Althouse: "When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything."

October 28, 2014

"When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything."

"But that is not so... He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment. The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."

Said Pope Francis.

67 comments:

hoyden said...: No argument from me. I like to believe we are manifestations of God's will.; 10/28/14, 5:26 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: WOW. You mean the Pope's Catholic?

It's Thomas Aquinas. From the 13th century.

How do people not know what Catholics believe after seven hundred years?; 10/28/14, 5:28 PM
David said...: "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."

That's just what I said. Wow!; 10/28/14, 5:30 PM
Ken B said...: Out: the big bang is heresy!
In: denying the big bang is heresy!; 10/28/14, 5:32 PM
Scott said...: "Yet more recently, Benedict XVI and his close advisors have apparently endorsed the idea that intelligent design underpins evolution..."

Why the word "apparently?" Is the reporter pulling that inference out of his butt, or has the Catholic Church actually endorsed intelligent design?; 10/28/14, 5:36 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Heck, check out Averroes. Muslims used to talk about this, too.

The best insight into God is from direct observation of what he created. We have been given reason, which is meant to examine the world.

Old, old, old ideas. Somehow forgotten because it's easier to bash on religion than examine it.; 10/28/14, 5:44 PM
Quaestor said...: The pope's argument was discussed and discarded by Stephen Hawking almost thirty years ago in his first edition of A Brief History of Time. The problem is this: If God is so clever that he has designed the Universe that it needs only to begin in order to carry on without divine intervention, putting God in the role of the guy who pushes the ON button that starts the automatic automation factory, then what prevents him from design himself out of the loop completely? Or why rely on a person to throw the ON switch when a machine could do that just as well?

The end point of the pope's reasoning is a God who keeps himself in the loop just so there is a role for a god.; 10/28/14, 5:54 PM
Stephen J. said...: "...has the Catholic Church actually endorsed intelligent design?"

Not in the sense Michael Behe and others have argued it, which is that you can infer purpose directly from specific biological structures in organic life currently deemed "too complex" to have evolved by purely mechanistic means. The Church believes that there is an Intelligence -- i.e. God -- behind the movements and physical laws of the Universe but does not hold any specific phenomenon, biological or otherwise, to be His "signature" on Creation's canvas. (With the except of Christ Himself as the Incarnation, but that's a different matter.) If Creation implies a Creator, then all Creation is part of that implication, not just the parts we "can't explain yet".; 10/28/14, 5:59 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Quaestor-

Sure. Maybe He cares what happens. Why do we care about animals, or plants, or anything else?

The universe can be created, can follow physical laws, and still have a God.

Another fun argument is this: could humans, at a sufficient level of technology, create another universe? If so, then what are the chances that our universe was created? Doesn't have to have been the Christian God, or any God or Gods. Could be someone's science experiment.

There isn't going to be any proof of any of this, but it's fun to kick around.; 10/28/14, 6:02 PM
Mark said...: Hey Ken B., how do you explain that the big bang theory was first posited by a Catholic priest (Father Georges Lemaître)?

Although, if you really want to know, it was set forth even earlier than that, by the author of Genesis who wrote, "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."; 10/28/14, 6:03 PM
Revenant said...: The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

He's half right. It neither contradicts nor requires the idea of a creator.; 10/28/14, 6:18 PM
Paul said...: I'm Catholic and I am a great proponent of science.

Yes the Bible can be taken literally (but I notice those who take it literally do only in some parts, not the whole Bible) or more figuratively in the time line.

After all, one 'day' can mean from sunrise to sunset... but that all depends on how fast the earth rotates, right? Same for a year.

What did they mean by 'day'.

Same for Darwinism. I actually agree that it is a 'system' of selection that is logical and of mathematical precision.

Thus the 'Big Bang' and Darwinism are compatible with my beliefs.; 10/28/14, 6:19 PM
Revenant said...: Hey Ken B., how do you explain that the big bang theory was first posited by a Catholic priest (Father Georges Lemaître)?

