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Intelligent Design belittles God, Vatican director says
Catholic Online ^ | 30 January 2006 | Mark Lombard

Posted on 01/30/2006 6:37:09 AM PST by PatrickHenry

Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might, according to the director of the Vatican Observatory.

Science is and should be seen as “completely neutral” on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results, says Father George V. Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, while noting that “science and religion are totally separate pursuits.”

Father Coyne is scheduled to deliver the annual Aquinas Lecture on “Science Does Not Need God, or Does It? A Catholic Scientist Looks at Evolution” at Palm Beach Atlantic University, an interdenominational Christian university of about 3,100 students, here Jan. 31. The talk is sponsored by the Newman Club, and scheduled in conjunction with the Jan. 28 feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Catholic Online received an advanced copy of the remarks from the Jesuit priest-astronomer, who heads the Vatican Observatory, which has sites at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, and on Mount Graham in Arizona.

Christianity is “radically creationist,” Father George V. Coyne said, but it is not best described by the “crude creationism” of the fundamental, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis or by the Newtonian dictatorial God who makes the universe tick along like a watch. Rather, he stresses, God acts as a parent toward the universe, nurturing, encouraging and working with it.

In his remarks, he also criticizes the cardinal archbishop of Vienna’s support for Intelligent Design and notes that Pope John Paul’s declaration that “evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis” is “a fundamental church teaching” which advances the evolutionary debate.

He calls “mistaken” the belief that the Bible should be used “as a source of scientific knowledge,” which then serves to “unduly complicate the debate over evolution.”

And while Charles Darwin receives most of the attention in the debate over evolution, Father Coyne said it was the 18th-century French naturalist Georges Buffon, condemned a hundred years before Darwin for suggesting that “it took billions of years to form the crust of the earth,” who “caused problems for the theologians with the implications that might be drawn from the theory of evolution.”

He points to the “marvelous intuition” of Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman who said in 1868, “the theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of divine providence and skill.”

Pope John Paul Paul II, he adds, told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 that “new scientific knowledge has led us to the conclusion that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis.”

He criticizes Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna for instigating a “tragic” episode “in the relationship of the Catholic Church to science” through the prelate’s July 7, 2005, article he wrote for the New York Times that “neo-Darwinian evolution is not compatible with Catholic doctrine,” while the Intelligent Design theory is.

Cardinal Schonborn “is in error,” the Vatican observatory director says, on “at least five fundamental issues.”

“One, the scientific theory of evolution, as all scientific theories, is completely neutral with respect to religious thinking; two, the message of John Paul II, which I have just referred to and which is dismissed by the cardinal as ‘rather vague and unimportant,’ is a fundamental church teaching which significantly advances the evolution debate; three, neo-Darwinian evolution is not in the words of the cardinal, ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection;’ four, the apparent directionality seen by science in the evolutionary process does not require a designer; five, Intelligent Design is not science despite the cardinal’s statement that ‘neo-Darwinism and the multi-verse hypothesis in cosmology [were] invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science,’” Father Coyne says.

Christianity is “radically creationist” and God is the “creator of the universe,” he says, but in “a totally different sense” than creationism has come to mean.

“It is unfortunate that, especially here in America, creationism has come to mean some fundamentalistic, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis,” he stresses. “It is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God. The universe is not God and it cannot exist independently of God. Neither pantheism nor naturalism is true.”

He says that God is not needed to explain the “scientific picture of life’s origins in terms of religious belief.”

“To need God would be a very denial of God. God is not a response to a need,” the Jesuit says, adding that some religious believers act as if they “fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God.”

Yet, he adds, this is the opposite of what human intelligence should be working toward. “We should be seeking for the fullness of God in creation.”

Modern science reveals to the religious believer “God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God,” Father Coyne says, adding that this view of creation is not new but can be found in early Christian writings, including from those of St. Augustine.

“Religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.”

He proposes to describe God’s relationship with the universe as that of a parent with a child, with God nurturing, preserving and enriching its individual character. “God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words.”

He stresses that the theory of Intelligent Design diminishes God into “an engineer who designs systems rather than a lover.”

“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” he said. “God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves.”

The concludes his prepared remarks noting that science challenges believers’ traditional understanding of God and the universe to look beyond “crude creationism” to a view that preserves the special character of both.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creationisminadress; crevolist; idjunkscience; ignoranceisstrength
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To: PatrickHenry
How did we humans come to be in this evolving universe? It is quite clear that we do not know everything about this process. But it would be scientifically absurd to deny that the human brain is a result of a process of chemical complexification in an evolving universe. After the universe became rich in certain basic chemicals, those chemicals got together in successive steps to make ever more complex molecules.

That is an amazing thing for the Vatican's official head scientist to say. I think the Catholic Church is doing a great job in coming up with a way to keep their belief in God consistent with the facts on the ground.

121 posted on 01/30/2006 11:08:50 AM PST by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: your mind)
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To: FourtySeven
Without getting into an exegetical argument...

But you have to do precisely that because there are rules for determining when to take scripture literally and metaphorically. Simply taking all of Genesis as metaphorical because a literal interpretation disagrees with current scientific theory is a slippery slope, especially for the Christian who considers scripture to be divinely inspired. You begin to judge the revelation of God with how well it agrees or disagrees with the reasoning of men.

