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Why a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless

Richard Polt, a professor of philosophy at Xavier University, explains why theories of evolution cannot and do not provide a foundation or reasoning for ethical and moral truths:

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.

In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness, as Wilson puts it, nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless.

Read the entire essay, "Anything But Human", on the New York Times' Opinionator blog.

Being Reasonable About Faith and Science

Being Reasonable About Faith and Science | William L. Patenaude | Catholic World Report

The recent “Modern Science/Ancient Faith” conference explored the oft-misunderstood relationship between science and Catholicism.

“Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, par 159.

Portsmouth, RI —Can faith exist in a world where science is demonstrating ever more details of creation and the evolution of human life? Is there a place for science among those who believe that the Book of Genesis is God’s inspired revelation?

Such questions anchored “Modern Science/Ancient Faith,” a conference sponsored by the Benedictine-run Portsmouth Institute, housed in Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey School, on June 22-24. The event brought together some ninety scientists, theologians, philosophers, clergy, lay faithful, and skeptics—or some mix of the above—to explore the dialogue between the natural sciences and Christianity.

While few participants expressed difficulties with the coexistence of faith and reason, the how of this coexistence wasn’t always in agreement. Some demanded a decidedly scientific approach to questions of beginnings. Others championed a more literal understanding of Genesis. This made for polite but fiery discussions that began in the early summer’s heat of the Abbey’s grounds and now continue online.

After opening with Adoration and the Rosary, the first talk was a review of the Galileo affair by Rev. Dom Paschal Scotti, O.S.B. His presentation set an amicable tone for the conference by demonstrating Christianity’s affinity for the natural sciences. The priest made clear that the driving issue at play in Galileo’s run-in with the Church was not an inherent fear of science. Rather, most Catholic theologians and scientists working with Galileo fought with the astronomer to keep scientific observations in their proper arena.

And as in the modern debates about issues such as evolution or climate change, what further inflamed the Galileo saga were the nuances of human sin, politics, and egos. According to Fr. Paschal, relations between Galileo and the Church were complicated by issues such as tensions between the Dominican and Jesuit orders; secular pressures on Pope Urban VIII; Galileo’s often aggressive approach and sometimes sarcastic writings; and the effects of Protestantism’s demands for sola scriptura.

Fr. Paschal noted that, human failings notwithstanding, an incarnational faith by its nature intersects with the natural world and, thus, the sciences—and this may explain why Christianity was the fertile ground from which the natural sciences could take root.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

20% off books by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, May 29 - June 5

Offer ends Tuesday June 5th, 2012 at 12:00 midnight EST. These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is the Archbishop of Vienna. The renowned theologian was the primary editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Born in 1945, the Dominican was a student of Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. He has written numerous books and articles on faith. Ignatius Press is offering 20% off on a selection of books that were written by Schoenborn.

See below the "fold" for a full listing of sale books:

"Together Behind Locked Doors": On resurrection, abortion, and judgment

by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

“On the morning of the first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together behind locked doors, suddenly, Jesus stood among them and said: ‘Peace be with you,’ alleluia.”
— Antiphon, Evening Prayer, Easter Sunday.

I.

In the twelfth chapter of the twenty-second book of the City of God, St. Augustine gives us a remarkably up-to-date objection to the resurrection of the body, one that might be of rather unsettling concern to many of our contemporaries. “It is the habit of the pagans to subject our belief in a bodily resurrection to a scrupulous examination and to ridicule it with such questions as, ‘What about abortions?’” Augustine tells us. “’Will they rise again?’ … Now we are not going to say that those infants (who die early) will not rise again: for they are capable not only of being born, but also of being reborn.” All persons capable of being born are capable of being reborn.

The fact that a significant percentage of the actual human race, though conceived, are not born, does not mean those unborn do not have the same destiny and purpose of those born. The pagan assumption is, of course, that, while those once born may perhaps rise again, surely not those who were never born but were instead aborted. In our time, the number of those who were not born but aborted, on a world wide scale, is simply staggering—around forty to fifty million a year at a minimum. Yet, these too participate in the same end designed for all of us.

Contemporary pagans and others usually do not give aborted infants the honor even of worrying themselves about the final status of such infants. Or of considering their final status as participators, directly or indirectly, in decisions and actions that terminate actual lives. But it is quite clear in this regard that the eternal status of aborted children is not a frivolous issue if their claim to humanness is as solid as that of anyone else, which it is.

II.

Why bring up at this time the same issue of aborted children brought up by the pagans in Augustine’s time? It is standard biological and Church teaching, on the basis of evidence, that an individual human life begins at conception. However lightly we want to dance around this fact, it remains true. Everyone who ever came forth out of the womb had his beginning in the union of a male and female element. This new life is not “part” of the mother, nor is it unnatural to her body. That is where it belongs.

Moreover, aborted babies and babies who die in the womb before birth have the same destiny as the mother who carries them and the father who begot them. What it is to be a human being begins here. Mortal life ends with death, whenever that occurs, be it by abortion at five months, be it by miscarriage at six months, be it by sickness at three years, heart attack at thirty, or Parkinson’s disease at ninety-five.

Now none of these human beings, however or whenever his death might occur, is caused solely by his parents or by himself. The ultimate origin of each human person is within the Godhead itself, within the Trinity. Our initial origin is in the image of God in which our very possibility must first exist. This origin too is why we are all related to one another in our very being. To be a person is to be related to others. Our dependence on one another is based on trues of one another. And this trust must be freely accepted. In this sense, all abortions are a violation of a truest that is ultimately rooted in that Trinitarian life in which we are to participate in God’s grace.

III.

Easter is our central feast, our fundamental doctrine. “If Christ be not risen,” Paul says, “our faith is in vain.” We grant that logic. That Christ rose from the dead is known to us because the fact of it was observed by certain definite witnesses. They did not invent what they saw, but, with some astonishment, reported what they went on. They were neither liars nor ideologues. They were not wishful thinkers or deluded mystics. Hard headed fishermen and a tax collector, among others, were among them. Many of them died for their testimony.

But when the Apostles were gathered together behind closed doors, they were in fact being cautious. What they were claiming in public was in its day not “politically correct.” They were testifying to the fact of the resurrection of Christ. Christ did not break down the doors to lead them out on a triumphant, overwhelming conquest. Rather, He appeared among them. He told them to be at peace. I bring this Easter passage up to remind us that even the aborted children are at peace. Even if their lives were unjustly cut off, God’s grace is sufficient for them to reach the end for which they were initially created as images of God.

The real drama of the aborted babies of our time, or any other time, concerns rather those who aborted them. To remind our contemporaries of their responsibility in this area is perhaps one often reasons that Benedict XVI speaks so often and so earnestly of final judgment. No human act is finally complete unless and until it is judged. Everything is done to keep the reality of abortions, what is actually done, from our eyes. They are in fact “behind closed doors.” But they bring no peace unless they are repented, and even then they unsettle our souls with the knowledge that members of our kind could justify such things.

And yet, Christ’s resurrection is an assurance that each of us, including those whose lives we cut short, will rise again, first to judgment. The assurance of that fact is this: When Christ appeared to the frightened Apostles after the resurrection, He told them that His peace was with them. Easter is indeed the Day the Lord hath made. This is why we can rejoice and be glad. It is not because whatever we do, including killing our kind as infants, makes no difference, but because it does matter. The peace follows the judgment of how we receive the give of the image of God in which we are all, from conception to death, created.

---

Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., is Professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University. 

He is the author of numerous books on social issues, spirituality, culture, and literature including Another Sort of Learning, Idylls and Rambles, A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning, The Life of the Mind (ISI, 2006), The Sum Total of Human Happiness (St. Augustine's Press, 2007), The Regensburg Lecture (St. Augustine's Press, 2007), and The Mind That Is Catholic: Philosophical and Political Essays (CUA, 2008). His most recent book from Ignatius Press is The Order of Things(Ignatius Press, 2007). 

His new book, The Modern Age, is available from St. Augustine's Press. Read more of his essays on his website.

“Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’"

The New York Times breaks the shocking news that there are philosophers who—steady yourself!—believe in the existence of God. (What would Aristotle, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Etienne Gilson—to name just a very few—think of such insanity?) From the piece, "Philosopher Sticks Up for God", which is about the highly regarded philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, a Protestant (Calvinist) who is emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame:

For too long, Mr. Plantinga contends in a new book, theists have been on the defensive, merely rebutting the charge that their beliefs are irrational. It’s time for believers in the old-fashioned creator God of the Bible to go on the offensive, he argues, and he has some sports metaphors at the ready. (Not for nothing did he spend two decades at Notre Dame.)