Lemaître's response to Pope Francis would presumably have been something along the lines of "holy father, I asked you nicely to please stop saying things like that".; 10/28/14, 6:25 PM
Original Mike said...: "The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it. "

Not so fast ....; 10/28/14, 6:30 PM
Fernandinande said...: The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

Where did the creator come from? Does that creator require another creator?

It is creators all the way down?

Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."

Perhaps, but Darwinian evolution is completely inconsistent with almost all Christian ideas and principles.; 10/28/14, 6:48 PM
Revenant said...: Darwinian evolution is completely inconsistent with almost all Christian ideas and principles

Not at all. It is inconsistent with a literal interpretation of scripture, certainly, but so is the rest of science.; 10/28/14, 7:05 PM
Fr. Denis Lemieux said...: @Ferdinande. No. No, it does not. Sez who? Sez me, and sez every Catholic Pope since Darwin wrote the Origin of the Species, and sez the rest of the Catholic intellectual world. This is... not a controversial matter in the Catholic Christian world.; 10/28/14, 7:08 PM
Ian Nemo said...: Re Fernandinande, "Is it creators all the way down?" St Thomas and Aristotle, among others apparently indulged in 10th grade bull sessions, too, and considered this. St Thomas dissected the notion of causation, of which he analyzed 5 (I think, - I only got to 12th grade :)).

Consider that one mode of causation is more similar to logic than to billiard balls. So the cause of calculus is, so to speak, the Zermelo-Frankel axioms+. The cause of the Zermelo-Frankel axioms is at most some meta-logical principles (in some sense - is it human intention or what that gets us to ZF?). And the cause of meta-logic is, well, what?

The point is there's no infinite regress, and Thomas/Aristotle take the uncaused causer to be more like that than a series of efficient cause.

I'm just using an analogy here. The various arguments are in fact quite subtle and worth some study.; 10/28/14, 7:12 PM
jr565 said...: Did he create human beings or did he create ape like creatures that tehn evolved into what we now know as humans?; 10/28/14, 7:15 PM
jr565 said...: Scott wrote:
Why the word "apparently?" Is the reporter pulling that inference out of his butt, or has the Catholic Church actually endorsed intelligent design?

I dont know if they endorsed intelligent design, but they certainly endorse design.; 10/28/14, 7:16 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Faith v. reason. Know which one to use.

Anything that can be observed should be. Anything that can be solved by reason should be. Only things that cannot be resolved through observation and reason should be matters of faith.

This is an old, old consensus from the Middle Ages. The Protestants rejected it and the Muslims never embraced it. Averroes died in exile, while Thomas Aquinas was made a saint. Make of that what you will.

Religion, it seems to me, is something that needs to concern itself with things that can't be solved any other way. Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? What is right and wrong? Can't observe the answers to those questions.; 10/28/14, 7:19 PM
jr565 said...: John Lynch wrote:
Another fun argument is this: could humans, at a sufficient level of technology, create another universe? If so, then what are the chances that our universe was created? Doesn't have to have been the Christian God, or any God or Gods. Could be someone's science experiment.

what are the odds that the universe could be created by happenstance? If we tried to create another universe we couldn't create one without it bearing the marks of it being created. If we just blew stuff up and waited to see what happened we probably woudlnt' get DNA out of the deal.; 10/28/14, 7:20 PM
Lucien said...: If you believe in an eternal (outside of time) God and that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old, while humans are on the order of 100,000 years old, then what difference does it make (theologically)whether He created humans by puffing magic breath into a handful of clay, or by 20 million years of evolution, or by creating souls in primates that already existed? All of these occur in just the twinkling of an eye from His point of view.; 10/28/14, 7:20 PM
jr565 said...: He would be a magician to us. We've tried to do things like create live or change sex, but can only do it by trying to copy his work. And we do a crappy job. Yet he imbued it into all animals DNA to have the capability to replicate themselves. And created out of nothingness. Even if you said the big bang was random, life wasn't created until the earth cooled which happened a LONG ways down the road. So what started that process?; 10/28/14, 7:32 PM
geokstr said...: Topics of this nature always remind me of my favorite sci-fi short story, "The Final Question" by Isaac Asimov, one the best and most prolific popular science and science fiction writers ever. And to emphasize how good it is, it was also his own favorite among his massive body of work. It's a short but great read:

