Robert Sungenis on Akin's Evolution Part One
Hi this is Robert Sungenis. Thank you for listening to the comments I have prepared for you concerning the creation evolution debate that recently took place between Mr. Gideon Lazar and Mr. jimmy Aiken. My comments are not to supersede Mr. Lazarus because he did a very good job under the constraints of a debate format. I merely want to add to his comments in order to strengthen them. Since my comments are rather long I ask you to endure to the end since there is very valuable information throughout that will defend the creationist model and show the fallacies of the evolution model. For the time being I will only be critiquing Mr. Aiken's opening remarks of the debate. We have also included comments at the end of the lecture on Mr. Aiken's recent interview with Matt Fradd concerning Pelagianism. This critique will be posted at our website robertsungenis.org.
To begin, we will let Mr. Aiken give the full remarks he made in his opening statement and we will intermittently critique them as is necessary. Let's begin.
Aiken: "...so uh Gideon and I have been asked to debate the issue of young earth creationism and that can be defined a number of ways but I take young earth creationism to involve two claims that are relevant for us today. First there's the claim that the earth and the cosmos as a whole is only a few thousand years old hence the name young earth and second there is the claim that the life forms on earth did not evolve but were directly created by God hence the name creationism. Gideon and I agree that these aren't matters of dogma and that they can be rationally discussed by Catholics and this discussion should be carried out with charity. Nobody should look down on someone else as a bad Catholic because of their belief or disbelief in young earth creationism since the church permits both views. Personally I consistently defend young earth Catholics and their liberty to hold their position..."
We should make it clear from the outset that the position of creationism is the long-standing and historic position of the Catholic Church starting from its earliest believers, such as the fathers of the Church in the face of the Greeks who were advocating some form of evolution based on what they believed to be the science of their day - that is, that life was created by atoms bombarding one another. Things did not change until about the 1800's, which was accentuated by Charles Darwin's 1859 book Origin of the Species. After Darwin, all the scientific evidence was interpreted from the lens of evolutionary theory. It wasn't until the mid-1900's that Christian scientists, armed with their own PhDs from secular universities, began to look at the scientific evidence to see if it supported the claims of the evolutionists. What they found was, contrary to popular opinion, the scientific evidence does not answer the question of origins in favor of evolution and that new discoveries in science in the past century now support the creation model, whereas it had little scientific evidence prior because obviously no one was doing creation science research prior to the 1960's.
Even today the only ones doing scientific creation research are Protestants, whereas almost all Catholic scientists are doing research to support evolution. This situation is quite ironic considering that Protestants do scientific research to support creationism because they believe Genesis should be interpreted literally whereas most Catholics believe Genesis should not be interpreted literally and thus opt for evolution. Yet Catholics have a whole history in which they have interpreted scripture literally against Protestants who interpreted it non-literally, such as with the words of Jesus in Matthew 26 verse 26 "This is my body, take and eat" or of John 3 verse 5 "Unless a man is born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God" or even Matthew 16 verse 18 "You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church."
The irony speaks for itself. As such, the question should be asked why Catholics, except for a very tiny few, are not doing research into scientific creationism. We should also ask why such influential Catholic scientific groups such as the Pontifical Academy of Science have consistently barred any Catholic degree-bearing scientist who advocates creationism to be a member of the academy to this very day. The reason is that most Catholics, in spite of the Magisterium's allowance for creationism, have decided they are not going to accept it or even fairly consider the scientific evidence in favor of it. So despite Mr. Aiken's graciousness to give Catholics the right to believe in creationism, the much larger part of modern Catholicism is not only ungracious it is downright antagonistic toward creationism.
Obviously, there is something wrong with this picture. Especially since as early as 1909, when the Pontifical Biblical Commission (which at that time was an authoritative arm of the church answerable only to the Pope) stated that the word 'day' in Genesis 1 can be interpreted as 24 hours. At no time afterward has the Church rescinded that allowance.
Aiken: "On the issue itself, we need to look at it from the perspectives of faith and reason. As medievals like saint Thomas Aquinas recognized all truth is God's truth and so faith and reason need to work together. Approaching the question from the faith perspective as Catholics we have two authoritative sources about the faith: scripture and tradition. We also have the Magisterium which authoritatively interprets scripture and tradition and that gives us a good starting point because the Magisterium has already given us an answer about the sources of faith on this question. In documents spanning more than a century the Magisterium has indicated that the sources of faith scripture and tradition do not require a young earth creationist interpretation. In other words the Magisterium has ruled that scripture and tradition are consistent both with an old universe and with some versions of evolutionary theory."
No, the Magisterium has not ruled that scripture and tradition are consistent with an old universe and evolution. At best, it is said that scripture and tradition do not address either evolution or an old universe. It was precisely for this lacuna in scripture that the Magisterium has allowed modern science to weigh in on the issue of origins. Moreover, Mr. Aiken's statement just begs the question as to what he means by the word Magisterium. As every educated Catholic knows there are several levels of authority to statements issued by the Magisterium. Unfortunately, throughout this debate Mr. Aiken does not specify what level of Magisterial teaching he is referring to but only says things such as "the Magisterium has ruled" implying that the Magisterium has officially taught that evolution in long ages can and must be taught - which it has not. This, of course, is the wrong way to involve the Magisterium in this debate. Any use of the Magisterium must qualify what authoritative level of the Magisterium is being used, if any.
