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1. Well said, both Cardinal Levada & Fr McDade.
   Dead right. Science neither proves not disproves the notion of a God. Science deals with the natural world.
   The notion of a God lies with the metaphysical.
   As does a sense of values & morals.
   
   Richard Dawkins himself acknowledges, rightly, that science doesn't & can't provide moral guidelines.
   
   Now, gentlemen of the Church, turn your attention to the social sciences. They shed light on human behaviours.

   Posted By: Marie H

2. Cardinal Levada may believe that Darwin's theories are science but the evidence does not support that. Darwin wrote in his Origin of Species that a single progenitor began life on earth. How did this clever little progenitor reproduce itself? How did male and female of the species evolve? I could go on and on but to me The origin of Species was boring, unscientific and the ideas totally improbable.

   Posted By: Pat O'Brien

3. We must be careful not to accept uncritically all that science offers to us under the umbrella term of evolution. Everyday we can see examples of microevolution - this is not in dispute. However evolution is also a term which science will apply to very philosophical and contentious or unproven hypotheses, viz., that life erupted spontaneously and accidentally from inorganic matter; and that one lifeform, by a series of accidents of nature, can "evolve" into a totally different type.
   Intelligent Design, so fiercely attacked by evolutionists, simply says that life is too amazing to have simply occurred by accident, and that an intelligent "creator" instigated life. This is no more anti-scientific than to postulate that the universe originated from an immensely hot and dense point or singularity, implying creation from nothing, yet this is what science now has to admit, very grudgingly still by many, is the best explanation of the origin of the universe.

   Posted By: Joe

4. I don't think Galileo was condemned in 1770. I think it was in 1633.

   Posted By: Paul

5. Doubly wrong, Fr McDade. It has never been "forbidden to teach Galilean theories in the area of astronomy" in the Church or in any Catholic-majority country. The Church merely forbade Galileo's unauthorised interpretation of Scripture based on the Copernican theory, and the teaching of heliocentrism as the only true and possible explanation of astronomical observations.

   Posted By: Ronk

6. Marie, your separation of metaphysical and physical along quasi-Duhemian lines will hold only insofar as you do not assert that science provides any guide to truth. The moment you have theories (and this holds just as much to Newton, Galileo and Einstein as to Darwin) claiming to be "true", you are already in the realm of metaphysics. Now, one might with good basis, hold to the truth of this or that theory, but this doesn't change the fact that it is metaphysical.

   Posted By: Adeodatus

7. Joe, Intelligent Design is based on making a value judgment. You gave the example yourself....'life is so amazing, it must have been instigated by a creator.'
   Science does not make value judgments.
   You have, in fact, just stepped into the realms of the metaphysical. Which is fine.
   
   But Intelligent Design is not science. You can call it your personal philosophy, if you like. But it's not science. And has no place in science education.
   
   
   
   

   Posted By: Marie H

8. There is great danger, Marie H, in taking the simplistic view that science deals with the natural world and God does not fit here, but in another category called metaphysics. On the contrary, anyone with genuine faith will argue that God is the reason and totality of the natural world.
   The danger lies in a great number of scientists who regard science as their faith system, their religion, and many in the world at large who have joined that "church". Central to their belief is that God does not exist - in words borrowed from the "Enlightenment" - there is only "Truth, Reason and Science", and no God!
   With respect to the supernatural, or miracles, these fanatical scientists, including Dawkins, do not say "beyond the capability of science to explain", but will say "impossible, hallucination, self-hypnosis, hoax,...etc.", even when the supernatural event is indisputable, simply because to admit so is contrary to their belief system.
   No, Marie H, the church must not restrict itself to the social sciences, because science provides a special window into the might and power of God, which everyone, including the Church, has a right to gaze into. It also has a right to correct those who would think that science has disproved the existence of God.

   Posted By: Joe

9. Evolution is a fantasy not worthy of the name philosophy, and is not even science. Never has been. It is bunkum.

   Posted By: Michael Webb

10. Adeodatus, science does not seek 'truth' as in whether a god exists or what a moral code should be.....science just observes the natural world, using the scientific method.
    You will notice in my first post that I pointed out even Richard Dawkins quite rightly acknowledges that science does not provide moral guidelines.
    Theories in science have nothing to do with the metaphysical. The word 'theory' comes from the Greek meaning to 'behold & wonder'. In science, it means that there's enough evidence from the natural world to consider a broader explanation for some natural process. Which, therefore, warrants further investigation, using the scientific method.
    As the scientific method deals with the natural world, scientific theories do not have roots in the metaphysical. If someone claims them to have, then he/she's stepped outside science.
    This is why you can have 2 equally prominent scientists who publish their work with equal scienific rigour....but who hold opposite personal views on a metaphysical matter like the existence of god.
    Their science hasn't given them a 'truth' or not.
    But it's the personal value judgments they've drawn about significance & meaning.
    So you can have a devoted Christian like Francis Collins as head of the Human Genome Project, & Richard Dawkins an avowed atheist working in the biological sciences & Lawrence Krauss, an astrophyscist & also an atheist, who champions the value of the metaphysical in the cognitive life of human beings.....which includes religious faith.
    They're all united in their work via the scientific method.....but, differ in the realms of values & meaning (i.e. the metaphysical).
    If people are to study their religion, I'd advise them to do a year or two of science....so they can learn what science is.....& what it is not.
    

    Posted By: Marie H

11. Since when have scientists been infallible? Despite what some scientists say, Darwin’s theory of evolution has never been proved scientifically -- and never will be. The missing inter-species links have never been found. What the Darwin believers fail to appreciate is that his theory assumes unscientifically that life began at random in the form of simple cell structure. What they have failed to explain scientifically or otherwise is how such a random process gave rise to orderly development of higher order cell structures and such a wide variety of stable living species?

    Posted By: Ray

12. Could evolution have actually occurred given the geological context of planetary change? Catastrophism has now replaced gradualism and the evidence suggests that there were six earth formation periods interspersed with five major cataclysmic events.
    
    The Permian Triassic extinction event rendered extinct 90% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species. The other four extinctions could probably have been worse.
    The destruction of life forms that existed prior to a cataclysm followed by the sudden appearance of life forms of a higher order is not compatible with evolutionary theory. The outcome of these events implies that the controlling influence of a Creator was at work.
    
    To say that God had no input into the ascending succession of stages of life forms, but created everything else is unreasonable. In 2006 Cardinal Christoff Schoenborn of Vienna, said that Darwin's theory of natural selection was incompatible with Christian belief. Catastrophism may well support the Cardinal's assumption.
    
    

    Posted By: Mervyn Pierce

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