Darwin vs. the Pope

July 9, 2005

Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution
by CORNELIA DEAN and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith. The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

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One of the things which drives me nuts about the constant war conservative Christian belief has with Darwin is that the conservative Christians don't bother to take the time to actually -study- what Darwin actually began.

Evolution is not "random." It simply holds that life develops and is shaped by the natural world around it. Mammals rose in good part because a comet cleared out the dinosaurs. (And the dinosaurs, apparently, benefitted from earlier mass extinctions which cleared the road for them.) If not, who knows, intelligent reptilian religious thinkers today might be sneering at the idea that we all came from dinosaurs instead of apes. Yet, Darwin critics can't grasp this.

Part of the problem is that organized religions have a poor sense of time regarding the physical universe. This isn't surprising if all you rely on is the Book of Genesis. Man jumps into the universe soon after its built. The implication being that the universe was created primarily to house humanity. So, the rest of natural universe's life, say, four billion years or so, is dispensed with. It's hard to grasp the thousands and millions of years life has developed over the Earth while adapting to changing circumstances if you're looking at the world's life through the lens of a couple of thousand years after the Explusion as your general yardstick.

What's long bugged organized religion about evolution is that it implies that we're all "animals", not God's prime creation. But even a cursory look reveals that we're beasts of the field. We're built the same way as the critters, breath the same air and reproduce like they do. What's specifically different is our apparent sense of and level of individual consciousness. So why couldn't a Spirit fit in there too? A container doesn't have to specifically define what it contains, does it? Just because our physical selves eat salmon like a forest bear means our mind and soul has to be "bearish" too.

Understanding our animal nature helps explains us to ourselves, too. A lot of the (generally) ridiculous works on parenting emphasizes how damaging it is for children to want to sleep with their parents. But it's quite natural for children to want this. As vulnerable young, they have a "natural" inclination to be in a safe place when they sleep, and the young of almost every critter knows that place is with momma or the nest.

Heck, when babes are born they've proven to have an instinctive recognition of the human face. Makes sense. New born ducklings head toward the first big moving thing they see, usually Momma Duck. Any new born has to make immediate connection with its caregiver or it's not surviving. Needless to say, over the millennia, the ones who make this connection survive, and pass it on to their kids. Evolution in action every day a baby is born.

The most frustrating thing about the Catholic Church getting involved in this is all the time and energy it'll waste fussing over nothing. With war, famine and environmental destruction hanging over the Third World, where most of its new converts are, you'd think they'd focus on something more relevant to its members. But I guess that's why you bring in a German to run things. If you want to establish order and re-fight the mythical past, you bring in the experts.