NYT reported An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith. The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "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." In a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church's position on evolution. "I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on," said Cardinal Schönborn. He said that he had been "angry" for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had "misrepresented" the church's position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.
Sounds to me that he is endorsing Intelligent DesignOne of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort. Mark Ryland, a vice president of the institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write the essay. Both Mr. Ryland and Cardinal Schönborn said that an essay in May in The Times about the compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory by Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested to them that it was time to clarify the church's position on evolution. The cardinal's essay, a direct response to Dr. Krauss's article, was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.
2 comments:
There is no redefinition going on at all. The Catholic position has been and remains that the world is what it is. God revealed himself to us in many ways but He did not give Moses tablets to explain quantum physics. He's letting us get science on our own for the most part.
An atheist believes, as a matter of faith, that God does not exist. A Catholic believes, as a matter of faith that he does. Both can be good scientists and observe the world as it is. What the atheist cannot do and remain an atheist is to marvel at a perceived design and identify a prime mover. He removes himself from the atheist camp the moment he does it. What the Cardinal is saying is that the Catholic similarly cannot go on about random, unguided evolution and retain his Catholicism.
No theory of evolution, as far as I understand them, requires any cosmological belief on first causes and the creation of the universe. We are nowhere near a state of knowledge that would permit proper scientific speculation on such things. Statements on such matters deeply remain matters of faith. The Cardinal rightly expects that Catholic scientists retain Catholic positions on matters of faith. That should neither be objectionable nor even remarkable.
It may not require a cosmological belief on first causes, but evolution does say that more complex organisms evolved from simpler organisms, rather than all being created at once.
However, IMHO, Intelligent Design allows for evolutionary creation of the more complex organisms under the control of an Intelligent Designer
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