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About card. Schönborn's Statement on Evolution
http://www.adaptive.it/ph/modpot.htm
by Bruno Caudana 12-JUL-2005
Copyright © 2005

[ Reference to card. Schönborn's statement on evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Schönborn ]

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry without an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection, is simply a nonsense if we accept Darwinian evolution as a scientific explanation of life as a physical process. It might be acceptable to cardinal Schönborn and the Catholic Church, but hopefully not to any scientist of today.

I understand that no Christian fellow can accept Darwinian evolution because it questions the existence of God at its very root, at least the existence of a personal God that directs human affairs and provides the moral law.

In fact, pope Benedict XVI explicitly and publicly rejected evolutionism during his pontificate's inauguration mass with these words: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary". He spoke in italian, so his words may have gone undetected by the rest of the world, but they are reported here:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html

Moreover, in several of his writings, he said that Christianity is put in peril by those theories of modern science wherever matter generates thought and rationality, whereas the Christian Truth assumes that matter originates from thought and rationality (from the 'logos'). This is the 'Mind first' assumption, strictly related to the 'Creation' assumption and to the foundation of any normative ethics.

Hence, not only evolutionism, but also any neurobiological theory of thought and rationality seems unacceptable to Christianity, which stays bound by St. Thomas Aquinas' definition of rationality as subject to Revealed Truth. Faith is the criterion of rationality for St. Thomas Aquinas, and so is for any Christian fellow today. No truth can be in contrast with the Revelation (Summa contra Gentiles, I,7). In the case of such contrast, the Truth of Faith wins and it is the rule of any and all rationality. If something is in contrast with the Revealed Truth it is not rational, according to St. Thomas Aquinas. It is God's Word first, against anything contrasting with it. This cornerstone has never been rejected by Cristianity and never will be, irrespective of any scientific evidence or theory to the contrary, otherwise disruption of Christianity would be impending. The root of this is in the Gospel of St. John: "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (11:25-26). It is the foundation of Christianity and cannot be amended.

I am sorry, but the time has come to choose whether to be on the side of faith or on the side of modern science and reason. I am on the side of modern science, and I consider the idea of God unnecessary and very strange indeed. We can survive even without that God, apparently dispenser of all intentionality and design, invented by our ancestors some 35,000 years ago.

[ Thanks to Wendy, Alfonso Messina and Lorenzo Matteoli for smoothing my english ].

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