Aiken: "...but sometimes young earth supporters try to minimize the significance of this ruling. Often they'll focus almost exclusively on blessed Pius XII 1950 encyclical Humani Generis. They note that in Humani Generis, Pius XII took a cautious stance on human evolution and authorized a tentative discussion of it by experts. Young earth supporters want to see evolution rejected and so they'll often portray Humani Generis' tentativeness as something that Catholics are still bound by today, as if it's still the approach of the Magisterium. But it isn't, and young earth supporters do a disservice to their audience if they focus on this document as if it was the only relevant thing the Magisterium has said. In the first place Humani Generis dealt with evolution; it did not deal with the age of the universe, and Pius XII was a strong supporter of an old universe as well as an enthusiastic supporter of the Big Bang cosmology proposed by the Belgian priest father George Lemaitre. The year after Humani Generis in 1951, Pius XII gave an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he cited scientific evidence such as the recession of galaxies, the age of the earth's crust as determined by radioactive decay, the age of meteorites and the interaction the gravitational interaction of stars. And based on these, blessed Pius XII asserted that the earth is approximately 5 billion years old. So there's an old earth. And he asserted that the universe was older than that so, Pius XII, the man who authored Humani Generis, was an enthusiastic proponent of the idea of an old earth and an old universe."
The 1950 encyclical Humani Generis was an authoritative statement by the Church, but Pius the Twelfth's speech in 1951 to the Pontifical Academy of Science was not. The 1951 speech was nearly Pius the 12th's opinion of the earth's age based on how he interpreted (or was told to interpret) the scientific evidence. In fact, Father Lumet once told Pius XII not to make any grandiose conclusions about the scientific evidence, since at one time the Pope suggested to Father Lumet that the light of Genesis 1 verse 3 was light from the Big Bang. More importantly, Pius XII never received any scientific opinions contrary to what modern scientists had been teaching since the time of Darwin, Lyell and Hubble. Hence his opinion on the age of the earth in 1951 was at best premature and at worst totally biased. As noted, creation science did not begin until the mid-1960's, so there was no way to give the Pope the other side of the story. It was not until conservative protestants had begun scientific creationism with the work of Henry Morris and John Whitcomb in their 1965 book "The Genesis Flood" was there any semblance of the science of creationism. So, if anything, Mr. Aiken needs to look at Pius the 12th's contribution in the historical context and not make the Pope's near opinion out to be the definitive and official response of the Magisterium.
Be that as it may, scientific issues such as the recession of galaxies and radiometric dating of the earth's crust have now been thoroughly studied by creation scientists for the 70 years after Pius XII and they have found a plethora of evidence showing that anti-creation scientists have made fallacious interpretations of the scientific data to make it appear the earth is old. For example, in regard to the recession of galaxies that Mr. Aiken claims is proof for long ages, if one reads Edwin Hubble's 1937 book "The Observational Approach To Cosmology" one finds that he invented the expanding universe (otherwise known as the recession of galaxies) not because the evidence led him directly to that conclusion, but because the most natural explanation of the red shift of galaxies (as he vociferously admitted in his book) was one that he did not like - namely, that the earth was in the center of the universe. Here is what Hubble said:
"Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe analogous in a sense to the ancient conception of a central earth. The hypothesis cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative, namely a distribution which thins out with distance... the unwelcome supposition of a favored location must be avoided at all costs." -- taken from the book "The Observational Approach To Cosmology" pages 50-51
The only alternative Hubble could offer to a central earth was to propose that there was no center and that all the galaxies laid on a balloon-type universe. In order for these galaxies to produce the redshift he saw in his telescope, he claimed the balloon surface must be expanding since an expansion would stretch the wavelength of the light to the red end of the spectrum. Hubble had no proof for this theory but it was adopted by him and his colleagues, including the Catholic priest and scientist Father George Lumet, because the only alternative was an earth in the center of a Euclidean universe which none of them wanted. In essence, Hubble did little more than twist the scientific evidence to agree with the kind of universe he wanted. Pius XII, of course had no knowledge of what Hubble had really done. He was only given the information that the universe was expanding. He never asked whether Hubble was being completely honest with the scientific data, but perhaps he should have.
In regard to long ages, Hubble was forced to do a lot of mathematical manipulation in order to make enough time for biological evolution. In the first model of the expanding universe, Hubble could only get 1.5 billion years out of his balloon universe. But evolutionists said they needed at least 10 to 20 billion years, so Hubble arbitrarily tweaked the rate the balloon universe was expanding to accommodate biological evolution. In the end, Hubble made the expansion go ten times faster than his original math allowed. In other words, Hubble went into his research holding the belief that biological evolution was correct and that the earth could not be the center of the universe and then adjusted the mathematics accordingly. So don't ever trust a scientist who tells you that the math proves his theory!
