Creationism, New Darwinism, and Intelligent Design

Like in my last blog about the seminar, I start with the last slide:

I answer this query with an absolute YES.

Many physicists, including me, are interested in religious questions. This seminar, in which 61 physics and nine theological students discuss Which Truths We Can Build Upon? Physics and Theology in Discourse proves this.

My personal deliberations on the matter are documented in blogs. One of the most recent ones, The Old One, references older ones.

Here is the definition of creationism in Christianity, announcing "alternative" thinking.

 

As far as creationism is concerned, I read Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True and was shocked how, in the States, the Bible stories about creation are still taken literally. For me, as a European, Jerry repeated his arguments too frequently, so they became boring. I stopped reading after having finished two-thirds of the book.

A brutal query for creationists

In the seminar, I learned about an auxiliary construction supporting the claim that the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old: God has made the world look older!

Don't creationists read the Church Fathers? On the other hand, I wouldn't go so far as to claim that the stories of creation are not factual texts but rather Hebrew poetry. They are testimonies of faith and hope in a God who sent his stubborn people into Babylonian captivity but had created a good earth for men and women.

Intelligent design, a variant of creationism, was hyped in the States at the beginning of the century. In 2006, Red Baron gave a talk at the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft titled Intelligent Design versus Darwinismus Glaubenskrieg um die Evolution.

The generally accepted theory about evolution is Neo-Darwinism, for which the students showed a slide.

The students also pointed to a negative outgrowth of the theory of evolution, which Darwin instigated in a paper in 1871. Social Darwinism spread everywhere at the beginning of the 20th century and reached its gruesome apotheosis with the racial ideology of the Nazis.

It is evident that the view of Social Darwinism's man/woman is incompatible with the biblical view. We are no animals. Humans have moral principles. The good Samaritan gives us a shining example of human care. 

Still, Pope Pius XII voiced his reservations in the Encyclia Humani Generis in 1950. The first argument is no longer valid. I would remove the unfortunate wording "proven doctrine" and replace it with scientific knowledge.

The second argument is void, for physics has no claim on souls. This reminds me of a discussion on evolution as a young physicist with a local vicar. He felt cornered and said, "But then you have to admit that at one time, God implanted the soul into the humanlike being created by evolution," an argument that I accepted.

Indeed, for a long time, the question has shifted from "How did the world come into being "to "Why did the world come into being?" This question overwhelms physicists.

The European Union drew its conclusion since the acceptance of evolution theories is overwhelming.

Here is the poll result: Do you believe that humans were created by God, or do you think that humans evolved from other life forms?

I feel like finishing this blog with one of my favorite texts by St.Paul. His words in 1 Corinthians 9-13, which I quoted before, are timeless and profound: ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now, we see only a reflection in a mirror; then, we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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