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956; 10/28/14, 7:46 PM
n.n said...: The Big Bang is an article of faith of a secular philosophy.

Both intelligent and evolutionary creationism are articles of faith that are considered in extra-universal and universal frames, respectively.

Neither spontaneous conception nor creationism can be observed or reproduced within the scientific domain.

Evolution is a chaotic process.

He's right that an evolutionary process begins with a source (i.e. "conception"). He is right that an evolutionary process does not have an intrinsic fitness function. Evolutionary creationism does not explain the existence of complex constructs beyond a clump of "cells" (e.g. rock).

I wonder what motivates Francis to reconcile the Atheist and Christian faiths.; 10/28/14, 7:53 PM
Birkel said...: The 4th dimension of time didn't exist until the Big Bang. To ask what happened 'before' the Big Bang is to reveal a misunderstanding of time itself. Any talk of what God did 'before' the Big Bang is similarly flawed. That is the current understanding of science.

That is all.; 10/28/14, 8:07 PM
Revenant said...: You can't tell if a universe is designed by looking at it from the inside. It is the only universe you can actually see -- you've got nothing to compare it to. Whatever you might observe about it, it is impossible to say whether if that's how a designed universe looks vs. how a random universe looks vs. how all universes, of whatever origin, always look.; 10/28/14, 8:11 PM
Revenant said...: Evolutionary creationism does not explain the existence of complex constructs beyond a clump of "cells"

"Evolutionary creationism" might not, but evolutionary biology explained that long before you were born.; 10/28/14, 8:12 PM
rcocean said...: So evolutionary science doesn't disprove Religion.

Don't tell the atheists.; 10/28/14, 8:20 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I think that it is a mistake to look at the universe we inhabit, from the moment of our birth to our death, as other than an act of imagination. Only in the human imagination does eohippus become equus through a process called evolution.; 10/28/14, 8:29 PM
RecChief said...: You know, this has always struck me about the big bang and evolution. If you go back to the first speck of matter, where did it come from? The answer I have always received the following reply,"It always was,"

That's a very biblical concept; 10/28/14, 8:33 PM
RecChief said...: The Protestants rejected it

What are you talking about? ridiculous; 10/28/14, 8:35 PM
Mark said...: If you go back to the first speck of matter, where did it come from? The answer I have always received the following reply,"It always was,"
That's a very biblical concept

To say "it always was" is a very unbiblical concept. The answer that apparently no one has given to you, the answer which has been proclaimed for thousands of years, is that the universe was created ex nihilo, out of nothing, ab initio temporis, at the beginning of time (time being a measure of changes in space, such that if there is no space, there is no time).

Of course, it is near impossible for us to conceive of the idea of complete nothingness. But it is perhaps easier to grasp the idea of a reality outside of the known physical universe with our present space-time.

To understand how creation could occur ex nihilo, how matter, energy and light could simply erupt into existence without someone coming up with the totally unoriginal question, "If God created everything, who created God?" (asked only about 500 gazillion times), one must first understand exactly who and what God is. And most people's conception of God and His nature are faulty to the point that they invariably cannot understand the creation question.; 10/28/14, 8:51 PM
Renee said...: Pope Francis Says Forces Of Gravity And Electromagnetism Are Real.

Satire...

