CSPC Forum Attingere

On the occasion of Darwin’s 200th birthday, the Harvard Catholic GSAS Association sponsored a talk titled, “‘Adam’ and ‘Eve:’ Rising Apes or Fallen Angels?  Charles Darwin and Christianity.”

The presentation was by a local professor of Christian Ethics, who I will refrain from naming, so that any responsibility for the mis-interpretation of his talk falls solely on me and does not reflect upon the speaker.

The outline of the talk included three major areas:

1. Ideas about science and religion
2. Comments on intelligent design
3. People working on linking science and religion

In the first section, the speaker referred to Genesis chapter 2 and quoted the verse, “God looked at everything… and called it very good.”  He also mentioned that in the Ark story that the animals were saved to.  His point was that one interpretation of this verse is that “man” is not the only “good” in the world.  This idea was meant to present a shift of emphasis from a “human-centric” view.

A second point in this first section was to differentiate between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist religions (Catholicism being among the later).  In this section of the talk he brought up examples of differences in the biblical creation story as reported by different authors.  In one version God creates man and woman; in another, God creates man, then the animals, then woman.  The speaker’s point here was twofold.  One was to acknowledge that of course there are contradictions and errors in the bible and that a literal interpretation is not logically possible.  However, by looking at this specific difference, he established that the order of creation is not necessarily set.  An important point to Christians who agree with current theories of evolution.

From here, several minutes were spent transversing the evolution of the “psychology of the masses” if you will.  The speaker talked about how early interpretations of the bible placed man at the top of the creation pyramid and makes it easy for us to understand how the first assumption of a geocentric cosmos was a natural first choice, and how displacing that view for a heliocentric view was viewed as heretical, since it appeared to undermine the primacy of humankind.  Then Darwin comes along and says that we are not a “special” creation by God, but the product of a process…

From here, our speaker provided a variety of quotes from such learned people as Sir Isaac Newton and others presenting perspectives which weave together creation and the divine, and the discovery of God through the study of the natural world.  This was perhaps the second section of the talk, since there was a brief nod to the idea of intelligent design although little direct discussion on the topic.

From here we landed solidly in the third part of the talk which presented quotations and examples of science and religion working together.  In particular, the discovery of “Peking Man” by a Jesuit; the discussion of science as a quest to discover God as a working principle; and mention of the current Catholic acceptance of evolution.

One of the more interesting ideas from this section of the talk was the presentation of humans not as a static point, but rather as the “axis and arrow of evolution, which is something much finer”… a quote attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and which lead me to discover the “Journal of Religion & Science”, a publication which I would gratefully ask readers of this column to comment on.

Following the talk, there were some interesting questions.  One of which was whether the soul could also have evolved, or was there a point when it appeared?  This would of course also tie into debates about the development of the mind… a debate I heard actively discussed on public radio this past week.

Thank you for your time, attention, and comments.