Via Reuters, comes further evidence that the Catholic Church is taking the side of reason in the debate over so-called “Intelligent Design.”
VIENNA (Reuters) – When Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn waded into a heated debate over evolution in the United States, his goal was not to persuade American schools to teach that God created the world in six days.
Nor was it to condemn Charles Darwin and his “The Origin of Species”, a book that Schoenborn, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vienna, considers a great work in the history of ideas.
His concern, Schoenborn told Reuters at his episcopal palace in central Vienna, was to stand up for common sense in a debate that had become ideological. He wanted to make clear where the Church thinks scientists overstep their bounds.
“The Church’s task now is to defend reason,” he explained, citing as his inspiration his former theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
“The theory of evolution is a scientific theory,” he said. “What I call evolutionism is an ideological view that says evolution can explain everything in the whole development of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
In other words, so-called Social Darwinism, an ideology/theory developed in the late 19th Century that attempted to apply the principles of evolution to social problems. It has been the intellectual crutch of racists, Nazis, and others seeking to justify exploitation, or extermination, of “inferior” people.
Cardinal Schoenborn goes on to say this, which is sure to get the moonbat brigade upset:
“The biblical teaching about creation is not a scientific theory,” he said, restating a Catholic view that contrasts with the literal reading of some conservative U.S. Protestants opposed to Darwin. “Christian teaching about creation is not an alternative to evolution.”
Somewhere, Galileo Galilei is smiling.
