Vatican newspaper weighs in on Darwin

February 03, 2009

At the beginning of the Year of Darwin-- which commemorates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of the Species-- journalist and historian Lucetta Scaraffia says that the significance of the scientist lies in his providing a conceptual framework of chance and necessity devoid of a sense of divine purpose. Noting that a large number of Americans do not believe in evolution, she attributes the increasing influence of creationism in Islam to tighter links with American creationists. Scaraffia observes that the Church never placed Darwin’s work on the Index of Forbidden Books and recalls statements made by Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II about evolution. Adding that Darwin’s work has been made an instrument in favor of atheism, Scaraffia says the Church has never believed that science and religion are incompatible, citing the example of the controversial Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. A recent biography of the Darwin by his descendant Randal Keynes traces the scientist’s atheism not to his scientific work, but to his reaction to the death of his daughter Annie. The principal question today, Scaraffia concludes, is not the relationship between science and the Bible, but between science and the very concept of faith: neurology, evolutionary psychology, and trends in the social sciences are positing that human culture and morality are simply a product of biology.

 

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Further information:

• Inizia l'anno di Darwin: Ma la biologia non spiega tutto l'uomo (L’Osservatore Romano)
• Pope Pius XII, encyclical letter Humani Generis (see nos. 5-6, 37-38)
• Pope John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1996)