122 posted on 01/30/2006 11:20:21 AM PST by frgoff
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To: Vicomte13
"I didn't realize that either Copernicus nor Kepler, Catholic monastics or teaching brothers both, were ever persecuted for proposing the heliocentric universe or demonstrating elliptical orbits. In fact, neither were."

Copernicus had the luxury of being dead right after his book was published, and the intro by Osiander said that the book was not claiming that the Earth literally moved (though that WAS Copernicus' intention). As for Kepler, he was a Lutheran, not a Catholic. He worked in Protestant countries away from Papal power.

"Galileo was not persecuted for supporting the theories of Copernicus."

Sure he was.
123 posted on 01/30/2006 11:20:29 AM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Virginia-American
Or am I missing the point entirely? (I'm not sure what "universal species" is supposed to mean; what part of the link you provided applies here?)

A universal is an abstract term that applies to a class of things. The term applies to the nature of all members of a class, rather than an individual member, i.e., this chair versus "chair," the universal term. In the act of apprehension, the mind abstracts the nature of the subject, that is, what exists in every member of the species. Upon reflection the mind may attach a term to this abstraction, the universal term, "chair," in the example. The terminology, "genus" and "species," derives from this Aristotelian concept and was carried over into the field of biology.

The question arises, what is the relation between the universal idea and the concrete individual? Is the relationship certain? If not, human communication becomes fundamentally uncertain, since we communicate by way of universal terms. See the section, "In Modern and Contemporary Philosophy," in the link that I provided. The solution is given under the subhead "Moderate Realism."

Let's say there's an interbreeding population of birds. Half a million years from now, the birds aren't able to breed with their ancestors and produce fertile offspring any more.

So why can't one say that this interbreeding population is a species at every time during the half million years?

But is the ability to interbreed what constitutes a species of animal, in the broader philosophical sense? Consider that a child apprehends the nature of "squirrel" upon seeing a squirrel for the first time, without knowing anything about the interbreeding of species or even whether other squirrels exist.

If after 10,000 years, the "squirrel" was to develop stubby wings, while still maintaining the ability to interbreed, would the "squirrel" still be a squirrel? It seems not, because were it possible for the same child to travel to the future, he would not apprehend the same species.

Conversely, consider the case of a hydrocephalic infant. We apprehend the child to be a member of the species "human," yet the hydrocephalic infant lacks what seems to be essential to human nature, a brain. It's foolish for people to argue that the child is not human, because such people will refer to the hydrocephalic child as "a child born without a brain." The child's humanity is assumed and reflexively apprehended.

So in the first case we apprehend a member of a species that has undergone a "minor" evolutionary change as a member of a distinct species separate from the original species, and in the second case, we apprehend the species of an individual that differs dramatically from other members of its species as a member of the same species.

The mind then apprehends species in a manner at times antagonistic to biological methods of categorization.

They wouldn't be considered the **same** species at the beginning and at the end of this period, but they'd be an identifiable species at each instant.

The difference between species at each instant would have to be almost immeasurable. Yet it would be necessary for the mind to apprehend each stage in development as a distinct species, since the mind apprehends diverse species regardless of biological means of classification. Yet the problem of the categorization of the hydrocephalic child arises even more acutely. How is it possible for the mind to recognize a hydrocephalic child as a member of the species human, yet differentiate between extremely fine gradations of (hypothetical) missing links?

124 posted on 01/30/2006 11:23:44 AM PST by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: Vicomte13
Bottom line: Galileo wasn't persecuted because he said the world revolved around the sun. It was actually the monk Copernicus who said that, before Galileo, and his work was well received. And it was another Catholic, Kepler, who demonstrated that the orbits were elliptical, and he was not locked in a dungeon and in fact had the patronage of various princes of the Church.

Excellent summary. Sadly, this mythology will live on as long as there are opponents of the Church.

125 posted on 01/30/2006 11:26:34 AM PST by Aquinasfan (Isaiah 22:22, Rev 3:7, Mat 16:19)
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To: jennyp
That is an amazing thing for the Vatican's official head scientist to say. I think the Catholic Church is doing a great job in coming up with a way to keep their belief in God consistent with the facts on the ground.

The Catholics have a long intellectual tradition (stained by a few well-known lapses such as the Galileo affair, which they recognize as error). They understand that science is here to stay, and they plan to be around for the long haul too. Father Coyne knows that to remain credible, they must avoid what he terms "crude creationism." They're good at this stuff, and apparently getting better.

126 posted on 01/30/2006 11:33:19 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: Pyro7480
Evolution may be the best "scientific" explanation for life, but it has a hard time explaining how life began.

Gravity has a hard time explaining how life began, too. Strange, isn't it?
127 posted on 01/30/2006 11:41:17 AM PST by aNYCguy
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To: Vaquero

The Vatican says that God "does not intervene" in the affairs of men. How am I supposed to interpret that?


