Like I have said before the debate between evolution and creationism has constantly been a debate one that doesn’t look like there will ever be a solution to. In a recent blog on Pure Pedantry, by Jake Young a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, there is discussion on some recent events within the Catholic Church. The blog discusses an article that appeared in The Economist that discusses how the dispute between religion and evolution has gone global. An article was written in the summer of 2005 by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna who challenged, “the idea that natural selection is an adequate explanation for the diversity and complexity of life in all its forms” (Young). Around the same time this article was written by the Archbishop a Jesuit astronomer, Father George Coyne, began to raise support for evolution. Many religious scientists have placed their beliefs in something called Intelligent Design. Because I was unfamiliar with what exactly this means I turned to Wikipedia.org and though I know some of its definitions are biased, I just wanted a basic understanding;
“Intelligent design is the proposition that certain features of the universe and of living things can better be explained by and intelligent cause rather than natural processes such as natural selection. It is a modern form of the teleological argument (an argument for the existence of God), framed in such a way that it does not specify the nature or identity of the designer. Its primary proponents believe the designer to be the Abrahamic God, and claim that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the evolution and origin of life” (Wikipedia).
Despite the fact that many religious scientist are now putting their faith in this intelligent design, many Catholic physicists, biologists and astronomers are adamant that there is no reason for their to change their views and feel that intelligent design is bad science; “And they expressed concern (as the Christian philosopher Augustine did in the 4th century) that if the Christian church teaches things about the physical world which are manifestly false, then everything else the church teaches might be discredited too” (Young). There are currently two camps among the Catholic Church trying to influence the pope on matters of science. In the one camp there are those who believe that physics and metaphysics should stay separated and that “natural phenomena have natural causes”. They also assert that, “every year the theory of evolution is consolidated with fresh evidence” (Young). The second camp includes those who believe that “Darwinian science should not seduce people into believing that man evolved purely as the result of a process of random selection” (Young). Young then brings up a good point, how long can religion survive if it continues to argue that empirical evidence is fictional? He questions, “Can it successfully argue that the science which has produced huge technical understanding and improvement in quality of life is at the same time fundamentally flawed?” (Young).
Jake Young’s answer to his final question was “no” and I would have to agree with him, how long can people keep arguing against something that is proved time and again through numerous means of research, they can’t. However, it appears by some of the comments posted in the blog from The Economist article that people are obviously not going to give up trying to disprove it. In his book Science in Action Latour does not directly talk about or discuss religion; however he does discuss the concept of networks, which he describes as a net, “The word network indicates that resources are concentrated in a few places- the knots and the nodes- which are connected with one another-the links and the mesh: these connections transform the scattered resources into a net that may seem to extend everywhere” (Latour, p.180). This concept of a network is that they are built of all these individual ideas, theories and facts and together they build this net of resources and information. This article specifically discusses Catholicism, which is its own network, as well as discusses evolution, which is also its own network. The difficulty here is if these two networks are separate of each other, is it possible for them to intertwine? Obviously several members of the Catholic clergy, mentioned in the article, do believe that it is possible for the two to intertwine as they are stating beliefs in some of the concepts of evolution. And though they are making claims that they believe in evolution, I would still like to believe that they also believe in God because they are representatives of the church. These examples of clergy extending their beliefs to accept ideas of evolution show how much more liberal the church is becoming in their beliefs. Years ago evolution wasn’t even mentioned in the church, and now it looks like it is not only being discussed but accepted. Even though Latour states that networks are independent structures, as he illustrates with his example of meteorology (Latour, p.181), where he says that to truly understand it you have to be, “inside their own network” (Latour, p.181) it is being proven otherwise by these clergymen believing in evolution. This is not to say that Latour’s theory of networks is wrong just that the theory itself has to evolve with the times. I don’t think that either network will ever be totally capable of completely intertwining or accepting the content of the other network because neither network is currently entirely backed by 100 percent proven facts. Evolution will never completely be proven because it happened such a long time ago that much of its evidence is gone. And religion, specifically creationism, will never be completely proven due to the same reasoning. However, with what each network currently contains information and fact wise it is reasonable for them to somewhat become intertwined in their beliefs.
Bibliography-
http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2007/04/evolution_and_religion_debate.php
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