Re: Cardinal

Here are excerpts from Schonborg/... plus my comments [in brackets],
beginning with a conclusion:

    [Overall, it seems that his claims for design are definitely for
nature-design, and maybe guiding-design although he is very vague, but he
isn't saying anything for or against miracle-design. But I wish he had
"said what he wants to say" more clearly.]

    Schonborg says:
    "The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the
history of life on earth [agreeing with Galileo that the Bible doesn't tell
us "how the heavens go"], proclaims that by the light of reason the human
intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design [what is the
meaning? A, B, and/or C? he never seems to make any claims for C, although
this is a commonly perceived meaning for any "design" claim] in the natural
world, including the world of living things."
    "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. Any system of thought that
denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in
biology is ideology, not science." [If he was saying that any claim against
theories of miracle-design wasn't "science" I don't think he would call it
"ideology" instead.]
    Schonborg calls the 1996 statement of John Paul II "rather vague and
unimportant" and says that in it John Paul did not define what he meant by
"evolution".

    John Paul - 1985: "The evolution of living beings, of which science
seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an
internal finality [despite Schonborg's explanation that this means "final
cause, purpose or design" the meaning still doesn't seem clear, unless he
means that God is "the cause of a process of purpose-producing design"]
which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a
direction for which they are not responsible or in charge [guidance is in
nature-ID? in a process that includes guiding-ID?], obliges one to suppose
a Mind which is its inventor, its creator." [this sounds like nature-design]
    John Paul - 1985: "To all these indications of the existence of God the
Creator, some oppose the power of chance [without guiding-ID?] or of the
proper mechanisms of matter [praising the properties of nature, without
giving ID-credit to God]. To speak of chance for a universe which presents
such a complex organization in its elements [nature-ID] and such marvelous
finality in its life [whoat does this mean?] would be equivalent to giving
up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us."
    John Paul - 1986: "It is clear that the truth of faith about creation
is radically opposed to the theories of materialistic philosophy. These
view the cosmos as the result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure
chance and necessity." [is it the design-and-origin of the "matter" that is
reduced to chance and necessity, or its process of post-bang evolution?]

    from the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The existence
of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the
light of human reason. [Then what is the role of faith, as in "the truth of
faith about creation" above?] ... We believe that God created the world
[does he mean the universe, or the world as we see it now?] according to
his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind
fate or chance." [this could be A, B, and/or C, but is certainly (and
mainly?) A]

    Schonborg says that the International Theological Commission, with
future-Pope Benedict XVI as head, "reaffirms the perennial teaching of the
Catholic Church about the reality of design in nature. Commenting on the
widespread abuse of John Paul's 1996 letter on evolution, the commission
cautions that "the letter cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all
theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which
explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role [certainly by
nature-ID and maybe guiding-ID?] in the development of life in the
universe." [This sounds like a rejection of "a universe that produced
itself" with no nature-design, and maybe a rejection of the NABT-1996 claim
that "natural" means "without God" because natural evolution is an
"unsupervised" process.]
    Furthermore, according to the commission, "An unguided evolutionary
process - one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence [again, is
this A and/or B?] - simply cannot exist."
    Benedict-2005, in the homily at his installation just a few weeks ago:
"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." [is this a statement about evolutionary
history, or current sanctity of life?]

    Schonborg: "Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with
scientific claims like neo-Darwinism [with a NABT-1996 atheistic
interpretation] and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to
avoid the overwhelming evidence [re: a design of nature] for purpose and
design found in [some interpretations of] modern science, the Catholic
Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent
design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories [isn't it their
"interpretations by some scientists" that are being challenged?] that try
to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and
necessity' are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an
abdication of human intelligence."
Received on Mon Jul 11 22:58:02 2005