There is a similar story with radiometry. Based on the half-life of various isotopes of chemical elements, it was concluded by modern scientists that the universe had to be older than 10 billion years. But what they didn't advertise to the world is that they had no idea what the parent-to-daughter ratio was in the original isotope, and thus it was virtually impossible to determine how old the isotope was. Mount St. Helens that exploded in 1980 is a good example of the inaccuracy of radiometric dating. Since we know when the volcano occurred, we also know how old the elements and their isotopes were that formed from the lava. When potassium argon dating was performed on the lava, the devices measured the lava to be at least 2 million years old, yet we know it was less than a few years old.
This shows that the devices and the theory behind them are fallacious, and that there is a lot of deception taking place in modern science to make it appear as if evolution and long ages are true. Even the measuring devices are deceptively programmed to support long ages. Here is another example: modern science has produced no published studies of carbon 14 isotope tests on dinosaur remnants. Why is this so? Because they know that carbon 14 tests done by creation scientists have shown that dinosaur bones can be no older than twenty thousand to fifty thousand years. Moreover, in many excavations of dinosaur bones today they have found soft organic tissue inside the bones such as blood cells and blood vessels, yet modern evolutionists claim these dinosaurs are no less than 65 million years old. If so, how could organic tissue survive for 65 million years? It is impossible, yet these scientists ignore this damning evidence and go on pretending they have evidence for evolution and long ages. Of course, Pius XII never had any of this kind of damning evidence against evolution and long ages and it is safe to say that had he seen it his 1951 opinion to the Pontifical Academy of Science would have been quite different.
Deception among evolutionists is rampant. Suppression of evidence that discredits evolution has been going on for a long time. For example, in 1922 a pioneer excavator found a somewhat odd-looking molar tooth in Nebraska. Henry Osborne, distinguished professor of the natural history museum in New York, concluded the tooth belonged to a missing link between ape and man, which was then labeled "Nebraska Man". Shortly thereafter in 1927, it was found that the tooth belonged to a peccary, a cousin to the pig. A couple years later, the famed "Neanderthal Man" was found in Neanderthal Germany. His brain capacity was said to be a little smaller than a chimpanzee and a prime candidate for the missing link, but later evidence showed Neanderthal Man had a brain capacity larger than modern man! It was also discovered through artifacts that Neanderthal Man believed in the supernatural, that he buried his dead in ceremonies, and he intermarried with others of his own kind. Much to the chagrin of his discoverers it was also revealed that Neanderthal Man walked upright, the same as humans today. Yet artists conceptions of Neanderthal Man continued to picture him as a hunched-over knuckle-rubbing brutish creature, complete with protruding jaw resembling an ape.
Another charade involved Piltdown Man from Piltdown, England. A prime figure in this effort was the Jesuit priest Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ, who because of this alleged discovery became a world-renowned paleontologist. In 1912, an ape-like lower jawbone whose teeth resembled the worn-down teeth of a human but had one tooth that was said to be similar to a canine tooth -but it was missing. The importance of the connection between the human and canine teeth is that an ape tooth which wore down like a human's would mean that the creature was between an ape and a human. In 1913, de Chardin claimed to have found the needed canine tooth and thus proceeded to fit it into the jaw, thereby deceiving the public.
In 1924, a few paleontologists found what has come to be known as Australopithecines. These specimens are pictured as large-jawed small-brained creatures standing about four feet and walking almost upright but not precisely. The depiction is made from the flimsiest of fossil evidence. In 1954, the renowned Solomon "Solly" Zuckerman did an investigation and found that Australopithecine showed no evidence of a creature evolving into human form. In 1975, Charles Oxnard of the University of Chicago likewise concluded that Australopithecine was closer to an orangutan than an ape or human. There are dozens of stories like these that could be told. For a catalog of them, consult the book "Scientific Heresies And Their Effect On The Church" by Robert Sungenis at robertsungenis.org.
As for meteors, the dating of these meteors suffers from the same bias that modern radiometry has when it measures the decay of various isotopes. So meteors provide no proof of long ages. For example, the current age assigned to the solar system of 4.6 billion years was determined by studying the uranium-to-lead decay systems in meteorites -which are assumed to have formed before the planets did. This age was based on the belief that the rate of decay has been constant and that uranium-238 will be present in a known ratio to uranium 235, but a study done by Arizona State University found that the rates of decay varied from meteor to meteor. Which led the university to conclude "the equation's assumptions for the age of the solar system that certain kinds of uranium always appear in the same relative quantities in meteorites is wrong. This variation implies substantial uncertainties in the ages previously determined by lead to lead dating of calcium aluminum-rich inclusions found in the meteorite." -- as stated by Breg Brennika in an ASU press release. In an article in the magazine Wired Science concerning Breneca's findings, Gerald Wasserberg emeritus professor of geology at Caltech commented, "Everybody was sitting on this two-legged stool claiming it was very stable but it turns out it's not." -- taken from Nicole Stabbs article titled "ASU Researchers Recalculate Age of Solar System", an Arizona State University press release dated December 31 2009.
