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Post by Admin on Oct 12, 2017 5:43:51 GMT
Question: can a person logically and consistently believe in the scientific theory of evolution and at the same time believe in Christianity? I, Joseph Ostermeir (Admin) will first let Pon de Replay make his argument, then I will respond. (Others are welcome to join too)
This should be fun! Invite your friends! Pop some popcorn! One of the most hotly debated questions today. Religious skeptics, agnostics, and atheists often base their disbelief in Christianity (and Catholicism, and Religion in general) on the theory of evolution. How can someone believe in a Christian God as the Creator and Origin of mankind if they also conclude from genetics/biology/human history that Homo Sapiens (humans) evolved from lower primates, and ultimately single-celled organisms, by means of natural selection? This question becomes even more difficult if natural selection is synonymous with a chaotic cosmos and the purpose of living organisms being survival and reproduction? If natural causes and events are ruled by randomness, chaos, and material survival, how could that reality be compatible with the existence of a God as believed by Christians? When the Christian concept of God is a perfect Creator, making a perfect Creation in His likeness? Theilhard de Chardin, a Catholic Jesuit theologian and evolutionist, tried to explain God and Christianity using the lens of evolution. Today Old Earth and New Earth Creationists, being both Catholics and Evangelical fundamentalists, argue evolution is incompatible with Christianity and the Book of Genesis. The Intelligent Design movement is another apologist for a personal God creating the cosmos. They emphasize the incredible amount of order evident in nature, from physical laws, to molecular chemistry, to the beauty of the cell, not to mention the indescribable level of order and function in the human body, especially the brain. Yet if nature does have some degree of disorder and chaos, resulting in horrible human suffering and death, and as a result moral evil, then how can an all good and compassionate God truely exist, as we see in the Holy Trinity and Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ? This argument about evolution depends on an intellectually honest discussion and debate on both sides of the question, considering the very best that science, philosophy, and theology have to offer. I would argue, the best way to approach this kind of question is through natural philosophy which governs (or should govern) empirical science, in particular that of Aristotle and St. Thomas. The origin of the species, as a creative event, is governed by causality and change. At some point in Earth's history, on this globe, the first Homo Sapien came into existence. Efficient, material, formal, and final causes were at play. A physical process of movement and change was also at play. Genesis describes Adam being formed from the Earth. So God chose to not just snap his fingers, and poof Adam instantly materialized. Eve was taken from his rib. So a physical process was occuring when human beings came into existence for the first time. That creation occurred at a certain point in history and in a particular place on Earth. Some geneticists argue genetics shows that there was one individual man and woman at the beginning of the human race, in the Middle East. As the mainstream of modern society becomes practically more and more secular, and even atheistic, the question of atheistic evolution vs. Christianity becomes even more relevant. |
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Post by Pon de Replay on Oct 20, 2017 12:46:11 GMT
Gracias to Admin for hosting this formal debate. I agree wholeheartedly that the question posed in the introductory post is relevant to the times. I would say it is probably one of the most important questions facing any believer in the Catholic faith: “can a person logically and consistently believe in the scientific theory of evolution and at the same time believe in Christianity?” I will argue for the response of NYET.
To begin with, I must confess that in terms of the science, I don’t possess much expertise to buttress my argument with. I would rate my knowledge of evolution as “passable,” perhaps, or “decent” at best, so I am open to correction if I put forth a scientific error at any point in this discussion (it’s possible that my understanding of evolution as a purely materialistic process is mistaken, but I’ve learned enough at least to think that’s not the case). What I have for the most part is my own experience, as believer who attempted to reconcile the two and failed.
As a Catholic I was a “theistic evolutionist” until that approach unraveled for me, because as Ted Kaczynski would say, “you can’t eat your cake and have it too”—and you can’t have evolution and the Catholic faith at the same time. Then I switched to the position known as “young earth creationism,” which I saw as the only account consistent with scripture and Church doctrine. With young earth creationism, however, I merely acquired a new form of cognitive dissonance: I was forced to reject everything I had ever accepted about evolution, and was expected to treat it all as a form of atheist propaganda, dispensed by the scientific community in a diabolical conspiracy to discredit Christianity. To some extent I believed in that conspiracy, but it did seem a stretch because evolution had always made rational sense, so I was badgered by the suspicion that I had chosen to make myself an ostrich with my head in the sand—“the ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but he buries his head gravely in the grave earth.” It was a hopeless Catch-22. Evolution was antithetical to the faith, but creationism was antithetical to reason. Unable to resolve this, I went back and forth between the two, always finding unease with either one.
