
Cardinal Ratzinger's Thoughts on
Evolution
An Excerpt From "Truth and Tolerance"
ROME, SEPT. 1, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Christoph
Schöönborn's July 7 editorial in the New York Times entitled
"Finding Design in Nature" provoked a flurry of reactions, both
supportive and critical.
Requests have begun to arrive in Rome for Benedict XVI to make some
sort of clarification on the Church's stand regarding evolution.
The following text, delivered in 1999 as part of a lecture at the
Sorbonne in Paris by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict
XVI) and subsequently published in the 2004 book "Truth and Tolerance"
(Ignatius), can give some clue as to the Holy Father's thoughts on the
question. The length of the paragraphs was adapted here slightly for
easier reading.
* * *
The separation of physics from metaphysics achieved by Christian
thinking is being steadily canceled. Everything is to become "physics"
again. The theory of evolution has increasingly emerged as the way to
make metaphysics disappear, to make "the hypothesis of God" (Laplace)
superfluous, and to formulate a strictly "scientific" explanation of
the world. A comprehensive theory of evolution, intended to explain the
whole of reality, has become a kind of "first philosophy," which
represents, as it were, the true foundation for an enlightened
understanding of the world. Any attempt to involve any basic elements
other than those worked out within the terms of such a "positive"
theory, any attempt at "metaphysics," necessarily appears as a relapse
from the standards of enlightenment, as abandoning the universal claims
of science.
Thus the Christian idea of God is necessarily regarded as unscientific.
There is no longer any "theologia physica" that corresponds to it: in
this view, the doctrine of evolution is the only "theologia naturalis,"
and that knows of no God, either a creator in the Christian (or Jewish
or Islamic) sense or a world-soul or moving spirit in the Stoic sense.
One could, at any rate, regard this whole world as mere appearance and
nothingness as the true reality and, thus, justify some forms of
mystical religion, which are at least not in direct competition with
enlightenment.
Has the last word been spoken? Have Christianity and reason permanently
parted company? There is at any rate no getting around the dispute
about the extent of the claims of the doctrine of evolution as a
fundamental philosophy and about the exclusive validity of the positive
method as the sole indicator of systematic knowledge and of
rationality. This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively
and with a willingness to listen, by both sides -- something that has
hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent. No one will be able
to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for
micro-evolutionary processes. R. Junker and S. Scherer, in their
"critical reader" on evolution, have this to say: "Many examples of
such developmental steps [microevolutionary processes] are known to us
from natural processes of variation and development. The research done
on them by evolutionary biologists produced significant knowledge of
the adaptive capacity of living systems, which seems marvelous."
They tell us, accordingly, that one would therefore be quite justified
in describing the research of early development as the reigning monarch
among biological disciplines. It is not toward that point, therefore,
that a believer will direct the questions he puts to modern rationality
but rather toward the development of evolutionary theory into a
generalized "philosophia universalis," which claims to constitute a
universal explanation of reality and is unwilling to allow the
continuing existence of any other level of thinking. Within the
teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of
transition from micro to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmary and
Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of
evolution, nonetheless declare that: "There is no theoretical basis for
believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and
there is also no empirical evidence that this happens."
The question that has now to be put certainly delves deeper: it is
whether the theory of evolution can be presented as a universal theory
concerning all reality, beyond which further questions about the origin
and the nature of things are no longer admissible and indeed no longer
necessary, or whether such ultimate questions do not after all go
beyond the realm of what can be entirely the object of research and
knowledge by natural science. I should like to put the question in
still more concrete form. Has everything been said with the kind of
answer that we find thus formulated by Popper: "Life as we know it
consists of physical 'bodies' (more precisely, structures) which are
problem solving. This the various species have 'learned' by natural
selection, that is to say by the method of reproduction plus variation,
which itself has been learned by the same method. This regress is not
necessarily infinite." I do not think so. In the end this concerns a
choice that can no longer be made on purely scientific grounds or
basically on philosophical grounds.
The question is whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning
of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not. The
question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and
necessity (or, as Popper says, in agreement with Butler, on the basis
of luck and cunning) and, thus, from what is irrational; that is,
whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating
in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless; or
whether the principle that represents the fundamental conviction of
Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: "In principio erat
Verbum" -- at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of
reason. Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of
the priority of reason and of rationality. This ultimate question, as
we have already said, can no longer be decided by arguments from
natural science, and even philosophical thought reaches its limits
here. In that sense, there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic
choice involved in Christianity is correct. Yet, can reason really
renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the
irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of
things, without abolishing itself?
The explanatory model presented by Popper, which reappears in different
variations in the various accounts of the "basic philosophy," shows
that reason cannot do other than to think of irrationality according to
its own standards, that is, those of reason (solving problems, learning
methods!), so that it implicitly reintroduces nonetheless the primacy
of reason, which has just been denied. Even today, by reason of its
choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains
"enlightened," and I think that any enlightenment that cancels this
choice must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but
an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment.
We saw before that in the way early Christianity saw things, the
concepts of nature, man, God, ethics and religion were indissolubly
linked together and that this very interlinking contributed to make
Christianity appear the obvious choice in the crisis concerning the
gods and in the crisis concerning the enlightenment of the ancient
world. The orientation of religion toward a rational view of reality as
a whole, ethics as a part of this vision, and its concrete application
under the primacy of love became closely associated. The primacy of the
Logos and the primacy of love proved to be identical. The Logos was
seen to be, not merely a mathematical reason at the basis of all
things, but a creative love taken to the point of becoming sympathy,
suffering with the creature. The cosmic aspect of religion, which
reverences the Creator in the power of being, and its existential
aspect, the question of redemption, merged together and became one.
Every explanation of reality that cannot at the same time provide a
meaningful and comprehensible basis for ethics necessarily remains
inadequate. Now the theory of evolution, in the cases where people have
tried to extend it to a "philosophia universalis," has in fact been
used for an attempt at a new ethos based on evolution. Yet this
evolutionary ethic that inevitably takes as its key concept the model
of selectivity, that is, the struggle for survival, the victory of the
fittest, successful adaptation, has little comfort to offer. Even when
people try to make it more attractive in various ways, it ultimately
remains a bloodthirsty ethic. Here, the attempt to distill rationality
out of what is in itself irrational quite visibly fails. All this is of
very little use for an ethic of universal peace, of practical love of
one's neighbor, and of the necessary overcoming of oneself, which is
what we need.