The need or necessity for a argument which shows Divine intervention is related to the fact that man alone of all the species is created in God’s own image. there is a sense that something very different occured when man was brought into being in the bibcal accounts. we had one original human ‘father’, named Adam and one ‘mother’ named Eve. They differed from animal life because God intervened in a specific way giving them a higher
nature, both body and soul. The human soul being a house for the Divine spirit. Evolution of a human being from a lower animal form can perhaps account for the formation of a human body but it can not account for that aspect fo divine Presence which is unique to a human being whoise soul is in the state of grace, as the original man and woman would have been before the fall.
I realize I am searching for ways to describe and explain my discomfort with pure Darwinism, but i id find this article that perhaps you could comment on. It does agree with much that you are saying that Catholics can see evolution as compatible with catholic teaching to a degree but it clarifies the points with which a Catholic cannot accept evolution:
"This is important because, in the properly scientific sense, “evolution” as a
how question poses no problem for Catholic belief. For decades now, scientists have established a chronology of how life forms succeeded one another over eons of time. It is beyond reasonable doubt that some sort of process has taken place. (As we shall see later, the mechanics of this succession have yet to be fully understood.) Whatever science determines on this
how level is compatible with a Catholic principle: that God ordinarily carries out His creative acts in natural ways.
No problems with Christian belief generally arise when “evolution” is loosely used in a broad philosophical sense. This meaning is substantially different from the scientific one above. It may be defined as follows: “an ideological frame of mind which sees the entire universe in terms of matter-in-development and which consciously denies the existence of spiritual or supernatural reality; all phenomena–scientific, historical, economic, and social–are explainable in exclusively material terms.”
This understanding of “evolution” is not scientific, though it derives much prestige from association with the sciences. It is not founded on experimental knowledge or rational deduction. It is rather a preconceived set of attitudes and values, a prejudice that is not merely unscientific, but irrational. For it is altogether credulous to hold that complex organs like the eye are not indicative of an ordering intelligence, but are instead the result of blind chance which of course cannot know or plan the
end (seeing) to which the eye’s single parts combine and evolve. In fact, it is a latter-day form of philosophical materialism which has been with us since the time of the Greeks.
Inasmuch as it is really an outlook on life, it is a kind of religion.
Properly speaking, therefore, this set of beliefs should not be called “evolution” but rather “evolutionism”. To subscribe to creation (which is
not the same as “creationism”), that is, the contingent world’s ultimate dependence on a necessary, creative being, is not, on the contrary, an act of religion at all. It is a matter of philosophy, of drawing sure conclusions from incontrovertible premises.
Like the other religion-substitute “isms” of our time, evolutionism has adherents from all walks of life. Some physicists, astronomers, and geneticists believe in it. But so do many journalists, economists, teachers, and historians–and cab-drivers and businessmen and poets. The atheism of a biochemist is really no more significant than that of a file clerk, but it can have more sway on public opinion./COLOR]
The article goes on to explain the church’s stance in more detail along with some examples of inconsistencies in scientific examples commonly used to support evolution in our text books which I won’t go into, but you can read the article online at this link:
ewtn.com/library/humanity/evolutn.txt
Here is what the article said about church teaching on the subject:
*The Church has maintained that the first three chapters of Genesis contain historical truth. Their inspired author used a popular literary form of his day to explain certain historical facts of Creation. These were named specifically by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, with the approval of Pope Pius X in 1909. The official document states that the literal historical meaning of the first three chapters of Genesis could not be doubted in regard to:
"
“the creation of all things by God at the beginning of time; the
special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from the
first man; the unity of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the command given by God to man to test his obedience; the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent; the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence; and the promise of a future redeemer.”
Note that the Church says nothing definite about how, in specific detail, God created the world and its various forms of life, or how long any of this took. The only “special creation” mentioned is that of man, who is unique in having a spiritual immortal soul. In the Church’s eyes, Genesis deals with historical fact, not scientific process–with the
what of creation, not the
how.
In 1950, Pope Pius XII addressed the question of man’s origins more specifically in his encyclical
Humani Generis. " *
I hope this explains better than I can what my discomfort is with what science is doing.
God Bless,
MaryJohnZ