During the debate, Mr. Lazar mentioned the rate study performed by creation scientists. Not knowing what they would find, in 1998 the rate team set out to take a closer look at radio isotope dating, which has been the basis for the argument that the earth is old, and a necessary component for the theory of evolution. The rate team's discoveries strongly support a young age for the earth and thus seriously challenge the theory of evolution. The rate team discovered: one, conventional radioisotope dating methods are inconsistent and therefore not reliable. In dating the same rock layer, radioisotope dating showed four different ages. Two, substantial amounts of helium were found in crystals of granite. If the earth evolved over billions of years all the helium should have already escaped. Three, radio-halos in rocks caused by the decay of uranium and polonium strongly suggest a rapid decay rate, not a gradual decay over billions of years -especially since the polonium examined had a half-life of only three minutes. Four, diamonds thought to be billions of years old by evolutionists contained significant levels of carbon 14. Since carbon 14 decays quickly, none should have been found in the diamonds if the evolutionary age is correct.
Further in the debate, Mr. Aiken claimed that if the decay rate of isotopes was as much as what creationists needed, the amount of energy released would burn up the earth. This is an unsubstantiated claim and Mr. Aiken offered no authoritative source or the scientific method he arrived at this conclusion. Mr. Aiken also claimed that the gravitational interaction of stars shows proof of long ages but he did not explain how he came to this conclusion. If Mr. Aiken is referring to supernovas of various stars, we will cover that near the eight-minute mark when Mr. Aiken addresses it. As we will see, supernovas provide no proof for an old earth and in fact show evidence of a young earth.
Aiken: "the caution he expressed in Humani Generis was regarding the theory of evolution and even then it wasn't in regard to the theory of evolution in general. If you read the text you'll see that the caution he expressed was regarding in his words the doctrine of evolution in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter. The tentativeness he expressed was in regard to human evolution not evolution in general as a Pope who believed the universe is billions of years old he didn't express a problem with non-human evolution. It was only in regard to human evolution that he was tentative."
Yes, Pius XII did what we would expect a Pope to do when faced with the tenets of evolution. Since he didn't know whether evolution could be scientifically proven, he had to address the subject as he did in Humani Generis; that is, with a cautious but open mind. In Pius XII's day, no scientific opposition to evolution had yet been mounted and thus for all Pius XII knew he might someday have to accept it as fact. The only thing he could do definitively at that time was state, as he did in Humani Generis, that if Adam had evolved from an ape to a man, God infused a human soul into Adam the day he became a man. More importantly, Pius XII stated that for those Catholics who were favoring evolution, they could not hold to Pelagianistic evolution -that is, the evolution of many ape-to-man transitions happening along with Adam's.
Adam could be the only one, since Catholic theology taught that original sin came from one man who was infused with a human soul. The irony of Pius the Twelfth's ruling against Pelagianism was that, for all the Pope's enthusiasm for an old earth and long ages, it essentially destroyed evolutionary theory because without Pelagianism evolutionists found it impossible to cease the evolution of millions of apes so as not to allow them to become human. Since only one ape was permitted by the church to become Adam, evolution was stymied. This also means that all the paleontological research that has claimed to uncover pre-human bone fragments must admit that none of them turned human they must accept that these specimens evolved from pre-ape to ape but suddenly stopped evolving (since Pius XII said that if evolution were true then only one of them could become human and be the progenitor of the whole human race). Hence this is why Catholic evolutionists have rejected Pius XII's 1950 ruling against Pelagianism in the encyclical Humani Generis, since they know that without Pelagianism evolution is dead.
So how do Catholic evolutionists deal with this problem? Leave that to Father Raymond Brown, a liberal Catholic priest who spent most of his career teaching at one of the most liberal Protestant seminaries in the world, Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was appointed as the president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission by John Paul II in 1993, despite his notorious career in seeking to curtail Catholic doctrine. Father Brown twists Pope Pius the 12th's Humani Generis encyclical like he twists every other Catholic teaching he doesn't like. First, let's see what Humani Generis says against Pelagianism. In its paragraph 37: "When however there is question of another conjectural opinion namely Pelagianism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true man who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and in everyone as his own."
This prohibition against Pelagianism is quite clear. But now notice how Father Brown distorts this paragraph to his own advantage. Brown starts by quoting from Humani Generis and then adds his own interpretation. He writes, "As for Pelagianism ,the Pope said it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with what has been taught on original sin, namely that it proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual, Adam. Note, however that the Pope does not absolutely condemn the theory of Pelagianism." -- taken from Father Brown's New Jerome biblical commentary, page 1171. As one can see, Father Brown extracts Pius the Twelfth's sentence, namely "now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth", and then Father Brown claims that since the Pope used the word 'apparent' that means the Pope was not being firm and resolute on his refusal to accept Pelagianism. As the saying goes, the Pope gave an inch and Father Brown took a mile.
