Last month at Reasons and Opinions, I discussed the issue of Sam Brownback and evolution. Out of the ten Republican presidential hopefuls, the Catholic senator was one of three to put up his hand when asked who did not believe in evolution. I’ll recap the basic issue here, and then address Brownback’s latest statement on the topic.
How should a Catholic treat this topic? Well, there is no inherent conflict between faith and evolution, as long as boundaries are respected. A person of faith should not castigate scientific findings about evolution that are accepted by all but a handful of quacks, and a scientist should likewise refrain from arguing that evolution proves the absence of a Creator (it proves no such thing). It’s really that simple. Way back in 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that there was no necessary opposition between evolution and the Catholic faith. While Pius was tentative, Pope John Paul II stated very clearly in 1996 that “new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.” Cardinal Schonborn, who has reflected a lot on the topic, sums it up: “I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained.” And Pope Benedict recently voiced similar thoughts: “The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science.”
The title of John Paul’s 1996 address was “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth”, which is quite apt. In other words, as Pope Benedict is fond of saying, faith and reason are perfectly compatible, because God’s own word is Reason (Logos), who is God himself. Catholics believed God gave his own Word or reason so we could become one with him, and, in his essay, Pope John Paul appeals to Aquinas when he notes that “man’s likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect, for his relationship with the object of his knowledge resembles God’s relationship with what he has created”. God is reason and infinite intelligence, and faith and reason are intimately entwined. We simply cannot appeal to faith to dismiss basic scientific tenets.
At the same time, it is fully in accord with reason to see the hand of a creator guiding the evolutionary process. At some fundamental level, Catholics must believe in an “intelligent designer”. But it is important to note that the American-created “intelligent design” movement does not merely postulate that God is the Creator of everything out of nothing and guides all of creation (sensible), but encroaches on scientific territory by holding that organisms appeared simultaneously (not so sensible). By the way, the claim of some prominent neo-Darwinists that evolution proves the non-existence of God is equally ludicrous, as they step rather indelicately beyond science and into theological speculation, where they clearly have no expertise.
Into this quagmire steps Brownback, with a New York Times op-ed. He starts off by the saying the right things, such that it is wrong to “drive a wedge between faith and reason”. But then he says the following:
“If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.”
Now, as noted over at Mirror of Justice by both Rick Garnett and Eduardo Penalver, this is an exercise in obfuscation. Why? Because he is confusing two issues: the notion of an infinite creative intelligence, and “microevolution, small changes over time within a species”. He is speaking in code, easily understandable to the proponents of the American design movement. Intelligent design joins its more irrational sister movement in trying to debunk the claims of evolution. As pointed out by Jerry Coyne in the New Republic a few years back, a key premise of intelligent design is that organisms appeared simultaneously, and have existed that way ever since. While they accept the idea of “microevolution” (within-species changes), the intelligent design crowd casts doubts on “macroevolution” (“large scale changes, leading to new levels of complexity”.) Seen from this angle, Brownback’s strange choice of wording makes more sense. As Penalver points out, the senator is trying to have his cake and eat it, by appealing to reason, but being careful enough not to antagonize his fundamentalists backers who love intelligent design.
Notice that the denial of evolution is concentrated in a small group of American evangelicals, and is not an issue in any other country. The reason is straightforward. American fundamentalists believe God’s word is a fixed text rather than reason incarnate, making the complementarity between faith and reason less essential. I think that Brownback, a Catholic covert from evangelical fundamentalism, still may have some distance to travel in this area.
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