Misrepresentation by religion prof:News! Water runs downhill!

Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School, writes, in the Martin Marty Center's Sightings (6 1 06),

While Cardinal Schoenborn and the Roman Catholic Church's astronomer have officially indicated that it is possible to accept the science of evolution while remaining in good standing with the Church, the idea of intelligent design persists in at least this nation's conversation as a challenge to that claim. And there is less clarity in those discussions than in official pronouncements from a Cardinal and his Church.

It is hard to know what to make of such a breathtaking misrepresentation of the Catholic Church's teachings, coming from an apparently learned source.

A friend writes, sadly, "When I read stuff like this, it depresses me. For it reveals how much power the other side has to tell falsehoods it thinks are true."

Yes, that's just the point. It's unintentional. Most likely, Prof. Rosengarten catually believes he has said something correct. He probably cannot imagine that the Pope really understands that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Christianity and Darwinism. But why can't he? Does he think the Pope is an Episcopalian, baptizing the American elite consensus?

Briefly, the Catholic Church has come out swinging in recent years AGAINST Darwinism, which is precisely the "evolution" that Rosengarten is talking about.

Here's what the Pope now distributes on prayer cards hawked all over Rome:

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

So all over the world, people will remind themselves of anti-Darwinism every day.

It's not the FACT of evolution that is controversial in most quarters, but Darwinism, the theory of unplanned and purposeless evolution that is currently forced down everyone's throat.

Bluntly, you cannot remain in good standing with the Catholic Church and also believe, with the Darwinists, that life unfolds without purpose or design. But that's what you would be required to learn and teach in many school systems today.

Now, if you don't want to be or remain in good standing with the Catholic Church, that's fine. Go live your life and be happy. Or, if you must, write a graduate thesis on why consciousness doesn't exist, or coat yourself with yak butter and howl naked at the moon.

Look, whatever. Until you tire of it.

Except ... a word in your ear ... if you want to know what the Catholic Church teaches, ask orthodox Catholics who are informed of the Vatican's real view on evolution, which is the opposite of Darwin's. And - on specifically Catholic religious subjects - read the Catechism. The information is free, and way more trustworthy than just some prof's opinion.

If you like this blog, check out my award-winning book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.