Evolution yes, Darwin no

Anthony Zimmerman
February 2, 1997
Reproduced with Permission

A statement made by Peter Wilders: "The progress in scientific knowledge...has led to a mounting attack upon evolution theory" is only half true (HPR October 1997). The other half must also be told. It is true that scientists are attacking Darwin's theory of evolution - his benighted evolution without God, spooked by a blind mechanism of natural selection. But it is far from true that scientists increasingly attack evolution itself. For example, the book by Michael J. Behe which Wilders cites attacks Darwinism, but it does not criticize divinely guided evolution.

The contemplation of designed evolution executed by God with creative power is the delight of many scientists. "There is intense excitement to be found in following the scientific evidence back toward life's origins" writes scientist Jim Brooks.

In recent years "scientific enquiry into the origin of life has been much more objective and of high academic quality" in contrast to what it had been from the 1920's into the 1940's (The Origins of Life, 150). The Pope himself - pace Wilders - is quite at home in scientific and philosophic circles.

Give glory to God who gazes into the abyss of our cosmos; who designed it lovingly for human habitation; who patiently supervised its construction during ten billion years while secondary causes paced through their sequences; who, we may believe, employed blessed angels as co-workers to co-execute the myriad details of the cosmic blue prints. Thomas would not find this unreasonable, see Summa Theologica, I, treatise on the angels.

Following the principle that God uses secondary causes, we can theorize - we have no proof - that He deployed battalions of specialist angels for a million projects of cosmic construction; artist angels to design flowers which are pleasing to the eyes, which also produce nectar; angelo-biologists to devise honey bees; and bio-chemist angels to invent human taste buds which sensate honey into sweetness. Periodically the flower angels, and the bee angels, and the human body angels - all the hard-hat angels - met to coordinate their labors. Theirs was a work of love: with God and under God, and in lively consort with each other, they crafted the cosmos into a palace; into living quarters fit for man, most especially for the God-man. The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament maturing under the baton of the Creator is sheer beauty.