THREE POINTS OF CONTRADICTION
To my lights, there are three essential ways in which evolution conflicts with Christianity. The first is that it calls into question the reliability and accuracy of sacred scripture. The second is that it calls into question the benevolence of God. And the third is that it offers an explanation for human behavior which makes the doctrine of Original Sin an apparent myth: a fine myth to be sure, but a myth nonetheless, if something like concupiscence (which St. Augustine taught was a result of the Fall) actually has a more plausible explanation in nature. If concupiscence is really nothing more than the biological imperative of primates (the order of mammals to which we belong), then in that case one would have to conclude that Arthur Schopenhauer had more insight into the human condition than St. Augustine did.
PROBLEM NO. 1: EVOLUTION & THE RELIABILITY OF SCRIPTURE
This post will pertain to the first area of difficulty: evolution and scripture. I was intrigued by something Admin wrote in the introduction, and I think it might be a good point to start from. The sentence that caught my attention was this one: “at some point in Earth’s history, on this globe, the first Homo Sapien came into existence.” This was immediately familiar to me; I recognized it as a notion that I had warmly embraced when I was a theistic evolutionist. I believed as follows: that although there had already been various hominins wandering the earth (ever since two hundred thousand years ago, when some intrepid chimp-like apes came down from the trees and ventured out onto the African savannah, eventually acquiring bipedalism and large brains), there came a point (“in the fullness of time,” as they say) when God ensouled one of these creatures (along with his mate), and these two were Adam and Eve, the pinnacle of evolution, and this single pair marked the origin of genuine humanity, from whom all of us are descended, and from whose disobedience we inherited the guilt of original sin.
Initially I felt this account was satisfactory—there is a certain grandeur and glory in the idea of the whole evolutionary process being purposefully directed to arrive at humanity. But this grandeur is superficial; it began to whither whenever I turned it over in earnest in my mind. In particular, I kept coming back to something that I believe was articulated by Stephen Jay Gould in one of his essays, where he said that one of our greatest misconceptions about evolution comes from an intuition we’ve inherited from Plato: that somewhere out there in the ether exists the perfect ideal of something, and that here in the material world we only meet with the imperfect forms of this ideal. But this is not the case with evolution. There is, for example, no “ideal rabbit” of whom all earthly rabbits are imperfect reflections. Rabbits, rather, exist on a genealogical continuum of small furry mammals. There was never really a first rabbit, as all creatures that are born are of the same species as their parents. Recognizable rabbit traits, such as long ears, bushy tails, and strong hind legs for hopping, were developed slowly over many generations. Speciation occurs when the features of one animal are different from its distant ancestors, and when the intermediaries have died off—leaving two separate animals. But the process is gradual, as every rabbit that ever existed had a rabbit for a mother and rabbit for a father.
When I began to consider this gradual aspect of evolution, and how there is no first member of a species, I was suddenly struck by the obvious: Adam and Eve had parents. Theistic evolution painted its narrative in broad strokes, with dreaminess and ambiguity, but it did not hold together when the particulars were brought into focus. The mother and father of Adam. Somehow, contemplating the brute parents of Adam of Eve served as the kernel of insight that ended up illuminating the flaws. There are two complimentary ways of looking at this: first, at what the bible positively says and what the Church positively taught; and second, by considering a supposition made by St. Robert Bellarmine when he confronted geocentrism: to look at what is negative, or absent, in the bible.
a. Evolution at variance with the Book of Genesis
The main problem with Adam and Eve having parents is that the bible makes no mention of it, and indicates something else altogether. A plain and honest reading of Genesis clearly suggests that Adam and Eve were a special and direct creation, entirely separate from the animals. Now to be fair, the literal sense of scripture does not have to be enforced on every single line. The bible is chock a-plenty with figurative language, parables, and poetic flourishes, many of which (as everyone knows) are quite sublime. “We piped for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, but you did not mourn.” But if evolution is true, then the early chapters of Genesis are, at best, an impenetrable riddle, because they strongly suggest the young earth creationist scenario—so much so that virtually every Christian for most of history had been a young earth creationist. Among the Church Fathers who dated the creation of the world to approximately 5200 BC were St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom, as well as St. Jerome, who made the Latin translation of the Chronicon of Eusebius. Lest this manner of dating based on scripture appear a quirk of the Early Church, a similar date was officially maintained in the Roman Martyrology of Pope Gregory XIII in 1584. And no theologian prior to Darwin ever produced an exegesis of Genesis where he noticed a metaphor for man sharing a common ancestor with chimpanzees. (It should also be remembered that the Council of Trent forbade interpreting scripture “contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers”—and the Church Fathers were unanimous in endorsing creationism). If evolution is true, then everyone had been tragically misled, because when Darwin’s work came out, the Catholic Church voiced displeasure with it.