In “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism,” published last week by Oxford University Press, he unleashes a blitz of densely reasoned argument against “the touchdown twins of current academic atheism,” the zoologist Richard Dawkins and the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, spiced up with some trash talk of his own.

Mr. Dawkins? “Dancing on the lunatic fringe,” Mr. Plantinga declares. Mr. Dennett? A reverse fundamentalist who proceeds by “inane ridicule and burlesque” rather than by careful philosophical argument.

On the telephone Mr. Plantinga was milder in tone but no less direct. “It seems to me that many naturalists, people who are super-atheists, try to co-opt science and say it supports naturalism,” he said. “I think it’s a complete mistake and ought to be pointed out.”

The so-called New Atheists may claim the mantle of reason, not to mention a much wider audience, thanks to best sellers like Mr. Dawkins’s fire-breathing polemic, “The God Delusion.” But while Mr. Plantinga may favor the highly abstruse style of analytic philosophy, to him the truth of the matter is crystal clear.

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’ ”

Exactly right, as this blog has said in one way or another more than a few times. The really honest adherent of pure naturalism will ultimately have to doubt both the basis for his studies and the reasons for pursuing them. But the disciples of naturalism tend to hedge their bets, and many would rather focus on loudly attacking theism than staring into the deep abyss created by their own empty philosophical premises.

UPDATE (Dec. 15, 2011): Along similar lines, today's edition of The Telegraph has a short, interesting piece by atheist physicist-turned-Protestant theologian Alister McGrath about the so-called "God particle", science, and faith.

Related on Ignatius Insight:

Who was Rev. Louis Bouyer?

Ignatius Press has just published its edition of The Church of God: Body of Christ and Temple of the Holy Spirit by Fr. Louis Bouyer (first published in English by Franciscan Herald Press in 1982). And Bouyer's book on Newman, Newman: An Intellectual & Spiritual Biography of John Henry Newman, will be available soon, and my understanding is that Ignatius Press will be publishing other works by Bouyer in the years to come.

The first book by Bouyer that I bought and read was the short book, The Liturgy Revived (University of Notre Dame, 1964), which I took up shortly before becoming Catholic in 1997. I soon read what is perhaps his best-known book (at least in many circles), The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. The Church of God was one of the texts for a course in ecclesiology in my MTS program, and it is one of my favorite works by Bouyer—at least of those I've read—along with the wonderful work, The Meaning of Sacred Scripture (University of Notre Dame, 1958).

Bouyer was prolific and wrote on a wide range of topics. And he is regarded by many (including myself, for what it's worth) to be one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century, even if he isn't as well known as Ratzinger, de Lubac, Rahner, von Balthasar, and others.

Last year, I interviewed Dr. Keith Lemna, Visiting Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Saint Meinrad School of Theology, who has studied the life and thought of Bouyer for many years. Here is part of that interview:

Presuppositions of Darwinism

by Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. | Editorial | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | October 2011

In his textbook, Philosophical Psychology (FSSP, Elmhurst, PA 1999), Prof. D.Q. McInerny lists and evaluates the six presuppositions of Darwinist evolution. The first presupposition is that life came to be, the way it is on earth, through natural means; there is no need for divine intervention, such as we find in the Book of Genesis. The second element is that life arose from non-life. The claim is that, over millions of years, matter became more complex until, by some chance of volcanic activity or lightning, there was a sudden transformation to the organic state, the beginning of life.

The third element is the idea that all life we know on earth is to be traced back to that first primitive form of life. Once life had gained a foothold on earth, there was more complexification until animal life evolved from plant life. After that, the two kingdoms continued to develop over millions of years to produce the many species of plant and animal life, including man.

According to the fourth element in the theory, it all began with a simple cell that underwent changes. The multiplicity of species in plants and animals is explained by chance mutation. The mutations, they say, must be small so that the new entity can survive; the change is positive, and gives the new entity an advantage over what went before. It is more suitable to survive, and to propagate others like itself. The improved one survives, and its ancestors do not. The process went on for millions of years to produce all the life forms on earth.

