A friend tells me that last Easter, Pope Benedict backtracked on Pope John Paul II’s statement that the Church accepts evolution as a theory of the origin of life on earth and that Pope Benedict insisted that life can never have evolved randomly from the earth. Is what she tells me an accurate statement? What is the Church’s position on the theory of evolution? Heather
The Church teaches that the totality of everything that exists depends entirely on the creative power of God, and God needs no pre-existing reality from which to make it.
Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani generis of 1950 was the first papal statement to set out the Church’s attitude to the Darwinian theory of evolution in regard to this doctrine.
Given that God created everything out of nothing, the pope said the Church did not forbid research and discussion on the theory that the human body came from pre-existent living matter, and Catholics were free to form their own opinions, doing so cautiously and not confusing fact with conjecture.
However, Catholics must believe that the human soul was created immediately by God because the soul is a spiritual and rational substance that could not be brought into being by the transformation of matter.
In 1996 Pope John Paul II, addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, repeated this by saying that the human soul could never emerge from the forces of living matter.
Simply put, whereas the human body may have evolved progressively over time, God directly endows each of us with a unique rational soul. It is the soul which makes each individual person capable of reasoning and making free decisions.
So, when in April 2005 Pope Benedict told scientists that human beings are not some product of evolution but each of us is the product of a thought of God, he was naturally referring to our rational soul.
At the Easter Vigil Mass this year he said: “It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.” This quote, I suspect, is what your friend had in mind.
Here the pope was clearly saying that rational life did not evolve randomly from matter. You see, then, the pope said nothing new or startling.
Dear Lee,
If you take away nothing else from this thread, then I urge you to pay especially close attention to the following …
Taken from “Bernard d’Espagnat Wins 2009 Templeton Prize”
URL http://www.templetonprize.org/esprelease.html
(I will only quote some excerpts, you can visit the URL if you wish to peruse the full press release ;-) )
“PARIS, MARCH 16 – Bernard d’Espagnat, a French physicist and philosopher of science whose explorations of the philosophical implications of quantum physics have opened new vistas on the definition of reality and the potential limits of knowable science, has won the 2009 Templeton Prize.
From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, d’Espagnat, 87, was a major player in the physics research community during a revolutionary period of exploration and development in quantum mechanics, specifically on experiments testing the “Bell’s inequalities” theorem. Definitive results published in 1982 verified that Bell’s inequalities were violated in the way quantum mechanics predicts, leading to the discovery of the phenomenon known as “non-local entanglement,” and, in turn, to “quantum information science,” a flourishing contemporary domain of research combining physics, information science, and mathematics.
D’Espagnat, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at the University of Paris-Sud, also understood the philosophical importance of these new physics-based insights into the nature of reality. Much of it centers on what he calls “veiled reality,” a hidden yet ultimate reality beyond time, space, matter, and energy – concepts challenged by quantum physics as possibly mere appearances. Since then, his writings and lectures on fundamental questions such as “What information does science really give us?” have provoked debate among scientists and philosophers.”
(That sets the scientific credentials … now, we await with bated breath the coup de grace … )
“The Templeton Prize was announced today at a news conference at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris by the John Templeton Foundation, which has awarded the prize since 1973. The Prize, valued at one million pounds sterling (approximately $1.42 million or €1.12), is the world’s largest annual monetary award given to an individual.”
(Yes, I’m being mischievous … just to hold the tension! Let rip the paukenwirbel … )
“From early in his career, d’Espagnat developed an interest in foundational problems in physics which brought him in contact with Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, John Bell, and other luminaries of 20th century science. In the 1960s and 70s, along with other physicists, he focused on the existence of serious discrepancies between quantum mechanics and the common-sense way of thinking about the world. His technical papers at the time inspired and encouraged the early emergence of vital experiments on physicist John Bell’s inequalities theorem (published in 1964) which showed that the concept of philosophical atomism – that nature is composed of a myriad of separate objects that act only “locally” (influenced directly only by their immediate surroundings) is in conflict with the predictions of quantum mechanics.