128 posted on 01/30/2006 11:57:13 AM PST by Theo
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To: jwalsh07

People can be over-educated. Not necessrily the years they attended institutions of learning, but they swallowed whole what should have been viewed through the glass of wisdom.

Many educated (and not so educated) people "believe" in the TOE solely because they care what other evofundies think of them. They're afraid of being labeled with all the nasty names evofundies label us with.

I say to them: I could give a rat's behind what anyone thinks of me. God's opinion is the only one that matters. Having this POV frees one up to believe the truth without fear.


129 posted on 01/30/2006 12:25:36 PM PST by little jeremiah
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To: jim_trent
In the Dover case, the defendants were found to have lied on the stand, under oath, many times. Unfortunately, there aren't nearly as many people around here calling for perjury trials for them than you saw with B.J.Clinton.

Do you have an article about the above?

130 posted on 01/30/2006 12:26:00 PM PST by Pyro7480 (Sancte Joseph, terror daemonum, ora pro nobis!)
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To: FourtySeven
Why is this such an anathema to so many here on FR and elsewhere? Is it "evil" to believe that science (as we know it today) and religion (or faith if you recoil in disgust against the term religion) are incompatible? Why must the two be conjoined in some bizarre amalgam?

Religion or theology is of philosophy. Philosophy seeks to prove or disprove existing thought (but not material things) by observation and logical deduction (that which is most logical). All thought presented can both be proved and refuted and therefore remains argumentative. Faith and belief in position of a argument is determined by the masses and their thoughts, but still remain argumentative because there is no empirical evidence or fact to support any arguments of philosophy. The Bible (Latin for a collection of books by the same or different authors) are the works of men and their thought (philosophy). There are no facts or evidence that the Bible was either written or inspired by God but that such thought is only of those who would accept the bible as their faith and belief. The effort of some to reconcile the differences and philosophies of Bible books is not of philosophy but of interpretation and opinion and not necessary of logical deduction. If all books of the Bible were of the same philosophy and thought only one book would be needed. The

Science is also from philosophy but invented to study material things that consist of evidence and fact. First there is the question of fact or action of a material thing. Then the fact or imperical evidence for material existence or action. A theory is then devised from the best reasoning or logical deduction to explain the evidence and action. Theories remain the same, change, or are discounted when the evidence, action, or logical deductions change because the evidence changes, the action changes or the deduction changes.
131 posted on 01/30/2006 12:38:25 PM PST by jec41 (Screaming Eagle)
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To: Virginia-American
Or is the alleged problem the fact that species are a fuzzy concept,

That they are and they may not be more than nomenclature for study. The proof for existence of change is simple. If you look in a mirror and you are different from all others and not a clone then you are evolving.
132 posted on 01/30/2006 12:48:37 PM PST by jec41 (Screaming Eagle)
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To: PatrickHenry

Evolution is for the weak of faith.


133 posted on 01/30/2006 12:49:55 PM PST by countorlock (But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills, And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me,)
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To: countorlock
Evolution is for the weak of faith.

Excellent, Grasshopper. 8~)

134 posted on 01/30/2006 12:51:53 PM PST by Dr. Eckleburg (an ambassador in bonds)
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To: frgoff
But you have to do precisely that [delve into an exegetical exercise of John 6:51 and Matt 5:30] because there are rules for determining when to take scripture literally and metaphorically.

That's really a separate issue though isn't it? That is, who determines these "rules"?

That point really doesn't address my fundamental point anyway, which was, again, "If the Bible shouldn't be taken literally all the time, then who is to say which scriptures should be taken literally where?"

Being a Catholic, I choose the Church's interpretation of Scripture, and since there has been no pronouncement ex cathedra regarding the veracity of evolution, I see no reason to get into such caniption fits over it (as many on these crevo threads do).

Now, you may say to me, "47, I'm not a Catholic, so you can't impose that on me!", which is perfectly fair to say. But then you're still left with the task of proving to me why should the Book of Genesis should be taken literally? By what "rules" do you go by?

And if you answer that question by saying, "The Bible's rules", or "Scripture tells me Genesis should be taken literally", you're really not getting my point at all.

135 posted on 01/30/2006 12:53:24 PM PST by FourtySeven (47)
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To: atlaw

God's motto?

Yes, when did he say that. Last time I checked he remained philosophical thought, neither proved or refuted by proof.


136 posted on 01/30/2006 12:56:21 PM PST by jec41 (Screaming Eagle)
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To: PatrickHenry
This is the word you were intending to use.

Wasn't that the name of minor character in a Verdi opera? I think he gets blown away in the First Act, but I could be mistaken; the opera didn't run for long -- the reviews say it sucked.

137 posted on 01/30/2006 1:06:11 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: Logophile

What's better than being an engineer?

Nothing, unless you are a philosopher too.


138 posted on 01/30/2006 1:07:11 PM PST by jec41 (Screaming Eagle)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman; PatrickHenry
Sure he was.

Don't you love revisionist history? Especially when they leave out the inconvenient parts (like showing Galileo the instruments of torture.)

139 posted on 01/30/2006 1:09:42 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: longshadow

It was the name of a hurricane back in '69. It blew out to sea.


140 posted on 01/30/2006 1:13:13 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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