Don’t ask me why, but Cardinal Shonborn in the NYtimes on Intelligent Design, etc.
EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance – or at least acquiescence – of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.
But this is not true. The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.
….Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.
The link requires registration, but I’ll just go ahead and tell you that most of them say yes to the "Do you believe in evolution" question, and those that don’t say something along the lines of I don’t want to say. Most, as well, don’t give much credence to Intelligent Design.
This is one discussion that usually drives me bats, being as unnuanced and uniformed as it is. The theory of evolution is far more than adaptation and survival of the fittest, or however the popular mind seeks to characterize it. The materialism and randomness at the heart of the theory must be dealt with by theists, who do their faith no credit by simply saying, "Oh, God could have started it all." At heart, the Darwinian theory of evolution and traditional Judeo-Christian theism are a much harder fit than many people think.
That said, I’m not for teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. What I am for is a more honest instruction in the theory of evolution – acknoweldging the problems, the gaps and the intelligent, scientifically-based challenges to it. One could do this, I’d think, without espousing Creationism. Not that the hysterical Darwinists would want you to think that, of course.
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