Creatio aut Evolutio

CREATION VS EVOLUTION

Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,

Previously the Old Testament reading in the daily Divine Liturgy was Genesis 1:1-19 where we talked about the Fine Tuning of the Universe. Then on the next day the Old Testament reading was Genesis 1:20-2:3 where we talked about Days of Creation. Following that is the Old Testament reading from Genesis 2:4-17 where we will talk about Creation vs Evolution. Finally the Old Testament reading will be Genesis 2:18-25 where we will talk about Mitochondrial Eve. Hopefully you, dear reader, will begin to see the unity of Science and Faith which Pope St. John Paul II explains in his encyclical, “Fides et Ratio,” which means (when translated) “Faith and Reason.” The following material for today’s discussion is derived from an apologetics training course that I gave some ten years ago entitled, “How the Church Deals with Evolution.” Yes, it’s long-winded and detailed with lots of science and lots of quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and from Papal Encyclicals (those prior to the current Pontiff), but truth cannot be distilled into a Facebook meme or Twitter soundbite. (PS, just wait till I get to Dr. High Ross’ work on the Book of Job.)

Theory

1. Definition: The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.
2. A theory is a way of explaining one’s observations of facts and itself is NOT fact.
3. Examples
a. The Atomic Theory is an analysis on the nature of matter
b. The Special Theory of Relativity is an analysis of the structure of space-time
c. The General Theory of Relativity is an analysis of existence and action of gravitation
d. The Theory of Evolution is an analysis of the process of change in the inherited traits of organisms across of generations

Fact

1. Definition:
a. A thing done
b. The quality of being actual
c. Something that has actual existence
2. Examples:
a. Matter can be sub-divided into smaller particles
b. Objects approaching light speed get more massive
c. A dropped object falls
d. Organisms change over generations

Evolution

1. Definition:
a. A process of change in a certain direction
b. A process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state
2. Examples:
a. Domestication of wolf to dog
b. Adaptation of viruses and bacteria to medicine
c. Progression from ape to man

Creation

1. Definition:
a. The act of bringing the world into ordered existence
b. The act of making, inventing, producing
2. Examples:
a. Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Big Bang
b. Made, Invented or Produced: Cars, jets, trains, houses, etc.
3. St. Augustine: "[T]hough God formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man’s soul, too, God created out of nothing, and joined to the body, when he made man" (The City of God 14:11 [AD 419]).

Three Basic Positions on Origin of the Cosmos, Life and Man:

1. Special or Instantaneous Creation: a given thing did not develop, but was instantaneously and directly created by God
2. Developmental Creation or Theistic Evolution: a given thing did develop from a previous state or form, but that this process was under God’s guidance
3. Atheistic Evolution: a thing developed due to random forces alone

Evolution answers HOW things originated, NOT WHY:

1. Universe: Cosmological Evolution
2. Life: Biological Evolution
3. Man: Human Evolution

Related to the question of how the universe, life, and man arose is the question of when they arose.

1. Those who attribute the origin of all three to special creation hold that they arose at about the same time (e.g., 6 to 10 thousand years ago).
2. Those who attribute all three to atheistic evolution have a much longer time scale and generally hold:
a. The universe to be ten billion to twenty billion years old,
b. Life on earth to be about four billion years old, and
c. Modern man (the subspecies homo sapiens) to be about thirty thousand years old.
3. Those who believe in varieties of developmental creation hold dates used by either or both of the other two positions.

Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican Council I solemnly defined that everyone must "confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing" (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5). The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebulae, and planets were created at that time or whether they developed over time (e.g., in the aftermath of the Big Bang). However, the Church would maintain that, if the stars and planets did develop over time, this still ultimately must be attributed to God and his plan. Scripture records: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host [stars, nebulae, planets] by the breath of his mouth" (Ps. 33:6).

Evidence of the Big Bang and Cosmological Evolution:

1. Large Scale Homogeneity of the Universe indicates a common, central point of origin.
2. The Hubble Diagram: the further away objects are from one another, the greater the red shift in their spectrum, and this indicates the expansion of the universe from a common, central point.
3. Abundance of Light Elements: the ratios of hydrogen to helium are mathematically consistent with what would be expected on initial hydrogen fusion during and after the Big Bang.
4. Cosmic Microwave Background: the current temperature (2.725 Kelvin) of the universe as measured from background is consistent with what mathematics predicts would be the case 15 billion years after the Big Bang.
5. Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background are consistent with the hyper-inflation that occurred after the Big Bang.

Father Georges LeMaitre and the Big Bang:

1. Belgian Roman Catholic Priest
a. Lived from July 17, 1894 to June 20, 1966.
b. Professor of physics and astronomy at Universite Catholique de Louvain
c. Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
d. Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium
2. Pioneer in applying Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to Cosmology.
3. He deduced the Big Bang decades before Hubble demonstrated its existence via the red shift in far away stars.
4. His work was the basis for Pope Pius XII’s Humani Generis.
5. He died in 1966 shortly after learning of the discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation which was the final conclusive demonstration of the validity of his “Primeval Atom” Theory.

Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.

Evidence of Biological Evolution:

• Fossil Record and Radioactive Dating
• Genetics – Molecular Relatedness
• Anatomical Relatedness

These could equally be considered evidence of special creation over long periods of time.

Concerning human evolution, the Church allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions…take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it enquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter— [but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

Evidence of Human Evolution – same as Biological Evolution:

• Fossil Record and Radioactive Dating
• Genetics – Molecular Relatedness
• Anatomical Relatedness

These could equally be considered evidence of special creation over long periods of time.

Conclusion:

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.

Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared.

The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but has NOT infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.

Catholics should weigh the evidence for the universe’s age by examining biblical and scientific evidence.

"Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 159).

The contribution made by the physical sciences to examining these questions is stressed by the Catechism, which states, "The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers" (CCC 283).

Age of the Universe: NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Project estimates the age of the universe to be 13.73 billion years old based on the decay and distribution of the background microwave radiation.

Age of Earth: The age of Earth is about 4.55 billion years based on the radioactive decay of Pb-206 / 204 or Pb-208 / 204 in Earth’s crust.

Age of Homo Sapiens: The age of humanity is about 30,000 years old, based on radioactive dating of fossils (K-40 / Ar-40 and C-14 / N-14).

Radioactive Decay

An object’s age can be measured by comparing the ratio of daughter isotopes to parent isotopes and calculating the elapsed time based on a mathematical equation from particle physics.

Radioactive Decay Equation

A(t) = [Ao] [e(-ln2(t/T)]

Use this equation to determine the activity of a radioactive material at any given period of time.

A(t) = the number of radioactive atoms at time (t)
Ao = the number of radioactive atoms at time zero (originally)
e = base of the natural log
ln2 = a constant (0.693)
t = the number of days of decay
T = the half-life in days of the radioactive material of interest

Conclusion

While there are many interpretations of the six days of Genesis 1, they can be grouped into two basic methods of reading the account:

1. Chronological Reading
2. Topical Reading.

According to the chronological reading, the six days of creation should be understood to have followed each other in strict chronological order and were standard 24-hour days.

Some argue these may NOT have been standard days because the Hebrew word used for day (yom) may mean a longer-than-24-hour period (as it does in Gen. 2:4).

However, the text in Genesis 1 presents the days to us as standard days. At the end of each one is a formula like, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (Gen. 1:5). Evening and morning are, of course, the transition points between day and night (this is the meaning of the Hebrew terms here), but periods of time longer than 24 hours are not composed of a day and a night. Genesis is presenting these days to us as 24-hour, solar days. If we are not meant to understand them as 24-hour days, then it would most likely be because Genesis 1 is not meant to be understood as a literal chronological account.

Pope Pius XII warned us:

"What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East." (Divino Afflante Spiritu 35–36).

This leads us to the possibility that Genesis 1 is to be given a non-chronological, topical reading. Advocates of this view point out that, in ancient literature, it was common to sequence historical material by topic, rather than in strict chronological order. The argument for a topical ordering notes that at the time the world was created, it had two problems—it was "formless and empty" (1:2). In the first three days of creation, God solves the formlessness problem by structuring different aspects of the environment. In the second three days, God solves the emptiness problem by populating the sky, dry land and sea.

Sequencing of the Days of Creation

1. Giving form to the world in the first three days
a. On day one God separates day from night.
b. On day two he separates the waters below (oceans) from the waters above (clouds), with the sky in between.
c. On day three he separates the waters below from each other, creating dry land.
d. Thus the world has been given form.
2. Solving the world’s emptiness problem
a. The world is still empty, so on the second three days God solves the world’s emptiness problem by giving occupants to each of the three realms he ordered on the previous three days.
b. Thus, having solved the problems of formlessness and emptiness, the task he set for himself, God’s work is complete and he rests on the seventh day.

DAY 0
Formless Wasteland Darkness Covered the Abyss
No Space, No Time, No Matter, No Energy

DAY 1
Separating Day from Night
Big Bang, Decoupling of Matter, Nucleosynthesis, Star and Galaxy Formation

DAY 2
Separating the Waters Below from the Waters Above
Solar System / Planet Formation

DAY 3
Separating Dry Land and Seas, Creation of Plants
Continent Formation, Evolution of Photosynthesis, Production of N2 / O2 Atmosphere

DAY 4
Creation of Lights in the Sky
Breakup of Planetary Cloud Cover from O2 Formation via Photosynthesis.

DAY 5
Creation of Sea Animals and Birds
Evolution of Aquatic Life and Dinosaurs (progenitors of birds)

DAY 6
Creation of Animals and Man
Evolution of Mammals and Man

DAY 7
God Rested
Start of Local Calendar Time

The argument is that all of this is real history: it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis would have understood it as such. Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, then it still records God’s work—things God really did. The Catechism explains that "Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day" (CCC 337), but "nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun" (CCC 338). It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

Out of Africa Hypothesis

Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch leaving Africa around 60,000 years ago. These emigrants spread to the rest of the world, replacing other Homo species already there, such as Neanderthals and Homo Erectus. The hypothesis is derived from research in several disciplines, chiefly genetics, archaeology and linguistics. Examination of mitochondrial DNA in fact indicates that all women are descended from the same woman – Eve.

In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated, "When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam, and which, through generation, is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own" (Humani Generis 37).

The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states: "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents" (CCC 390). Conclusion: If there is no Fall, then there is no Redemption.

The Catholic Church has always taught that “No real disagreement can exist between the theologian and the scientist provided each keeps within his own limits…If nevertheless there is a disagreement….it should be remembered that the sacred writers, or more truly ‘the Spirit of God who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men such truths (as the inner structure of visible objects) which do not help anyone to salvation;’ and that for this reason, rather than trying to provide a scientific exposition of nature, they sometimes describe and treat these matters either in a somewhat figurative language or as the common manner of speech those times required, and indeed still requires nowadays in everyday life, even amongst most learned people" (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 18).

As the Catechism puts it "Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of the faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are" (CCC 159). The Catholic Church has no fear of science or scientific discovery.

Conclusion from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Pages 53-54: “…we [the agnostic] had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? ….Without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? Or did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time! Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life. But we believed in life-of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet, there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Or course we couldn’t. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that. At least, so the chemist said. Hence, we saw that reason isn’t everything.”