The fifth element is natural selection, or the survival of the fittest. The mutated organisms, that have an enhanced capacity for survival, is what Darwin called natural selection. The fourth and fifth elements are the key to the explanation of why one species is formed into another. So the mutations are necessarily very small, with the process requiring an immense amount of time—millions, and perhaps billions, of years.

Read the entire editorial at HPRweb.com...

Evolution and Art (the "signature of man")

In an American Spectator essay, "Evolution Needs to Evolve", Hal G.P. Colebatch writes:

Monkeys and men appear to have a common ancestor. Monkeys, like men, have hands. But, as Chesterton said, the significant point is not that monkeys have hands, but that, compared to Man, monkeys do almost nothing with them. A five-year old child can paint a crude picture of a monkey. But not the wisest monkey ever painted a picture of a child. Years of experiments trying to teach apes language show they cannot form even the simplest sentences.

If a monkey was born capable not only of gathering nuts and bananas but also of building cathedrals, writing Hamlet or flying to the moon, we would see it as a major objection to the pure theory of evolution. We might even be tempted to believe that a God had intervened somewhere along the line.

But Man is born capable of doing these things and has done them. The fact speaks for itself. Further, as far as paleontology can tell us, Cro-Magnon Man, the earliest form of Homo sapiens, had brains as good as modern men -- Cro-Magnon Man simply knew less. We know from cave paintings that 16,000 years ago at least Man had highly developed art.

Why? Art is useless for survival. There is no reason why evolution should have produced it. It is possible to be reminded of Gandalf's cryptic comment in The Lord of the Rings: "Something else is at work."

The reference to Chesterton is, I believe, a reference to one or more passages in The Everlasting Man, one of his greatest books. Chesterton wrote:

 It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

That is the sort of simple truth with which a story of the beginnings ought really to begin. The evolutionist stands staring in the painted cavern at the things that are too large to be seen and too simple to be understood. He tries to deduce all sorts of other indirect and doubtful things from the details of the pictures, because he can not see the primary significance of the whole; thin and theoretical deductions about the absence of religion or the presence of superstition; about tribal government and hunting and human sacrifice and heaven knows what. ... When all is said, the main fact that the record of the reindeer men attests, along with all other records, is that the reindeer man could draw and the reindeer could not. If the reindeer man was as much an animal as the reindeer, it was all the more extraordinary that he could do what all other animals could not. If he was an ordinary product of biological growth, like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one. ...

It is not contended here that these primitive men did wear clothes any more than they did weave rushes; but merely that we have not enough evidence to know whether they did or not. But it may be worthwhile to look back for a moment at some of the very few things that we do know and that they did do. If we consider them, we shall certainly not find them inconsistent with such ideas as dress and decoration. We do not know whether they decorated other things. We do not know whether they had embroideries, and if they had the embroideries could not be expected to have remained. But we do know that they did have pictures; and the pictures have remained. And there remains with them, as already suggested, the testimony to something that is absolute and unique; that belongs to man and to nothing else except man; that is a difference of kind and not a difference of degree. A monkey does not draw clumsily and a man cleverly; a monkey does not begin the art of representation and a man carry it to perfection. A monkey does not do it at all; he does not begin to do it at all; he does not begin to begin to do it at all. A line of some kind is crossed before the first faint line can begin.

On a lighter note, see the young Chesterton's satirical piece, "Half Hours in Hades" (written and illustrated in 1891, when Chesterton was seventeen), which contains a section on the "evolution of demons". The piece contains this little bit of hilarious brilliance:

To proceed at once to business, I will first introduce to my young readers the Common, or "Garden" serpent, so called because its first appearance in the world took place in a garden. Since that time its proportions have dwindled considerably, but its influence and power have largely increased; it is found in almost everything.

Indeed!

On Making Sense of the Universe: Thoughts On Fr. Robert Spitzer's "New Proofs for the Existence of God"

On Making Sense of the Universe: Thoughts On Fr. Robert Spitzer's New Proofs for the Existence of God | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Ignatius Insight | December 9, 2010

"Science, unlike philosophy and metaphysics, cannot deductively prove a creation or God. Science is an empirical and inductive discipline, meaning that it cannot be certain that it has considered all possible data that would be relevant to a complete explanation of particular physical phenomena or the universe itself. Nevertheless, it is reasonable and responsible to attribute qualified truth value to long-standing, rigorously established theories until such time as new data requires them to be changed. This is what enables science to 1) identify, aggregate, and synthesize evidence indicating the finitude of past time in the universe and 2) to identify the exceedingly high improbability of the random occurrence of conditions necessary to sustain life in the universe."
-- Robert Spitzer, S.J., New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 2010), 73.