D’Espagnat anticipated that Bell’s inequalities would be violated as predicted by quantum mechanics, even though at the time many physicists believed that atomism and locality were right and quantum mechanics wrong. In 1982, experiments by French physicist Alain Aspect and his collaborators proved d’Espagnat right: Bell’s inequalities were in fact violated, and, with that, not only atomism, but even “locality” of the physical universe were no longer viable.”
(Yes, he’s a real scientist … and now for a lethal jab of the rapier … )
“Since then, d’Espagnat has written and lectured extensively on the philosophical significance of the universal truths of quantum mechanics. He notes, however, that quantum physics merely predicts observational results. As far as describing reality, it suggests that not only our plain, everyday concepts of objects but also our scientific concepts refer only to phenomena – that is, to mere appearances common to all.
Still, d’Espagnat warns, experiments often falsify theories and so there must exist, beyond mere appearances, something that resists us and lies beyond the phenomena, a “veiled” ultimate reality that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out by cogent scientific arguments. Although d’Espagnat concedes the theological implications of the term “veiled reality,” he guards against using it as justification for specific religious doctrines which can be falsified by reason and facts.
In his nomination of d’Espagnat for the Templeton Prize, Nidhal Guessoum, Chair of Physics at American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, wrote, “He has constructed a coherent body of work which shows why it is credible that the human mind is capable of perceiving deeper realities.
These perceptions offer, d’Espagnat has said, “the possibility that the things we observe may be tentatively interpreted as signs providing us with some perhaps not entirely misleading glimpses of a higher reality and, therefore, that higher forms of spirituality are fully compatible with what seems to emerge from contemporary physics.”
In a statement prepared for the news conference, d’Espagnat pointed out that since science cannot tell us anything certain about the nature of being, clearly it cannot tell us with certainty what it is not. “Mystery is not something negative that has to be eliminated,” he said. “On the contrary it is one of the constitutive elements of being.”
D’Espagnat stressed the role of science in grasping empirical reality, that is, the reality of experience or observation. He went on, however, to note that other methods of insight, including the arts, provide windows on understanding the true realities that lie behind things, what he described as “the ground of things.” “Artistic emotions essentially imply the impression of a mysterious realm which we may merely catch a glimpse of,” he said. “Science and only science yields true knowledge. On the other hand, concerning the ground of things science has no such privilege.””
(Some contextualization of the Templeton Prize …)
“The Templeton Prize each year honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. Created by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation’s international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions, ranging from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. The monetary value of the prize is set always to exceed the Nobel Prizes to underscore Templeton’s belief that benefits from advances in spiritual discoveries can be quantifiably more vast than those from other worthy human endeavors.”
(And why not quote the rest of the article just in case you will never visit the link … )
“John M. Templeton, Jr., M.D., Chairman and President of the John Templeton Foundation and son of Sir John, notes that d’Espagnat has consistently employed the most rigorous scientific standards to expand the potential of what science may tell us far beyond the laboratory. “Instead of simply measuring the limits of quantum physics,” he said, “he has explored the unlimited, the openings that new scientific discoveries offer in pure knowledge and in questions that go to the very heart of our existence and humanity.”
The 2009 Templeton Prize will be officially awarded to d’Espagnat by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, May 5th.
Bernard d’Espagnat was born on August 22, 1921 in Fourmagnac, France, but spent most of his early years in Paris where his father, a post-impressionist painter, and mother imbued him with a love of classic literature and the arts. Attending some of the finest schools in Paris, he was drawn to the humanities, especially philosophy. It was during those early years, while riding his bicycle through a large country garden, that d’Espagnat says he first took conscious notice of beauty. Even now, he says, that initial realization serves for him as “a signpost pointing to reality.”
Despite his love of philosophy, d’Espagnat focused on science and mathematics, believing that advances in philosophy would require the knowledge and practice of contemporary science.
