Posted on 01/18/2006 3:09:20 PM PST by xzins
Vatican Paper Hits 'Intelligent Design' By NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY (AP) -
The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.
The article in Tuesday's editions of L'Osservatore Romano was the latest in a series of interventions by Vatican officials - including the pope - on the issue that has dominated headlines in the United States.
The author, Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, laid out the scientific rationale for Darwin's theory of evolution, saying that in the scientific world, biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."
He lamented that certain American "creationists" had brought the debate back to the "dogmatic" 1800s, and said their arguments weren't science but ideology.
"This isn't how science is done," he wrote. "If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."
Intelligent design "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified," he wrote.
"It only creates confusion between the scientific and philosophical and religious planes."
Supporters of "intelligent design" hold that some features of the universe and living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism - a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation - camouflaged in scientific language and say it does not belong in science curriculum.
Facchini said he recognized some Darwin proponents erroneously assume that evolution explains everything. "Better to recognize that the problem from the scientific point of view remains open," he said.
But he concluded: "In a vision that goes beyond the empirical horizon, we can say that we aren't men by chance or by necessity, and that the human experience has a sense and a direction signaled by a superior design."
The article echoed similar arguments by the Vatican's chief astronomer, the Rev. George Coyne, who said "intelligent design" wasn't science and had no place in school classrooms.
Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in off-the-cuff comments in November that the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticized those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
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Well....this is certainly discouraging.
I hate it when my Catholic brethern use "creationist" as an expletive.
Almost no scientist would ever say that a given scientific theory "explains everything" - only that it explains and is supported by data under analysis.
The Catholic Church has very wisely decided not to demote Scripture into a science text. ID is little more than creationism with a good PR machine.
The arguments from the ID crowd always boil down to "Gee, off the top of my head I can't POSSIBLY IMAGINE how all the complexity of the biological world could unfold from a few basic principles...
Thankfully, the Creator is vastly more creative and brilliant than these folks can possibly imagine...
As if the fragmentary "theory of evolution" doesn't.
Good comment, jw.
I cannot imagine a Christian group not recognizing pursuit of info about design being a legitimate search. I hope this is just knee-jerk of the moment after the Dover case by a few of the vatican's nervous nellies.
This comment of yours makes you in my mind an unwitting advocate of Intelligent Design.
:>)
Surely they've got all the answers in physics, biology, metaphysics, and theology all locked up in Al Gore's infamous "lock box." (In there with the cure to Social Security ills.)
/sarcasm off
I cannot vouch for what goes on in your mind, but all I'm saying is that, whatever else it may be, ID is NOT science.
Sometimes definitions help and sometimes definitions confuse.
ID IS A CRITICISM of evolutionary theory. The basic criticism is that complexity is so vast that the available time that evolution postulates is not sufficient to bring about all the varieties of life and complexity that we see.
From that criticism, the ID proponents suggested that the only means of achieving the evident complexity was by some kind of intelligent design. There is no attempt on the part of ID founders to insist that the design(er) must be personal.
The point was that design can deal with the time problem.
Why? Pope, imam, rabbi, Mormon elder, guru... what relevance to a Biblically-oriented Christian?
The perfessor is, naturally enough, from the University of Bologna. Whichever liberal editor was responsible for this nonsense will be presenting an alleged descendant of the apes perfessor at a University of Liverwurst or Head Cheese or some such.
I know you are not Catholic but I do strongly recommend that you read something with actual authority which lays down the actual Catholic doctrines on this and much else. Pope St. Pius X (not to be confused with the excommunicated Marcellian whackos who have the brazen nerve to invoke his name) issued a Syllabus of Errors (Lamentabile Sane) in July, 1907 and then a related encyclical letter (Pascendi Domenici Gregis) in August, 1907, both attacking "Modernism" which he described as the synthesis of all heresies. Our separated brethren in Christ reference the same phenomenon as "Secular Humanism." Pius X was very clear that man is not descended from apes. He held a much higher position in the Church than this perfessor of or from Bologna even before Pius X being canonized as a saint (the only pope so canonized in the last 300+ years). Whatever you may reject of his documents you will find areas of agreement as well. For example, he wrote that Scripture was, word-for-word, cover-to-cover the inerrant Word of God. Easily readable and very reasonably priced copies of those documents are available from the Daughters of St. Paul in Boston. Enjoy!
Your first statement is correct. ID is a criticism, but is not one supported by any data... so it is only opinion, and not science.
If Intelligent Design is not science, then science is not the search for truth and is therefore not science.
"Why? Pope, imam, rabbi, Mormon elder, guru... what relevance to a Biblically-oriented Christian?"
Here's your award for "First Ignorant Catholic Comment of the Thread"!! Enjoy it - you've earned it!
Intellegent Design: A theory about the origin of life that holds that intelligent causes best explain the origin of many features of living systems. The theory is based on the testable assumption that structures that exhibit high information content are more likely to be the result of intelligent design than of undirected natural causes.Which part of that definition does the Vatican find threatening or worthy of distancing itself from?
Glad to hear from you.
You are correct...there are more political ins and outs related to Vatican watching than I can ever hope to understand.
I like inerrant from cover to cover, and I really don't think I have an ancestor common with the apes. (Unless it was my great uncle Joe....:>)
"If Intelligent Design is not science, then science is not the search for truth and is therefore not science."
But ID isn't about "searching for truth". It's about saying "An Intelligent Creator waved his magic wand" when an IDer encounters something currently unexplainable, rather than trying to figure out the cause of the unexplainable.
Fortunately, most human minds aren't satisfied with such childish answers.
This is just one more knee-jerk reaction that isn't worth the time it took to publish it.
The definition at #16 fairly well summarizes ID. I'd modify it in a few places, but it seems substantially different from yours.
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