I.

In the first book I wrote, Redeeming the Time (1968), one chapter was entitled "The Cosmos and Christianity." Even then, I was concerned with the question of whether, as many then assumed, science had somehow made faith—or the particular version of it known as Christianity—to be impossible. But was there not evidence for another relationship? That is, Christianity and science were rather closely related. Both sought objective truth. Both were concerned with the origin and meaning of the whole physical cosmos. Both presupposed or needed the other for their respective completions. They were not intrinsically contradictory to each other. Neither could definitively exclude the other, however much they might try.

Thus, the subtitle of the chapter was: "The World Is for Man." These were the days before Stanley Jaki's The Road of Science and the Ways to God (1979) or William Wallace's Modeling of Nature (1996), which made the compatible relationship between science and revelation more plausible. The cosmos, in other words, was not just sitting out there with God, as it were, even though He created it, looking on wondering what in blazes to do with it. An inner order or plan was there from the beginning, one that did not satisfy itself by knowing what were the principles of nature, however important these were. The cosmos itself was related to something within it which pointed, in its turn, to what transcended it.

Fr. Jaki, in fact, argued that the possibility of science itself depended on certain theological propositions without which science does not appear in any culture. Science depends on the notion that a real world exists. It is not an illusion. It has within it stable secondary causes open to investigation by human intelligence and techniques. We can learn something from it because something is there to be learned. Scientific principles do not just explain themselves, even when known. They are already operative within the cosmos before any finite mind ever thought to articulate what they meant.

Theories of divine or cosmic voluntarism, moreover, in which the opposite of any fact could be at the same time possible or true, make science impossible. If the world depends on an arbitrarily changeable will, nothing can really be known. Both the existence and the explanation of the world rather depended on principles that seemed anything but arbitrary. In the beginning it was not clear whether the world and its principles always existed or whether it came into existence at some definite point in the past, however long. The history of modern cosmology has reached a solid consensus on this issue. The cosmos did have a beginning, approximately 13.7 billion years ago. Time itself began with that beginning.

Read the entire essay...

"A World Existing Independently From Us": On the Pope and the Scientific Method

"A World Existing Independently From Us": On the Pope and the Scientific Method | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Ignatius Insight | November 29, 2010

"For her part, the Church is convinced that scientific activity ultimately benefits from the recognition of man's spiritual dimension and his quest for ultimate answers that allow for the acknowledgement of a world existing independently from us, which we do not fully understand and which we can only comprehend in so far as we grasp its inherent logic."
— Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 28, 2010 (L'Osservatore Romano, English, November 3, 2010).

I.

The great worry of the culture of disbelief and death that we call the modern world is over the fact that Catholicism and science are quite compatible and necessary to each other. It is a quietly obvious fact that the principal promoter of reason in its fullest sense in the modern world is the papacy, but not necessarily "Catholic" academia. This view that they are compatible is well spelled out by Robert Spitzer, S.J., in his remarkably clear book, New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Eerdmans, 2010).

In some basic sense, the modern world was built on the assumption of such incompatibility. Science and religion, it was claimed, were opponents to each other. One had to get rid of one if the other was to reign. Hostility, not dialogue, was the norm. We thus wanted a world in which we were guided by "scientific reason," not (supposedly) blind faith. Science was assumed to make belief in a transcendent God impossible or absurd. After all, no telescope or astronaut ever encountered God out there in space and time. Where else could He be?

Other things closer to home were also at work. If we could rid ourselves of any "First Cause," or especially any "Intelligent Cause," we would be left a world that could provide no standards of what it is to be human. The human being would not be already human on the basis of something that he did not himself create. His moral life would not be seen against a background of natural law or natural ends. Minus these inconvenient limitations, as he saw it, modern man could do what he wanted. The only exceptions were the ecologists who did not like the fact that man did much of anything with the earth. Freedom, in any case, would not mean conforming oneself to intelligible standards designed for man's own good, but making what he wanted to do to accomplish his self-given law.

Read the entire essay...

