Catholics and evolution

[Jbuza]

Over 150 years Darwin's theory has not merely survived it has flourished; not merely has it flourished, it has become one of the cornerstones of modern science. It has passed all tests and every question thrown at it with flying colours and then some.

I can imagine you are in a froth let me cary this on for you. WE are the great answer, everything else is grabage, We are the fountian of truth! Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. This is garbage.

This attitude says let us stop investigating, hypotheses from other ideas, they should be shunned, ya right and from the other conrner of your mouth you were talking about science being open to ideas, it is this kind of grabage that you are posting that indicates that science is a little baby scared of the adult arena of ideas. Whatever.

Surely, sayeth the Wedge, this blessed time shall come upon us again when science is done as it ought to be done: filtered by the Committee for Religio-Scientific Censorship for the removal of any non-theistic sounding evil, which might be interpreted by some as indicating that there is no God. Halellujah.

You have this idea that Creation theory will try and silence other theories to justify the close minded idea that is plainly visible that is in fact saying Let us censor every non-athiest, non-evolution idea. Creation explaines nature, so get your head out of the sand, stand on your own two feet, and enter the arena of ideas without making calims about all knowing-darwinism wihtout a shread of evidence.

This rant is laughable and simply makes calims without any substance.

[Jbuza]

ID explains nothing, solves nothing and predicts nothing. . .
(I invariably find that ad hominem attacks indicate weakness of argument).

And what my friend would you call this, "ID explains nothing, solves nothing and predicts nothing"? This is in fact ad hominem attack, instead of investigate what ID and creation theory are about, you simple attack it.

Of course ID explains things, and of course it makes predictions, and it does in fact solve various problems with evolution. IT seems apparent that you are Ignorant of ID and craetion theory.

I guess the RCC just finaly caved to this fascist pressure!

[Kurieuo]

Which brings us back to Cardinal Schonborn; he it was, who, with the help of some friends at the Discovery Institute for Ideological Dissemination, called Darwinian evolution an ideological assault upon reason and science (truly he did, don't laugh), but now he says:

““Without a doubt, Darwin pulled off quite a feat with his main work and it remains one of the very great works of intellectual history.”

Whew! Suddenly he's got it at last. Welcome aboard Cardinal. Nice little eulogy that, from the man who said, of the late Pope John Paul's endorsement of evolution as “more that a hypothesis”, that it was “vague and unimportant”. Apparently he now feels that John Paul didn't go far enough in his personal commendation of Darwin!

“I see no problem combining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, under one condition — that the limits of a scientific theory are respected.”

Amazing grace, he's definitely got it! There are no problems whatsoever in believing in scientific (Darwinian) evolution and God. It's easy to do of course if you believe in God; you just say that is evolution is the way God chose to make you and me. His op-ed piece was a scathing response to another a few weeks prior to it by Lawrence Krauss saying that was exactly the RC Church position. Krauss expresses himself far better that I can and his op-ed is worth reading.
http://genesis1.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss/17comm2.html

After the Cardinal's NYT piece, Krauss, together with Kenneth Miller and Francisco Ayala, wrote an open letter to the new Pope asking for clarification.
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/ ... etter.html

Schonborn's recantation would appear to be that clarification. Krauss had it completely correct. Schonborn had it completely wrong. Schonborn was indulging in the same kind of ideology (in this case ID ideology) that he was accusing Darwinian science of.

You have not proven Schonborn has recanted in any form. I think people such as yourself perhaps have simply had a knee-jerk reaction to what Schonborn originally said. For in Schonborn's New York Times article, Schonborn never at any point rejected evolution as incompatible with belief in God, nor did he reject evolutionary theories in general. For example, he quite willingly says that "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true." If this might be true, then assumably he is basing this possibility off the often accepted Darwinian form of evolution, no? Therefore, he never rejects Darwinian evolution. This fact seems to be overlooked by people such as yourself who continue to (knowingly or unknowingly??) perpetrate misleading information on Schonborn's original statements.

Rather, Schonborn distinguished between "evolution", a quite ambiguous word which means many different things to many people, and "neo-Darwinian evolution". It is this latter neo-Darwinian form that he rejected as incompatible. Indeed, this is what Krauss, Miller & Ayala pointed out in their open letter to the Pope seeking clarification writing, "In an essay, also published in the New York Times... he claimed that 'Evolution in the Neo-Darwinian sense... is not true'." Yet, Schonborn never outrightly rejected "evolution" as you seem to be making out, as well your MSNBC news piece which is quite misleading on Schonburn's original statements, and also over-exaggerates Schonborn's affiliation to the Intelligent Design movement.

