The Vatican and Evolution

I have been very dismissive of creationist and "intelligent design" advocacy. Personally, I think that both try to turn God from Supreme Creator into a hum-drum engineer. By requiring God to review the plans for the earthworm, I believe we reduce God.

The Vatican has gotten involved, though as usual the press tends to misunderstand it. About a 15 years ago, Pope John Paul II made some statements in support of evolution and the press acted as though this was a major change in Vatican policy. I noted to an evangelical friend that it is not really a change. The officially commentary on the Scripture had recognized evolution at least since the 1950s, and in fact the church had been OK with evolution before that.

Of course, there were some controversies, such as the Omega Point theory of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which argued that evolution was leading to man converging with God. But the controversy was with the endpoint so to speak, not the theory of evolution.

I saw this item on Little Green Footballs that the Vatican is having a conference on evolution and the intelligent design folks were kept out. Pope Benedict a few years ago got himself enmeshed in the intelligent design controversy, mostly because he probably did not understand how that term had become so loaded in the United States. Hopefully, this conference signals an end to the Vatican getting mixed up with intelligent design.

The Pope Meets Stephen Hawking

Pope Benedict met briefly with Stephen Hawking at a Church sponsored conference on faith and science. The Pope spoke briefly, noting that "There is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences."

Accepting God and evolution pose no problem for me. I have never really understood the issue. Creation just is, accept it as it is. God's message is one of redemption, not the Bible as a science book.

P.J. O'Rourke on God, Evolution and Death

To the extent I have a favorite philosopher, it is PJ O’Rourke. I am not sure exactly what that says about me (it cannot be good), but I find him to be the modern Mencken, without the nastiness.

O’Rourke just found out he has cancer and while things look good, he deals with it in his usual way.

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn't. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I've been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I'm told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it -- as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound -- my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

His biggest concern is that he has a malignant hemorrhoid and he is not sure what color bracelet to wear (or where to wear it). Along the way he muses about God, evolution, life, death, pain and meaning. While his theology and philosophy would probably fail freshman courses at Catholic universities, he is right on how death is a part of life. In O'Rourke's words:

Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God's grace. (Although this option is not usually open to reporters.)

Read the whole thing. And get well soon PJ.

Creation

So if you accept evolution, but not Intelligent Design, how do you reconcile that with faith?

Faith is something you accept without needing proof. To someone completely materialistic, that of course is a fallacy. Yet, I accept faith. I accept it because I accept creation. I look at the universe, and simply accept that it is, that I am, and that God created all of it. I do not dwell on why it was created, only that it is.

In his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II talked about "the joy of creation" as a good in and of itself. It is good that the universe exists. It is good that I exist. Existence itself is reason to exist.

But the why and how of creation are secondary to the salvation and redemption. For as Pope John Paul II wrote, the joy of creation itself leads to the joy of salvation, and thence to the joy of redemption.

So I simply accept and embrace my existance, with the belief that somehow, someway, God created it all.

Faith and Science

A few weeks ago, I was in a car with some friends of a friend and somehow the issue of evolution came up. One of the people in the car was an agnostic and found it strange that I, as a professing Catholic, noted that I had no problem with the concept of evolution. As I put it, I believe in evolution, but really believe in the Creed.

I believe that as Catholics, we must be careful in finding the way to accept both faith and reason. The Catechism instructs us that science does not override morality, and it cannot conflict with our faith.

So going back to evolution, my non-Catholic friends, and many of my Catholic ones for that matter, are surprised when they learn that the Church has never taken a stand against evolution. And while the Pope unfortunately got himself briefly enmeshed into the "Intelligent Design" controversy about a year ago (mostly I think because he did not really understand how that term has become very loaded in the United States), the Church has tried to stay clear of the controversy.

The story of faith, the message of Christ is that of salvation. It is a message that each of us, no matter how humble, have worth before God. By arguing how long God contemplated the blueprints for the earthworm, we reduce God's message and we turn our back on what was truly important. By turning the Bible into a science book, we in effect reduce God and probably commit the fallacy of Deism.