the tindog coffeehouse

As the scientific community prepares to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday tomorrow, the Vatican appears ready to fully embrace his theory of evolution within the Catholic Church.

“In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said. …

Conceding that the Church had been hostile to Darwin because his theory appeared to conflict with the account of creation in Genesis, Archbishop Ravasi argued yesterday that biological evolution and the Christian view of Creation were complementary.

This view by the Catholic Church isn’t really anything new. The Church has had an open mind with regards to evolution going back at least to the 1950s, and Pope John Paul II said in 1996 it was “more than a hypothesis.” And while Pope Benedict XVI hasn’t specifically endorsed evolution as the ultimate truth, he hasn’t endorsed Intelligent Design either.

I’m not Catholic, so maybe I’m not really qualified to be blogging about this. But I’m not sure how you can say on the one hand that the world was “created by God” while on the other hand, Intelligent Design (i.e. Creation) is “poor theology and poor science.”

Does the Catholic Church believe that God created the universe and mankind or doesn’t it? From Archbishop Ravasi’s statements, it appears it doesn’t.

So how is that complementary to the Bible? It isn’t. As I wrote a couple of months ago:

Christianity can be summed up in four basic truths: (1) God created the universe and everything in it, and humans were created distinctly in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). (2) Mankind disobeyed God, causing us to be separated from Him. Romans 6:23 says that the punishment for that disobedience is death, meaning Hell. (3) God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to pay that penalty for us by dying on the cross. Three days after His death, Jesus was resurrected and now sits at God’s right hand in Heaven. (4) By repenting of our sin and acknowledging that Jesus is Lord of our lives, we can be forgiven of our sins and reborn spiritually in order that we can live eternally in Heaven.

If you remove any of those truths from the equation, then it’s no longer consistent with the Bible. Therefore, you can’t as a Christian believe that humans evolved from another organism or species.

However, that is not to say that evolution cannot co-exist with Creation. Evolution, if you define it as plants and animals adapting over time to their environment, is not inconsistent with the Bible (at least as I see it). So I can allow for the existence of evolution up to a point. But again, if you take out that first biblical truth, then all other aspects of Christianity don’t make any sense.

It may be that I’m misunderstanding the Vatican’s position here. It could very well be that their view of evolution is similar to mine, which allows for a limited form of evolution so long as it doesn’t interfere with the concept of divine creation by God.

But if there’s any question as to the Church’s beliefs, now would be a good time to clear it up.

Previously:
The faith of George W. Bush
Should evolution be debated in public schools?