So again, what did Schonborn reject which caused so many knee-jerk reactions by people such as yourself? While he accepts evolution in general may be true, he says that "evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense[/b - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not." Indeed, I believe he rightly clarifies in his opening two paragraphs that this neo-Darwinian concept, which allows for no providence or guidence for the divine, has not ever been supported by the RCC.

So when you say:

Schonborn's recantation would appear to be that clarification. Krauss had it completely correct. Schonborn had it completely wrong. Schonborn was indulging in the same kind of ideology (in this case ID ideology) that he was accusing Darwinian science of.

Such is said in total ignorance to what Schonborn himself had originally stated. With Schonborn's latest statements, he did not recant, nor did he contradict his earlier statements in his NY Times piece. In addition, Schonborn never gave his undying support to the ID movement, although he looks as though he is entirely familiar with contemporay philisophy regarding cosmological arguments. Thus, you have made an issue out of nothing, and yourself misrepresented Schonborn by either swallowing or perpetrating lies rather than looking at what Schonborn did infact originally say.

Cheers,
Kurieuo

[Kurieuo]

I do not understand what the point of your following question is, or what relevance it has to what I wrote:

“So you would believe then that we can't determine whether an object is designed without knowing [who?] its designer is?”

You declared: "The theory that it was God who was responsible is not a scientific one — as Cardinal Schonborn now says. Let us explicitly say what “design” means in this debate — it means GOD." (emphasis mine)

Since you introduced ID into the discussion (by confusing Schonborn as being affiliated with the ID movement), you need to swallow all of ID. Now ID never states "who" the designer is and steer clear of this question which has no relevance to the scientific enquiry of detecting design is an object or system. ID proponents believe they do not need to understand whether who designer is in order to recognise something is designed. Yet, you dictate above to ID proponents that the designer is God! Well, if you want to assume God, then I suppose you acknowledge then that there does appear to be design. Yet, the "who" is something that will never be defined by IDists, and so if you or Schonborn associate such design with God, than this is entirely his "theological" opinion which is outside the realm of ID.

Kurieuo

[tootin]

Kurieuo said

So again, what did Schonborn reject which caused so many knee-jerk reactions by people such as yourself? While he accepts evolution in general may be true, he says that "evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense[/b - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not." Indeed, I believe he rightly clarifies in his opening two paragraphs that this neo-Darwinian concept, which allows for no providence or guidence for the divine, has not ever been supported by the RCC.

As a believer in a theistic God of course Schonborn doesn't believe in a natural theory of evolution, but how does he know that it is not true? In his original NYT piece he is saying that it is against the scientific evidence and even reason itself to argue that there is no design. That simply is not true.
A scientific theory cannot have God as a component. Believers are free to add on their own personal religious interpretation if they wish. Athesists are free to add on nothing if they wish. But the theory itself MUST NOT say anything about God. That is not the purpose of science. That is the purpose of religion.
Science is about finding out how the world is, as God has made it if He has; or as it is, if he has not. After all it is one and the same identical world whether God has made it or whether he has not.
Believers and atheists inhabit one and the same world.

[Jbuza]

A scientific theory cannot have God as a component. . . . But the theory itself MUST NOT say anything about God. That is not the purpose of science. That is the purpose of religion.
Science is about finding out how the world is, as God has made it if He has; or as it is, if he has not. After all it is one and the same identical world whether God has made it or whether he has not.
Believers and atheists inhabit one and the same world.

This is trash. Albert Einstein was investigating the mind of God when he came up with his theories, and he was ridiculed for it. You redicule God in science today. So you by effect of what you say about God in science, are advocating that only ideas that presuppose no God are science. If you cannot understand how important devine guidence and intervention have been in scientific discoveries that laid the foundation for the current one-sided scared child that much of science has become that fears and fights the thoughts and ideas of God

[tootin]

Kurieuo said

Schonborn never outrightly rejected "evolution" as you seem to be making out, as well your MSNBC news piece which is quite misleading on Schonburn's original statements, and also over-exaggerates Schonborn's affiliation to the Intelligent Design movement.

So again, what did Schonborn reject which caused so many knee-jerk reactions by people such as yourself?

So Krauss and I overexaggerated what Schonborn said in a knee-jerk reaction? See Michael Behe's reaction, in that case. Speaking of the Schonborn op-ed he said:

Not to put too fine a point on it, he essentially says in so many words that neo-Darwinism is wrong and ID is right. He writes that the conclusion that life is designed is not a matter of faith, but a matter of physical evidence. He says the denial of that evidence is itself ideology; in other words, the denial of the evidence is the faith, the affirmation of the evidence is rational.

