John Paul may or may not have believed that he had a fundamental disagreement with scientific accounts of evolution, but as the quotes in that editorial reveal, he always phrased things in such a manner as to leave wiggle room you could drive a biology department through. He was no dummy and surely read his Augustine; you could have an extratemporal God who creates the whole consistent history of the universe in one go, so that you get your appearance of randomness and your mysterious teleology at the same time. Not my cup of tea, but I can live with people pushing that.
If Benedict and Schönborn now believe that it's the Catholic Church's job to repudiate modern science overtly, and the Catholic schools that currently teach natural selection are going to stop doing it, well, I guess the fight is on again, then. One thing I believe is that it's almost impossible to kill science; swim against it and you mostly end up hurting yourself by promoting your own ignorance.
I do think it's interesting that he sticks to papal statements and doesn't start quoting Michael Behe. As a non-Catholic I can't really argue with statements about what the Pope thinks, I can just declare them irrelevant.
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syntheid
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Date: 2005-07-08 12:52 am (UTC)If Benedict and Schönborn now believe that it's the Catholic Church's job to repudiate modern science overtly, and the Catholic schools that currently teach natural selection are going to stop doing it, well, I guess the fight is on again, then. One thing I believe is that it's almost impossible to kill science; swim against it and you mostly end up hurting yourself by promoting your own ignorance.
I do think it's interesting that he sticks to papal statements and doesn't start quoting Michael Behe. As a non-Catholic I can't really argue with statements about what the Pope thinks, I can just declare them irrelevant.