Pope B, ID and the IT

2Scoops

This was in today's Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0412/1176156961827.html

It's a little confusing - seems like the pope has his own ideas but they include different interpretations from some of his underlings. Either way, it's not exactly science-friendly. 'Dimensions of reason' - y'wha, Gay? Anyone care to pore over the minutiae and deconstruct it?:)

Irish Times/Derek Scally in Berlin wrote:

Pope Benedict has rejected speculation that he could be moving in favour of the controversial "intelligent design" theory of life over Darwin's theory of evolution, saying that researching the origins of life is an interplay between faith and science.

However in a new book, Schöpfung und Evolution (Creation and Evolution), published yesterday, the German pontiff had critical words for evolutionary theory, calling it "not a complete, scientifically verified theory".

"Evolution theory is in large part not experimentally verifiable because we cannot bring 10,000 generations into a laboratory. That means there are considerable gaps in experimental verification . . . as a result of the incredible timeframe which the theory addresses," he said in the book, based on a symposium with former doctoral students in 2006.

Church watchers had speculated that the conservative pontiff might have friendly words for intelligent design and its claim that many life forms have elements too complex to be explained by the random process of evolution, proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, and must instead have a creator.

A former student of the pope, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, wrote in the New York Times in 2005: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

This appeared to align the influential cardinal with a theory that has widespread acceptance among fundamentalist Christians in the US. However the pope did not appear to go as far as Cardinal Schönborn, saying that sciences had opened up "large dimensions of reason" previously unconsidered and undiscovered.

"But the joy of the discovery tends to take away the dimensions of reason we still need. Its results lead to questions that go beyond the methodological canon and cannot be answered within it."

He said the evolution debate was about "reclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" and "the great fundamental questions of philosophy - where man and the world came from and where they are going."

The pontiff said he dismissed the idea of "nature" or "evolution" as an active subject in itself. He said that evolutionary progression, which could be interpreted as a rational development, suggested a pre-evolutionary "creative rationality" or God.

"Evolutionary theory implies questions that have to be addressed by philosophy which go beyond the realm of natural sciences," he said.

Among Prof Ratzinger's former doctoral students at the discussion was Fr Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. Fr Twomey said the discussion was lively, but that no one mentioned "intelligent design".

"Unlike the fundamentalist Protestant churches in America, the Catholic church does not have a serious problem with the scientific theory of evolution," he said. "These are American problems we don't even enter into."

Scofflaw

He's opting for guided, or "Theistic" evolution, which is pretty much the standard Church line.

He therefore rejects evolution as an unguided process - God guides it. The questions that need to be addressed are:

1. how do we see the hand of God in evolution?
2. why so long to get to humans - what was the point of everything else?
3. if we are still evolving, what does that imply for God's plans for humanity
4. where does humanity begin and end - what separates us from other species?
5. do other forms of life have a spiritual nature?

The reason for the opt-out on evolution being not completely proven is partly in case the theological answer to any of these questions has to be in conflict with the science. He's hedging his bets, but he's certainly not rejecting evolution as a mechanism.

What he is doing is rejecting evolution as a worldview, in the sense that evolution does not require God - but he's doing so in sufficiently subtle language to avoid supporting the out and out creationists while not offending them. Bear in mind that plenty of Catholics believe in a young Earth, and he doesn't want to alienate them - but he doesn't want to be intellectually ridiculous either.

A clever and subtle man - occasionally too clever for his own good.

cordially,
Scofflaw

2Scoops

Scofflaw wrote:

A clever and subtle man

Except when he's banging on about Hell being a real place, of course!

Scofflaw wrote:

What he is doing is rejecting evolution as a worldview, in the sense that evolution does not require God - but he's doing so in sufficiently subtle language to avoid supporting the out and out creationists while not offending them.

That makes a lot of sense - deliberate obfuscation, if I were to put it in more cynical terms. Thanks for the insight though, clears it up a lot.:)

Dades

Of course he's looking to preserve the role of god in the whole process, but frankly that could have been a lot worse. There's no more smokescreen there then you hear from any priest with an opinion on the matter, and he's the head honcho with a rep for being old school.

lostexpectation

I thought that he was moving away from material evolution to question how the consciousness would have evolved without god. something that scientist haven't figure out yet.