Is there a Catholic problem with basic evolution theory?

[buffalo]

Indeed, in the homily at his installation just a few weeks ago, Benedict proclaimed: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

Throughout history the church has defended the truths of faith given by Jesus Christ. But in the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well. In the 19th century, the First Vatican Council taught a world newly enthralled by the “death of God” that by the use of reason alone mankind could come to know the reality of the Uncaused Cause, the First Mover, the God of the philosophers.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of “chance and necessity” are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

[buffalo]

Pope Benedict XVI Regensburg address

…This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

…This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

…While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

 

[buffalo]

Pope Benedict XVI

Monod nonetheless finds the possibility for evolution in the fact that in the very propagation of the project there can be mistakes in the act of transmission. Because nature is conservative, these mistakes, once having come into existence, are carried on. Such mistakes can add up, and from the adding up of mistakes something new can arise. **Now an astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, and human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of “haphazard mistakes.” [5]

**
What response shall we make to this view? It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. * The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence*, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. * Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love.* They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

 

[grannymh]

When the Church speaks about polygenism, it refers to true human beings.

It is the 1940’s which is examined in Humani Generis. At that time, readers recognized that the word polygenism (polygenesis) required a large population in order to produce a new distinct species.

 

[grannymh]

The bigger point in this discussion is why this line of investigation is so terrifying to some.
The fear betrays a lack of confidence in the durability of revelation and the full integrity of God’s word.

There can be fear when there is doubt about the “birth” of human nature.

 

[grannymh]

And they could also provide Cain’s wife, Seth’s wife etc. Being biologically compatible, such marriages would be fertile and would avoid incest. Similarly the problem of modern measured genetic diversity – the 10,000 ancestors issue – would be avoided.

rossum

I prefer the length of female fertility and a handsome male.

 

[grannymh]

Any biology textbook is studying the world that God made. That is just as much a study of God as is the study of the word that God inspired. God’s word agrees with God’s work when both are correctly interpreted. Unless you believe that one of the other was created by Loki/Trickster. If that is the case then all bets are off.

rossum

May I add that natural science is a gift from God.

 

[grannymh]

Then why are the following statements in science textbooks about Biology?

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. “[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

Ed

Thank you. I printed this for my file.

 

[grannymh]

Ed

Some people take evolution too far and make it their god. But not all that believe the evidence favors God creating life via evolution go too far. Saying these statements show evolution to be 100% incompatible with Catholic faith is kind of like a Protestant taking quotes on Mary from the Collyridians and saying those show how honoring Mary is 100% incompatible with Christian faith. The key is realizing that non-Catholic texts are not going to 100% compatible with Catholic doctrine, but still realizing they may have some truth to them. Kind of like how a Protestant book would be compatible with Catholic doctrine on some issues, but need to be taken with a grain of salt on other issues.

 

[grannymh]

There are no Catholic doctrines about evolution in the material world

 

[edwest2]

Ed

Thank you. I printed this for my file.

You’re welcome.

Ed

 

[edwest2]

Thank you, buffalo. Good day, everyone.

Ed

 

[grannymh]

As an alternative, God creates Adam’s body directly from clay/dust/earth and supplies it with a soul. Eve is created from Adam’s rib and also supplied with a soul. God creates his new pair of true humans with DNA that is compatible with previously existing unsouled proto-humans. Adam and Eve’s children can marry the local proto-humans and have fertile offspring because their DNA is compatible. God supplies those offspring – Adam and Eve’s grandchildren – with human souls. All persons with human souls are descended from both Adam and Eve because they are their grandchildren, great-grandchildren etc.

That scenario is not inconsistent with the scientific evidence and appears to me not to contradict reasonable interpretations of Genesis.

rossum

In Thomistic philosophy, the soul animates the matter and the union is a single human nature.
**CCC 365 **The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

As I recall, one of the philosophical questions regarding “Science, Theology, and Monogenesis” asked if the “matter” of other creatures, DNA etc. was suitable for the spiritual soul created by God at conception?

For philosophers, matter matters.

 

[grannymh]

I agree that there may be ways to reconcile theological monogenism with evolutionary polygenism. But I also think the Church is moving slowly and carefully away from monogenism. It is original sin that seems to require monogenism (not Genesis), and theologians have been rethinking the understanding of original sin. Pope Benedict wrote on this topic. I realize that is a sticking point from some people, but I think the Church is heading that way, with the help of theologians like Pope Benedict.

The tiny crack is that evolutionary polygeneism (polygenesis) is population and you are right that Original Sin is involved.

“We cannot temper with the revelation of Original Sin without undermining the mystery of Christ.” is a fascinating point in CCC 389

 

[Roseeurekacross]

It is the “populations” in the theory of evolution which can cause problems when one is reading the first three difficult chapters of Sacred Scripture.

Ok so now define what you mean by populations, and then again, the theory of evolution. ( which is being grossly distorted here)

And then describe how these populations cause problems.

At least we are narrowing this down!

For what it’s worth , I see a grave injustice done to God by those who choose to ignore His Creations. And the Scientific steps God employed to Create. After all doesnt God discuss just this issue with Job?

Rossini, you rock!

 

[TMC]

What did Pope Benedict say?

Ed

I am talking about Pope Benedict’s writings on original sin, not on evolution. I don’t have an exact quote handy, but the gist was a suggestion that original sin impacts each individual by virtue of that person being introduced into a broken world - rather than being passed on like a gene.

On polygenism itself, the Church’s comments about humanity arising from a “group” some time in the past suggests an openness to the concept of polygenism. The problem with polygenism has always been original sin - if sin must be passed from parent to child, that would suggest we all have one common parent. If Benedict is correct that original sin is not necessarily transmitted like a gene, then polygenism seems more compatible with original sin.

 

[buffalo]

I am talking about Pope Benedict’s writings on original sin, not on evolution. I don’t have an exact quote handy, but the gist was a suggestion that original sin impacts each individual by virtue of that person being introduced into a broken world - rather than being passed on like a gene.

On polygenism itself, the Church’s comments about humanity arising from a “group” some time in the past suggests an openness to the concept of polygenism. The problem with polygenism has always been original sin - if sin must be passed from parent to child, that would suggest we all have one common parent. If Benedict is correct that original sin is not necessarily transmitted like a gene, then polygenism seems more compatible with original sin.

When the preternatural gifts of bodily immortality was withdrawn it is genetic. We know that each generation is devolving around 200-500 deleterious mutations.

 

[grannymh]

Humans are amazing creatures.
Genesis 1: 27

 

[grannymh]

On polygenism itself, the Church’s comments about humanity arising from a “group” some time in the past suggests an openness to the concept of polygenism.

That group happens to be two, yes two, fully complete humans who are the sole founders of the species known as humanity. These two amazing humans did not have to arise because they were immediately created by God. Genesis 1: 27.

 

[grannymh]

In the old days, children learned that the Incarnation followed Original Sin.

Today, there may be a bit of tiny trouble understanding the human nature of the prophet Jesus Christ. That kind of “poly-blindness” has the potential for a different kind of problem. It would be a hidden problem, a problem of full Divinity. Normally, we would not consider that information as a Catholic problem of basic evolution theory. Only a few people might wonder where did the human nature, assumed by the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, come from. Actually the human nature Genesis 1: 27 originally received by Adam is assumed, without sin.

Shall we put aside the concept that the human nature assumed by Jesus Christ came from a single beginning nature – that of a non-polygenesis Adam. John 3: 16