Intelligent Design belittles God, Vatican director says
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Catholic Online) -- Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might, according to the director of the Vatican Observatory.
VATICAN OBSERVATORY DIRECTOR SPEAKS ON EVOLUTION – Jesuit Father George V. Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, is pictured in a 1996 file photo in Washington. In a Jan. 31 West Palm Beach, Fla., talk, Father Coyne says that Christianity is “radically creationist,” though the theory of Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God. (CNS photo)
PrintScience is and should be seen as “completely neutral” on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results, says Father George V. Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, while noting that “science and religion are totally separate pursuits.”
Father Coyne is scheduled to deliver the annual Aquinas Lecture on “Science Does Not Need God, or Does It? A Catholic Scientist Looks at Evolution” at Palm Beach Atlantic University, an interdenominational Christian university of about 3,100 students, here Jan. 31. The talk is sponsored by the Newman Club, and scheduled in conjunction with the Jan. 28 feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Catholic Online received an advance copy of the remarks from the Jesuit priest-astronomer, who heads the Vatican Observatory, which has sites at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, and on Mount Graham in Arizona.
Christianity is “radically creationist,” Father George V. Coyne said, but it is not best described by the “crude creationism” of the fundamental, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis or by the Newtonian dictatorial God who makes the universe tick along like a watch. Rather, he stresses, God acts as a parent toward the universe, nurturing, encouraging and working with it.
In his remarks, he also criticizes the cardinal archbishop of Vienna’s support for Intelligent Design and notes that Pope John Paul’s declaration that “evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis” is “a fundamental church teaching” which advances the evolutionary debate.
He calls “mistaken” the belief that the Bible should be used “as a source of scientific knowledge,” which then serves to “unduly complicate the debate over evolution.”
And while Charles Darwin receives most of the attention in the debate over evolution, Father Coyne said it was the 18th-century French naturalist Georges Buffon, condemned a hundred years before Darwin for suggesting that “it took billions of years to form the crust of the earth,” who “caused problems for the theologians with the implications that might be drawn from the theory of evolution.”
He points to the “marvelous intuition” of Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman who said in 1868, “the theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of divine providence and skill.”
Pope John Paul Paul II, he adds, told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 that “new scientific knowledge has led us to the conclusion that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis.”
He criticizes Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna for instigating a “tragic” episode “in the relationship of the Catholic Church to science” through the prelate’s July 7, 2005, article he wrote for the New York Times that “neo-Darwinian evolution is not compatible with Catholic doctrine,” while the Intelligent Design theory is.
Cardinal Schonborn “is in error,” the Vatican observatory director says, on “at least five fundamental issues.”
“One, the scientific theory of evolution, as all scientific theories, is completely neutral with respect to religious thinking; two, the message of John Paul II, which I have just referred to and which is dismissed by the cardinal as ‘rather vague and unimportant,’ is a fundamental church teaching which significantly advances the evolution debate; three, neo-Darwinian evolution is not in the words of the cardinal, ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection;’ four, the apparent directionality seen by science in the evolutionary process does not require a designer; five, Intelligent Design is not science despite the cardinal’s statement that ‘neo-Darwinism and the multi-verse hypothesis in cosmology [were] invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science,’” Father Coyne says.
Christianity is “radically creationist” and God is the “creator of the universe,” he says, but in “a totally different sense” than creationism has come to mean.
“It is unfortunate that, especially here in America, creationism has come to mean some fundamentalistic, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis,” he stresses. “It is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God. The universe is not God and it cannot exist independently of God. Neither pantheism nor naturalism is true.”
He says that God is not needed to explain the “scientific picture of life’s origins in terms of religious belief.”
“To need God would be a very denial of God. God is not a response to a need,” the Jesuit says, adding that some religious believers act as if they “fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God.”
Yet, he adds, this is the opposite of what human intelligence should be working toward. “We should be seeking for the fullness of God in creation.”
Modern science reveals to the religious believer “God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God,” Father Coyne says, adding that this view of creation is not new but can be found in early Christian writings, including from those of St. Augustine.
“Religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.”
He proposes to describe God’s relationship with the universe as that of a parent with a child, with God nurturing, preserving and enriching its individual character. “God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words.”
He stresses that the theory of Intelligent Design diminishes God into “an engineer who designs systems rather than a lover.”
“God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” he said. “God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves.”
The concludes his prepared remarks noting that science challenges believers’ traditional understanding of God and the universe to look beyond “crude creationism” to a view that preserves the special character of both.
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Science is the process of discovering the perfect ultimate design GOD has provided us. They dont believe GOD to pave way to promote their business. Their are some derivation scientist have publish which was re-modeled by incoming scientist. They cannot prove incarnation.
Great Article. Much thanks to Blessed Pope John Paul II.