In 1939, as d’Espagnat made plans to enter the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, World War II put his education on hold. In 1946, his studies finally began. Encouraged by his professors, he became a young researcher at France’s National Center for Scientific Research and was attached to the Institut Henri Poincaré. There, under the guidance of Louis de Broglie, the 1929 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, he prepared his thesis and received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in 1950.
D’Espagnat went on to the University of Chicago, where he served as a research assistant to physicist Enrico Fermi, and then to the temporary headquarters of CERN (the European Council for Nuclear Research) at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, headed by physicist Niels Bohr. From 1954 to 1959 he served as physicist, then senior physicist, at CERN’s permanent home in Geneva, helped create the CERN theoretical physics group, and continued there part-time until 1970. In 1959 he was appointed assistant professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and almost immediately became attached to its newly created science center in Orsay.
While d’Espagnat enjoyed fruitful collaboration with some of the most outstanding physicists of the time, he remained troubled by the scant attention most of them paid to the interpretational questions raised by quantum mechanics. His first book, Conceptions of Contemporary Physics, in 1965 asked these questions and sketched possible resolutions, underscoring his insistence that scientists face the issues raised by their own pursuits.
Subsequently, d’Espagnat was an early-stage interpreter of the deep philosophical significance of the experimental research agendas in quantum physics. In his 1979 Scientific American article, “The Quantum Theory and Reality,” and his best-selling 1979 book, À la recherche du réel, le regard d’un physicien (In Search of Reality, the Outlook of a Physicist) encouraged physicists and philosophers to think afresh about questions long considered marginal but which today serve as the foundation for new fields of research into the nature of reality.
Bruno Guiderdoni, director of the Observatoire de Lyon at the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, remembers attending one of d’Espagnat’s lectures as a graduate student in 1980, a time when quantum physics was presented merely as a series of computational recipes. “I was deeply impressed by the philosophical implications of what he was addressing,” he says. “One has to understand that these issues were completely absent from the usual lecture courses in quantum physics…he helped me understand that there was actually a very deep question in this issue.”
In his 1994 book, Le réel voilé, analyse des concepts quantiques (Veiled Reality, An Analysis of Present-Day Quantum Mechanical Concepts), d’Espagnat coined the term “veiled reality” and explained why significant experiments over the past decade had not restored conventional realism. On Physics and Philosophy (published in France in 2002 as Traité de physique et de philosophie) was hailed as “surely the most complete book to have been written on this subject and one likely to last a long time…” by Roland Omnes, professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Orsay. His most recent book is Candide et le physicien (Candide and the Physicist), written with Claude Saliceti and published in 2008, a layperson’s guide that answers 50 questions which pinpoint and correct preconceived ideas of contemporary physics and examine the many conceptual and philosophical changes those ideas reveal.”
Vincent
” I am always a tad suspicious of those who have all the answers”
As am I, which is why I never claim to have all the answers.
“That religion always and necessarily is a hindrance to science or that the two are always in harmony with each other are simplistic views that are oblivious to historical detail.”
I agree. Simply by offering an explanation by which all things may happen naturally does not mean they did in fact happen naturally. We have the theory of gravity to explain how universal bodies attract to one another but of course no one can prove it is not the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
“d’Espagnat pointed out that since science cannot tell us anything certain about the nature of being”
Is contradicted by his very findings and those of others. Specifically “Definitive results published in 1982 verified that Bell’s inequalities were violated in the way quantum mechanics predicts, leading to the discovery of the phenomenon known as “non-local entanglement,” and, in turn, to “quantum information science,” a flourishing contemporary domain of research combining physics, information science, and mathematics.”
“experiments often falsify theories and so there must exist, beyond mere appearances, something that resists us and lies beyond the phenomena, a “veiled” ultimate reality that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. ”
Is also contradicted by his findings, those of others, the computer you’re using, modern medicine and other discoveries. Science works. The conclusion reached in this quote is a classic non sequitur and only vaguely applies to the specific field of quantum mechanics.
