Are Catholics Creationists? In 1986, John Paul II gave a series of general audiences on the subject of Creation. In them, he laid down a principle of Biblical exegesis that has been around since the Church Fathers: The Book of Genesis is not meant to teach science. Genesis tells what God did, not how he did it. “Indeed,” writes John Paul, “the theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about creation. . . .as presented in the Book of Genesis. . . .It must, however, be added that this hypothesis proposes only a probability, not a scientific certainty. . . .[But] it is possible that the human body, following the order impressed by the Creator on the energies of life, could have been gradually prepared in the forms of antecedent living beings.” In an address to Italian clergy on July 24, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI also recognized evolution as a legitimate scientific theory. At the same time, he expressed impatience with the false polarities of “creationism” and “evolutionism.” The doctrine of creation and the theory of evolution, he said, are not “mutually exclusive alternatives.” The world need not be divided between fideists who cram scientific data into a Biblical template never meant to receive them and materialists who think that soothing phrases like “random fluctuation in the quantum void” dispense with the need for a Creator. While allowing for the possibility of evolution, neither pope has issued a free pass to evolutionary materialism. The Church has nothing to fear from legitimate science, but is wary of materialist philosophies tricked up as science – which is what Darwinism often amounts to. In Truth and Tolerance, Benedict complains that evolutionists often trespass their legitimate bounds by making sweeping metaphysical claims. As a result, the educated public has the vague impression that “evolution” explains everything. Why, it even explains Darwinists whose purpose in life is to explain that the universe has no purpose. Benedict reminds us that there are fundamental questions that science in principle cannot answer. Such as: Why is there something rather than nothing? As G. K. Chesterton, an astute observer of the evolution wars, remarked: “Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.” Apart from the origin of the universe, there are two other ontological leaps that elude scientific explanation. thecatholicthing.org/content/view/2439/2/
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 15:54:04 +0000
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