From the pope’s 9-12-06 homily address at Regensburg:
We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But is such a thing still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success – inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn’t add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth – I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. With this faith we have no reason to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end. We rejoice that we can know God! And we try to let others see the reasonableness of our faith, as Saint Peter bids us do in his First Letter (cf. 3:15)!
Just one more nail in the coffin to the argument that Darwinism and theism are compatible. Agnostic/atheist scientists such as Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge claim the realm of science and the realm of religion are entirely separate. The twain shall never meet, and thus can never contradict one another. One can believe in Darwinism and embrace theism. Don’t believe such an absurdity! Darwinism is the creation story of materialistic philosophy: a way of accounting for existence without a supernatural creator. Even if God exists, they argue, He was not necessary to bring the universe into being, let alone into its present form. But if God is not necessary to explain our existence, then He is equally unnecessary in our lives as well. Although Darwinism does not necessarily exclude the possibility of God’s existence, it definitely excludes God’s involvement with the cosmos. And if God is not involved with the cosmos, then Christianity is false, and God is useless to us. We have no contact with him, and he has no contact with us. In fact, he doesn’t want to. This sort of deism is not reconcilable with the Christian conception of God.
Thinking to Believe 
October 6, 2006 at 2:42 am
As an atheist, I heartily agree. I’m much more on the side of Dawkins in that debate. You can’t have any useful religion without discounting the whole of modern science; science is meaningless if you randomly inject the miraculous where it suits your fancy.
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October 9, 2006 at 5:03 pm
That’s quite a claim! Depending on what you mean by “modern science,” I am not sure I can agree. If you mean “Darwinian evolution,” then I agree. But if you mean anything more than that I cannot agree, for it would imply that the Christian faith is opposed to the exploration of our world. That’s nonsense, both from a historical perspective as well as an ideological perspective.
Clearly there is more to modern science than Darwinian evolution. The vast majority of what goes on in the scientific world does not require belief in Darwinian evolution.
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October 9, 2006 at 8:00 pm
“The whole of modern science” I am referring to evolutionary biology, the big bang, et al.
Of course, there are areas of science that don’t require a commitment to these concepts. But if you’re talking about biology, physics or any related discipline – those are foundational concepts that explain and define the entire discipline.
The historical perspective is somewhat misleading, as it is only in the last two hundred years or so that science has proven the biblical myths of creation and the origins of the universe untrue. Isaac Newton did very good science, but he was limited in his scope by the knowledge available in his day and never had to cross that boundary.
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October 12, 2006 at 12:23 am
If you are talking about how the majority of biologists, for example, think of their discipline, then yes, they think of their discipline in Darwinian terms. But what difference is there between what a Darwinist and a creationist biologist would do in the lab? Do they not both study the body to figure out how it works? On a practical level Darwinism makes little difference in many areas of science. As the famed Darwinist, Jerry Coyne said,
“To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.”
Has science proven the Bible’s view of creation to be false? That depends on what you mean. One thing is clear. In the last 100 years science finally had to admit that the Bible was right all along: the universe had a beginning. Furthermore, science has done nothing to explain where life came from. The more scientists research the origin-of-life, the less they understand how it is possible. The hole keeps getting deeper, not filled in.
Regardless of how little or much Newton knew, the fact of the matter is that the modern scientific movement began in a Christian worldview using Christian presuppositions about the order in the universe, the reliability of the senses, etc. It was only with these Christian presuppositions that science succeeded in the West.
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