Evolution as heresy?

In an address by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996, entitled "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth,"(1) the Holy Father made this controversial statement: "...new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis."

This assertion greatly inflamed many in the anti-evolution camp, who felt that it set back the causes of creationism and "intelligent design," which had been making great headway.

Natural selection within species

However, one aspect of evolutionary theory is "natural selection", and in certain limited cases dealing with changes within a species, natural selection is in fact "more than a hypothesis."

For example, some studies have shown that beak sizes in finches can vary depending on selection due to environmental factors.

The same phenomenon of variation has been found in classical studies of the survival value of changes in wing coloration of peppered moths.

Yet, in the end, we still have finches and peppered moths. The changes are due to natural selection and the environment acting on variations in the genetic information within members of a species.

Common evolutionary descent

However, the aspect of evolutionary theory that is most often questioned and debated is the supposition of "common evolutionary descent."

It is questionable because there is no experimental, scientific proof that one species or family has descended from another. It is merely a hypothesis, and has not progressed beyond this stage for a century and a half.

The term evolution in this essay will refer to this concept of common evolutionary descent.

Unproven hypothesis

In recent years the work of scientists who employ intelligent design theory has effectively debunked the notion of neo-Darwinism, i.e. evolution of new species arising from the interaction of natural selection, the environment, and genetic changes primarily due to mutations.

Among the active pioneers in the intelligent design community are the London-educated Michael Denton, and the Americans William Dembski, and Michael Behe, a Catholic.

Nevertheless, the new developments that have effectively challenged neo-Darwinism have not prevented evolutionists from brazenly referring to their model as the "fact of evolution."

But evolutionary descent can be labelled neither a fact, nor as "more than a hypothesis", since it has never been scientifically proven that higher animals and plants developed from other species or simpler forms of life. Controlled laboratory experiments on genetic mutations have failed to produce evidence of new species evolution or even an "improved version" of an existing species.

"Theistic evolution" anomalies

Unfortunately, evolution is still uncritically accepted as true by large segments of the Catholic population. Perhaps some are so apprehensive of another Galileo incident that they bend over backwards to accommodate evolution theory to religion. Thus the compromise of "theistic evolution" is embraced, whereby God somehow used or permitted evolutionary descent to be the mechanism of creation.

Speculation along this line of thought is permissible to a believing Catholic, as detailed in the encyclical Humani Generis issued by His Holiness Pope Pius XII. The encyclical explains that in light of the current (1950) state of opinions on evolution by scientists and theologians, it is permissible to discuss and explore the possibility of "…the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God."(2)

In the more than half a century since then, and in the century and a half since Darwin, the discussion of the possibility of human descent from lower animals has been ongoin