Controversial Catholic Cardinal writes on evolution and purpose

Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn, the highranking cleric who created a flap by pointing out that the Catholic Church does not in fact support purposeless evolution, has now written a book, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith (Ignatius Press):

It is endorsed both by Michael Behe and Owen Gingerich:

Michael Behe, Author, Darwin's Black Box:
"Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn's 2005 essay in the New York Times, which seemingly condemned Darwin's scientific theory of evolution, ignited a firestorm of controversy. Yet the hasty responses did not look deeply enough into the Cardinal's words. Rather than the science of Darwin, it is the philosophical claims made in its name that the prelate upbraided. Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. In Chance or Purpose? the Cardinal shows that the data of biology, when properly examined by reason and philosophy, strongly point to a purposeful world."

Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science, Harvard University. Author of "God's Universe":
"Cardinal Schoenborn writes with masterful simplicity on profound theological issues. I, as a scientist and Christian outside the Catholic tradition, welcome his wisdom. He argues effectively that there are multiple approaches to reality, and he states clearly that while intelligent design is worthy of human reflection, from a scientific perspective the evolutionary model is the true story."

The above division of opinion suggests that the Cardinal is steering his way through a minefield. The book's sales are respectable.

Incidentally, I wonder what Gingerich means by "the evolutionary model is the true story"? What evolutionary model in particular? That is, does he agree with Dawkins that evolution is without purpose or with John Paul II (and Schoenborn) that it has purpose?

New ID threat assessment lists Akyol, O’Leary, ... oh and the Pope too, by the way ...

A friend draws my attention to a recent squawk in TRENDS in Biochemical Sciences Vol.32 No.7 (July 2007) by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, who - so far as I can tell - make a career out of opposing the intelligent design theorists.

Squawks about the alleged threat posed by the ID theorists are nothing new - this one (“Biochemistry by design”) is aimed mainly against Mike Behe - but my friend called my attention to the fact that it mentions me (and my friend Mustafa Akyol) - and in a most curious context too:

Nature recently featured a ‘special report’ cataloging problems with creationism in western Europe, Turkey and Russia [10]. Turkey harbors a particularly active network of creationists, one of whom – Mustafa Akyol – is a prominent Discovery Institute ally, appearing publicly in America with ID supporter and spokesman Denyse O’Leary. (O’Leary is a Canadian journalist with no scientific background, who typifies the ID movement’s support base [77–80].) Unsettling signals are coming even from the Vatican, where Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s July 2005 public statement of support for ID, released by the public relations firm of the Discovery Institute, was followed by ambiguous comments from Pope Benedict [81]. Statements from the pope released in April 2007 have not dispelled concerns about this ambiguity [82,83].

I am, of course, pleased to be mentioned alongside my friend and fellow journalist, Mustafa Akyol, one of a growing number of voices of reason in the Muslim world.* But to mention either of us in the same paragraph as Christoph, Cardinal Schonborn or the Pope?

That’s the trouble with alarmist theories. All sense of proportion ... poof!

Believe me, if the Pope isn’t buying into Darwinian materialism, it will hardly matter to the world’s Catholics what O’Leary or Akyol think. But no, wait, that’s too sensible. We can’t think of things that way. So, realizing that you ought to be concerned, your best protection is to buy and read these books. It’s all in here, folks, all in here:

Here’s the abstract:

Creationists are attempting to use biochemistry to win acceptance for their doctrine in the public mind and especially in state-funded schools. Biochemist Michael Behe is a major figure in this effort. His contention that certain cellular structures and biochemical processes –
bacterial flagella, the blood-clotting cascade and the vertebrate immune system – cannot be the products of evolution has generated vigorous opposition from fellow scientists, many of whom have refuted Behe’s claims. Yet, despite these refutations and a decisive defeat in a US federal court case, Behe and his associates at the Discovery Institute continue to cultivate American
supporters. They are also stepping up their efforts abroad and, worryingly, have achieved some success. Should biochemists (and other scientists) be concerned? We think they should be.

*We’d been asked by the McLaurin Institute to talk about ID and the media.