I think this is enormously important. (Me Catholic.) I strongly suspect that this op-ed was instigated by Pope Benedict himself. It seems very unlikely that Austrian Cardinal Schönborn would publish an op-ed in the New York Times expounding Catholic understanding of evolution, taking on the Darwinists, and quoting Benedict himself without at least the Pope's tacit approval, and more likely his active encouragement. I take this to mean that Benedict thinks this issue is very important, and is very interested in setting matters straight.

Having the weight of the Catholic Church publicly behind ID and against Darwinism will make it much harder for the Scopes Trial caricature to stick to ID. Now it isn't just the proverbial band of yahoos from Tennessee (and a tiny number of confused academics) who don't get it. Now it's the largest Christian denomination in the world, one that makes distinctions between the entirely separate issues of the age of the earth, common descent, and Darwinian randomness.

http://www.idthefuture.com/index.php?ti ... &tb=1&pb=1

[sandy_mcd]

You have not proven Schonborn has recanted in any form.

Nice posts tootin !
I think it is difficult to address this question as it is fairly subtle and I have never found the text of Schonborn's second statement. To me the essence is that he first claimed that evidence of design was apparent; later he did not. Whether evolution at some level was involved is beside the point.
From his editorial "by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things". Couple this with a recollection that the Discovery Institute was involved and it seems clear to me that scientific evidence for design is implied. His later statement did not include this backing for design, as far as I can find out. That is the extent of the "recantation". I suspect that the mere fact of the later "clarification" is to be interpreted as a recantation though.
MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9913712/ has an article with comments by Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, which seem to support my interpretation. Note that they do not explicitly discredit ID, but suggest other options.
See also the article "Catholic experts urge caution in evolution debate" http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2 ... 72905h.php from which the following is copied:
"A recent article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn in The New York Times, asserting that “unguided, unplanned” evolution is inconsistent with Catholic faith, should be read with caution warn a number of Catholic scientists and theologians, including the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Most of the experts interviewed said the article can offer a useful alert if taken at a theological level. Evolution, they point out, has sometimes been invoked to justify atheism, as well as immanentism (that God is a vague life force) or deism (that God set the universe in motion and has nothing more to do with it).
To the extent Schönborn's point is that Christianity cannot accept a universe without an active, personal God, they say, there's little to dispute.
If taken as a scientific statement, on the other hand, these observers warn that Schönborn's insistence on seeing “purpose and design” in nature could steer the Catholic church towards creationism in the bitter cultural debate, especially prominent in the United States, between evolution and intelligent design. Doing so, they say, risks overstepping the bounds of the church's competence, as well as reopening a divide between science and the Catholic church that had seemed largely overcome."

[Kurieuo]

So Krauss and I overexaggerated what Schonborn said in a knee-jerk reaction? See Michael Behe's reaction, in that case. Speaking of the Schonborn op-ed he said:

Not to put too fine a point on it, he essentially says in so many words that neo-Darwinism is wrong and ID is right. He writes that the conclusion that life is designed is not a matter of faith, but a matter of physical evidence. He says the denial of that evidence is itself ideology; in other words, the denial of the evidence is the faith, the affirmation of the evidence is rational.

I think this is enormously important. (Me Catholic.) I strongly suspect that this op-ed was instigated by Pope Benedict himself. It seems very unlikely that Austrian Cardinal Schönborn would publish an op-ed in the New York Times expounding Catholic understanding of evolution, taking on the Darwinists, and quoting Benedict himself without at least the Pope's tacit approval, and more likely his active encouragement. I take this to mean that Benedict thinks this issue is very important, and is very interested in setting matters straight.

Having the weight of the Catholic Church publicly behind ID and against Darwinism will make it much harder for the Scopes Trial caricature to stick to ID. Now it isn't just the proverbial band of yahoos from Tennessee (and a tiny number of confused academics) who don't get it. Now it's the largest Christian denomination in the world, one that makes distinctions between the entirely separate issues of the age of the earth, common descent, and Darwinian randomness.

http://www.idthefuture.com/index.php?ti ... &tb=1&pb=1

Again, Schonborn comments were in relation to neo-Darwinian evolution, and there is nothing in Behe's comments which portray Schonborn was talking about evolution in general. Perhaps you don't know the difference? But I refer the reader to my previous posts, for I feel everything said in them is still applicable.

