"Intelligent design" not science: Vatican paper By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion. A court in the state of Pennsylvania last month barred a school from teaching intelligent design (ID), a blow to Christian conservatives who want it to be taught in biology classes along with the Darwinism they oppose. The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the Church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism. "Intelligent design does not belong to science and there is no justification for the demand it be taught as a scientific theory alongside the Darwinian explanation," said the article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper. Evolution represents "the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth" and the debate in the United States was "polluted by political positions", wrote Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at Italy's Bologna University. "So the decision by the Pennsylvania judge seems correct." EVOLUTION CONFUSION Confusion about the Catholic view of evolution arose last year when both the newly elected Pope Benedict and his former student, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, said humans were part of an intelligent project designed by God. An article by Schoenborn in the New York Times in July seemed to signal a Church shift toward intelligent design because it played down a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul that evolution was "more than a hypothesis". This triggered a wave of "Vatican rejects Darwin" headlines and attacks from scientists, Catholics among them, who argued that had been proved man evolved from lower beings. Schoenborn later made it clear the Church accepted evolution as solid science but objected to the way some Darwinists concluded that it proved God did not exist and could "explain everything from the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony". The Church, which has never rejected evolution, teaches that God created the world and the natural laws by which life developed. Even its best-known dissident, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, echoed this in a recent book in Germany. Schoenborn said he spoke up because he shared Benedict's concern, stated just before his election last April, that a "dictatorship of relativism" was trying to deny God's existence. TENET OF FAITH Pennsylvania Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design was a version of creationism, the belief that God made the world in six days as told in the Bible, and thus could not be taught without violating a ban on teaching religion in public schools. It was not science, despite claims by its backers, he said. This literal reading of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is a tenet of faith for evangelical Protestants, a group that has become politically influential in the United States. Many U.S. Catholics may agree with evangelicals politically, but the Church does not share their theology on this point. Intelligent design has few supporters outside the United States. While not an official document, the article in L'Osservatore Romano had to be vetted in advance to reflect Vatican thinking. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute -- the main think tank of the ID movement -- said on its website that reading the Osservatore article that way amounted to an attempt "to put words in the Vatican's mouth".
Vatican newspaper backs judge's support of evolution By Ian Fisher and Cornelia Dean in Rome January 20, 2006 AdvertisementAdvertisement THE Vatican newspaper has published an article labelling as "correct" the decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution. "If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in this week's edition of L'Osservatore Romano. "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious." The article was not presented as an official church position, but in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI. Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasising that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr Francisco Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him." But Robert Crowther, spokesman for the Centre for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle organisation where researchers study and advocate intelligent design, dismissed the article and other recent statements from leading Catholics defending evolution. Drawing attention to them was little more than trying "to put words in the Vatican's mouth," he said. L'Osservatore is the official newspaper of the Vatican. While not all its articles represent official church policy, it would not be expected to present an article that dissented deeply from that policy. Last July, Christoph Schoenborn, an Austrian cardinal close to Benedict, seemed to call into question what has been official church teaching for years: that Catholicism and evolution are not necessarily at odds. In an opinion piece in The New York Times, he played down a 1996 letter in which Pope John Paul II called evolution "more than a hypothesis". "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense â an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection â is not," Cardinal Schoenborn wrote. There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source. At least twice, Pope Benedict has signalled concern about the issue, prompting questions about his views. Last April, when he was formally installed as Pope, he said human beings "are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution". In November, he called the creation of the universe an "intelligent project," wording welcomed by supporters of intelligent design. Many Catholic scientists have criticised intelligent design, including the Reverend George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," he said in November. "Intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." The New York Times
