Philosophers argue God made human soul and let nature do the rest
Three Catholic academics recently discussed the age-old question of the relationship of science and faith.
The panel, stacked in favour of evolution, gave three perspectives at the Vancouver Art Gallery Cafe April 25 on how to harmonize that theory with the fact that God is Creator.
“As a biologist, I don’t take a breath without presuming that evolution is true,” said Father Rob Allore, SJ, the pastor of St. Mark’s Parish and a longtime geneticist. He argued evolution helps scientists understand how closely all life is connected.
“Anything messing with the health of any part of the natural world is going to mess with us. If there is a canary dying in a coal mine, if all the frogs are dying, or the eggshells of the birds have got soft and they can’t reproduce, if it’s hurting other organisms, it’s heading for us.”
He addressed the concern that if evolution is true, its randomness takes away life’s meaning.
“The Bible talks to us about the meaning, the why we are here, what kinds of relationships are important in our life, whereas science talks to us about what is and perhaps how it works,” he explained.
“Each of the traditions need their own space to talk about what is, and the meaning that we get from those different traditions, and then it’s up to us on our journey as human beings living in community to talk about how each tradition cross-fertilizes in our effort to find meaning.”
Chris Morrissey, a philosopher and lecturer at Trinity Western University, took a few minutes of his speech to slam Intelligent Design, an alternative to evolution that suggests the creation of the universe is better explained by an intelligent cause than random processes like natural selection.
Morrissey dismissed it as “creationism dressed up with a marketing slogan” and said the way to understand evolution and faith is to accept that God created the human soul and nature did the rest.
“God can outsource everything to secondary causes, but when He gets directly involved in primary causality, it’s creation of the human soul out of nothing,” he said. “Evolution serves up the material conditions, and God sets His seal on it.”
In his view, humans are “spiritualized animals” dealing with the problem of “moral evil” unique to their species.
Panelist David Klassen, a philosophy professor at Corpus Christi and St. Mark’s Colleges, pointed out that while he accepts evolution, there is much that science hasn’t discovered.
“We can accept all that science tells us about evolution, but science will offer us only a partial or a limited account of who we are and where we come from,” he told about 65 audience members at the cafe.
He quoted Nobel prize winner and physicist Richard Feynman, who wrote: “What I cannot create I do not understand.”
Scientists have “taken pre-existing forms and they have tinkered with them in some way, either by adding artificial genetic material or by removing some genes,” but they have never been able to create life from scratch, Klassen said.
That means scientists can describe natural processes, but not consciousness.
“Science can tell us all about a bat’s brain and about its nervous system and about its genes, but it can’t tell us about a bat’s inner life and experience. You’d have to be a bat to know that.”
The only possible explanation for the human soul is that God created it, he said.
The event was hosted for 25- to 45-year-olds by Catholic After Hours and the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry of the Vancouver archdiocese.