Thinkquote of the day: Cardinal Schonborn on Darwnism

Regular readers of this space will know that I try to keep up with the Catholic Church’s growing awareness of Darwinism, as the creation story of materialism. Here are some brief excerpts from Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn’s thoughts on the subject, as published in First Things. Schonborn is the Pope’s point man on the Catholic Church’s response to this problem:

... armed with a richer understanding of the nature and limits of modern science, we must reexamine the genuine science at work in Darwin’s theory and its developments, and begin to separate it from ideological and worldview-oriented elements are are foreign to science. Darwin must be disentangled from Darwiism; modern evolutionary theory must be freed from its ideological shackles.

To do this, people must be permitted to exercise criticism rooted in fact against the reductionist and ideological aspects of Darwinism. A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear o fthe debate between anti-teleological theories and those scientists and philosophers who defend teleology in nature.

Hmmm. I’m not sure that Darwin himself can be freed from the shackles of Darwinism, but His Eminence is, of course, welcome to try. Anyway, I think the discussion that Cardinal Schonborn envisions could happen in a Catholic school in my city (Toronto) and would be valuable there. But I would give no good odds on it for a public high school here. given that no value system other than administrative correctness or a current edu-fad can really be given priority. And we can be reasonably certain that the great philosophers are not a current edu-fad.

Anyway, later, he says,

An oft-cited remark by [key Darwinist] George C. Simpson runs: “Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that does not have him in mind. He was not planned.” If Simpson had said merely that no plan according to which mankind came about may be discerned using the purely quantitative-mechanical methods of scientific inquiry, then this assertion could be correct. But this way of looking at things - this “self-limitation of reason,” in the words of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address - is not “given by nature” but is a deliberate, methodological, and eminently goal-oriented choice.

Note that Schonborn says “could be correct”, not “would be correct.”

There is, of course, a critical distinction here. If science is applied materialism then, by definition, no evidence can ever be discovered that points to purpose or design because any other explanation, no matter how ridiculous, is - by definition - to be preferred, and ignoring contrary evidence and persecuting those who bring it forward or express doubt about a materialist consensus.

(Note: You have to buy a subscription to view Schoenborn’s First Things article just now (a good value, I may say); it doesn’t go into free archives for a couple of weeks.) For a good introduction to a Catholic understanding of evolution, go here.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

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

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

Animations of life inside the cell, indexed, for your convenience.

My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design. My reviews of movies relevant to the intelligent deisgn controversy.

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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Notre Dame academics trash/laud Cardinal Schonborn’s stand against Darwinism

In the continuing spin of Cardinal Schonborn’s denunciation of Darwinism, Gary Belovsky, an evolutionary biologist “who is Catholic” says

There will always be a place for God in peoples’ lives, because there are ultimate questions that science cannot answer, e.g., how did the “big-bang” creation of the universe get its start? However, to search for all answers to our existence using faith alone is an abdication of human intelligence. Prior to Cardinal Schönborn’s statement, the only religious caveat placed on Catholics in regard to evolution was that at some point God nfused our ancestors with an immortal soul, a metaphysical entity that science cannot measure and therefore, must be accepted on faith.

Does he mean that a Catholic can be a complete and thorough-going naturalist as long as he maintains, by faith alone, that one, single completely unobserved and unobservable notion about the human is true (an immortal soul)? Hmmmm. I can certainly see why Cardinal Schonborn is concerned ....

Meanwhile, Protestant scholar Alvin Plantinga argues that Schonborn is right.

Some think of evolution as the theory of common ancestry: Any two living things share ancestors, so that we and the poison ivy in our back yard, as well as other living creatures, are cousins. This is surprising, but compatible with Christian belief.

Problems arise, according to Plantinga, when "scientists and others take evolution to be a process that is wholly unguided and driven by chance, so that it is simply a matter of chance that rational creatures like us exist. This is not compatible with Christian belief, according to which God has intentionally created us human beings in His own image. He may have done so by using a process of evolution, but it isn’t by chance that we exist."

Plantinga ironically reverses the legacy media’s obsession with the dangers of questioning naturalism in the public schools, by observing that the idea that

human beings and other living creatures have come about by chance, rather than by God’s design, is also not a proper part of empirical science. How could science show that God has not intentionally designed and created human beings and other creatures? How could it show that they have arisen merely by chance. That’s not empirical science. That’s metaphysics, or maybe theology. It’s a theological add-on, not part of science itself. And, since it is a theological add-on, it shouldn’t, of course, be taught in public schools.

No, but it is. If Darwinism is taught without any critical thinking permitted, then that metaphysic is necessarily taught. Darwinism is the creation story of the public school system. That’s what the controversy is about.

