evolution and the church
The Commissar notes a widely-linked piece about a Catholic cardinal who appears to reject evolution as being incompatible with Catholic faith.
He says, “I thought the Catholic Church had learned from its little dispute with Galileo.”
They did. In 1616, when Galileo was advancing Copernicanism (in which planets revolved around the sun), the Church went against him — largely for political reasons due to the fairly recent Protestant Reformation, Pope Paul V declared Copernicanism “false and erroneous” and ordered Galileo to recant it and to stop advancing it.
Galileo held out hope, however, when a friend of his became Pope Urban VIII in 1623. He tried to get the previous order thrown out. Urban VIII refused, but did allow Galileo to publish his work under conditions that must seem familiar to science textbook writers today — Galileo was required to discuss both Copernican and Aristotelian theories, and he was enjoined from taking sides and required to include a “disclaimer” that mentioned the role of God in all of it. (Unfortunately, they hadn’t invented stickers yet.)
This book was called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and it was published in 1632, to what amounted then to rave reviews. Pope Urban VIII saw that it was a disaster for the Church, and hauled Galileo before the Inquisition, which sentenced him to a lifetime of house arrest and forced him publicly to recant Copernicanism. He had to smuggle his future works out of his own house for publication.
But I said the Church came around, right? It did. The Church pronounced the Big Bang model of the universe to be the one in accordance with the Bible — 328 years later, in 1951.
Oops.
Stephen Hawking, who writes about these and many other subjects in his book A Brief History of Time, also wrote about an audience he and other astronomers and mathematicians had with a Pope who told them, as Hawking put it, “it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God.” Good to know. Oh, yeah, the year was 1981, and the Pope was John Paul II.
There are many parallels between this situation and the one facing evolutionary theory today. Like the big bang theory, it may never be “proven”, in the sense that most people understand the word “prove”. It is certainly falsifiable (see here for more on that term); as we observe that some evidence contradicts parts of the theory, we revise the theory based on our observations. The word “theory” gets us in trouble with the general public, as well. Scientists (and mathematicians, the world I come from) understand a theory to be, generally, a set of predictions based on empirical evidence. (It’s not quite so in mathematics, but I think you get the idea.) In everyday usage, the word “theory” includes any fanciful situation imagined by anyone — “God is a giant green dragon that lives in a higher-dimensional fold” is a theory in the everyday sense; but it’s not a scientific theory, because it cannot be proven false. The big bang theory and evolutionary theory could both be proven false tomorrow, because they make certain predictions about the natural order based on the evidence that’s come before. Anything that is observable, reproducible, and violates that order will present a problem for either theory.
The main problem in this debate is that while many scientists understand well the concepts of “intelligent design”, proponents of “intelligent design” in schools do not understand science. The notion of an intelligent Creator is not falsifiable; you can’t prove one doesn’t exist. Therefore, “intelligent design” is not science, and should never be taught as such.
We must also recognize one thing — many proponents of “intelligent design” are not proponents of any such thing: they are proponents of young-Earth, Biblical creationism, and nothing else. Another big problem is that these people are literalists — to them, the Bible represents the ultimate, incontrovertible truth; the infallible word of God. To deny any part of it is to deny the whole. These people approach science that way, and it’s wrong.
Another canard that’s always trotted out to oppose both theories is that neither allows for a divine Creator. Not so. Neither theory makes predictions about what happens before the big bang or what happens before the process of evolution begins. These are wide open to belief or conjecture. Many scientists (including Hawking, if I read him correctly; and including myself) are quite willing to accept the idea of a divine being.
Hawking notes that at the 1981 audience, the Church had gotten a number of astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists to advise it on cosmology. It may wish to consider doing so on evolution, lest it render itself irrelevant in a technologically-advancing world.
Be sure to read the ridiculous comments that are sure to follow on the Commissar’s post. UPDATE: What’s there now isn’t so bad. Plus, I’ve had about three small glasses of the cognac I didn’t use in the garlic filets mignons (which were a culinary tour de force, if I say so myself), so I’m more inclined to be charitable.
UPDATE [23:27]: Ron Beasley, posting at Random Fate, doesn’t see the Catholic cardinal story as a big deal.
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