Evolution<\/strong><\/p>\nThe outward appearances of the biological human remain those of a biological human, and so far as science runs, that is all that evolution can say.\u00a0 It really does remain a biological human.\u00a0 It is not transformed into a metaphysical human until the Word imparts an immaterial soul that adds the power of intellect and will to the animal powers of the biological human to produce a metaphysical human (which is to be human per se.)<\/p>\n
Properly understood, evolution can be considered a prefigure of the Eucharist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
From a Thomistic perspective, I\u2019ve never seen much of a problem with the proposition that God\u2013using secondary causes ranging from the\u00a0manufacture of carbon atoms in the heart of exploding stars, to the development of the mouth-to-anus gut tract during the Cambrian Explosion, to the creation of live birth reproductive systems and the mammary gland, to the Cretaceous Extinction Event to my own father and mother\u2013created me.\u00a0 God *usually* uses secondary causes.\u00a0 Evolution has always seemed to me to be a way of saying \u201cGrace perfects nature\u201d and \u201cGod made man from the dust of the earth reeeeeeeeeeeeeally slowly.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cgrace perfect nature\u201d is a statement that reaches it apotheosis in the proposition that God raises bread and wine to transubstantiation into the Body and Blood of Christ, just as he raises a race of hairy fanged primates to be children of God through God the Son, who became a risen and glorified hairy fanged primate for us and for our salvation.<\/p>\n
When God doesn\u2019t use secondary causes (as for instance when he created loaves and fish ex nihilo) we regard that as such a departure from his normal way of doing business that it is called a \u201cmiracle\u201d.\u00a0 When we start needlessly invoking miracles by literally shouting \u201cThen a miracle occurs!\u201d in order to prop up some completely needless demand for a pet theological theory the Church in no way demands, we are headed for trouble.<\/p>\n
God of the gaps arguments, such as Intelligent Design, tend to want to look at such exceptions to rules as the *main* proof of the existence of God.\u00a0 That\u2019s fine (assuming, of course, that transitions in living forms is really an exception to the rules).\u00a0 Jesus does, after all, say \u201cIf you don\u2019t believe me, believe the miracles I\u2019ve done.\u201d\u00a0 But it is notable that St. Thomas doesn\u2019t point to exceptions to the rules.\u00a0 He points to the rules and says, \u201cWhy is there anything?\u00a0 Why is it intelligible?\u201d\u00a0 He, like Augustine, has no problem with the idea that God could invest matter with the power to self-organize and change and bring out new possibilities, likening it to a collection of wood that miraculously self-assembles into a ship.\u00a0 God, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, can do whatever he likes.<\/p>\n
The main problem with God of the gaps arguments like ID is that they say, \u201cWe don\u2019t know how this apparent exception to the rules happened, so God.\u201d\u00a0 That work, till you find out how the exception to the rule happened.\u00a0 Then people (falsely) conclude. \u201cSo no God.\u201d\u00a0 Result, you are left with with a) atheist fundamentalists concluding that nature seems to work fine, so there\u2019s no God, or b) Christian fundamentalists making futile and increasingly strained attempts to say, for instance, \u201cGod made the universe to *appear* to be billions of years old\u201310,000 years ago.\u201d\u00a0 This is, for all intents and purposes to needlessly call God a liar.\u00a0Appeals to the miracle of the loaves and fishes (\u201cGod instantly made fish that looked old, so he *must* have done the same in order to fit my pet theory of a\u00a010,000\u00a0\u00a0year old earth\u201d) founder on the fact that you do not, in fact, know he must have done any such thing.\u00a0 They also founder on the fact that the point of the sign simply was not\u00a0at all related to your pet theory, particularly since Jesus refused rather pointedly to endorse the idea that he could be expect to keep creating\u00a0stuff ex nihilo.\u00a0It also proves too much since, by the exact same logic I could declare that God, for his own inscrutable purposes, made the universe 10 seconds ago, but made it *appear* to be be billions of years old (and made us complete with a set of false memories of our entire lives).\u00a0 Sooner or later, common sense kicks in and you have to say, \u201cYoung earth creationists who maintain God made the universe to fool us into thinking it is 13.5 billion years old are positing a Liar God in order to prop up a theory that not one member of the Magisterium would regard as remotely necessary to the Catholic faith.\u00a0 Instead of listening to pet theories cherished by people who are paying not attention to either the teaching of the Magisterium *or* the scientific data, why not actually think with the Magisterium and make us of the best science has to offer?\u201d<\/p>\n
The denial that God works through secondary causes\u2013which undergirds a lot of anti-science rhetoric when it comes to evolution is, ironically, a hallmark of Islamic, not Christian, thought<\/a>.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason Science was stillborn everywhere but in Christian Europe.\u00a0 It depends upon a specifically Catholic and Christian metaphysic to be born.\u00a0 It remains to be seen whether it can survive once it severs that metaphysical root and tries to survive without it.\u00a0 My money is on the death of the scientific enterprise in the long run since science is done by scientists and scientists have the unfortunate habit of being born into the species homo sapiens sapiens: a race afflicted by a spiritual condition known as \u201coriginal sin\u201d which darkenes the intellects, weakens the will, and disorders the appetites, even of men and women in lab coats.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2026whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread and wine, and so far as science runs that is all that science can say.\u00a0 The bread and wine are not transformed.\u00a0 They are transubstantiated.\u00a0 The substance, the inner reality, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[318,90],"class_list":["post-40164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atheist-fundamentalism-vs-christian-fundamentalism","tag-the-darwin-mythos"],"yoast_head":"\n
Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-11-27T18:27:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-12-30T18:01:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html\",\"name\":\"Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-11-27T18:27:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-12-30T18:01:26+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\"},\"description\":\"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Here’s something to make Fundamentalist heads explode\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/\",\"name\":\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\",\"description\":\"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\",\"name\":\"Mark Shea\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mark Shea\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode","description":"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode","og_description":"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html","og_site_name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","article_published_time":"2012-11-27T18:27:59+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-12-30T18:01:26+00:00","author":"Mark Shea","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark Shea","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html","name":"Here's something to make Fundamentalist heads explode","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-11-27T18:27:59+00:00","dateModified":"2014-12-30T18:01:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5"},"description":"...whether they be atheist or Catholic.\u00a0 The invaluable Mike Flynn writes: Eucharist The outward appearances of the bread and wine remain those of bread","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/11\/heres-something-to-make-fundamentalist-heads-explode.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Here’s something to make Fundamentalist heads explode"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/","name":"Catholic and Enjoying It!","description":"Mark Shea's Blog: So That No Thought of Mine, No Matter How Stupid, Should Ever Go Unpublished Again!","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5","name":"Mark Shea","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f287911f45adc932ad24ddbae3597ed5?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Mark Shea"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/author\/markshea"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}