It was a jolt to read that “Intelligent Design reduces and belittles God’s power and might,” this from no less a source than the Director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. George V. Coyne, S.J. It may be that my concept of Intelligent Design (ID) is incorrect, but as understand it, ID means, at bottom, that God created the universe, and that evidence of this can be seen in the universe’s design and order. This is not a radically “fundamentalist” idea, like the Creationist’s taking Genesis literally. In fact, I thought it had always been basic to Catholicism that God left his fingerprints all over this universe that he gave us, and that one laudable aim of science was to discover them. One would assume very easily that an astronomer of the Vatican Observatory would do what he does largely for that precise reason — to see God’s own fingerprints in the ordered heavens.
So it’s disturbing to read that to "see" God in an ordered universe is to “belittle” him. Fr. Coyne says that “Religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.” Why “must” we? Does science say that God did NOT make the universe? Or that the universe is not “a watch that ticks along regularly”? If so, then it is news to most theists, and Fr. Coyne should correct us with a fuller explication of his cosmology. If, on the other hand, the answers to these questions is “No” — that is, if God DID create an ordered universe — then why does his having done so make him “dictatorial”? I have the sneeking suspicion that Fr. Coyne just doesn’t like “dictators,” not even divine ones. He says we must instead view God "more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words.” Hmmm. Interesting childhood. Well, . . . if my own father (Joseph S. Cortes, God bless his saintly soul) could be both a "dictator" and a loving, encouraging parent, I don’t see why God can’t. Indeed, by saying that the theory of Intelligent Design diminishes God into “an engineer who designs systems rather than a lover,” Fr. Coyne belittles lots of men in Cary, North Carolina, many of whom are both engineers AND lovers . . . of their wives, children, and fellow men.
It would have been “nice” to see from the Vatican Observatory a confirmation that, yes, God did leave signs of Himself in this ordered, created universe. Instead, what we get is that we’re foolish to look for this, and that our ideas “belittle” our Creator. Fr. Coyne says that “To need God would be a very denial of God. God is not a response to a need.” Good grief! Basic Catholic theology teaches that God is the Ultimate Necessity, in the sense that everything in creation is dependent on him. To acknowledge one’s need for God is to affirm him, not deny him. And although God is not “a response to a need,” he IS necessary, and it denies him not one bit to say so. Why is it that when what Catholics most need is a conveyor of truth, we get a contrarian polemicist? By the way, have you heard the one about the Dominican and the Jesuit?
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Here are a few words for Father Coyne and the Vatican from a Cambridge man who looked at this affair more than a few years ago:
“The popular perception is that increased scientific knowledge inevitably closes the gaps in our understanding, and progressively removes any need for non-natural explanations. However, biology is a clear example – perhaps it is the only example – where our increased knowledge has served to widen the gap rather than close it. Success in uncovering the molecular mechanisms of biology … does not explain how biology (began). In fact, the more of molecular biology we uncover, the stronger does the case for (intelligent) design become.”
David Swift, "Evolution Under the Microscope"
Good day.
This is a beautiful article. Fr. Coyne has brilliantly summed up how science and religion complement each other. Science does not negate faith, nor should religion need to suppress scientific progress. The Jesuits have shown that the two go hand in hand in building a better world.
Yannick,
He only meant that God doesn't intervene in the process of evolution.
"God does not intervene in creation"? "he merely encourages, nurtures, loves"? how about the incarnation? isn't that an intervention (the greatest at that)? He direct intervention in miraculous healing (miracle=the suspension of natural order) no intervention there? Thank God this jesuit is no theologian. Yes we should leave science to the scientist (word to the cardinal). But they (this jesuit scientist included)should also leave theology to the theologians. God does not intervene...what is he smoking????
De la nada, como causa y efecto; y la consiguiente consecuencia de atrambas: nada sale.
En el infinito Espacio de infita Luz iluminado y de infinita Vida poblado. Antes de este nuestro limitado Tiempo o Universo de oscuridad y d emuerte tuviera lugar:
En el infinito Esapcio de Luz y de Vida; Donde el que mora es morador y morada:
Del infinito principio esférico como causa que es el Dios Padre Luz -foco cúbico de luz de principio; Y del infinito fin como efecto que es el Dios Hijo Luz -foco cúbico de fin: En infinita función copulativa isótopica; Aparece el infinito medio centro
Vida cúbica Dios Espirittu Santo -cubo cúbico de intermendio-
Y en la parte de la parte de este infinito cubo-eférico de Luz y de Vida, -libre y responsablemente- retroyéndose a la ley de su principio origen: apareció este nuestro Tiempo limitado o universo de oscuridad y de muerte.
Nova,
I sense a lot of serious hurt and pain. I'm sorry for what pain you feel the Church might have done to you or the lack of support its members might have given you when you needed it most. I'll be praying for peace in your soul. Don't give up on God and the Catholic Church, they haven't given up on you.