Darwin debated: The Vatican is pondering ID.
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William R. Stoeger is a Jesuit and a scientist who is lending his voice to a prickly debate in the Roman Catholic Church.

It started when Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, stirred up Catholics and scientists in early July when he wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times reassessing the common belief that Catholic doctrine accepts Darwin’s theory of evolution.

In the op-ed, the influential archbishop said vague references to science’s compatibility with religion made by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI should not be construed as absolute acceptance among church leaders. Although Darwin defenders have been led to believe that evolution is compatible with Christian faith, Schönborn said that is not necessarily the case.

Several leading Catholic theologians and scientists have come out openly against Schönborn’s views, which were seen as a step backward from Pope John Paul II’s groundbreaking remarks made in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. According to evolution proponents, the late pope said that “new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as something more than just a hypothesis.”

Affiliated with the Vatican Observatory Research Group at the University of Arizona, Stoeger has a doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge. He joined the staff of the Vatican Observatory in 1979 and specializes in theoretical cosmology, high-energy astrophysics and interdisciplinary studies relating to science, philosophy and theology.

A member of the American Physical Society and American Astronomical Society, Stoeger criticized Schönborn’s interpretation of John Paul II’s remarks, taking exception with the cardinal’s ambiguity, in a recent interview with Science & Theology News.

Q: Cardinal Schönborn says in his New York Times op-ed: “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.” As a scientist, do you think this claim stands up to scientific scrutiny?

A: It is certainly clear from strictly scientific evidence that there is, at the level of direct process, no detailed design or controlled planning of the evolutionary process. The dynamisms of nature enjoy a relative autonomy and integrity — enabled and empowered by the creator working through them and in them, but not continually guided from step to step by a designer or contractor.

If Cardinal Schönborn means this by design and guidance, then certainly his claim does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. However, there is a deep order in nature, and it appears that the universe is fine-tuned for complexity and life — but uses a degree of chance and randomness within that larger framework of law and order to explore and realize the rich potentialities of that order. Many biologists and evolutionary philosophers do not adequately recognize that — even scientifically.

Finally, it is not possible, given the limitations of the sciences, for them to recognize purpose and intention in nature — they are limited in what they can conclude from their investigations, not being able to treat ultimate causes or the mystery of why there is anything at all. But that does not mean that there is no purpose or ultimate source of order in nature. It just means that the sciences are not capable of revealing that. The cardinal would be correct in criticizing the failure of people to recognize the limitation of the natural sciences. God as creator employs chance and randomness in creation as an instrument of his ongoing creative act. God acts as creator, a primary cause — and never as just another cause — a secondary cause — in the world.

Q: The word “evolution” is used primarily in two senses: to refer to the evolution of life in the Darwinian sense and the evolution of the cosmos. While the Darwinian view speaks of a haphazard, random process in the evolution of life on earth, all aspects of cosmic evolution do not necessarily follow such a pattern. For instance, stellar evolution follows, by and large, a predictable, preordained path. Do you think there is a conceptual mix-up here? In fact, even John Paul II refers to the “plurality” of theories in his 1996 Pontifical Academy of Sciences address. Are there theories of evolution the Church accepts?

A: The church really does not accept or reject any scientific theory as a strictly scientific theory. It is really incapable of doing that, and it would be a mistake for it to do so. It has always affirmed that the natural sciences are independent disciplines — independent of philosophy and theology — and should pursue truth according to acceptable scientific methods and criteria in a responsible and careful way.

However, at the same time, the church does — and should — provide guidance concerning philosophical, ethical and theological extrapolations and extensions of scientific conclusions — particularly those which purport to claim that science demonstrate that there is nothing beyond the purely material or that there is no purpose or point to the universe.

Q: Doesn’t the cardinal have a point when he says that the theory of Darwinian evolution cannot be reconciled to the Christian faith?

A: No, if you mean the theory of Darwinian evolution as a strictly scientific theory. This is because God, as creator, can and apparently does, use or employ — is creatively immanent in — all the physical, chemical and biological processes of nature, including those which involve chance and randomness. What the cardinal should be saying is not that Darwinian evolution cannot be reconciled with Christian faith, which is simply not true, if it is properly understood, including its limitations, but that unwarranted philosophical extensions — for example, scientism and many forms of materialism — cannot be reconciled with the Christian faith. It is absolutely crucial to make this distinction between the scientific and the philosophical conclusions based on the sciences, though many scientists and those interpreting them do not do so.

As far as the biblical stories of Genesis — and elsewhere in the Scriptures — go, reputable Catholic biblical scholarship has recognized for years that the stories of creation are not to be understood literally. Even St. Augustine, St. Basil the Great and other church fathers recognized that. Those stories are proclaiming important theological truths about creation and about ourselves, not historical or scientific truths about our origin and that of the universe. They are much more about the meaning of creation and its relationship to God and its ultimate destiny than about what actually happened. In fact, they are not about that at all.

Even in John Paul II’s address on evolution in 1996, it is abundantly clear, if one reads the whole address, that these distinctions are operative. After an endorsement of evolution as “more than just a hypothesis” supported by a number of independent lines of evidence, the pope goes on to insist on how this evolutionary understanding must be integrated with a recognition of the special spiritual character of human life and the human person. Catholic and other mainline Christian theologies have developed very compelling accounts of how this can be accomplished.

Q: Do you think “natural theology,” to which Catholicism has been long committed, lends credence to the theory of intelligent design?

A: Yes, Cardinal Schönborn is speaking on behalf of human reason, as well as on behalf of the Christian faith. And that is as it should be. However, what he really needs to emphasize is that human reason is not confined to the natural sciences.

He seems to question the rationality of the sciences, which most people privilege as the height of rationality. In so doing he opens himself to a critique of his own rational approach. To insist on the overwhelming evidence for design in nature — without carefully qualifying the issue as I have done, and without acknowledging the “natural evils” and quirks that hound nature at every turn — renders his point of view incredible to many. He has a very important point of view, in fact, but has opened it to serious misunderstanding. It would have been relatively easy to clarify and strengthen his main points without appearing to denigrate science and the essentials of evolutionary biology.

What is meant by intelligent design in the discussion on science and religion today is the apparent need for an intelligent designer to account for what some people refer to as the “irreducible complexity” of certain structures and emergent systems, like the flagella of bacteria or the animal eye, which they maintain cannot be explained by any evolutionary process. Thus, the designer — God — just fills in these gaps in the evolutionary processes. Thus, intelligent design is, as these people present it, a complement or corrective to the other evolutionary processes such as natural selection and symbiogenesis.

However, intelligent design in this sense is completely scientifically unsupportable, as well as philosophically and theologically mistaken. It ends up making God a secondary cause in the world instead of the creative primary cause, which enables and empowers creation and all its manifestations to be what it is and to act according to its own nature and relationships.

Q: Has the science-religion dialogue, which was very close to John Paul II’s heart, suffered a setback with the cardinal’s op-ed?

A: No. But the cardinal’s remarks have temporarily muddied the waters for those who rely on the press for information and guidance in these areas. Despite this, they have gradually become much clearer through the careful reflection, research, discussion and precise distinctions John Paul II and his advisers have employed, as well as through the outstanding and intensive collaborative scholarship of many dedicated scientists, philosophers and theologians, which has fed into the late pope’s thinking. Hopefully, this will continue.