I’ve been kicking First Things around a lot lately. It’s only fair, therefore, that I give praise where praise is due. And praise is certainly due to Avery Cardinal Dulles for his masterful essay on evolution, which cuts neatly through much of the obfuscation on the issue.
Paying homage to the role played by Pope John Paul II in this debate, Dulles starts by making a basic distinction between the competencies of science and religion:
“He recommended a program of dialogue and interaction, in which science and religion would seek neither to supplant each other nor to ignore each other. They should search together for a more thorough understanding of one another’s competencies and limitations, and they should look especially for common ground. Science should not try to become religion, nor should religion seek to take the place of science. Science can purify religion from error and superstition, while religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each discipline should therefore retain its integrity and yet be open to the insights and discoveries of the other.”
In other words, there is no inherent conflict between faith and evolution, as long as boundaries are respected. Therefore a person of faith should not castigate well-established scientific findings about evolution, and a scientist should likewise refrain from arguing that evolution proves the absence of a Creator (it proves no such thing). In this regard, it is notable that John Paul’s key address in 1996 (where he noted that evolution was “more than a hypothesis”) was entitled “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth“. As he noted, “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 infinte intelligence, and faith and reason are intimately entwined. We simply cannot appeal to faith to dismiss basic scientific tenets. Dulles notes that the First Vatican Council condemned fideism, or the notion that faith is irrational.
Dulles argued that many viewed John Paul as blessing the neo-Darwinian view that everything you need to know about evolution is explained by random mutation and natural selection, whereas nothing could be further from he truth. It was for this reason that Cardinal Cardinal Schönborn waded into the debate, and he too was misunderstood. Was he backtracking, aligning the Catholic church with the creationists of the American right (as some in the press contended)? Not at all, says Dulles. Schönborn’s crtitique was focussed specifically on the neo-Darwinist spokesmen who claimed that the natural selection underpinning Darwinism proves the non-existence of a Creator. Pope Benedict put it best in his inaugural Mass:
“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”
The problem, Dulles notes, is not that Catholics are unreasonable, but that the neo-Darwinists have an overly-narrow conception of what reason means. For here is the problem: neo-Darwinists have contend that “no valid investigation of nature could be conducted except in the reductive mode of mechanism, which seeks to explain everything in terms of quantity, matter, and motion, excluding specific differences and purpose in nature.” Using Aristotle’s terms, they focus their attention solely on efficient and material causality, excluding formal and final causes, and thus have no way addressing questions like why life exists, how humans differ from animals, and how we should conduct our lives.
In the second part of his essay, Dulles shows three ways in which faith and evolution may be perfectly compatible. In what he calls theistic Darwinism, God brings creation into being, and guides the process. What we see as random is part of God’s plan, as God can foresee the outcome from all eternity. The scientific approach is therefore valid, but limited. It simply cannot see the big picture.
A second school starts from the point that biology cannot be explained by mere mechanics. Dulles himself is partial to this view, which he calls the teleological view, owing to its emphasis on purpose or finality. In other words, “the behavior of living organisms cannot be explained without taking into account their striving for life and growth.” A materialistic view excludes such consideration. Thus the process of evolution needs what Dulles refers to as the “divine creative energy” at various stages in the process, in a dynamic creation endeavor. Yet again, the neo-Darwinist worldview is limited in perspective.
Dulles devotes a few words to the third school, the American-based “intelligent design” movement, which claims that the existence of so-called “irreducibly complex” organs implies something more than mere random mutations. Dulles is charitable, but he gently exposes the main limitation of this group:
” As a matter of policy, it is imprudent to build one’s case for faith on what science has not yet explained, because tomorrow it may be able to explain what it cannot explain today. History teaches us that the “God of the gaps” often proves to be an illusion. “
In fact, intelligent design encroaches into the scientific debate, with specific conjectures of its own. In particular, it maintains that organisms appeared simultaneously, and have existed that way ever since. Its supporters accept the idea of “microevolution” (within species) but cast doubts on “macroevolution” (large scale changes, leading to new levels of complexity.) This is an inappropriate venture into the scientific domain, just as the wild metaphysical conclusions of the neo-Darwinists are inappropriate.
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