While We're on the Subject of Science and Religion

"Scientists do not create the world," declares Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, "they learn about it and attempt to imitate it, following the laws and intelligibility that nature manifests to us. The scientist’s experience as a human being is therefore that of perceiving a constant, a law, a logos that he has not created but that he has instead observed: in fact, it leads us to admit the existence of an all-powerful Reason, which is other than that of man, and which sustains the world. This is the meeting point between the natural sciences and religion. As a result, science becomes a place of dialogue, a meeting between man and nature and, potentially, even between man and his Creator."

The whole address is here.

Dr. Stephen M. Barr vs. Dr. Stephen W. Hawking

Here is Dr. Barr, professor of physics at the University of Delaware and author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, on the First Things blog:

Has physics done away with God? A newly release book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow says, “Yes.”

What is a Jewish or Christian believer to make of this? Is the Creator now out of a job? The short answer is (unsurprisingly) no: the ideas propounded in Hawking’s book constitute no threat whatever to the Jewish and Christian doctrine of Creation.

The idea that Hawking is now touting is not new—in fact, within the fast-moving world of modern physics it is fairly old. My first introduction to it was reading a very elegant theoretical paper entitled “Creation of Universes from Nothing,” written in 1982 by the noted cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, who argued that our universe might have arisen by a “quantum fluctuation.”

This idea is sometimes referred to as the quantum creation of the universe. There are different variants, but the basic idea is well-known among particle physicists and cosmologists.

Right up front, it must be noted that this idea is extremely speculative, has not yet been formulated in a mathematically rigorous way, and is unable at this point to make any testable predictions. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine how it could ever be tested. It would be more accurate to call these “scenarios” than theories. It would be a mistake, however, for religious believers to dismiss these scenarios as mere fanciful conjecture or as motivated merely by atheist ideology. Based on a plausible analogy with the experimentally observed and well-understood phenomenon of the quantum creation of particles, the idea of quantum creation of universes is not without merit.

The salient point has to do with how quantum mechanics works. In quantum mechanics one always considers some physical “system”, which has various possible “quantum states”, and which is governed by certain well-defined “dynamical laws.” These dynamical laws that govern the particular system and the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics allow one to calculate the probability that the system will make a transition from one of its states to another. To take a simple example, the system might be an atom of hydrogen, and its states would be the different “energy levels” of the atom.

Read the entire post. In an 2006 interview with Mark Brumley for Ignatius Insight, Dr. Barr said:

The New York Times pans Hawking's new book: "tinny and inelegant"

From a NYT's review by Dwight Garner of The Grand Design (Bantam, 2010), by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow:

Mr. Hawking’s new book, “The Grand Design,” published yesterday, has already made headlines and been a trending topic on Twitter, thanks to a different sort of God-mongering. This time Mr. Hawking has, we’re told, declared God pretty much dead.

His search for an answer to the question “How did the universe begin?” has led him to suggest that the creation of our universe and others simply “does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god.” It’s another canny move. Books about the God wars are easier to argue about than those that parse the finer points of quantum physics. As I’m typing this, “The Grand Design” is the No. 1 book on Amazon, one spot above “Freedom,” the heavily hyped new Jonathan Franzen novel.

The real news about “The Grand Design,” however, isn’t Mr. Hawking’s supposed jettisoning of God, information that will surprise no one who has followed his work closely. The real news about “The Grand Design” is how disappointingly tinny and inelegant it is. The spare and earnest voice that Mr. Hawking employed with such appeal in “A Brief History of Time” has been replaced here by one that is alternately condescending, as if he were Mr. Rogers explaining rain clouds to toddlers, and impenetrable.

“The Grand Design” is packed with grating yuks. “If you think it is hard to get humans to follow traffic laws,” we read, “imagine convincing an asteroid to move along an ellipse.” (Oh, my.) This is the sort of book that introduces the legendary physicist Richard Feynman as “a colorful character who worked at the California Institute of Technology and played the bongo drums at a strip joint down the road.” Mr. Hawking has written “The Grand Design” with Leonard Mlodinow, a fellow physicist who has also worked on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” They’re an awkward pair, part “A Beautiful Mind,” part Borscht Belt. This book is provocative pop science, an exploration of the latest thinking about the origins of our universe. But the air inside this literary biosphere is not especially pleasant to breathe.