But the Church 60+ years ago stated on had no issue with evolution.; 10/28/14, 8:53 PM
Unknown said...: Wow. History, folks. The "big bang" was invented by a religious leader and defending religious beliefs where atheists had no explanation for a change in the stasis of the universe. Somehow we got from static conditions to order, and now are returning to entropy.

Pressure relieved disburses, and it takes something to regenerate the pressure. Water flows downhill, and it takes something to move it back up hill. The atheists of the time proposed a a timeless universe that had always existed instead of a God that changed things, but could not explain why/how order came out of randomness. There was/had to be/is some motivating force.

I do not fully understand the Bible, suspect that those who wrote it did not fully understand the vision and words given by God. I think of a primitive shown some BBC production explaining the development of the universe and writing down what they saw in the words and language they had at their disposal. Projecting into that viewpoint, I can see how the Bible accurately portrays what we think we understand about God's universe in prehistoric terminology (I know, not all of it is technically prehistory but the earliest portions may be a transcription of oral history or may have been in the OT languages which still did not have current concepts).; 10/28/14, 8:54 PM
Original Mike said...: "If you go back to the first speck of matter, where did it come from? The answer I have always received the following reply,"It always was,""

That's not the answer you'll get from a physicist.; 10/28/14, 8:55 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Quaestor said...

The end point of the pope's reasoning is a God who keeps himself in the loop just so there is a role for a god.

Maybe, just maybe, God found it tricky to create a machine that actually loves its contents.; 10/28/14, 8:57 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The article itself is poorly written:
The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.
Yes, the theories are real . . .; 10/28/14, 9:03 PM
Mark said...: In this age of ideological, politicized "science," we should remember that for many years many scientists insisted upon the "steady state theory," which said that the universe always existed, while it was those backward religionists who maintained that the universe had a beginning.; 10/28/14, 9:05 PM
Jacinto said...: Einstein himself, at first was a believer in the "steady state theory" of the universe. When a solution to his equation indicated an expanding universe. He added a "fudge" factor to the equation to maintain the steady state of the universe. When later observations confirmed an expanding universe, he admitted his error and called it one of his biggest blunder.; 10/28/14, 9:29 PM
Original Mike said...: Even before Hubble's data became available, it was understood that Einstein's steady-state "solution" wasn't stable.; 10/28/14, 9:39 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: As children at Old Mission Catholic School, Father Toal, a young Irishman, told us that there was nothing in evolutionary theory that contradicted the teachings of the Church. That was in 1962, and I'm glad to see nothing has changed since then.; 10/28/14, 10:07 PM
NCMoss said...: The planet Mars wants a re-do on its evolution. Even after 4.5 billion years it only has rocks and sand.; 10/29/14, 2:32 AM
Carl Pham said...: Catholicism has always been very pro-science. But unlike modern Scientism, a weird form of postmodern cargo cult, the Church has insisted that science cannot answer philosophical or moral questions, and that you cannot successfully draw philosophy or morals from it. For that, you must have religion -- a faith of some kind, a guiding philosophy.

The only reason I can imagine Francis's wholly unoriginal observation gets press now is that these days a lot of the bloom has come off Scientism.

Knowing humans, of course that means it's time for a wild swing back into Scholasticism -- of finding the answers to scientific questions in religion, which is the reverse of this particular coin o' folly.

Good old human beings: you know, on average they make sense, missing it by about the same wide margin either side each time they fire at the target.; 10/29/14, 4:14 AM
Skyler said...: Nothing new here. Only fundamentalist whacko Protestants deny evolution.; 10/29/14, 4:34 AM
damikesc said...: That's why I don't get the church vs science hostility.

For me, evolution EXPLAINS creation. The Bible isn't a textbook on HOW God did anything. It's not the point of it so it doesn't dwell on it. 7 days to God are unfathomable to mankind.