If such is true, why can't someone believe in God and believe in evolution at the same time. If the Scientific evidence points to evolution, and the Heart evidence points to God, then what one would have, then, is belief in a supreme being who happened to create the richness of life by means of an organic process that took millions of years... a rather more elegant notion, in fact, than the thought of wildebeests and cheetahs and digger wasps simply popping into existence by the snap of cosmic fingers. (Not many have attempted it, but one could argue that evolution has more 'style points' in terms of a skillful creator's plan than snap-crackle-pop does.) Perhaps the problem is not so much that science and theology are separate. It is that people get confused by the areas in which science and theology overlap. When Steven Jay Gould or Carl Sagan say that no God exists or that man cannot consider himself morally superior to bacteria, they overstep their bounds. But so too does a theologian who asserts something that appears to directly controvert science. It goes both ways. It does not seem illogical that one could uphold scientific evidence and belief in a creator, because the two do not have to conflict as you imply. But for such a belief system to be logical, certain traits of the creator would have to be logically derived from His (Her? Its?) "creation style..." which would be defined by scientific principles and scientific evidence applied to creation. Here is where the overlap pops up. Believe in a supreme being? Okay, no necessary conflict with science... maybe the big bang was some sort of thought energy. But believe in a supreme being who made the earth less than five thousand years ago? Now there is a problem, because theology has intruded on the available scientific evidence. On the other side of the coin, an evolutionist runs into a similar problem when he uses the structure of a protozoa to justify his alignment with Nietsche on scientific grounds. In reality, his alignment with Nietsche is on wholly philosophical grounds... in moving from protozoa to 'God is dead', the scientist misses the fact that he has gone from testable hypotheses to inductive leap. So there is confusion there too... when scientists make philosophical statements in regard to evidential findings, they are on subjective ground. Many scientists miss this. They feel more justified in missing it because they have a volume of evidence on their side -- and they are usually going up against proponents of emotion and gut feel -- but miss it they do nonetheless.
Can someone be a theist and an atheist at the same time? The central issue is that we observe processes, which are facts of observations. It is the causation that we make guesses on, when we don't observe the causation of past events...this is when scientists speculate and theorize about causation. Darwinism rests on certain assumptions which cannot be proved true or false. We see a change in a biological organism, we don't know why it happened, we don't know the cause, so we call it spontaneous unplanned random mutation. Is it really spontaneous random mutation? How do we know that it is not by design or plan? How do we know that there is not some programming triggering these changes, by design? We don't. That's the real issue. The theists have a belief that the unknown and currently unknowable is by design, the atheist believes the unknown and unknowable at this time is a product of a non-God process. Teaching observed biological changes is cool, as it is neither atheistic or theistic. Teaching atheistic theory that man evolved from lower species by some random unplanned chance is propagation of atheistic beliefs. Why should we be teaching either atheistic or theistic belief systems?
Not true. It is possible to believe in evolution and believe in God without contradicting one's self. God's method of bringing about life is not written in stone. For all we know, God is kicked back in his armchair on Alpha Centauri, watching the action with a pair of cosmic binoculars. Maybe the evolutionary process is God's way of helping man get his shit together. Maybe when we get to Alpha Centauri He will say 'Hey dudes, you finally made it! Kept some beer in the fridge for ya.' Not saying I believe this personally, but someone certainly could. The Alpha Centauri part is tongue in cheek, but the core metanarrative is no more implausible than the other metanarratives floating around.
exactly. the theory of evolution says nothing about the point of creation. belief in god and evolution can coexist. belief in the bible as inerrant and evolution can not.
As a side note, there are links between evolution and eastern philosophy that I find quite curious. The first teaches that all life is of one origin. The second teaches that individual consciousness is an artificial distinction. Hmm. As the buddhist said to the hotdog vendor, "make me one with everything." If by curious chance the hotdog vendor were a biological evolutionist, he might respond: "you are already one with everything." Considering that all matter and energy were originally sourced from the big bang, this is quite literally a scientific statement. (As well as a metaphysical one.) Furthermore both camps, when consistent, view death and pain with utter detachment -- as just another step in a process of neverending change. Death as part of life, nothing more.
