationalism.
I think Catholicism's unique anti-intellectualism relates back to the authoritarianistic nature of the church's hierarchy, where authoritarianism is viewed as anti-intellectual via unreasoned deference of epistemic authority to religious authorities.
Also, see Richard Hofstadter's 1964 Pulitzer Prize winning book "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" where he discusses Catholic anti-intellectualism specifically. He discusses how the first wave of Catholics were economically challenged, and were thus supportive of assimilation into the American mindset of using knowledge instrumentally -for monetary gain rather then for intellectual pursuits.