In the end, evolution doesn't explain what started everything. Creation provides that explanation.; 10/29/14, 7:06 AM
n.n said...: Evolutionary biology is built on an axiom of evolutionary creation (i.e. origin of a life fitness function). This is fine as far as axiomatic deduction is concerned. However, it is not completely scientific. Science is a philosophy and method that attempts to separate an objective (i.e. constrained frame in time and space) and philosophical domain. Relying on axioms such as "Big Bang" and evolutionary creationism undermines the legitimacy of science. Unfortunately, the integration of faith and science is a traditional aspect of competing faiths.

It's telling that many or perhaps most adherents of a traditional "theist" faith have developed a greater capacity to separate articles of faith and science. I suppose it's similar to early human evolution, where children imagine they have a novel perspective of everything, and over time recognize the insight of their parents and reconcile with their own limitations.; 10/29/14, 8:35 AM
Revenant said...: You know, this has always struck me about the big bang and evolution. If you go back to the first speck of matter, where did it come from? The answer I have always received the following reply,"It always was,"

That's like saying you've always wondered where babies come from, and the answer you always received was that storks bring them. If people keep telling you there was a "first speck of matter" that "always was", you probably ought to try asking an astrophysicist instead. :); 10/29/14, 8:40 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Why don't you tell us all about it, Revenant?; 10/29/14, 8:56 AM
Revenant said...: Somehow we got from static conditions to order, and now are returning to entropy.

First of all, "static conditions" are as ordered as anything can get, so saying something went from "static conditions" to "order" is silly. That's like saying you went on a road trip from Los Angeles to California.

Secondly, the big mistake creationists always make when talking about entropy is claiming that entropy always increases. This is false. The overall entropy of a closed system always increases. A non-closed system can, and regularly does, see its entropy decrease, provided entropy outside the system increases.

That's exactly what happens on Earth. We receive over a hundred petawatts of solar power from the Sun; this energy provides the basis for all life.; 10/29/14, 8:59 AM
Shanna said...: If you go back to the first speck of matter, where did it come from? The answer I have always received the following reply,"It always was,"

That's a very biblical concept

I feel the same. I've always viewed science as the how, but it doesn't speak to the why. There is no reason science and religion have to be incompatible.

In the Beginning, God Created the heavens and the earth. Then time passes. That's not super detailed, which is why I never understood people who sneer that christians believe in a young earth. They mostly really don't. There is no timeline given between the creation of the heavens and the earth and now.; 10/29/14, 9:07 AM
Shanna said...: I see that Revenant has replied that 'it always was' is not correct, but the whole idea of a beginning is more what I was speaking to.; 10/29/14, 9:09 AM
Revenant said...: Why don't you tell us all about it, Revenant?

Because blog comments are THE best place to study physics? :)

RecChief's main error is thinking of the "big bang" as something that happened IN space -- that there was a clump of matter in space, and it blew up. That's a common misconception. What "blew up" -- or, rather, "expanded rapidly" -- was space itself.

Matter itself didn't come into being until a little while later. The early universe was too hot for matter to exist in.; 10/29/14, 9:20 AM
Revenant said...: That's not super detailed, which is why I never understood people who sneer that christians believe in a young earth. They mostly really don't.

Mostly because when the big bang is discussed, Christians always show up to dismiss it as an atheistic lie.

Are they a minority? Absolutely. But it is the same sort of thing that causes atheists to be blamed for trying to ban Christmas decorations, when in reality the vast majority of us have no interest in doing so. The vocal minority is what gets the attention.; 10/29/14, 9:28 AM
Revenant said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/29/14, 9:28 AM
Revenant said...: Evolutionary biology is built on an axiom of evolutionary creation (i.e. origin of a life fitness function).

I'm not sure what that word salad is supposed to mean, but it doesn't describe evolutionary biology. :)

Neither evolution nor the concept of fitness are "axioms". That evolution occurs is an observed fact. That it occurs via selective processes (in which 'fitness' plays a part) is a theory explaining that fact, supported by rather a lot of experiment and empirical observation.

