Posted on 08/24/2006 8:37:24 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna said he thought Darwin's theories on evolution deserve to be studied in schools, along with the scientific question marks that remain.
It is right to teach "the science of Darwin, not ideological Darwinism," Cardinal Schonborn said Aug. 23. He spoke at a meeting in Rimini sponsored by the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, and his remarks were reported by Italian newspapers.
In 2005, Cardinal Schonborn helped fuel the debate over evolution and intelligent design when he wrote in The New York Times that science offers "overwhelming evidence for design in biology." He later said some scientists had turned Darwin's teachings into an ideological "dogma" that admitted no possibility of a divine design in the created world.
In Rimini, the cardinal said he did not regret writing The New York Times article, but said that in retrospect he might have been more nuanced.
"Perhaps it was too much crafted with a hatchet," he said.
"The church teaches that the first page of the Book of Genesis is not a page of science," he said.
Cardinal Schonborn said there should be no doubt that the church does not support creationism, the idea that the biblical account of the creation of the world in six days should be taken literally.
But when teaching evolutionary theory, he said, schools should underline the points still awaiting clarification, the "missing links" in the theory which were recognized by Darwin himself, he said.
Cardinal Schonborn said Darwinian theory and the faith can coexist, and he proposed a metaphorical image: Darwin's scientific ladder of rising evolutionary development on one hand, and on the other the biblical Jacob's ladder, from which angels descended from heaven to earth.
The cardinal said the images offer "two directions, two movements, which only when observed together allow for anything close to a complete perspective." At the center of these two movements is the figure of Jesus Christ, he said.
Cardinal Schonborn said it was important to realize that Darwin's theories continue to have an impact in economic as well as biological fields. For example, he cited a link between ideological Darwinism and some capitalist theories that consider high unemployment simply a byproduct of a necessary economic natural selection.
In bioethics, he said, the church's differences with ideological Darwinism become important.
"Despite sometimes heavy criticism, the church continues to firmly believe that there is in nature a language of the Creator, and therefore a binding ethical order in creation, which remains a fundamental reference point in bioethical matters," he said.
The cardinal was one of several scholars invited to join Pope Benedict XVI at his summer villa in early September for a private two-day symposium on "Creation and Evolution." The encounter is an annual one in which the pope meets with his former doctoral students from his teaching years in Germany.
It's not the interpretation, but where you find them.
Finding modern day creatures bones mixed into say, the Permian layer, would falsify ToE.
By finding contradictory evidence.
Editors and referees of scientific journals.
So it's a political thing. I see.
However, if one has a preconceived bias as to what any evidence found will support (and we all know human beings are like that), then 'finding contradictory evidence' is subject to the interpretations of the evidence given by biased individuals.
And please don't tell me scientists aren't biased. If they are human, they have biases.
That, of course, would depend on how such a finding was interpreted. :)
How very post-modernist of you.
Yes, bias is an issue, but what you fail to see is that interpretation can only take you so far. The beauty of science is that it provides a method of testing hypotheses so that the result is NOT open to interpretation.
Nope.
Yep. Political and economic. Those who parrot the party line get their papers published; get tenure; get promoted to editor; get the Pulitzers and Nobels.
That's been the way of things in publishing for two centuries. It's no different today. People with power do not give it up.
ARe you suggesting that modern day bones are found frequently in old layers?
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