God and Matter: The Evolution of the Evolution Debate

[buffalo]

God and Matter: The Evolution of the Evolution Debate

Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schönborn has stepped into the confused controversies surrounding evolution, and added some much needed clarity.

Just enough clarity, mind you. Not too much. Not too little.

In a recent op-ed for The New York Times, “Finding Design in Nature,” Cardinal Schönborn issued a crystal-clear warning to proponents of Darwinism: Stop misusing Pope John Paul II’s words as blanket support for neo-Darwinian beliefs that go directly against Church teaching.

In 1996, John Paul stated that evolution was “more than a hypothesis.” But that was not all that he said, by any means. As Cardinal Schönborn stated, that string of four words — taken out of the context of his entire speech, and worse, of his many other statements about evolution — has been taken up by proponents of Darwinism as a ready-made, unambiguous stamp of approval by the Catholic Church of evolutionary theory.

Enough is enough. Neither John Paul II nor the Catholic Church ever gave unambiguous assent to the entire doctrine of neo-Darwinism precisely because, even while it has uncovered some important truths, its fundamental assumptions are in direct contradiction to the fundamental assumptions of faith. Witness Cardinal Schönborn’s wise words:

“The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things. Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”

Now witness John Paul II’s other words, words conveniently left unquoted by proponents of neo-Darwinism: “It is clear that the truth of faith about creation is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity.”

At its heart, neo-Darwinism is materialistic, and affirms evolution guided only by mere chance and necessity. God is entirely unnecessary. That is why Richard Dawkins, chief spokesman of today’s evolutionists, states smugly that “although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

The Cardinal had become increasingly angry because evolutionists, including Dawkins, argued that evolution proves that God doesn’t exist, and no one should fear teaching evolution as a fact because the Roman Catholic Church affirms it as “more than a hypothesis.”

** See the problem? Atheists who believe the world is the product of mere chance and material necessity are using the late Pope’s words against him to eliminate belief in a divine Creator. **

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[AlanFromWichita]

Most people are completely uneducated when it comes to statistics, and the “probability” they get is a lame introduction, easily forgotten.

For example, when you hear a poll has a “two percent chance of error” that is technically a non-statement statistically. The only way you can be that sure of the results are if you interview 98% of all the people, and then only if other conditions are met.

“Two percent chance of error,” really means “two percent confidence interval based on sampling numbers only, at some undisclosed confidence rate.” In other words, all that number does is give you some idea of how many people they asked compared to how many they presume to measure.

Similarly, the business that evolution is all just “random” is missing the whole point on what little I know about evolution. Personally I don’t care what Darwin thought about whether such a theory of natural selection bolsters or damages the argument for the existence of God. It simply doesn’t touch it at all.

In my brief political involvement, I met many idiots who were so vitriolic against evolution they couldn’t even think straight, and evolutionists who were just as foolish. It’s uncanny how something like this has gotten to be such a big deal, but here is Kansas we are infamous for being at the epicenter of this argument, as every school board election has become about it.

Alan

 

[walstan]

The most major problem surounding the Darwinism controversy is the mixing of fact with hypothesis. Certain facts are undisputable, the age of the earth, the development of humanity; interestingly enough it is now almost certain that man originated our of Africa from one single family, tribe or woman, often referred to as the original Eve. (That should upset those who judge on skin colour), and the evolution and development of the full flora and fauna of the world.

But, what this does not show is randomness. The assumption of randomness is exactly that, an assumption, who is to say that this is not Gods way of developing his creation? Who has the ability to read the mind of God?

The argument often quoted by fundamentalists is that God made everything perfectly and therefore “random” development was unecessary. But how about, God made things so perfect they were ABLE to adapt to Gods ever changing world. Even from a human point of view, which is cleverer, a static painting that simply gets duller and more difficult to see as time passes or, a dynamic painting that is constantly changing and developing over time?, would God only be capable of producing the first and not the second? I think not.

I totally agree with Dawkins on how Darwinism has altered our perception of the world and our understanding of history and evolution but, to me all that he has done is to raise in me a greater wonder in the creativity of God and it explains why the Old Testament says what it does. How could anyone of that time comprehend what we know today? and more importantly how could they write it down in such a way that others could comprehend? Actually when you read the OT you realise what a cracking job they actually made of it, it’s unfortunate that many of todays people, those God made to progress and develop, stay a few thousand years behind where God intended us to be and still read as if they live in the 9 and 10th century BC. (The costs of free will I assume).

So, say thank you to Darwin, thank you to Dawkins, they have both helped us to a greater understanding of Gods wonder. Ask any randon person in the street if they believe in God and the most common answer will be “I don’t know”, ask them on the other hand if they believe that creation and the world around us is completely random and the majority (and probably a large majority) would say No. I think that says it all.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

walstan:

But, what this does not show is randomness. The assumption of randomness is exactly that, an assumption, who is to say that this is not Gods way of developing his creation? Who has the ability to read the mind of God?

That’s right. Mathematicians have studied for many years how to determine if a particular sample of numbers, for example, is in fact “random” or if there is a pattern we just haven’t found yet. For example, of you flip a coin twice and it comes up heads twice in a row, few would immediately accuse you or using a trick coin. Do the same thing five times in a row, and nobody will believe you have a fair coin.

Was the coin fair? Nobody knows from the information given, but statistics can tell us one thing. They can tell us that if the coin was, in fact, fair that the chances of one thing happening the way it did are 1 in 4, while the other thing has a chance of 1 in 1024. If you take a whole school of 500 kids doing this experiment five times each, more likely than not one of them will come up with heads 10 times, and will then declare themselves “lucky” or that “it’s a miracle” because they have seen a coincidence against the odds. For that individual it was against the odds, but not for the group.

The idea that evolution is just “random” is dumb anyway. Random variations do occur, but it is precisely the selectiveness and non-randomness that causes those features better adapted to live longer and have greater chance of reproduction. In science we call the variations “random” because we cannot predict it. In religion we call them “inspired” because we cannot predict it with science.

What’s the diff? Here in the Kansas Epicenter for Evolutionary and Creationary Stupidity (KEECS, sometimes called KOOKS) it’s gone beyond being important and become entertaining.

My kids go to Catholic school and are taught evolution in science class, and creation in religion class. That works for me. If they went to a school that had tried to pander to this argument, I would fix them. Once I was so proud of my #2 son who, in Freshman year when he went to public school, he came home and showed me his history book, and pointed out paragraphs he had specifically detected as propaganda. He showed how they used clever wording to give an impression they could not factually support.

I never realized how bad the textbook revisionist issue was until years ago I read the book “Who Stole Feminism” by ex-feminist Christina Hoff Summers, so when my son found those passages, I was as pleased as he that he had learned to read what was presupposed but not said, as well as what was written. I figure teaching the kids how to recognize Barbara Streisand (BS) lingo from straight talk does more good than any law at “legislating” what is science and what is not.

Alan

 

[faelpsanfeel]

I’m extremely confused.

You said, “here’s a quote where the Pope recognizes that evolution has some validity,” then you said, “but here’s the stipulation that the Pope appended to that statement that most people ignore,” and then you said, “evolutionists are using the Pope’s words to destroy God.” That’s basically what I got from the OP; so did I miss something or did we just make this incredibly huge, random leap into a big excuse to lash out at hypothetical “atheists” just because the Pope essentially said they might be right about just this ONE thing?

It’s like if I said “I like the color green,” and then you went around accusing people of accusing me of having relations with reptiles. It’s really obvious that the Pope doesn’t believe that the human experience happened by chance, and I think that everyone realizes that, even those damnable athiests.