The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Apparently, there is a big confab right now at the Vatican to decide what to say about intelligent design vs. evolution. A friend insisted, for some reason, that I offer an opinion. Heck, everyone is doing that, it seems.

Ever since Pope Benedict XVI said, in his inaugural mass, that we are not "some casual and meaningless product of evolution," the Catholic Church has found itself in the spotlight, asserting, against the adminbots and pundits of a materialist society, the we are purposeful and meaningful.

I can't think what to suggest, but try this: Recover your heritage.

Recover the traditional Catholic idea of evolution, which is not a Darwinian struggle for survival.

There is a whole Catholic way of understanding evolution that was buried by vulgar Darwinism, which was well suited to the expansion of a military and commercial empire - the materialism of expressways and shopping malls. Darwinism told people what they already knew (that the big guns win) through the entire history of life. That was false but in an age of imperial expansion and falling trees, it sounded true.

There were non-Darwinian Catholic contributors to evolution theory - St. George Mivart and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. What about Giuseppe Sermonti or Jerome Lejeune?

Mivart summarized the problems with Darwinism as follows, a hundred and thirty-five years ago:

What is to be brought forward (against Darwinism) may be summed up as follows:
That "Natural Selection" is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. That it does not harmonize with the co-existence of closely similar structures of diverse origin. That there are grounds for thinking that specific differences may be developed suddenly instead of gradually. That the opinion that species have definite though very different limits to their variability is still tenable. That certain fossil transitional forms are absent, which might have been expected to be present. That there are many remarkable phenomena in organic forms upon which "Natural Selection" throws no light whatever. (From By Design or by Chance?, p. 70-71.)

These are still problems. Nothing has changed except that the Darwinists are louder, ruder, and more bullying than ever.

Maybe it's time to just tell the Darwinists to siddown, shuddup, and let others talk for a while.

Gosh, if the Catholic conclave did that, it would be making a real contribution. The Catholics who have weighed in on the subject may be right or wrong, but it's time the Church recovered its own history and gave them a listen. Even if a person is largely wrong, the points on which he is right might show a way forward.

It's almost not worth deciding what to do about Darwinism, because it is on the way out anyway. But we must find some comprehensive way of addressing the history of life. Listening to the muffled or silenced voices - especially from one's own tradition - would be a good beginning.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).