Vatican chimes in on Intelligent Design

Wow. Maybe now I'll convert.

BTW...Chuck Norris believes in intelligent design.

Of course he does, he designed everything.

bts

Good for the Vatican!

I think that trying to put a scientific slant on faith only serves to undermine faith. Let faith stand on the merits of faith! There's much to be gained from seeing the world through mystical eyes.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but the "Vatican" did no such thing.

There was an article in a Vatican newspaper by a scientist calling for ID people to put up a scientific model.

Most of the debate in Random Evolution vs ID is comparing apples to oranges.  One side may present a "scientific" viewpoint while the other side presents a "philosophical" viewpoint.  Both sides have science and philosophy, but they don't do a good job of separating them and it clouds the issue.

Here is a quote from the article from the scientist author:

He lamented that certain American “creationists” had brought the debate back to the “dogmatic” 1800s, and said their arguments weren’t science but ideology.

“This isn’t how science is done,” he wrote. “If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it’s not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science.”

Here is the end of the article that everybody seemed to miss:

Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in off-the-cuff comments in November that the universe was made by an “intelligent project” and criticized those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.

To add one more layer, there really is no such thing as "the Vatican said". The Church should not be thought of as a corporation with the pope as CEO and a paper like L'Osservatore its communications department. Articles like this, however, can been seen as an insight into the thinking of some people within the Vatican, more specifically the Roman Curia.

This was probably in response to Cardinal Schoenborn, the bishop of Vienna, who wrote last year, I think it was an oped piece in the NY Times, about problems he saw with current trends in the developing theory of evolution. What he said was largely misunderstood and misinterpreted.

The Pope seems to be in agreement with Cardinal Schoenborn, and I think Schoenborn should be looked at as the main theologian in the development of this counter to the current evolutionary trends.

And this is the basic issue. For Schoenborn, it's not that theology or philosophy is stepping into the proper realm of science, it's that science, or specifically the developing theory of evolution, is stepping into the proper realm of philosophy and theology.

Here's what Schoenborn had to say in response to Catholic scientist Stephen Barr who criticized him for his oped piece:

Stephen Barr criticizes me for confusing two very different things: the modest scientific theory of neo-Darwinism (which he defines as “the idea that the mainspring of evolution is natural selection acting on random genetic variation”) and what he calls the “theological” claim that evolution is an “unguided, unplanned” process. “This,” he asserts,“is the central misstep of Cardinal Schönborn’s article.”

Let us assume for the moment that I indeed made a mistake. Is there any excuse, any basis for my error? Barr, treating Darwinism with great delicacy, says nothing. But there is much he could have said. He could have listed quotations from Darwinian scientists going on dozens of pages in which they make such “theological” assertions, in bold and completely unqualified ways, assertions that evolution by means of random variation and natural selection is an unguided, unplanned process.

Many of those assertions are in textbooks and scientific journals, not just in popular writings. I will leave it to others to compile acomplete account of such quotations. I made a small contribution of three quotations in my recent catechesis on creation and evolution in the cathedral church of St. Stephen’s in Vienna. Here is one of those three examples, a quotation from the American scientist Will Provine:“Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces rationally detectable.” read more

So the problem here is that scientists are using the theory of evolution to try to prove that God does not exist. This is the troubling trend.

Meanwhile, back to the L'Osservatore piece. It is fair to say that the "Vatican" believes that the theory of evolution is solid science.

I think Renee suggested in an ID thread a while back that the solution to the problem is to teach philosophy in public school. I agree with that. Teach science in the science classroom and philosophy in the philosophy classroom. Everyone's public school does have a philosophy department, right? If not, why not?

Here is an article from yesterday regarding it.

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/ap_051118_ID_vatican.html

Personally, I'm not troubled at all by a someone using scientific methods to try to prove anything, but it should be pointed out that no scientist worthy of their slide rule would attempt to prove a negative such as the non-existence of something.

Personally I find the idea of scientifically valid proof one way or another to be a thought far more horrifying than the lack of it.

There is neither evolution nor intelligent design. There are merely creatures Chuck Norris hasn't killed yet.

“Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with deterministic principles or chance. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces rationally detectable.”

I've got to say that I do not read that as saying "scientists are using the theory of evolution to try to prove that God does not exist."

Provine is saying that the scientific method does not find anything in the natural world that directly supports a literal interpretation of Genesis or any other metaphysical Creation theory.

That is very different from saying "God does not exist". In my interpretation, Provine's statement leaves plenty of room for faith. It just cautions against confusing faith with provable fact.

I'm basing this on the one quote, I never read anything by the man and have no idea of the context of his statement.

Thanks for the link. I'm intentionally not going back to that web site, I'm sleep deprived as it is.

Sounds like Provine isn't much of a scientist. A negative, such as the non-existence of something, simply cannot be proven. Also, he completely misrepresents Darwin's positions as I understand them. His ideas were/are heretical to some, but heresy does not equate with non-belief.

Charles Darwin never claimed to have found or seen any evidence of the existence or non-existence of God. Writing on the question of primary causation and the existence of a Creator:

"I [Darwin] cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."

The Origin of The Species ends with this sentence:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Provines position strikes me as one that can not be taken seriously and in this matter he should defnitely not be considered as representative of anything but a very small number of the ill informed and willfully ignorant. It seems something of a shame that a thinker such as Schoenborn is spending time dealing with opinions like Provines.

As to no free will for humans, I'm all for a thread on Behaviorism.

"Provine:  Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud
and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no
purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after
death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead.
That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no
ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an
unintelligible idea."

That's a gross misrepresentation of Darwin's views and work. Darwin didn't set out to prove or disprove an afterlife or that God existed. He set out to understand our natural environment and how it came to be what it is (was 150 years ago). Our understanding of our natural environment - micro and macro - is founded on Darwin's principle. Throw out Darwin's principles and you throw out Modern Biology.

ID is not a scientific theory. It's creationism with an updated PR campaign.

This old horse has been beat to death so much, the bones are dust.

Don, let's look at what this he's-no-fool Professor is saying. Let's parse his words.

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud
and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. 

Ummm... maybe, maybe not. Source? What/whose views are he summarizing? 

There are no gods,

If what he means is that Modern Evolutionary Biology does not proselytize, he's right. It could also accurately be said that there are no gods in Geometry. Or Chemistry. Or Physics. Is that really a problem? A criticism? Or a statement of the obvious?

no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind.

Science looks to explain natural phenomenon such as how a tree grows. Science does not look to answer whether the tree has a divine purpose.

There is no life after death.

It's been many years since I was in any kind of science class but I don't recall having a discussion of the afterlife in my Biology, Anatomy/Physiology, or Physics class. The topic never came up. Aside from my tiny anecdotal experience and much more importantly, Science does not seek to answer man's burning question of whether his existence is finite or not. That's a spiritual matter, not an empirical matter.

When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.

Science seeks to explain what is and how things evolved to become what is. Science does not look for an "ultimate meaning" for life, that is not the domain of science. So, is this guy complaining that Science's domain is restrictive or is he simply stating the obvious?

I think ID would be better taught in a World Religions class (which is taught in some schools; I knew a teacher who taught it at the middle school level). If you get into Philosophy, you open the door into metaphysics, existentialism, nihilism, not just creationism. Are you ready to support the teachings of those (western) philosophies?