I studied philosophy of science and if there was some point you were attempting to make by latching on to yet another red herring and attempting to extrapolate quantum mechanics to other fields, you failed miserably.
The original question here was never answered, and you conceded you have no answer. It makes no sense to declare the implantation of souls into our species at some precise moment in our past as our evolution is based in population genetics. The concept of souls cannot be reconciled with evolutionary biology and that failure is made obvious by your repeated red herrings and inability to provide any argument on the issue whatsoever.
And Lee, while I’m at it, it is considered impolite to resort to ad hominems … I suggest that you try to play the ball, not the player! One can hardly take you seriously if you have to resort to name-calling! Such puerile behaviour suggests that you realise your arguments are often irrational and weak, and so you need to distract from that stark reality by generating as much bluster as possible.
I would hope that the Webmaster doesn’t edit out the insults … they reveal more about you than anyone else! Certainly, Derrick has touched a raw nerve or three trillion!
“The original question here was never answered, and you conceded you have no answer.”
I’m quite happy to admit that I have no definitive answer, sweet pea! Just the occasional insight or three, the odd glimpse into the queer every now and then.
St Paul spoke as a good mystic, good philosopher, and good scientist when he said “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
Dear Lee,
So you have taken a course in philosophy of science. Excellent stuff!
d’Espagnat /is/ a philosopher of science. And an exceptionally talented scientist.
You can choose to hold an opinion contrary to his, I’ll grant you that. So we have a difference of opinions.
We should note, however, that his opinions are probably taken a bit more seriously in scientific and philosophical circles than yours … now that’s what a polished and sophisticated ad hominem feels like. Given to remind you of the wisdom of the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I have nothing futher to add to this debate, and so also signal my withdrawl.
Have phun ascribing offensive labels, Lee! The floor is all yours …
Lee Myers, your insults of others (“moron”, repeatedly) makes you seem like a teenage loudmouth shouting over adult conversation because the grown-ups just won’t agree that your favourite pop band is the bestest ever in the world. If you persist in the use of insulting language, we might have to send you to your room without supper. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? Now, you might in fact be a teenager, in which case we shall manage to tolerate your juvenile conduct. But if you are an adult, you should be expected to act like one. Just ask other adults for guidance.
Dear Gunther,
Thank you! You made the point that I was just about to make. And thank you to Vincent and Derrick for trying to tackle this issue with such a truculent and insulting character. He keeps on going on about red herrings and straw men, but seems to forget that the Ad Hominem attack is the lowest of all forms of argument. If Lee Myers is an example of the scientific mind, then I think that I would rather have no part in something that expects a person to take its point of view so seriously and yet is so insulting to the views of others. Very scientific, I guess.
However, that said, there IS one thing that i would like to hear a good scientific explanation for: Why is there something and not nothing? And to say that “there just is” is not in any way a scientific answer. However, I am consoled by the fact that faith in God does actually give an answer to this question – one that I have yet to hear a scientist pronounce on. Furthermore, the fact that we can actually ask this question points to the fact that we are ourselves transcendent beings. Science may be concerned with explaining reality and the things that exist, but really falls short in an explanation as to why these things exist at all.
I don’t see how science, as a human endeavour, can operate from a framework of enquiry that has any other mode of causality than that of materialism. For example, if someone were to be supernaturally healed of a sickness, at no point is science ever able to throw up its arms and concede a supernatural cause. It would keep on testing new material hypotheses, and it would rather insist on a natural hypothesis that is impossible to test than a supernatural one (that is also impossible to scientifically test). The multiverse theory is such an example. Instead of holding the fundamental physical laws of the universe to be evidence of a supernatural Law-giver, the multiverse theory is held, in which there are potentially an infite number of universes, the physical laws of our particular universe therefore being inevitable.
I could be mistaken, but I think that this is also why Aquinas held that it is revelation, not reason (science), that tells us that the universe has a temporal beginning. Science will always keep looking for material causes to explain everything, including the beginning of the universe. The moment it ceases to do so, it is no longer science. If science were to throw up its arms and admit to supernatural causes, then it would never get very far in understanding the universe.