The only axiom involved is "the universe obeys laws which can be studied".; 10/29/14, 9:37 AM
Ian Nemo said...: Revenant - The only axiom involved is "the universe obeys laws which can be studied".

Which is a summary of what I take the word salad to mean. Each piece, - "universe", "obeys", "laws", "can be studied" - is intentional, in the philosophic sense, an instance of Whitehead's thoughtlike universe.; 10/29/14, 10:04 AM
Unknown said...: Revenant, creation is not an open system. Picking out a subset of creation does not "prove" entropy increases.

If you want to call creation an open system bleeding into another system, (1) you are a crackpot, or (2) read so much science fiction that it has influenced you brain too strongly, or (3) are proposing a new religion, or (4) all of the above.; 10/29/14, 10:37 AM
Unknown said...: "RecChief's main error is thinking of the "big bang" as something that happened IN space -- that there was a clump of matter in space, and it blew up. That's a common misconception. What "blew up" -- or, rather, "expanded rapidly" -- was space itself."

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep... 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."; 10/29/14, 10:40 AM
Revenant said...: Which is a summary of what I take the word salad to mean.

It clearly can't be, since he claims it makes things like astrophysics and evolutionary biology less scientific. That's the axiom that underlies all of science.; 10/29/14, 11:08 AM
Jacinto said...: To the question of what existed before the Big Bang, a Russian physicist states that it is the laws of Physics. I think it is not necessarily so. The laws of Physics of our universe may have been created at the moment of the Big Bang.; 10/29/14, 11:12 AM
Revenant said...: Revenant, creation is not an open system.

Creation isn't a system at all, open or closed. It is an act.

If you mean "the universe is not an open system" then, yes, I know. I didn't say it was. I said the Earth was an open system, which it is.

The universe as a whole is a closed system, which is why its entropy has been steadily increasing since the moment of the Big Bang.

Now, some creationists will tell you that the formation of planets, stars, etc, are examples of "order" growing out of "disorder". These people don't understand what words mean. :); 10/29/14, 11:17 AM
Revenant said...: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep... 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

That would be an example of one of the many things Genesis gets wrong about the early universe, yes. :)

Personally, my favorite part is where water exists before light and earth do. Of course, that belief makes sense when you realize that the people who wrote that passage thought the Earth was a flat disc floating in water.; 10/29/14, 11:20 AM
Unknown said...: (1) The universe as a whole is a closed system, which is why its entropy has been steadily increasing since the moment of the Big Bang. -- what caused the BB?

(2) The words don't match current understanding, no argument; if the universe is the earth as was thought when the Bible was written, "the earth was without form or void" matches pretty well with whatever existed without form or void prior to BB. Strapping the current understanding as the standard for what was written in a different time is stupid.; 10/29/14, 11:30 AM
Revenant said...: what caused the BB?

Nobody knows yet. That's why I mentioned, yesterday, that the big bang theory doesn't contradict the idea of a creator. You can fill gaps in knowledge with any stories you please.

In the strictest sense of the word "cause", of course, it can't have had one. Causes precede effects, and nothing preceded the big bang -- it is the earliest moment in time.

Strapping the current understanding as the standard for what was written in a different time is stupid.

... says the man who just tried to shoehorn 3000-year-old myths into modern astrophysics.

But sure, if you ignore what the myth creators wrote AND what they thought AND what they meant, and pretend the words mean entirely different things, then yes, you can claim Genesis matches what actually happened. You can claim the Harry Potter series matches reality, too, by that standard. :); 10/29/14, 12:32 PM
Rusty said...: The creation myth was simply a way that a post nomadic culture explained how we got here. When you think about it not only was the concept of a creator god unusual, but the very idea that the creator willed everything to be made out of nothing-the void- is a pretty sophisticated concept. They went further and offered that god could not be named. That god was a concept we attached to the creator of the universe.
Pretty smart, them old Jews.; 10/29/14, 1:36 PM