Image: Wikipedia/ Fabio Pozzebom, Agência Brasil
Joel Kontinen
Next year will be the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species and 200 years since his birth. For supporters of evolution the year 2009 presents many opportunities to propagate their pet theory of biological evolution.
Two Catholic universities, the Pontifical Gregorian University (Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana) in Rome and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, will arrange a science conference in Rome in March 2009 in which they plan to examine evolution critically.
The Vatican’s stance towards evolution has been vaguely positive. In 1996 Pope John Paul II said that Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were basically sound, provided they admitted that God is the Creator. He also said that evolution was ”more than a hypothesis”.
Benedict XVI has published a book on creation and evolution. He has pointed out that the theory of evolution “is not a complete, scientifically proven theory” and that naturalistic evolution is not the whole truth.
However, Benedict has also suggested that many scientific facts speak for evolution. He nevertheless feels that evolution is unable to answer the all-important question of how everything came into being. In his view, the dispute between creation and evolution is absurd, since we have proof of both.
The Pope has nonetheless failed to see that evolution is basically an attempt to make God superfluous. It is a worldview that is opposed to Christianity. And when we examine critically the facts that are offered in support of Darwinian evolution we notice that they do not necessarily support evolution which, after all, has its roots not in science but in ancient Greek philosophy.
The evidence speaks for creation. As St. Paul wrote in Romans 1:20: ”For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”
Sources:
Eddy, Melissa. 2007. Pope says evolution can't be proven. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-04-12-pope-evolution_N.htm
MSNBC News Services. 2007. Pope: Creation vs. evolution clash an ‘absurdity’. (25 July)
Vatican information Service. 2008. Congress on evolution to be held in 2009. (16 September)
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