Read the entire review.

Oh, so WE are the "lords of creation". That explains everything.

The larger context of Stephen Hawking's recent statement about spontaneous creation can be read in this excerpt from Hawking's book, The Grand Design (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow). Here is an excerpt from the excerpt:

Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many.

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

Suffice to say, this is no more convincing than the shorter quote I somewhat flippantly (but only somewhat) took to task a few days ago. Anyhow, I don't have time to comment much at the moment, but hope to take this is up further soon. I'll just note that it's not obvious in the least how, in Hawking's view of things, men end up being "the lords of creation"—even "in a sense." How so? If Hawking is right about "creation" and the universe, man is, at best, an interesting but ultimately meaningless blip on the biological screen of cosmic history—and only "interesting" because he (either man in general or Hawking in particular) says so, which is very, very small solace indeed.

Physicist, Heel Thyself

Doing a little reading. Thought I'd share:

The job of the physicist is to uncover the patterns in nature and try to fit them to simple mathematical schemes. The question of why there are patterns, and why such mathematical schemes are possible, lies outside the scope of physics, belonging to a subject known as metaphysics.

From The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon & Schuster, 1992), by Paul Davies, page 31.

Stephen Hawking should first consult a young child, then a dictionary, then...

... move on to a discipline called philosophy. That might keep him from lobbing absurdities such as this into the public realm:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

I imagine this conversation happening, preferably on a major television broadcast:

Hawking: Something, what we call "the Universe", came from nothing.

Young Child (waving his hand wildly): How?

Hawking: By "creating itself".

Young Child (frowning): But how?

Hawking: Spontaneously.

Young Child (irritated): Using what?

Hawking: Nothing.

Young Child (through clenched teeth): How did it use "nothing" to make something?

Hawking: By using the law of gravity.

Young Child (hands on hips, glaring): Wait, isn't the law of gravity "something"?

Hawking: Yes, but the law of gravity exists because of creation, which exists because the Universe created itself out of nothing using the law of gravity.

Young Child: Yeah, right.

Okay, here is the dictionary part. The word "creation," according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, means:

Darwin and Malthus

Darwin and Malthus | Étienne Gilson | From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species, and Evolution | Ignatius Insight

Editor's Note: The extensive end notes (four pages in length) for this excerpt have not been included here.

---

It is not difficult to discover the connections which at an early date tied together the thought of Darwin and that of Malthus. Darwin himself told the public of it, but for a long time yet the sense and the bearing of Darwin's discovery of Malthus will be puzzled over.

The more one comes to know Darwin, the more one is persuaded that, from the day when he conceived the idea of transformation of species, he felt charged with the scientific mission of revealing to men a truth which was in his eyes indubitable; but this scientific truth was at the same time the reverse of a religious certitude which he himself had lost. The antireligious always has a bit of the religious in it. Strictly speaking, a scientific negation of the religious makes no sense, because the two orders are strangers to each other and because there is no sense of the word "truth" common to the two orders on which they might be able to meet. This abstract distinction is, however, contradicted by the psychology of the believer. There is in Darwin the scientist a propagandist charged by his own conscience with delivering men from a harmful error. Not having ever doubted the literal truth of the account of Genesis, he was frightened, finding himself in the presence of his new idea. A world came apart, in his mind, under the pressure of its spirit. Many of those who today judge that his uneasiness was without objective basis would then without doubt have shared his fear. They are like those who in the twentieth century are astonished that it was possible in the seventeenth century to judge the theses of Richard Simon as dangerous to the faith. At least Darwin had the courage to accept his own idea with all its consequences. In a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker, dated January 11, 1844, that is to say, about fifteen years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin said: "At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable."

If species are not fixed, what is the cause of their variation? Darwin was much less able to neglect the question which had been posed before him by Lamarck, whose doctrine he knew well enough to feel authorized to reject as absurd. His own discovery of 1844 was not in his eyes that of the variability of species, for that uncovered to him simultaneously the cause of their variations. To depart from Lamarck had been to depart from a bit more audacious and technically perfected Buffon. Darwin himself truly believed in the transformation of species only when he was able to catch sight of the cause of their transformations, natural selection, which Lamarck had not imagined. The theory was virtually complete in his mind when he had discerned the essential parameters of the problem: the struggle for existence, the spontaneous variations in the heart of the species [au sein des espèces] with the tendency to divergence which they entail, the hereditary transmission of variations favorable to the perpetuation of the species, and finally the analogy between the results of natural selection and those of domestication.

