Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design

The emergence of public debate on this topic is striking. It was, until very recently, as taboo from "respectable" scientific publications as [ahem] a certain liturgical topic [the Latin Mass] was from "respectable" Catholic publications. I believe the internet has been significant in both arenas.

Too many assume uncritically that the whole Creation/Evolution/Intelligent Design boils down to one of two choices: either we are highly-evolved apes, or God created the World in 6 calendar days of 24 hours. This has never been the true Catholic position.

According to the unvarying tradition of the Church: one must read Scripture within the Tradition of the Church, since the Bible is itself part of Tradition, it does not stand over and above it. This means that when interpreting Scripture one must take account of the interpretations offered by the Church Fathers – the source of the Church's Tradition – and by the Magisterium, the shepherd and arbiter of the Church's Tradition.

Newcomers to the topic are often surprised how wide is the interpretation of the Scriptures permitted by the Catholic Church, which normally confines Herself to rejecting certain specific errors of interpretation. This is entirely within the spirit of the Church, whose understanding is always growing from one generation to the next, just as the mustard seed grows to be "the Greatest of all Trees."

Can we go back to Genesis?

There are three broad classes of interpretation of Genesis, all admissible to Catholics, other things being equal.

1. The "ordinary week" interpretation. The days of Genesis 1 are six 24-hour days (+ the 7th). There have always been dissenters of stature from this view, including S. Augustine. The Summa Theologica, Prima Pars 65 - 74, deals with this topic with typical thoroughness. Note that while St Thomas is unswerving in the position that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, he by no means insists on Protestant-style literal interpretation, & discusses very matter-of-factly the position that the ‘days’ could be a literary/theological device.

2. The "day-age" interpretation. The Hebrew word for day (yom) also can represent a longer period of time than 24 hours, as it clearly does in Genesis 2:4 ("the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens"). According to this view, the days of Genesis 1 represent long periods of time-even the billions of years modern science talks about. I personally think this line of thought is inadmissible; trying to have it both ways. The real question is whether Genesis 1 is trying to tell us anything in chronological sequence at all.

3. The "framework" interpretation. This view holds that the six days of creation are not intended to convey anything in particular about the time or sequence in which God created things. Instead they represent a literary/theological framework into which the events of creation are fitted. S. Thomas calls them “instants” in the Eternal Plan of Creation. When all six (or seven) ‘instants’ are manifested, the Universe is in existence.

The six days of creation are divided into two sets of three.

[A] The Work of Division or Distinction

In the first set, God divides one thing from another:

day from night,

waters above from below, and

land from water.

[B] The Work of Adornment

In the second three days, God goes back over the realms he produced by division and populates or adorns them.

He populates the day and night with the sun, moon, and stars;

the waters above and below with birds and fish.

And lastly he populates the land (between the divided waters) with animals and man.

This is supported by the beginning and end of the narrative.

At the beginning we are told that "the earth was without form and void" (Gen. 1:2). The Work of Distinction addresses the "without form", and the Work of Adornment addresses the "void".

Likewise, at the end of the narrative we are told "the heavens and the earth were finished [i.e., by distinction], and all the host of them [i.e., by adornment]" (2:1).

People have recognised for centuries that this is the ordering principle at work in Genesis 1 (Aquinas, ST 1:74:1). The question is whether God actually used that ordering when he created things or whether it is meant figuratively. The creation of the sun on the fourth day, after the creation of the day-night cycle, would suggest the latter. If the sun were not created until the fourth day, how do we know it was the fourth day?

The ‘Framework’ interpretation thus accords well with the text of Genesis, with what modern science suggests, and with the Catechism's interpretation of the six days.

I personally think the weight of evidence is towards an “Old Earth”. Young-Earth proponents can point to difficulties & apparent contradictions, which if genuine are important, but there is a vast amount of contrary evidence. To name but two, the global deposit of iridium clay at the K-T boundary cannot, as far as I can see, be reconciled with a worldwide flood, but provides convincing proof of worldwide extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous.

All over the world, at the precise line of division between the Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks (according to Mainstream science), there is a very thin layer of clay, anomalously rich in the element iridium, and with traces of pure carbon. This accords well with the hypothesis that a large iridium-rich meteorite struck the Earth, spraying the entire planet with its unusual dust, and setting off worldwide brush fires that provided the charcoal - the carbon. If these rocks were really laid down by a very sudden flood, and do not represent a chronological sequence, how did the iridium clay get itself inserted in precisely this position worldwide?

The annual rings of bristle-cone pine trees can be matched back from tree to tree for 10,000 years.

The whole point is that it is not just one line of evidence (of which I have given only two) – each of which can be picked at – but the consistency of innumerable apparently unrelated lines of evidence from all the sciences, that makes me incline to the Mainstream account and cautious of the ‘Young Earth’ account.

‘Classical Neo-Darwinism’ states that the world around us was generated by "random" mutations or movements of atoms. But what exactly do we mean by "random?" See the page on Randomness.

Literalists point out that atheistic Darwinism was seized upon by the Manchester Materialists for their "dark Satanic mills" and the Nazis for their Extermination Camps. Yet this is not a proof of the "Six Literal Days" position: "The Abuse does not invalidate the Use". "Something" happened, but we cannot follow the coming of the world into existence step-by-step as by a video, in our present state of knowledge.

A couple of other points of relevance.

(1) Notice that we are all descended in the flesh from Adam. Eve was, in some way, derived physically from the body of Adam. If God had created them both & independently, then Eve would not have been “one flesh” with Adam.

(2) MItochondrial DNA has now established that all living human females do have one common ancestor.

(3) Genetic fingerprinting has revealed that there was more genetic variation in 20 chimpanzees at San Diego Zoo, in about 1980, than there is in the entire modern human race.

(4) The Mainstream scientific journal New Scientist, commenting on this, remarked that the human species had “gone through a ‘genetic bottleneck’". at the time my reaction was, ‘Why not stop mincing words & name the ‘genetic bottleneck’ Adam and Eve?!

(5) So what are apes & monkeys, if they are not our blood ancestors? St Thomas writes “God created the apes to show us what WE would have been like if we had no souls”.

(6) On the topic of the Divine Paternity of Jesus: have you noticed that, on the Holy Shroud of Turin, Jesus has no navel? My grandfather always told us that Adam had no navel: and Christ is the Second Adam. I am surprised that books & DVDs on the Shroud never seem to mention this.