Most of the useless debate between creationists and evolutionists is ultimately about whether we can include supernatural causes as part of science. The answer is clearly not. But as Christians we know that their are supernatural causes. Should we not be open to the possibility that modern biology’s over-arching claim that all life forms have evolved from a common ancestor is a result of this necessary shortcoming of science? That evolution exists is not debatable, but if we step outside of the narrow materialist paradigm (in which there is ONLY natural causality), this need not mean that it explains all the variety of life on earth. In fact the sparse fossil record, if anything, shows that there is a lot left to be explained.
@Jonathan: You raise a number of interesting issues.
(Natural) science is concerned with phenomena that are measurable, empirical, repeatable, etc. It has nothing to say about phenomena which do not have such characteristics. Neither does it have anything to say about ultimate causes or about telos / intentionality underlying phenomena.
Science is therefore indeed inherently materialistic—as you suggest—since it deals with phenomena in the material world; But this does not mean that science is inherently atheistic—as others suggest. It neither assumes nor rejects the idea of God—it is, if you like, inherently agnostic.
When science encounters phenomena that it cannot explain because they are not empirical, measurable, repeatable, etc. then it has to reserve judgment. That is the point of what I was trying to get across in regard to the Shroud of Turin in the discussion above.
I also think it is important to be aware of the scope of scientific causal explanations. Science generally describes rather than explains. It describes (often mathematically) what will (or is likely to) happen when entities in the universe are in a given state. It has no notion of explaining why? Science does not tell us why—in any ultimate sense—gravity exists or grass is green. I note on your blog site that you are interested in Chesterton. You will no doubt have noticed that he makes this point very eloquently—the fact that phenomena are repeated does not explain why they come about in the first place. His chapter on “The Ethics of Elfland” in his book, Orthodoxy, is well worth a re-read in this regard.
In regard to your final paragraph: I am not a biologist, but, as I understand things, there is concrete evidence in the fossil record to suggest the emergence of homo sapiens about 150000 years ago from earlier hominoid forms, themselves having emerged australopithicine forms about 3 million years ago, which go back to apes, mammals, etc. I see no theological reason for being skeptical about this, In fact, I believe that one of the big challenges of theology is to fully assimilate the implications of the evolution of homo sapiens from earlier life forms.
It would seem that at least one theologian has risen to the challenge mentioned in my previous post. Jack Moheny SJ has produced a book in which he suggests ways in which Christian theology should be adapted to fully align with evolution. See Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Evolution-Exploration-Jack-Mahoney/dp/1589017692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326603827&sr=8-1
From what I have read, it would seem that the theology is a scholarly theological refinement of the ideas that Pierre Teilhard was proposing in the first half of the last century. Mohoney’s book is described in the following terms on the Amazon webiste:
“Evolution has provided a new understanding of reality, with revolutionary consequences for Christianity. In an evolutionary perspective the incarnation involved God entering the evolving human species to help it imitate the trinitarian altruism in whose image it was created and counter its tendency to self-absorption. Primarily, however, the evolutionary achievement of Jesus was to confront and overcome death in an act of cosmic significance, ushering humanity into the culminating stage of its evolutionary destiny, the full sharing of God’s inner life. Previously such doctrines as original sin, the fall, sacrifice, and atonement stemmed from viewing death as the penalty for sin and are shown not only to have serious difficulties in themselves, but also to emerge from a Jewish culture preoccupied with sin and sacrifice that could not otherwise account for death. The death of Jesus on the cross is now seen as saving humanity, not from sin, but from individual extinction and meaninglessness. Death is now seen as a normal process that affect all living things and the religious doctrines connected with explaining it in humans are no longer required or justified. Similar evolutionary implications are explored affecting other subjects of Christian belief, including the Church, the Eucharist, priesthood, and moral behavior.”