The Pope certainly did condemn Pelagianism, for he said in the previous sentence "The children of the church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion" but Father Brown takes the Pope's next sentence "it is in no way apparent how to reconcile Pelagianism with Catholic doctrine" to mean that someday it might be possible to reconcile Pelagianism with Catholic doctrine and thus Father Brown rationalized his continued acceptance of Pelagianism till the day he died in 1998. To this day, however neither Father Brown nor any of his liberal colleagues have demonstrated how Pelagianism can be reconciled with Catholic doctrine and that is why most of them have instead opted to reject what Pius XII said against Pelagianism. This kind of subterfuge is all over Father Brown's writings.
Not accepting Pius the Twelfth's ban on Pelagianism, we can easily see why Father Brown then came to the point of creating his own doctrine of man, stating in his 1975 book "It is no longer necessary to maintain that man's body was directly created by God from the earth or that woman's body was directly created from man's. There is not a word against evolution and no indication that the Genesis account of creation must be taken literally." -- taken from Father Brown's book titled "Crisis Facing the Church" pages 12 and 16. Notice that not only does Father Brown pretend there is no prohibition against evolution from Pius XII, he also discards Pope Leo the 13th's teaching in the 1880 encyclical Divinae Arcanum Sapientiae, which stated that Eve was created from the side of Adam. Pope Leo wrote "We record what is to all known and cannot be doubted by any, that God on the sixth day of creation having made man from the slime of the earth and having breathed into his face the breath of life gave him a companion whom he miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus in his most far-reaching foresight decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time."
As most liberals do, Father Brown had a deep-seated animosity toward anyone who believed in creationism or who tried to interpret the Bible at face value. He writes in his New Jerome biblical commentary that those who don't accept evolution are "pseudo-scientific anti-evolutionists" among many other derogatory names. Not surprisingly Father Brown claims that in Humani Generis "there is virtually no chastisement of biblical scholars. Seemingly to his death Pius XII remained firm in his faith in modern criticism." But those of us who have carefully studied Humani Generis know why Father Brown used qualifiers such as 'virtually' and 'seemingly'. If one reads the encyclical without Father Brown's bias, the chastisement of modern biblical scholars is quite obvious. For example in paragraph 23, Pius writes "Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of holy scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual. By this method they say all difficulties vanish. Difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the scriptures." This is a stinging indictment against Father Brown and his liberal colleagues for it is precisely their hermeneutic which says the literal details of scripture are incidental, unimportant and unreliable -and that the 'spiritual' meaning is the only thing the author intended.
Let's look even closer at Pius the 12th's encyclical Humani Generis. In paragraph 38, Pius the 12th takes a clear shot at the Wellhausen Theory, which was invented in the mid-1800s by Protestant liberals and which many modern Catholic scholars were using at the turn of the 20th century to interpret Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament. The Pope writes saying, "This letter in fact clearly points out that the first 11 chapters of Genesis 2 nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense. If however the sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents." In paragraphs 25 and 26, Pius XII shows the damage the Catholic liberal hermeneutic has done to the Church, saying "It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. Some also question whether angels are personal beings. Disregarding the Council of Trent some pervert the very concept of original sin, along with the concept of sin in general as an offense against God, as well as the idea of satisfaction performed for us by Christ. Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substances, should be also modified." Notice that Pius XII warned about those who "pervert the very concept of original sin."
What was Father Brown's goal? It is something you will not hear from his admirers and which is not well known among his detractors. Father Brown's goal was to eliminate the Catholic doctrine that original sin began with a man named Adam who disobeyed God. He did this just to make room for evolution, as Father de Chardin did before him. Father Brown, as all liberals have tried to do, was also trying to establish that man's present condition - that is, the condition that is hampered by imperfection and a proclivity to evil - was merely the way he evolved to that state of being. For Father Brown, man's hominid ancestors were savages and thus modern man is said to have retained some of those negative traits. In other words, man is today the way God allowed him to evolve, not the condition into which God placed man when he sinned in our first parents Adam and Eve. Consequently, the onus is put on God not man, for man's present evil condition.
This is precisely what is behind the carefully chosen words Father Brown used to describe his desire to reinterpret original sin, saying "But we should stress that the Genesis story is only a vehicle for the doctrine of original sin and not the substance of the teaching. Moreover, in loyalty to modern biblical scholarship, we should point out that the Genesis story is not an exact historical account of the origins of man. Thereby we prepare students for the possibility that under the impact of theological reflection the Church may not always phrase the doctrine of original sin in terms of a sin committed by Adam and Eve as sole parents of the human race. They must keep abreast of modern theological discussion, so that the limitations of past understandings of those doctrines are not imposed on the students as if they had to be believed." -- taken from Father Brown's book "Crises in the Church" page 18. This attempt to reinvent or even discard the doctrine of original sin goes hand in hand with Father Brown's continual praise of the Protestant liberal theologian Karl Barth who, having a wide influence on Catholic theologians, especially Hans Küng, believed and taught that original sin is merely a way of describing that man is today the way he always was.