You have the central issue well defined: The debate is not now, nor has it ever been over whether there is or isn't a universal designer. The debate, though very few are willing to admit it openly, is whether or not the story Genesis is literally true. Evolution (and cosmology for that matter) does not deny the existence of God. It does, however, deny the story of Genesis, as a literal history of the universe. The Roman Catholic Church dances around this issue with more skill than do other, more fundamentalist Christian sects, but even the Church is internally at odds. Because, although its Vatican newspaper strongly suggests the reality of evolution, the words of the Pope, found in various Encyclical publications, have a demonstrated preferences in favor of Genesis. Most of the posters here who are theists, and the majority of the population of the U.S., believe that Genesis is basically true, and that Satan has manipulated the World such that God's children are led to stray from the True faith. Therefore, science is merely the tool of Satan, and while it provides many good things for the World, it will, nevertheless, be the World's undoing. Moreover, all of this is the predetermined intent of God, therefore there's nothing wrong with the conflict between God and Science/Satan, because it's all part of the big Plan. This all sets up the perfect perpetual argument, because if what the scientist perceives is a gross misrepresentation of reality, then the scientist can be simultaneously correct in observation and wrong in conclusion, whereas the theist can be incorrect in observation and correct in conclusion. And, since reality is, from the theist's view, intentionally distorted, neither side can ever prove their case to the other, because each side's case is wholly dependent upon the belief in the correctness of their respective position, rather than upon any observable fact. Whereas, from the scientist's view, reality is not intentionally distorted, therefore the facts can fairly be used to infer new hypotheses for further testing, which the theist immediately seizes upon as the means of denigrating science as not based upon scientific observation. I have no problem with either view, except where the theist attempts to suggest that inference based upon scientific observation is any more "lunacy" than is "materialization from pure potentiality," which is another way of saying, "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat! Whoops...wrong hat!" I would have a similar difficulty if someone like Richard Dawkins, were to pronounce that belief in God is ignorant nonsense. But, that is NOT what Dawkins said. He said that not believing in "evolution" is ignorant. Evolutionary processes have been demonstrated true by scientific observation. The fact that no one has evolved a giraffe from an e-Coli, by subjecting it to random background radiation does not falsify evolutionary process. The only hole in the theory of evolution is what I wrote of above, i.e., if the scientist's perceptions are gross distortions caused by satanic intervention, as part of God's universal plan to test the faith of humanity, then evolutionary theory, and every other scientific theory is nonsense, and we should all just wear robes and sit in devotional prayer and meditation from dawn until dusk, until either our lives expire, or the End of Days occurs. I prefer to accept that my perceptions are correct and that the scientific method accurately describes reality, and therefore that reasonable scientific inference is equally scientific. Obviously, there is a point where inference is no longer scientific, but that point is not some bright line drawn across the heavens -- it is something that must be determined by the facts and circumstances surrounding the experimental data -- data that most of lay people cannot follow, so as to determine its fundamental accuracy, because they lack sufficient education or raw processing power to understand what the data actually means. But evolution itself, i.e., random mutation in response to environmental stress, and the maintenance of the mutation, where it provides enhanced survival benefit, is scientifically proven. The underlying cause of the mutation itself, cannot ever be known. It could be accident, or it could be design, but either way, the mutation occurs, and the organism thereby evolves. And, to the extent that this proof contradicts with the story of Genesis, every person must decide for him/herself whether to accept whether to accept the scientific proof, or to accept that the scientific proof is distorted by God, to suit His universal Plan. None of this, however, makes Darwinism (or theism) equivalent to lunacy.
By the way there are creationists who say that if you properly understand time and physics and the big bang. A day back then would be equal to a very long long time now. Not that I am banking any salvation on that statement. There are also physicists who claim they have scientific proof that light is slowing down. Which would also have major implications on what we conceptualize as time. So one can even argue that theory of evolution is not in conflict with literal scientific read of genesis. Once that story is put in a proper context. (Not trying to make that my argument.) Regarding Stu's comment about proof of evolution. KJ and z10 have been having that argument for months. I have no reason to get into with a person who would never admit he was wrong even if I I found Adam's second rib hiding in the garden of Eden or I produced Arius to explain what the trinity is not, or I had God manifest as the Trinity.
I don't think this is a question of there being a need for any contradiction in the first place. There is no necessity to believe in something that is actually a fact. As evolution is a fact, belief in it seems incongruous and unnecessary. Belief suggests something is not actually a fact. God is not a fact as evolution is a fact, therefore a belief in God is essential where some idea of It is derired to be accepted in the absence of fact. Surely the contradiction would be apparent when comparing something which is a fact against something which is a belief?