Vatican official calls humbug to evolution without God

ROME - A Vatican cardinal said Tuesday that the Catholic Church does not stand in the way of scientific realities like evolution, though he described as “absurd” the atheist notion that evolution proves there is no God.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke at the Vatican sponsored 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.” reiterating the Vatican’s position that there was a wide “spectrum of room” for belief in both the scientific basis for evolution and faith in God the creator.

Further he spoke of the Catholic view that does not exclude any area of science, but reject any notion as “absurd” that evolution proves that there is no God, as per the teachings of author Richard Dawkins.

The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI has been trying to stress its belief that there is no incompatibility between faith and reason, and the five-day conference at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University is a key demonstration of its efforts to engage with the scientific community.

Intelligent design?
Church teaching holds that Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds. But the Vatican’s position became somewhat confused in recent years, in part because of a 2005 New York Times op-ed piece written by a close Benedict collaborator, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

In the piece, Schoenborn seemed to reject traditional church teaching and back intelligent design, the view that life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone, and that a higher power has had a hand in changes among species over time.

Vatican officials later made clear they did not believe intelligent design was science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only created confusion.

The evolution conference will explore intelligent design later this week, although not as science or theology but as a cultural phenomenon.

In his remarks, Levada referred to both Dawkins and the debate over teaching creationism in schools in the United States. He declined to pinpoint the Vatican’s views, saying merely: “The Vatican listens and learns.”

For more information go to Vatican and evolution @ fpv

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