The exchange with my “pro-evolution” correspondent has been continuing. I thought I’d share part of my latest reply:
With regard to Aristotle, it’s not a question of the origin of species, which is clearly to be found in the Creator, but in the hierarchy of life. Aristotle presents an ascending hierarchy from the lowest forms of life to the highest, i.e. man. His hierarchy mirrors the hierarchy employed by Darwinians, though of course he was writing 2,300 years or so before Darwin. The difference is that Aristotle places man above all the other creatures because of his ability to imagine and to reason in an abstract sense. The point is that the hierarchy has nothing to do with evolution. The fact that modern science has discovered that the animals closest to humanity in the hierarchy are more closely related genetically to man than those further down the hierarchy is exactly what we would expect, both as Christians and/or as classical philosophers. The fact that we share most of the same building materials as the apes is true; it is the material that God has used to create us. We also share most of the same materials as plants, in the sense that we are built of hydrocarbons; and nearly everything in creation, including inanimate objects, such as rocks, are built of the same basic molecular material. We have a lot in common with everything else in creation at the molecular or sub-molecular level. If apes are close cousins in terms of their chemistry, we should not forget that even a stone is a more distant cousin! We all bear the fingerprints of the One who created us. Logically, this points to the fact that we are related to a single source, not that we evolved from rocks to plants to animals to man by an impenetrably improbable, i.e. patently impossible, accident—or, to be accurate, billions upon billions of such patently impossible accidents. It seems to me that a belief in this sort of evolution involves a far greater degree of credulity than anything in the Creed.
Nice thoughts. But I personally don’t have a problem with evolution, well that is the transition from one species to another, not the totally random nonsense that atheistic darwinists spew out there. I like many other Catholics/Christians/theists don’t see why God could not have evolution as a part of his grand design.
But my question to you is this, how would you describe the other humanoid/ape like creatures out there. I don’t mean apes, I mean things like the neanderthal man, and others like it, including the find last year.
This is an honest question, I would like to know how you, someone who does not belive in evolution, would explain these things.
I have never thought ill of people who don’t believe in it, in fact my family holds no belief in darwin, I personally don’t care what it turns out to be in the end, Im sure that however it was, the Logod was behind it.
You make a good basic point, but I would bring up two things:
First, you are correct to point out that homology does not logically necessarily require descent, but inferring descent from homology is not unreasonable. After all, we know that descent does in fact cause genetic similarity — this is the whole principle behind DNA paternity tests or genetic family trees that track recessive genes, for instance. If we know with scientific certainty that descent causes genetic similarity within a species, it is not preposterous to suspect that it might be the efficient cause of genetic similarity between species as well.
Second, while you are careful to logically separate homology from descent, you then go on to somewhat carelessly connect descent and traditional Darwinism (which I distinguish from evolution more generally). There are a good number of critics of Darwin who accept descent and yet dispute the “mindless unguided chance” interpretation of it. Evidence for descent is not necessarily evidence for descent occurring by means of “billions and billions of impossible accidents.” One may accept the former and reject the latter.
Also, just to be clear, an Aristotelian hierarchy and genetic descent are not mutually incompatible (not, of course, that you claimed that they were.)
Dear Recent Convert,
Your question is for Joseph and not for me, but may I offer a couple of thoughts anyway?
Have you ever noticed how your own personal consciousness matures? Both what you thought and how you thought when you were 11 years old is very different from the what and how of now. Do you call that “evolution” or do you simply call it maturation? What is true for an individual is true for a species. No one of us is unique in that process. It’s the same for all of us.
Just a thought.
I reject accidental evolution, but I am also inclined to doubt continual intervention by the Creator in natural-world events which are no more closely related to the Covenant than the daily sunset. For that reason, I am open to designed evolution — that is, a biological system designed to bring forth new species without intervention. It is not a question of billions of absolute accidents, but of a series of events which are accidental in the immediate sense of non-intervention.
Aristotle’s hierarchy is not about the origin of living and material embodied forms; it is philosophy, not natural science. He mentions evolution in a different essay, and rejects it as a cause because accidents cannot be causes in that sense. No problem here.
The question is, can new species be born of the old, or, more specifically, (since I think it cannot happen at this point in history) could that ever have happened?
And then: what would constitute evidence that it did or did not happen?
It matters because the reigning concept on biology needs to be reconsidered in a manner that indicates familiarity with the evidence.