The thesis is God designed man to evolve that way and thus there was no fall of man. Not surprisingly, since Karl Barth put the onus on God for man's condition, then of course it is God's responsibility to save all men from the state with which He hampered them. Which then led to Barth's teaching of Universal Salvation. Very simply, God did it and thus God is responsible for undoing it.
Finally, regarding Pelagianism, throughout the debate Mr. Aiken tells Mr. Lazar that he should be more open to the rulings of the Catholic Magisterium and if he were he would be more open to evolution in long ages. But with Pius XII we have a good example of a ruling by a Pope against one of the essential tenets of evolution - that eliminates evolution for Catholics since it is practically impossible to fit in Pelagianism with Catholic doctrine - but of which Mr. Aiken is very reluctant to accept. Instead he continues to teach ape-to-man evolution even though he has no answer to Pelagianism and therefore he is disobeying the Magisterium. But without an ape-to-man evolution the whole theory of evolution falls apart. Since evolution was invented and designed to show how molecules develop into man, if evolution cannot reach its pinnacle by producing a man, then for all intents and purposes it is useless, superfluous and contradictory.
Aiken: "...evolution that he was tentative and in the years since Humani Generis the Magisterium has not been silent. The document was issued over 70 years ago and multiple popes and church bodies have addressed both the age of the universe and evolution. Young earth creationists aren't being honest with the public if they portray Humani Generis as the only important thing the Magisterium has said or if they pretend that the Magisterium today displays the same tentativeness regarding human evolution. Famously in 1996 Saint John Paul II gave an address to the pontifical academy of sciences in which he stated today almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical Humani Generis new knowledge has led us to recognize the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis it is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge the convergence neither sought nor fabricated of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory."
We are not surprised to hear this statement from John Paul II, since he had been favorable to evolution in long ages for decades before 1996. But identical to Pius the 12th's 1951 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, John Paul II is only expressing his pastoral opinion on evolution, not giving the Catholic Church a defined and authoritative teaching. Moreover, it is certainly true today that evolution has become "more than a hypothesis" since most of the world holds it as fact based on how they interpret the scientific evidence. What they are not told, or what they refuse to consider, is that there are now available completely viable and logical scientific explanations for creationism and against evolution. But the sad fact is few want to hear this side of the story. Whenever creationism has tried to enter the school system as an alternate view, it is shot down immediately from great schools to major universities and even to the Pontifical Academy of Science. The powers that be have decided what science the world is allowed to listen to. Logically if anyone was presented with the one-sided evidence promoting evolution that John Paul II was given, he would probably come to the same conclusion. As noted there were few, if any, Catholics doing research into scientific creationism to have offered John Paul II any Catholic evidence to the contrary.
The scientific research into creationism was only being done by conservative Protestants, little of which John Paul II ever saw, if any. We have firsthand confirmation of that fact since our team of scientists met Cardinal Ratzinger in 2002 in Rome and he told us that he and the prelate were promoting long ages and had not considered any contrary evidence from creation science. We had talked specifically about the fossil record and the Cardinal didn't even know there was contrary evidence on how to interpret the strata in the geologic column, much less had ever studied it. In other words, they were blind and were forced to admit their blindness. No wonder Catholic scholars from Father de Chardin in the early 1900's to Father Raymond Brown in the late 1900's were busy denigrating Protestant scientific creationists as Fundamentalists that insisted on reading Genesis literally. While at the same time ironically the Catholics continued to read literally even more difficult passages of scripture in their worship of God that science doesn't support at all - such as when Jesus said "this is my body, take and eat." The paradox speaks for itself.
Aiken: "Paul II went on to say in his encyclical Humani Generis, my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points."
Yes, in general, there was no opposition between the doctrine of the faith and the possible evolution of man because as we saw earlier no one was bringing forth any scientific opposition to evolution in long ages at that time. Almost every single scientist in the world believed in the Big Bang and evolution from the time of Einstein to Hubble and beyond. Mr. Aiken goes on to say that John Paul II realized, however that evolution could only be accepted "on the condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points." We already saw that one of those indisputable points from Pius XII was that a Catholic who favors evolution cannot accept Pelagianism as its mechanism.
As we noted, without Pelagianism evolution will not work since evolution claims there were millions of ape-to-Adam evolutionary transitions occurring at the same time and thus humans were being formed all over the world. But the Catholic Church insists there was only one man who was the progenitor of the human race, not millions of men, so either Mr. Aiken is unfamiliar with this indisputable point in Humani Generis or he is deliberately ignoring it. Either way, Pius XII eliminated a belief in evolution for Catholics.
Aiken: "In paragraph 283 of the catechism of the Catholic Church we read, the question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms and the appearance of man. And in referring to scientific studies the catechism isn't thinking of ones done at the institute of creation research, they're thinking of studies done by mainstream science, so we..."
