BISHOP DONALD SANBORN, at his blog In Veritate, answers a college student’s questions about faith and the meaning of existence. An excerpt:

Question 2. What are your views on evolution? Evolution is a proven fact. How do you reconcile it with Christianity?

Answer. Evolution is an absurd system which is based on an absurd principle: that something comes from nothing, that the greater comes from the lesser, that the more perfect comes from the less perfect, that order and constancy come from chance. Evolution is a modern mythology which makes the systems of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses look rational. It is to say that there is design without a designer. It is a creed that is too unbelievable to recite. Indeed, I think that one would have to be psychotic to really believe that it is true. It would be psychotic, for example, to say that the music of Mozart was composed by his cat’s walking on a piano. Yet evolution asserts this very principle.

What is possible is something commonly called microevolution, which is not evolution according to the Darwinian sense. It is to say that species, by means of a natural ability built into them by the Creator, can adapt over time to certain environments, producing variants that are not new species, but simply subspecies which do not differ substantially from other animals or plants within the same species. There is a lot of evidence for this. Darwinian evolution has no evidence to support itself, and there is indeed much evidence against it.

Question 3. Humans, by their nature, are considered animals in the grand scheme of things. We have certain instincts that mirror other animals, and we have been classified as a “great ape.” In our intelligence, of course we see ourselves as “special” and “made in God’s image.” But in reality we are simply well-developed creatures that belong to the biosphere. With this in mind, what makes us to be “special” in the eyes of the Divine?

Answer. Humans are not brute animals, although animality is part of their nature. They are essentially distinct from brute animals inasmuch as they have an intellect and free will. This is proven by the fact that human beings can abstract from material reality and know immaterial objects (e.g., possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, causality, justice, charity, moral guilt, to mention only a few). This knowledge of immaterial things proves that there must be an immaterial faculty which is capable of such knowledge. This we call the intellect. Because man has an intellect, he also has a will, which is the faculty which pursues the good, and not merely the good of the sensible order (e.g., food and sex) but also of the immaterial order such as justice, mercy, thoughtfulness, an ordered society, law, marriage, etc. It is intellect and will which make man special in God’s eyes, since by these faculties man is constituted in God’s image.

Question 4. Science has come to explain many of the ways that life and the universe work. We know the mechanisms behind every human function. We know what makes the sun shine bright. We know how mountains formed. We know how the earth formed, and have a pretty good idea of how the universe formed. Because all of these processes have been explained by science, where is there room for a designer?

Answer. I think you greatly exaggerate how much science knows about the universe, and especially about the human body. There are many, many mysteries which have not yet been solved.

There is evidence of an awe-inspiring order in the universe, as well as an unrelenting constancy (e.g., the absolutely predictable movements and/or stability of the sun, moon, stars, and earth). There is this same order and constancy in the activity of minerals, plants, and animals. There is so much order and constancy, if fact, that physical “laws” have been established. But order and constancy cannot come from chance. Chance may produce a fleeting moment of order, strictly speaking, but cannot produce a constant order. For example, if you were to win the lottery repeatedly, people would accuse you of fraud, and of having fixed the lottery somehow, because they know that chance, by its very nature, cannot produce constancy. Indeed, the very word chance presupposes an order which chance does not follow. The word chance is incomprehensible without order.

Order and constancy demand an intelligent designer. Even many atheists admit this. But once you admit an intelligent designer, you are logically committed to admit an infinite God. But I would have to prove it to you if you are interested.

To say that there is design without a designer is psychotic.

Even your statement in No. 4 speaks of design and of causes: “We know the mechanisms…” “ We know what makes the sun shine bright.” “We know how mountains formed.” Even in the atheistic scientific world, these explanations require the recognition of cause and effect, and of constant scientific laws, which are in turn based on the unchanging nature of minerals, plants and animals. But cause and effect necessarily leads one to posit an infinite God. Scientific laws necessarily demand fixed natures which always act in the same way. And everything demands a cause for existence itself, something that causes existence, but which did not itself receive existence from anyone or any thing.

Here is an interesting comment from a reader at In Veritate:

I graduated with a degree in Chemistry (and I took more Physics classes than was required for my major). A scientist realises that there is more that scientists do NOT know than what they know. What this realisation produces in the scientist is deep humility. The more one discovers, the more one is in awe of the wonders of the natural world. I would say that the more one studies science, the more one believes in God. Scientists who reject the death and resurrection of Jesus outright, without truly examining what happened, are not applying the scientific method properly. They need to approach the subject with an open inquiring mind: let’s assume that Christ died, which is most likely given the circumstances. Let’s assume that he rose from the dead. A scientist would ask: how did he rise from the dead? That’s a very interesting question. Since no other human being has, on his own power, risen from the dead, what does that say about Jesus? On the other hand, if you are an atheist and you reject outright the existence of God, the Resurrection is the last subject you would want to discuss. I have noticed that most atheists and agnostics stumble at the Resurrection. They say to themselves, “better not go there because if we do . . . ” [emphasis added]

— Comments —

Mrs. T. writes:

Fantastic!! Thank you for posting. I’m keeping this one.

Please follow and like us: