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.

A quote I like

"Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence." Father Michael Heller, cosmologist and Roman Catholic priest, on winning the Templeton Prize for science and philosophy.

One reason I started this blog was to examine the role of faith and reason. As I make it clear, I am not a philosopher, a theologian or a scientist. But I believe strongly that faith and reason need not be in opposition to each other. Yet, faith and reason at times seem so hard to reconcile. Some try to by using God to fill in those things that science cannot understand – turning God the cause behind the universe into "The God of the Gaps." This God of the Gaps idea is what lead to my brief fling with atheism a decade or so ago. I found viewing God in that way so narrow that it turned Him into something I no longer recognized. Father Heller has argued against this view of God.

I admit, I had not heard of Father Heller, who teaches in Poland, prior to winning this award. Perhaps I should make acquaintance with his work.

A Quote I Really Like

"One must welcome the true conquests of the Enlightenment, human rights and especially the freedom of faith and its practice, and recognize these also as being essential elements for the authenticity of religion." -- Pope Benedict's reply to the 138 Muslim Scholars.

Pope Benedict wrote those words as part of a reply to a letter addressed to him by 138 Muslim scholars. The scholars wrote to the Pope hoping to begin a dialogue between religions, following the Pope's Regensburg Address. While addressed to a specific group of Muslims, these words I believe have relevance for us all. Some believe it is impossible to unite faith, reason and liberal democracy. Yet I argue that the three not only co-exist but are enhanced and strengthened by each other.

The Pope's Undelivered Speech

I found an English translation of the Pope's speech that he was supposed to deliver to the students and faculty of Rome University.

The speech is what you would expect of the Pope. The speech began with a discussion of historical context. It briefly traced the history of the university and its importance to the Italian state. It then discussed the Pope's connection to the actual invitation, noting that it was to the Pope as "bishop of Rome".

The speech then turned to discuss the nature and purpose of two institutions, the Papacy and the University. Looking to the history of words, the speech noted that the Pope was first and foremost a bishop, who Greek word is tied with the idea of the shepherd. So the Ope is, in essence, someone who is a voice to guide "ethical reasoning." But the Pope also speaks from faith. So as always, Pope Benedict sees faith and reason intertwined.

The Pope next turned to the purpose of the university. A university is a physical manifestation of man's quest for knowledge. Which again is where faith and reason connect. To the early Christians, the quest for knowledge was a way of blowing away the clouds of myth and understanding God. As the Pope put it, "to discover the God that is creative Reason as well as Reason-as-Love." And what is the end of knowledge? As the speech explained the "purpose of knowing the truth is to know what is good."

What is perhaps most ironic about this affair is that the Pope, the most scholarly of clerics by far, was forced away from a university. Those who protested his planned appearance would have done well to hear what would have been his closing words:

What does the Pope have to do or say in a university? He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered. Beyond his ministry as Pastor of the Church and on the basis of the intrinsic nature of this pastoral ministry, it is his task to keep alive man’s responsiveness to the truth. Similarly he must again and always invite reason to seek out truth, goodness and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future.

Anyway, do not take my word on it -- read the speech.

Pope Benedict, Faith, Reason, and the University of Rome

Pope Benedict had planned to visit Sapienza University of Rome, perhaps Italy's most prestigious university, to celebrate the start of the academic year. Instead, a coalition of students and professors demanded he stay away, so he did. Their complaint is that the Pope, an advocate of free inquiry and the importance of reason, is responsible for Galileo or something like that.

This has lead recriminations from Italy's left wing government, with both the president and Prime Minister condemning the actions of the protesters.

The Vatican has released the text of the Pope's undelivered speech. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find it in either English or Italian. I probably will have more to say once I read it.

Richard Dawkins is Following Me

Well, not literally, but for some reason, everywhere I turned in airports or on airplanes this vacation, someone was reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. I will admit, that given the general tenor of this blog, that book is not on my reading list. However, one person in the flight yeseterday was not only reading it, but giving her husband frequent updates on the thesis of the book.

One problem I find when speaking to nonbelievers is that they have a view of believers that is more Hollywood caricature than fact. They have n their mind an uneducated, small minded person who believes the world is flat. Then again, the same can probably be said of how believers view nonbelievers. Too often, believers have a caricatured view of immoral nonbelievers engaging in sex with animals in front of the neighbors' kids.

As with most everything else, the problem is communication.

Isabel Paterson

I have become extremely interested of late in Isabel Paterson. Paterson is one of founders of modern American libertarianism. A prominent literary critic who used weekly book review column in the New York Herald Tribune "Books" supplement to take on the status quo, she was a contemporary of H.L. Mencken and Rose Wilder Lane, editor of humorist Will Cuppy, mentor to Ayn Rand and correspondent to Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley. She is unfortunately somewhat forgotten today. Unlike her contemporaries, she was not a joiner -- Rand had her Objectivist movement while Lane was active at the libertarian Freedom School. Paterson simply had her column. Hence, she did not leave behind a phalanx of disciples to popularize her work.

Besides being a critic she also was a writer herself. Her sole nonfiction book, "The God of the Machine" was in some ways the starting point for modern American libertarianism. Ayn Rand told Paterson that the book "does for capitalism what Das Kapital does for the Reds and what the Bible did for Christianity." Paterson also wrote historical novels where kings were the villains and merchants the heroes.

To Paterson, society was simply the transmitter of energy -- the energy of commerce and creativity. Many things, overburdening government, grasping nobles, a society based on status, central planning, Bolshevism, or fascism, were items that slowed down the transmission of energy. Paterson is of interest to me because she did not see liberty as being in opposition to faith. In fact, she felt quite the opposite -- that Christianity helped to set free the energies of Europe. While recognizing that Europe in the Middle Ages was a status bound society based on serfdom, she believed that Christian philosophy was one of the basis for freedom (Paterson was not a Christian herself, but is rather better considered a Deist).

Unfortunately, the only works of Paterson that seem to be in print are "The God of the Machine" and one of her later experimental novels. Her Tribune columns and her early novels are hard to find. In addition, there is an excellent biography of her, "The Woman and the Dynamo" by Steven Cox. Hopefully, a few of her earlier novels might come back into print.

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.