Without knowing it, Mr. Aiken has put his finger on the problem he is having. Let's retrace his steps. He first reads from paragraph 283 of the Catholic catechism that says, "the question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos the development of life forms and the appearance of man." Mr. Aiken then gives a comment on that sentence saying, "in referring to scientific studies, the catechism isn't thinking of the ones done at the institute of creation research, they are thinking of studies done by mainstream science." In other words, Mr. Aiken is telling his audience not to investigate the work done by qualified PhDs in scientific creationism who work for Protestant creation institutions. Mr. Aiken tells his audience that they must form their opinions about the validity of evolution and long ages strictly from mainstream scientists who Mr. Aiken already knows have a monolithic consensus against creation science and are completely biased toward evolution in long ages. Not to mention that most of them are atheists, and not to mention that creation scientists got their PhDs from some of the same secular universities that evolutionists got theirs. If this doesn't tell us the total bias Mr. Aiken coddles before he comes to this debate nothing does. It shows that he totally dismisses the evidence from other qualified sources that do not favor evolution, and he is so strong in his opinion that he commandeers the Catholic catechism as supporting the ignoring of these other qualified sources and thus forces the catechism to agree with his viewpoint.
Whether the catechism would be against the institute of creation research as evidence the catechism does not say, but we now know Mr. Aiken is against it. As such, the catechism is neutral, but Mr. Aiken is totally biased. As Mr. Aiken has built a reputation for being what is known as a "company man" for the "modern Catholic Church", we would then expect that the modern church's stress on ecumenism and dialogue with religious and ideological opponents to also be a part of Mr. Aiken's apologetic repertoire, but it is now quite obvious that dialogue and ecumenical relations with PhD Protestants regarding the scientific evidence is certainly not encouraged by Mr. Aiken to those trying to learn the science of origins, especially those at the Vatican. Mr. Aiken has the same attitude as that fostered by the Pontifical Academy of Science as it refuses to allow any creationist from joining the academy. Yet the academy has had open arms to accept devout atheists like Stephen Hawking. Why does the Pontifical Academy of Science act ecumenically toward an atheist like Hawking but chooses not to be ecumenical with Protestant creation scientists who declare their love for Jesus Christ in scripture? The reason is obvious. They are not in this scientific arena to be fair to the evidence. They are in it to crush any advancement of creation science. The liberals that dominate both the Vatican and academia have made that fact very clear.
Aiken: "See the catechism saying that modern science has splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age of the universe and how the life forms on earth developed including man. The catechism thus speaks approvingly of both an old earth and of biological evolution, including human evolution."
Mr. Aiken says that the catechism speaks approvingly of evolution in general and human evolution in particular. Where does Mr. Aiken find such teaching? The catechism does not mention the theory of evolution even once in all its 800 pages, so how could it speak approvingly of it? The only thing the catechism admits to are things such as those which are stated in paragraph 283, namely that "many scientific studies have enriched our knowledge of the dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms and the appearance of man" but it does not say that it approves of, or speaks approvingly of, evolution. It only says that our knowledge has been enriched. It does not say that it has made any official decision on that knowledge. But Mr. Aiken reads into paragraph 283 as if it is an official endorsement of evolution from the Catholic Church.
The attempt here is to make it appear as if Mr. Lazar is ignoring the Catholic Church while Mr. Aiken is holding firm to it. In reality, it is Mr. Aiken who was ignoring the Church and giving his own interpretation of what the Church officially teaches. It is the same thing as when Mr. Aiken made it appear as if Pius XII believed and taught evolution without Mr. Aiken telling us that the same Pope said that no Catholic can believe in evolution if he also believes in Pelagianism. Yet Mr. Aiken knows, or should know, that evolution without Pelagianism is impossible.
Aiken: "Human evolution. Then, in paragraph 337, the catechism states that scripture presents the work of the creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine work. So here we have the Magisterium endorsing the view that the days of creation are symbolic, and Magisterial statements also identify other elements in early Genesis as symbolic."
Mr. Aiken says "here we have the Magisterium endorsing the view that the days of creation are symbolic." Let's look closely at this. The catechism explicitly says with no equivocation "scripture presents the work of the creator symbolically as a succession of six days." The catechism does not say, of the two views, literal or symbolic, the church is endorsing the symbolic, but you're free to believe it is literal. In other words, in this part of the catechism it is not leaving any room for the literal interpretation of Genesis. If not, it would have stated that the literal interpretation of Genesis is also possible or that there can be a literal and a symbolic interpretation, but it does neither. But Mr. Aiken takes the position, as he stated earlier in the debate, that he accepts and respects Catholics who believe in creationism especially because they have the right to do so based on Catholic tradition which he knows is preponderantly creationist. But how can Mr. Aiken hold to that position since paragraph 337 says that the creation story is symbolic? It appears Mr. Aiken is caught in another contradiction, just as he was when he cited Pius 12th's 1950 encyclical as allowing evolution but only a non-Pelagianistic one.
