My dogma is bigger than yours

In a footnote to chapter nine of Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett alerts his readers to a piece written by Cristoph Cardinal Schörnborn in which he clarifies the views of the Catholic Church toward evolution. In 1996, Pope John Paul II gave an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences entitled "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth," in which he spoke about evolution. His main point was that the emergence of the human spirit (for my money, "spirit" is the Fergie of meaningless buzz-words, being both the most despicable and the most ubiquitous) could not be located on an evolutionary timeline and therefore weighed toward divine intervention. Let's just elide over the fact that the soul has never been scientifically demonstrated in the first place. John Paul and Schörnborn don't worry much about that, so neither will we.

In "Finding Design in Nature," Schörnborn attempted to remedy false notions about Church doctrine which had cropped in the nine years since the papal address. John Paul mentioned evolution but did not condemn it as false, so it's perfectly reasonable for any reader to assume that he accepted the fact that evolution is a real process. The important distinction, for Schörnborn, is that Christian teachings are fundamentally incompatible with "Neo-Darwinian doctrine," which he criticized as ideological rather than scientific. Neo-Darwinism denies the supposedly abundant evidence of design in the universe.

With formidable indignation, he quoted a1985 writing by John Paul in which he touted the "finality" of life on earth. So far as I know, finality is not a scientific concept. How would one test an organism to determine whether it is "final"? Does it have something to do with cell structure, anatomy, observed mutations? Is there a finality gene? Presumably John Paul's address was given in Italian; the Italian finalità may have some connotation or scientific application of which I am unaware. More likely, though, it's just jargon made up by JPII to make a case for something that just isn't so.

The late Pople continued: "To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us." This is a baffling role reversal. The merest thought reveals that divine intervention is the bankrupt explanation in this discussion- what Dennett would call a "skyhook," a device which purports to do the work of a crane absent any actual superstructure to support it. Claiming that God is responsible for any observed phenomenon is intellectually lazy. Scientists have studied processes of differential replication for 149 years and have learned much about how random, stepwise processes can carry a system from simplicity to complexity. Positing divine intervention does not require any tests or observations, or even any thought. Pointing your finger at someone else and saying, "No, you're the one who refuses to use your brain," is worth 0 points. Sorry.

Schörnborn goes on to defend the new pope, Benedict XVI, from the scurrilous neo-Darwinists who would warp and corrupt his pronouncements for their own wicked ends. He doesn't cite any of these nefarious materialist rogues, so I have to doubt their existence. Who would make such a claim? I wouldn't go out of my way to get Benny on my side of the Beatles vs. Stones controversy, much less something meaningful like the origin of life. Furthermore, who believes that the pope doesn't think God had anything to do with the development of life on Earth? XVI is just as wrong as I expect him to be.

The Cardinal concludes by reiterating that design is plainly visible in all of nature. Again, no scientific work is cited to support this claim. It is a bare assertion. It's not that I expect Schörnborn to publish articles in a biology journal. He has better things to do; if he's anything like American bishops, that includes protecting child molestors. In any event, there is a sizable catalogue of supposed scientific work in support of the design theory. That body of work is rejected in toto by respectable scientists, but if the Cardinal is going to try to use science to support his Stone Age ideas, the least he could do is bring some science into it.