As I’ve been muttering in these pages, a Catholic cardinal close to the new Pope printed an essay in the NY Times Op-Ed page that appears to condone a reversal of Catholic opinion on the Theory of Evolution.
“NPR’s Weekend Edition program had a nice story on this ongoing discussion”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4757698.
The report makes a nice point: the problem with evolution is not the theory itself, but the interpretations that are made beyond the theory that promote a particular world view. For instance, atheistic justification by promoting the underlying random mutations as happening without the need for a god; or, taking the flip-side, using evolution as evidence for a creator or, in the new lingo, a “designer”.
Another good point made in this story is that theories, such as Evolution, challenge the Church to think harder about the nature of God. This is a good thing, of course, since we cannot assume that as a creature created by another we necessarily and automatically understands the creator, or the act of creation. Science, and the scientific method, are a means to reach back in time and understand creation, whether there was an instigator or not. That last point is my own… at least, it doesn’t appear in the NPR story.
