This morning we were very privileged to welcome the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna to our Institute. The Cardinal was the main editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997), and he is the patron of the ITI. He spoke on the topic of Creation and Evolution - a topic for which he has become rather famous ever since his controversial July 2005 op. ed. piece in the New York Times. After the lecture he offered Mass together with the priests - Roman and Byzantine - of the Institute. Then lunch with some student representatives and dessert with the whole community.As for the lecture itself, he seems to want to defend the presence of purpose within the framework of evolution, that is, to argue against chance as an ultimate explanation while conceding evolution as scientific fact (still maintaining, of course, the Catholic dogma of Creation ex nihilo).
I for one, though, am not at all convinced that evolution is true regardless of whether or not it can be made to square with the Faith. If you want to make a gift of a book to someone who thinks the world is the product of blind chance, then the Cardinal's recently published Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith might be perfect. But if you're looking for a critical assessment of the theory of evolution itself, I suspect you'll be better off looking elsewhere. I hope that is not taken as overly critical however. One cannot write about everything at once; the Cardinal has chosen his battleground and is fighting courageously for Catholic Truth. Many thanks to him for his work, his patronage of the ITI, and his defense of the Faith!
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Of course, the cardinal's duty is to teach and defend Catholic Truth, and whether evolution is true or not, it is important to be clear on what does or does not comport with that Truth. And, as far as the Church herself is concerned, it's probably a good thing not to claim too much. . .
On a purely scientific basis, there are examples of 'natural selection' occurring all around us - bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, as the only members of the species that survive to reproduce are the more resistant ones, to cite one particularly clear example. But the thing is, you still have the same species of bacteria that you had before; genetically 'modified' according to the 'selection effects' of the antibiotics, but certainly not a new species. So, we can say that natural selection can readily be seen to contribute to variation within a species, but it is an unjustifiable stretch to suppose that natural selection can account for the creation of new species.
The strongest argument I've encountered against the 'creative' ability of Darwinian evolution is based on Information Theory - any given organism simply has too much information contained in its DNA for it to have come about by random chance. . .
Are you sorry yet that you brought this up? . . . ;)
Of course, the resistant bacteria were always there (as were the populations of heavy-billed and light-billed finches that Darwin observed) and background environmental factors radically altered the relative populations; environmental change did not give rise to the 'new' trait but ensured that we would be more likely to encounter it in the species.
The best evidence against evolution understood as the origin of species is the existence of the Panda...
The best evidence against evolution understood as "science" is that it cannot be tested experimentally.
Some interesting reading material in defense of the intelligent design theory and in argument against evolution on the large scale: Of Pandas and People, (can't remember the author)which I believe CKGaler owns, and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip E. Johnson. The second book exposes the errors in thinking that lead to the acceptance of macro-evolution to the denial of creation.
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