A regional council was convened in Cologne in 1860 to address the issue of evolution. The council denounced it, and furnished a decree: “the first parents were created directly by God. Therefore, we declare as contrary to Sacred Scripture and contrary to the faith the opinion that man came to be from imperfect nature to the most perfect and, in a continuous process, finally human.” The documents of this council were formally approved for promulgation by Pope Pius IX, who loathed evolution and sent a letter of papal approval to Constantin James, a French author of anti-evolution books, with permission to include the letter in future editions. The pre-eminent Thomistic theologian of the 19th century, Tommaso Maria Zigliara (the Cardinal who helped Leo XIII write the encyclical Aeterni Patris, inspiring a revival of Scholasticism) rejected Darwinism as “nothing other than the material part of absolute evolutionism, which is Hegelian pantheism.” Orestes Brownson remarked that evolution “denies the doctrine of the creation and immutability of species as taught in Genesis” and called Darwin “one of Satan’s most efficient ministers.” The list of prominent Catholics who rejected evolution goes on, but this sampling should be sufficient, and it would be redundant to heap on any more. All of these opinions appealed to the literal sense of the creation story, and all of them indicated that it would go against the faith to say that the creation of man had been a gradual process.
Meanwhile, theologians at the time who came up with various notions of theistic evolution had their books placed on the Index. Cardinal Zigliara chaired a committee of the Holy Office which in 1878 condemned a theistic evolution book by an Italian physiologist priest, Raffaello Caverni. And twenty years later, the Vatican was still having none of it: Fr. John Augustine Zahm (who would be considered a tepid “Intelligent Design” proponent by today’s standards), was nevertheless censured for publishing a book that cautiously considered harmonizing Catholicism with a conservative and modified “god-guided” form of evolution.
b. The Bellarmine dilemma (Letter to Foscarini, 1615)
What the Church teaches about scripture is that it is inerrant and inspired by God. It may contain mysteries or difficult passages, but it cannot deceive. If theistic evolution is true, then the Catholic Church’s reaction is Galileo all over again. The science comes out, gets deemed heretical on scriptural grounds, and then slowly the Church changes her mind and decides to take it on board; and something that was once deemed “contrary to the faith” becomes somehow acceptable for belief. Sometimes we hear the smug contention that “we Catholics are not biblical literalists like those knuckle-dragging Protestant goons” (and N.B.: I do not attribute this claim to Admin, but it is something that frequently does get said from the theistic evolutionist side. I know because I used to say it myself). However, the fact remains that Catholics were, in fact, biblical literalists, at least when it came to creation: from the Early Church Fathers to the Roman Martyrology to the Council of Cologne.
So then the question gets raised: why was Genesis composed in such a way that it would cause everyone to take it literally, and why was the sacred author not inspired to write it in such a way that it would keep the Church from embarrassment, controversy, and internecine quarreling when the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries rolled around? (On the Origin of Species has now passed its sesquicentennial anniversary. It’s older than Canada, and Catholics are still fighting over it, both with unbelievers and amongst themselves). God being omniscient, it stands to reason that he would’ve foreseen this future, with evolution and its resultant trouble, and would have insured that the scriptural account would harmonize nicely with the science when humans finally uncovered it. A bible that anticipates evolution would contain lines like, “and the Lord God said unto Adam, ‘you are emancipated from your father and your mother. I have given you a great gift, an immortal soul. Go ye therefore into the land of Eden. I have planted there a paradise, a lush garden where another awaits you. Her name is Eve.’ And Adam was much saddened of having to leave his parents, but because of his trust in the Lord he obeyed. Now the beauty of Eve was unsurpassed.” This sort of thing, I think, would be expected if evolution was true. It is often said that “the bible is not a science textbook,” and I don’t think anyone requires it to be, but it does seem rational to presume that a divinely-inspired text would be innocent of the kinds of passages that have caused the difficulties presented by evolution. The Holy Spirit, with foreknowledge, would not have inspired the author of Genesis to compose a creation story that was wrong or grossly misleading. St. Robert Bellarmine precisely considered this notion when it came to geocentrism, and it applies equally to evolution: “it is not too likely that [the bible] would affirm something which was contrary to a truth either already demonstrated, or likely to be demonstrated.”
QUESTIONS
1. If evolution is true and the creation story in Genesis is allegorical, why did the bible cause the Church Fathers to interpret it literally as indicating a distinctly separate creation of man? This especially should be considered given the fact that the Holy Spirit guided the Council of Trent 1546 to prohibit anyone dissenting from a unanimous patristic consensus, solemnly sealing their interpretation as final.
