Pope Benedict XVI Rejects Neo-Darwinism

The MSM often reassure us that Catholicism is on intimate terms with modern evolutionary theory. But in his homily at his installation mass Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI said:

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

The confusion over this longstanding Catholic teaching is cleared up by the basic distinction between directed and undirected evolution. Catholic teaching accommodates the possibility of directed evolution and universal common descent. But according to Neo-Darwinism, as soon as the first lusty cell leapt onto the stage of the world, purely impersonal, material processes reigned--a watchmaker not merely blind but mindless. Darwininian evolution possesses no distant goal nor is man the twinkle in the eye of any god.

This distinction between directed and undirected evolution is commonly blurred by Darwinists and the MSM who love them. Consider the following comment in the Wisconsin State Journal by molecular biologist Sean Carroll:

The problem with the debate, Carroll said, is that little notice is given in the media to the many, including clergy and even the late Pope John Paul II, who believe evolution and belief in a higher power are not contradictory.

"I was taught evolution by Catholic priests," Carroll said. "And I never realized there was a problem."

"Little notice?" As a molecular biologist, Carroll is kept extraordinarily busy plumbing the intricate riches of the cellular world, so it's not surprising he hasn't heard the MSM's drumbeat of propaganda reassuring Americans that "evolution" and Christian theism go hand in hand.

(UPDATED) However, he is trained in evolutionary theory, so he knows better than most the enormous gulf between the idea of directed evolution and Neo-Darwinism's story of life evolving strictly by undirected causes like natural selection. A colleague, Mark Ryland, provided a clear summary of the Catholic Church's teaching on this subject: "IF, as most scientists claim, evolution/universal common descent happened, THEN it was guided, because design is (self-) evident in Nature, including biology." The words "IF" and "guided" are crucial here. Contemporary Neo-Darwinism will have truck with neither.

An essential component to a clear and civil debate is the use of precise terms central to the debate. Journalists should be the first to insist on such clarity, dispensing with vacuous definitions like this one that recently appeared in The Kansas City Star:

Evolution ... says species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations.

The Greeks of Homer's day, I'm told, were about our height. Those of the Middle Ages were much shorter. Now they're taller again. If that's the modern theory of evolution, we can all pack our bags and go home. But Neo-Darwinism is much more ambitious than that, more ambitious even than Rudyard Kipling's fanciful Just So Stories about how the leopard got his spots, or the whale his throat. It tells how the amoeba became a man, one little undirected step at a time. It's an extraordinarily imaginative story, and one every child should learn in full--the whole big fish.