(Note: If this is not the story you were looking for, see the Blog service note below or the stories listed in the sidebar. )

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

Why should the Cardinal be concerned about Darwinism?

I wish I had had the good sense to rush a prediction into print last week: That — now that Cardinal Schönborn has made clear that the Catholic Church does not support Darwinism — a number of people would be anxious to tell me that Darwinism is not, after all, really used to support the teaching of atheistic philosophies in the publicly funded school system. So why, they want to know, is there any problem that the Cardinal need be concerned about?

Fortunately, Craig Rusbult, over at the publicly archived American Scientific Affiliation list, has drawn attention to a good example of just that very use of Darwinism, in the National Association of Biology Teachers' efforts to define evolution:

For more than two years, from April 1995 to October 1997, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) declared that "natural" does mean "without God" in their position statement on evolution, which stated that evolution is an "unsupervised, impersonal" process.

[...]

After first refusing to do so, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) has dropped the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from its official description of evolution. The group's eight-person board of directors voted unanimously on October 11 to alter the wording of its two-year-old statement in support of teaching evolution — and the board did so just three days after it had voted unanimously not to make the change. Religion scholar Huston Smith and philosopher Alvin Plantinga had urged NABT to make the change, arguing that inclusion of the two words constituted a theological judgment about the nonexistence of God that went beyond the boundaries of empirical science.

While the fossil record may shed light on the process of evolution, the two scholars argued, it cannot answer the question of whether evolution is or is not directed by God. They argued that the statement was vulnerable, made NABT a legitimate target for creationists, and, since polls show that more than 90 percent of Americans profess belief in God, undermined Americans' respect for scientists, especially when scientists were drawing conclusions beyond the available evidence. NABT officials first unanimously refused, and then three days later unanimously reversed themselves. {from Christian Century, November 12, 1997, p. 1029}

So, believe it or not, the Association only reluctantly dropped the clearly atheistic language from its statement under pressure, not only from Christians in science but also from the chief Darwin lobby, National Center for Science Education. I wish I'd been a fly on the wall when lobbyist Eugenie Scott told NABT to quit punching a hole in the bottom of the boat ...

Cardinal Schönborn is nobody's fool and he knows exactly what he is talking about. He's talking about episodes like that. And that episode is instructive, but certainly not unique. Incidentally, Rusbult's online article linked above, provides many useful links.

(Note: This controversy relates to the intelligent design controversy - but should not be confused with it. The Christians who challenged the Association were not doing so on behalf of the intelligent design hypothesis (that evolution is sometimes design-driven, because design is the most reasonable inference for some aspects of life forms). They were simply challenging the decision of a national teachers' association to define evolution in a clearly and implicitly atheistic way. Obviously, if evolution is "unsupervised," there is no design, but even if it is supervised, the intelligent design hypothesis could be falsified.)

Blog service note: Did you come here looking for any of the following stories?
- the Privileged Planet film shown at the Smithsonian, go here for an extended review. Please do not raise cain about an "anti-evolution" film without seeing it. If your doctor forbids you to see the film, in case you get too excited, at least read my detailed log of the actual subjects of the film. If you were one of the people who raised cain, ask yourself why you should continue to believe the people who so misled you about the film's actual content ...

- the showing of Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian, go here and here to start, and then this one and this one will bring you up to date.

- the California Academy of Sciences agreeing to correct potentially libellous statements about attorney Larry Caldwell, who thinks that students should know about weaknesses as well as strengths of Darwinian evolution theory, click on the posted link.

- Bill Dembski threatening to sue the Thomas More Law Center in the Dover, Pennsylvania ID case, click on the posted link and check the current daily post for updates. (Note: In breaking news, this dispute has apparently been settled. See the story for details. )

Blog policy note: This blog does not intentionally accept fully anonymous Comments, Comments with language unsuited to an intellectual discussion, URLs posted without comment, or defamatory statements. Defamatory statement: A statement that would be actionable if anyone took the author seriously. For example, someone may say “O’Leary is a crummy journalist”; that’s a matter of opinion and I don’t know who would care. But if they say, “O’Leary was convicted of grand theft auto in 1983,” well that’s just plain false, and probably actionable, if the author were taken seriously. Also, due to time constraints, the moderator rarely responds to comments, and usually only about blog service issues.