hecd2:
Your approbation doesn’t make him right. He was wrong in many respects which are clearly laid out here:
evolutionpages.com/Schoenborn_critique.htm
I do understand that you are unable or unwilling to engage in a detailed discussion of this, but the fact is that Schoenborn was egregiously wrong in many important respects.May I ask why do you think I am unable or unwilling?
Because you still haven’t engaged in a detailed discussion of Schoenborn’s errors. You created a post with very many words, but none of them actually address the points that I made in my article.
I have read your critique and it makes certain assumptions.
What assumptions are they? Where in the article do I make them? Why are they unwarranted?
You criticize Schoenborn but you do not address the quotes from Pope John Paul II.
Well, the article was specifically a response to Schoenborn’s in First Things that you have gleefully quoted, not a general critique on the official stance of the Catholic Church on evolution (which I don’t have a problem with, by the way).
The guiding principle is that knowledge given by God is actual knowledge.
Whose guiding principle? And whose interpretation of this knowledge should we adhere to - the Pope’s, Schoenborn’s, Jimmy Swaggart’s, Pat Robertson’s, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s, the Russian Patriarch’s, the Chief Rabbi’s, yours, my barber’s?
It [doing science] has an affect on them [scientists] that is philosophical or metaphysical. You mention this worldview as having the “same validity as anyone else.” To the individual, it may be valid, but for anyone who has spent any time on internet forums knows, all worldviews or opinions are not equal; some don’t even make any sense.
Indeed so, in fact they cannot all be equal, as one is right and many are wrong in fact, but since no worldview is a priori more valid than another, and no individual has a priori more authority to promote his or her worldview, it is up to the adherents of each position to put forward their case based on observation, evidence and reason. The problem that Schoenborn is trying to address is that the findings of science do tend to support the atheistic worldview, but he (and you) make the mistake of arguing against that by attempting to undermine the science which is a weak and ultimately futile argument, especially for those who are not trained in science.
You mention that mutations have “no knowledge of the consequences for the organism.” The Catholic Church will tell you that God is the first cause and the cause of causes.
But you see, what the Catholic Church says carries no special weight for me or for the majority of people in the world. The science is as I represented it - if you want to suggest that God is a puppet master pulling the strings of mutation to direct evolution on a day by day basis in a way that falls outside natural law, be my guest, but I suggest that most of your fellow Catholics will diverge from your views on that point.
You quote from a Church document regarding evolution but did not quote a statement from that same document that was meant to be final word regarding the evolutionary process: “An unguided evolutionary process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence - simply cannot exist…” I realize most scientists would simply laugh at this scientifically not provable assumption,
No, I have no problem with this as I made clear in my article. If Catholics believe that true contingency can fall within divine providence that’s fine, provided you accept that the process is properly contingent. But you have to believe simultaneously in contingency and providence operating in the same processes if you a) believe that every human being is willed and b) understand the random processes that go to create each individual human being.
but the Cardinal makes it clear that evolution combined with religious knowledge would meet the requirement of being acceptable to the faith
On the contrary, the Cardinal, in this article goes way beyond that to criticise the very foundations of modern biology (and comes a cropper because he didn’t really understand what he was talking about)
. But… and this is very important… he correctly criticizes scientists who, for whatever reason, step out of their lab coats and go around promoting atheism because evolution proves you don’t need a god, any god.
I have shown quite clearly that this criticism is inappropriate because it assumes a priority for the Catholic worldview that is unwarranted. A theological Maxwell’s demon.
This would, of course, prevent them from seeing an alternative; one that can be arrived at without faith.
I asked you how you would do that in another thread, but I notice you failed to provide a response.
I think he gives a good explanation of randomness and the term uncorrelated.
Then your knowledge of what randomness means in science is just as muddled and wrong as Schoenborn’s was, who got it horribly wrong in the article. I explain in my article in some detail where he has gone wrong on that point but I notice that you are unable or unwilling to address that too.
There are many points where Schoenborn went wrong in that article that I review in detail in mine. You have not addressed a single one of them.
Let me ask you a simple question. Do you think randomness has any part to play in human reproduction?
Alec
evolutionpages.com/Schoenborn_critique.htm
I am content to let science catch up.