In another irony, Mr. Aiken earlier implied that Mr. Lazar was not being completely honest with his audience because he did not cite what Mr. Aiken called "the Magisterial statements of the Church" but as we see it is Mr. Aiken who is not being honest with the Magisterial statements he is citing. As it stands, the catechism says one thing in paragraph 337 and Mr. Aiken says another. Both can't be right. Who is wrong? It's the catechism, since nowhere in its Magisterial documents has the Church said that Genesis 1 is symbolic and must therefore be interpreted symbolically. In fact, as we noted previously, the Magisterium under Pius X stated in the Pontifical Biblical Commission that Catholics can believe that the days of Genesis 1 were 24 hours or a certain period of time, thus taking no sides on the issue. Not so with paragraph 337 of the 1994 Catholic catechism. The person who authored paragraph 337 made a decision to eliminate literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and teach only symbolic interpretation, effectively taking sides on the issue.
The catechism is also exposing its error because it does not cite in its footnotes any Catholic authority which says officially and authoritatively that the days of Genesis must be interpreted symbolically. This is seen by the fact that paragraph 337 has three footnotes, none of which are attached to a statement that Genesis 1 is symbolic. In fact, one of the footnotes of paragraph 337 is footnote 205 which cites Vatican II's document Dei Verbum paragraph 11 which says "the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation". In normal parlance, Dei Verbum 11 is saying that what is written in scripture is for the sake of our salvation. But here is the sad part: modern liberal Catholics, most of whom believe in evolution and long ages, have reinterpreted Dei Verbum 11's phrase "for the sake of our salvation" to mean that only the texts of scripture that speak directly of salvation are inspired by the Holy Spirit and are without error! This means consequently that everything else in scripture can - and most likely will - be an error because it is written only by man and not inspired by the Holy Spirit. And that is because, according to the liberal interpretation, it does not deal directly with salvation.
All one need do to prove this fact is to consult the writings of the evolutionist and Catholic priest Father Raymond Brown who in his New Jerome biblical commentary says on page 1169 "Scriptural teaching is truth without error to the extent that it conforms to the salvific purpose of God." Father Brown says the same thing in his book "The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Christ" on pages eight and nine. "In the last hundred years we have moved from an understanding wherein inspiration guaranteed that the bible was totally inerrant to an understanding where an inerrancy is limited to the bible's teaching of that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writing for the sake of our salvation. In this long journey of thought the concept of inerrancy was not rejected but was seriously modified to fit the evidence of biblical criticism which showed that the bible was not inerrant in questions of science, of history and even of time-conditioned religious beliefs."
Rest assured, the Catholic Church in its official statements has made no such modification of biblical inerrancy. In fact, it has said just the opposite. Here are a few samples:
Pope Leo the 13th in Providentissimus Deus says "It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of sacred scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred."
Pope Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus says "The divine inspiration extends to all parts of scripture without distinction and that no error could occur in the inspired text."
Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis condemns the following notion: "Immunity from error extends only to those parts of the bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters."
Finally, the very statement from the Church that Father Brown and his liberal colleagues try to dismiss the most by claiming that its phrase "for the sake of our salvation" means that biblical inerrancy is limited to matters of salvation, says just the opposite when one reads it in context. We are speaking here about Vatican II's document Dei Verbum paragraph 11 which says "In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and abilities so that with him acting in them and through them they as true authors consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. Therefore since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."
Therefore, as Saint Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 verses 16 and 17, "all scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error for reformation of manners and discipline and right living so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind."
In fact, so adamant was Pope Paul VI against allowing Dei Verbum to teach a limited inerrancy of scripture, he personally intervened to stop the liberals from trying to make it limited. Hence this is why today all the liberals have left is to twist the phrase "for the sake of our salvation" as if it teaches limited inerrancy. But as anyone can see who isn't hell-bent on believing in evolution, neither Dei Verbum nor any other official Catholic doctrine teaches a limited inerrancy of scripture. To no surprise, Father Brown includes a large section in his commentary teaching biological evolution over millions of years as fact. According to Catholic liberals like Father Brown, Genesis 1 is neither inspired nor inerrant and thus it cannot be interpreted to bring out literal truth about the cosmos. At best it can only be interpreted symbolically, hence how the cosmos was actually constructed is to be left to those who gather and interpret the scientific data regardless that most of mainstream science is populated by atheists who have a vested interest in denying the literal interpretation of scripture or the literal teachings of the Church.
To recap, the catechism's paragraph 337 citation of Dei Verbum 11's phrase "for the sake of our salvation" is at best suspicious. If the catechism is using the phrase the same way Catholic liberals do today, then it is logical why it insists on saying the days of Genesis 1 are symbolic, since if Genesis 1 is not inspired by the Holy Spirit and - as the liberals teach in all our Catholic academic institutions it is just a redaction of fanciful Mesopotamian creation literature - then obviously it cannot be interpreted as literal truth. The liberals think they have the license to teach these things because according to their distorted interpretation of Die Verbum 11, real biblical truth only applies to matters of salvation and Genesis 1 is not a matter of salvation. This is one of the biggest falsehoods ever perpetrated on Mankind and its home is right in the heart of liberal Catholicism which dominates most of Catholicism today.