Abstract
Contemporary creationisms, opposed to the Darwinian theory of evolution, are characterized by a rhetoric diversity (literalist creationisms, “scientific” creationisms, evolutionist creationisms) that should not conceal their doctrinal unity. Any attempt to explain the natural world int terms of a willing and surpernatural force driving it is, in the broad sense [of the term], a creationism. This chapter deals with the diversity of creationisms, and more specifically with the approaches labeled “evolutionist creationism” (or “theist evolutionism”) – to which intelligent design belongs. The suggested typology is illustrated by an analysis of the Vatican’s current positions on the Darwinian theory of evolution since the famous 1996 speech of Jean-Paul II before the Pontifical academy of sciences.
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Notes
- 1.
Characterized, in an extremely condensed form, thus: an evolution by natural selection (See Huneman, Chap. 4, in this volume) is any process by which populations are modified via a mechanism that puts into play the interaction of these three factors: variation (See Heams, this volume), heredity (idem) and the differential abilities of organisms to survive and reproduce. The naturalist (explaining nature by nature), anti-finalistic (challenge to teleology), and unifying (Darwinism’s theoretical adaptation to a considerable number of phenomena) core unique to Darwinian theory is all there.
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It was especially after the publication of La filiation de l’homme (1871) that this became a considerable problem for religions; human beings are indeed part of animal lineage, which then makes it necessary to explain man’s unique ability to develop a morality, which was solely reserved as God’s prerogative.
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Kant notably stated than no theory could account for life: “It is indeed quite certain that we cannot adequately cognise, much less explain, organised beings and their internal possibility, according to mere mechanical principles of nature; and we can say boldly it is alike certain that it is absurd for men to make any such attempt or to hope that another Newton will arise in the future, who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered. We must absolutely deny this insight to men”. (Kant 1914 [1760])
- 6.
This is where science and ontology join together, a thesis advanced primarily by Bunge (1977: xiii–xiv): “[…]Furthermore, to the extent that we succeed in our attempt, science and ontology will emerge not as disjoint but as overlapping. The sciences are regional ontologies and ontology is general science. After all, every substantive scientific problem is a subproblem of the problem of ontology, to wit, what is the world like ?”
- 7.
Note that David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1749) rejects, by anticipation, Paley (Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 1802) and, clearly, current proponents of ID. Put simply, he showed that the watch syllogism completely fails due to inadequate premises.
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We see then that ID is even more retrograde in that it does not even consider that which Darwin’s great friend, the botanist Asa Gray, was able to imagine – wrongly, of course – in the chapters of his book Darwiniana (Gray 1888) entitled “Natural Selection not Inconsistent with Natural Theology” et “Evolutionary Teleology”.
- 9.
Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray (22 May 1860), after a very prudent qualification of the atheist interpretation that could be made of his remarks, nevertheless conceded that he could not accept this idea of absolutely optimal design: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed.”
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This term is used with the intention of showing that these doctrines are both more elaborate than biblical creationism and give in to sophistry using persuasion and dissemination of its intrinsic dogmatic aims.
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“L’Église devant les recherches sur les origines de la vie et son évolution” www.hominides.com/html/theories/jean_paul_evolution.html.
- 14.
Cited in “Benoît XVI réfléchit au débat sur l’évolution des espèces”, La Croix, 4 September 2006: 22.
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“God’s chance creation”, The Tablet, 6 August 2005.
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Benedict XVI, “Memorial of the Three Archangels”, homily of 29 September 2007.
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Society of Roman Catholic priests founded in Switzerland in 1970 by Mgr Lefebvre. In 1988, these priests were excommunicated, leading to a schism within the Catholic Church. However, in January 2009, negotiations with the Vatican (Benedict XVI) in light of the reintegration of the FSSPX led to the bishops’ excommunication being lifted.
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The notion of “teleological evolutionism” echoes an approach that the Vatican finds particularly interesting: Teilhardism, a spiritual doctrine conceived by the Jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). This theologian developed a “Christian evolution” that was at first firmly rejected by the Vatican (since it accepted evolution); his numerous writings have since become a vast subject of study for the Catholic Church (in particular, French theologians François Euvé, Jacques Arnould and Jean-Michel Maldamé, specialists on the faith-science relationships, have contributed to the valorization of the Teilhardian approach in many publications and conferences), Teilhard always tried to find a meaning in evolution and thus developed the idea of an evolution directed by an internal logic (“deep-stead orthogenesis”), toward a goal (the “Omega Point”). For more on the interference of his spiritualist ideas on his paleontology work, See Tassy (2007).
- 30.
Time permitting, we could also discuss Islam and Judaism; for now, we will point out that the three religions of the Book rally together easily as history demands it when it comes to hunting down science or enlisting it in their desperate search for a theological justification of the magnificence of the world’s harmony, as well as for denying any ultimate relevance to processes that would, to put it bluntly, seem to be the result of chance (that is, according to Darwin’s concept, such an intermingling of causes and determinisms makes it illusory to describe evolutionary modalities in detail.)
- 31.
To this end, the biologist Antoine Vekris (alias Oldcola in the blogosphere) has coined an interesting term to describe science-religion hybrids: scienligions (scien[ce|re]ligions). He explains: “From a marketing perspective, the hybrid approach is quite interesting; it appropriates elements of respectability from each of its neighbors, exploiting the public’s natural skepticism for the camp from which it originates: scientists who doubt that science could have all the answers, believers who consider divine intervention as knowable. To group all of these minorities together and present this approach as innovative, meaning that it is also rational, is particularly powerful in a social context that is characterized by its fragmentation and by a certain respect for the irrational. […] These positions’ dogmatism is carefully camouflaged by alternately invoking science and religion rather than religious fundamentalism or scientific materialism according to the subject and its representatives. These are positions that are no less dogmatic than those of extremists, built upon assertions that no proof supports, and which demand unconditional acceptance as long as the opposition has not refuted them—which is impossible, since the assertions in question are chosen precisely because they are un-testable.” (http://oldcola.blogspot.com/2006/03/scienligion-lhybride-entre-science-et.html).
- 32.
In English “designed” in this context implies an intentional creative force (the “intelligent” in intelligent design). However, “design” is also commonly used by Darwinian biologists in English in the sense that design is not granted by an exogenous visionary; it is a product of variation and natural selection (also See the very insightful note 1 in Downes’, Chap. 31, this volume).
- 33.
They do have a philosophical foundation (it is not a fundamentalism), but this is not what essentially distinguishes them from neocreationist theses. See the chapter “The Philosophical Assumptions of the Scientific Method” Pigliucci (2002).
- 34.
For an examination of the relationship between science and materialism, See Silberstein (2008).
- 35.
A permanence that the evolutionary biologist Dawkins (2006) explores in a remarkable book that uses scientific methods to consider the “God hypothesis” (a hypothesis that Laplace said was of no use except in celestial mechanics) and concludes that our scientific theories and data can only invalidate such an unrealistic hypothesis. We also (MS) clearly subscribe to this line of thought (also argued by Daniel Dennett).
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Translated by Elizabeth Vitanza, revised by Antoine Ermakoff.
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Brosseau, O., Silberstein, M. (2015). Evolutionism(s) and Creationism(s). In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_41
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