Kurieuo

[sandy_mcd]

I not only don't know the difference between "neo-darwinian evolution" and "evolution in general", I am not sure what is currently being discussed.
To summarize my position:
1) The Catholic Church has no official stance on physical evolution, requiring neither belief nor denial.
2) Any Catholic who believes in evolution can not believe that it is a random physical process without any role for God.
3) The opinion of most of the church leadership is to defer to science on material matters.
4) One (of 181) cardinals expressed a personal opinion that nature contained evidence of design, i.e., a belief in ID. [As do the two men behind the Thomas More Law Center involved in the Dover trial.]
5) He made another statement in which he may not have expressed such a belief explicitly, which could possibly be interpreted as a form of recantation.
6) Points 4) and 5) are statements of personal belief, not doctrine, and also do not reflect the opinions of most Catholic scientists and theologians, who do not currently support the concept of ID, from 3).

[Kurieuo]

Hi Sandy,

From your previous response it seems that you are somewhat inline with my own thinking. However, to clarify: Do you believe an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection is able to produce the variety in life we see today, and that a Chrisitian (Catholic or otherwise) can seriously believe this?

Kurieuo

[sandy_mcd]

No, I don't see how any Christian, much less a Catholic, can believe in a God who created a universe which just happened to end up producing humans. [Isn't that deism ?] On the other hand, I can believe in a God who set up a universe and a set of scientific laws which as an inevitable consequence resulted in the appearance of humans. That is, God can create humans with souls but not necessarily leave physical evidence of his handiwork behind. Such a scenario would scientifically be indistinguishable from a purely naturalistic explanation. [I also have a philosophic bias against ID since physical proof of God's existence would obviate the need for faith.]

[Kurieuo]

What you state here is strictly speaking not neo-Darwinian evolution, which Schonborn explains in the original article you quoted of him as "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection." This, is what he says is inconsistent with Christian belief, or any other truly Theistic belief which identifies God as personal. So if this makes Schonborn an advocate of Intelligent Design, then you are by the same token also an advocate of Intelligent Design.

But doesn't Schonborn make references to "design"? Yes, but this is no more than say Swinburne (see under "III. The Argument from the Evolution of Animals and Men" at http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth09.html—I think you and him would share similar perspectives), or the usual philosophical design arguments, or observing the "anthropomorphic principle" and so forth. Even Davies finds much to strength in such things. Yet, none of this makes them advocates of Intelligent Design. Just because "design" is mentioned, it does not mean ID is being refered to. Design was long around before ID, which only arose really about two decades ago, the intended purpose of which is to detect patterns which appear to be of intelligence (particularly in biological systems) rather than chance or necessity.

Kurieuo

[Kurieuo]

[I also have a philosophic bias against ID since physical proof of God's existence would obviate the need for faith.]

I know this is a popular idea, but it is one that makes no sense to me. Would it not be more correct to say a little evidence produces a little faith, more evidence produces more faith, and complete evidence produces a complete faith?

Kurieuo

[sandy_mcd]

Just because "design" is mentioned, it does not mean ID is being refered to.

This is getting into precise definitions and meanings of words and phrases and I am not comfortable enough to argue such subtleties.

The statement which suggested ID to me was
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opini ... [quote]the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things. ... Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.[/quote] Perhaps I misunderstood the point Schönborn was trying to make.

More persuasive to me was the involvement of the DI as mentioned in the NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/scien ... nd&emc=rss

One 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 was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.

Mr. Ryland, who said he knew the cardinal through the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he is chancellor and Mr. Ryland is on the board, said supporters of intelligent design were "very excited" that a church leader had taken a position opposing Darwinian evolution. "It clarified that in some sense the Catholics aren't fine with it," he said.

I had originally assumed from the involvement of the DI that the "design" referred to by Schönborn was of the DI variety. Rereading the last paragraph, I am no longer so sure. Maybe the DI was just interested in his opposition to atheistic evolution, but that is not his personal opinion alone but the position of the Catholic Church.

Also Googling for these references turned up this: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1506151/posts

The theory of intelligent design will have its first major European showing at a international, scientific conference in Prague, Czech Republic next Saturday, October 21. Promoters of the conference -- Darwin and Design: A Challenge for 21st Century Science (http://www.darwinanddesign.org) ... Representatives of Christoph Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, Austria will attend the conference. Cardinal Schonborn, former lead editor of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, has recently challenged claims of Darwinists that the Catholic Church accepts the broad anti-design implications drawn by proponents of Darwin's theory.

[I've skimmed the Swinburne link but not read it closely yet.]