Continue reading...

Fr. Robert Barron on the relationship between religion and science

A new video posting from Fr. Barron of Word on Fire:

Granting that he making general points, I'm not convinced that Fr. Barron provides an entirely fair and accurate representation of intelligent design. What do you think?

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Excerpts from Chance or Purpose: Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• On Being Amazed In The Cosmos: Christoph Cardinal Schönborn and "The Purpose of the Path" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with physicist Dr. Stephen Barr | Mark Brumley
• The Universe is Meaning-full | An interview with Dr. Benjamin Wiker, co-author of A Meaningful World | Carl E. Olson
• The Mystery of Human Origins | Mark Brumley
• Designed Beauty and Evolutionary Theory | Thomas Dubay, S.M.

Also see:

Ratzinger Schulerkreis 2009

The topic this year is "Mission of the Church," reports CNA:

Before being elected Pontiff, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger held annual summer meetings with some of his former students from the theology departments of Tubingen and Ratisbona. Among the students convened by then Cardinal Ratzinger were important theologians, such as Cardinal Cristoph Schonborn of Vienna, who was also one of the editors of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Since 2005, the Pope has kept the tradition of meeting with the “Ratzinger Schulerkreis,” with discussions in previous years focusing on issues such as evolution and Islam.

This year the group will focus on the “Mission of the Church,” a topic that is central in the reflections of Ratzinger the theologian.

The only former student of Joseph Ratzinger in the United States who regularly attends the meetings is Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, the editor of Ignatius Press. "I am planning to attend," Fr. Fessio told CNA.

The 2006 meeting, which focused on the topic of “Creation and Evolution”, resulted in the publication of Creation And Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI (Ignatius Press, 2008), edited by Fr. Stephan Horn.

Ecclesiology, of course, has been the topic of several significant works/collections by Ratzinger/Benedict, including Called to Communion, Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology, Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, New Outpourings of the Spirit, and Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church As Communion. The most in-depth study of Ratzinger's ecclesiology is likely Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology, Fundamentals of Ecclesiology, by Maximilian Heinrich Heim, which for $12 (the current online price) is a steal.

Kind of funny and sort of weird in an off base way

Robin Robert Wright, the author of The Evolution of God—which I know little about except what is on amazon.com—is interviewed by The New York Times:

Your approach to religious history is so nakedly materialist. For instance, you claim the Apostle Paul was a kind of marketing guru who dropped the more demanding requirements of Judaism, like circumcision and dietary restrictions, to attract more followers.
Do the math. How many Christians are there today and how many Jews are there? If his goal was to gain a large following, he seems to have made the right tactical decision there.

Do you have to make Christianity sound like a pre-electronic Facebook?
Institutions thrive when they can serve the interest of a bunch of people, and there’s no reason to think the church is different. None of this is to say Paul didn’t feel divinely inspired.

O.K., but where is the transcendence in your book?
Well, I wind up arguing that the drift of history, however materially driven, has enough moral direction to suggest that there’s some larger purpose at work, and I guess you can call that transcendence.

And:

Were you a churchgoer as a child?
Southern Baptists don’t fool around. At age 8 or 9, I chose to go to the front of the church in response to the altar call and accepted Jesus as my savior.

When did you begin to doubt?
I think it was roughly sophomore year in high school. I encountered the theory of evolution, and my parents were creationists. There was a clash. They brought a Baptist minister over to the house to try to convince me that evolution hadn’t happened. He was not entirely successful, I would say.

That sure sounds familiar. The particular fundamentalist Bible chapel I was raised in didn't really do "altar calls," but I was part of several at summer Bible camp and other outings. (Even as a 12-year-old I thought they were emotionally manipulative and I did my best to avoid participation.) I also watched several anti-evolution videos in high school and heard plenty of anti-evolution talks/sermons. I eventually rejected "Creationism" (that is, the notion that God created the earth 6,000 years ago because the Bible "says so")—and became Catholic. Because, in the end, being a materialist with a vague, Hegelian-lite notion of transcendence isn't satisfying or convincing on any level or in any way. Still, although Wright might not be entirely right, I kind of like his sense of humor.