2. Similarly, why wouldn’t the bible anticipate the damage and disrepute that would befall it when it would eventually contradict with science? It could have contained a story far more amenable to the history of man’s descent. As St. Robert Bellarmine indicated, a divinely-inspired scripture would more likely cohere with any later scientific discovery than cause confusion.
These were the two questions that had no apparent good answer whenever I considered the conflict between evolution and the faith in terms of the bible, and therefore they are the two questions I ask in this post.
I apologize for the length. At this point, the two children in the picture have long since fallen asleep, and the parents (who seem like their tastes might tend towards romantic comedies starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey) are straining to keep their eyes open on 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie with a running time of two hours and forty minutes, a glacial pace, and a ponderous soundtrack of classical and avant garde music. But it does have the iconic scene where the tribe of ape-men wake up one morning to find that mysterious and impassive monolith in their midst, and take an evolutionary leap accompanied by the timpani-pounding grandiosity of a Wagner homage to Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra. Elvis Presley would later use this music as his entrance theme at concerts.
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Post by Admin on Oct 24, 2017 3:53:36 GMT
Great argument Pon. Working on my reply.
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Post by Pon de Replay on Nov 14, 2017 18:58:54 GMT
Not that it matters to the substance of the debate, but I was listening to the classical music station last night and was reminded by the disc jockey that Thus Spake Zarathustra is by the composer Richard Strauss, not Richard Wagner. Offhand I tend to get this confused, because Wagner was an important contemporary of Nietzsche and also a Reichsfavorite, where Zarathustra's concept of the Übermensch was taken seriously (if wrongly), so it sits in my brain with a Wagner association, even though I own a CD of the piece which is clearly marked Strauss. But, I just wanted to make the correction for the record.
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matto
New Member
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Post by matto on Nov 17, 2017 17:12:11 GMT
I agree with Pon's side on this one. I do not believe the belief in Catholicism is compatible with the belief in evolution. I find the belief in evolution to be incompatible with the traditional Catholic beliefs about original sin, and for other reasons as well, some of which have been brought up by Pon. I know I was greatly distressed when I learned that Pope Pius XII was not a "young earth creationist" as they are now called and I thought to myself that if I was a sedevacantist maybe I would reject him also and believe that Pope Pius XI was the last Pope.
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Post by Admin on Nov 20, 2017 3:29:19 GMT
I agree with Pon's side on this one. I do not believe the belief in Catholicism is compatible with the belief in evolution. I find the belief in evolution to be incompatible with the traditional Catholic beliefs about original sin, and for other reasons as well, some of which have been brought up by Pon. I know I was greatly distressed when I learned that Pope Pius XII was not a "young earth creationist" as they are now called and I thought to myself that if I was a sedevacantist maybe I would reject him also and believe that Pope Pius XI was the last Pope. My most maxima culpa to Pon. I will give my reply to his first phase of the argument soon. Got distracted by life.  Matto, this argument at its core is a challenge for me, since I'm arguing Christianity and evolution can be accepted together without contradiction. I can't accept the premise that pro-evolution non-believers must abandon evolution before they can embrace the Faith. I promise to speed this up. |
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Post by Pon de Replay on Nov 22, 2017 18:46:53 GMT
No apologies necessary, Admin. I'm glad we agreed on a slow pace, and the current pace is perfectly acceptable. I agree with what Matto said about Pope Pius XII's view, and we will probably discuss that at some point. Completely unrelated, but I recently discovered that "Matto" is the Italian word for "crazy" or "mad." The title of this Renaissance painting by Agostino Carracci is "Arrigo Peloso, Pietro Matto e Amon Nano"—"Hairy Harry, Mad Peter, and Little Amon." That's how I realized it. So Matto is a good username. It evokes the excellent notion of the "Holy Fool" found in Russian Orthodox Christianity.
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matto
New Member
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Post by matto on Nov 24, 2017 19:37:26 GMT
Completely unrelated, but I recently discovered that "Matto" is the Italian word for "crazy" or "mad." The title of this Renaissance painting by Agostino Carracci is "Arrigo Peloso, Pietro Matto e Amon Nano"—"Hairy Harry, Mad Peter, and Little Amon." That's how I realized it. So Matto is a good username. It evokes the excellent notion of the "Holy Fool" found in Russian Orthodox Christianity. That is very interesting about the meaning of my username. I was not aware of the meaning when I chose it but I am glad to learn about that meaning because I think it fits me (if one can say that without sounding prideful). There was no deep meaning behind the choosing of my username. I chose it when I joined Cathinfo all those years ago in 2010. I wanted to be "Matthew" or "Matt" but both of those were taken by the owner who shares the same name as me. So I chose "Matto" which is simply the shortened version of my name and the first letter of my last name. |
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