A Response to a Dominican

A Response to a Dominican who teaches at a Protestant University in Hong Kong:

The last 20 to 30 years has seen new scientific discoveries and data collecting in cosmology, biology, chemistry, and genetics which completely vindicates what the Roman Catholic Church actions in the past. Also, the sheer changeability of scientific theory precludes its 'disproving' Catholic doctrine. Another underpinning of your view is scientism. Scientism is a pseudo-philosophy and not a correct nor valid methodology for scientific inquiry. Atheists and agnostics have replaced true science and its progress with this slavery of scientism. But it has not been able to stop new findings from reaching scholars and scientists. Aside from the four causes of atheism - hatred, obstinance, ignorance, and libertinism - atheism as a whole has slowed, nay has practically stopped scientific progress and enshrined scientific theories which have long been out-of-date. Dawkins, De Grasse Tyson and Bill Nye the (fake) science guy is old news. Their neo-Darwinian evolution has been made obsolete by advanced research in genetics and DNA science.

In cosmology/astronomy we have "the little whimper from the Big Bang—and the subsequent mapping of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by three different satellite probes—[which] was like the tolling of a death knell for any and all theories trying to deprive the universe of a beginning or of change. It did not, of course, signal the end of scientistic atheists; it only forced them into deeper recesses of irrationality." The data collected by the COBE satellite, which measured the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, saw heat waves that spanned the universe coming from different directions. At its intersection was the exact coordinates of earth showing that earth is indeed, in a special place in the Universe. Couple this new finding with what Einstein and Hawking had said about the relativity of geocentrism and heliocentrism and that they cannot be proved by optical experiments vindicates  the Roman Catholic Church and it’s holy inquisition (via St. Robert Bellarmine) which showed themselves to be better scientists than Galileo by disallowing the possibility of a "strict proof" of the earth's motion, on the grounds that an astronomical theory merely "saves the appearances" without necessarily revealing what "really happens." NASA, very expectantly, has done all it can to not disseminate the data COBE satellite and it will not be taught at Universities. 

In the fields of biology and genetics we see the complete collapse of evolution and by extension evolution applied to psychology and the ridiculous application of animal psychology to human psychology.  Evolution claims that the DNA in genes has a mechanism that changes the DNA so that the gene will eventually turn into another species. There is simply no indication from science that DNA has that power, even when it is altered by artificial means.

Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis, the first papal document addressing evolution, sums up the Catholic position on evolution:

"5. If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.

Evolution is an absurd system which is based on an absurd principle: that something comes from nothing, that the greater comes from the lesser, that the more perfect comes from the less perfect, that order and constancy come from chance. Evolution is a modern mythology which makes the systems of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses look rational. It is to say that there is design without a designer. It is a creed that is too unbelievable to recite. Indeed, I think that one would have to be psychotic to really believe that it is true. It would be psychotic, for example, to say that the music of Mozart was composed by his cat’s walking on a piano. Yet evolution asserts this very principle." "First of all, we must observe that the role of randomness in Darwinian biology is quite different from its role in thermodynamics, quantum theory, and other natural sciences. In those sciences randomness captures our inability to predict or know the precise behavior of the parts of a system (or perhaps, in the case of the quantum world, some intrinsic properties of the system). But in all such cases the “random” behavior of parts is embedded in and constrained by a deeply mathematical and precise conceptual structure of the whole that makes the overall behavior of the system orderly and intelligible." 

"In the case of randomness, what appears to us as random is not necessarily so when understood more deeply, so randomness in nature is really an epistemological issue possibly due to Original Sin, our finite nature, and our imperfect intellects. E.g., the motions of atoms in a gas are not random in the sense that they obey no underlying rules; one can in principle derive the statistical properties of a gas by analyzing its trillions of atoms individually. Taken as a collection they have very predictable characteristics—e.g., temperature and entropy—indicative of an underlying logic. The same goes for quantum mechanics. The neo-Darwinists' biology, on the contrary, makes no predictions from random genetic mutations toward an increase in the information in DNA, which one would expect if more complex beings were to evolve from lesser complex ones, contrary to what the second law of thermodynamics says—that disorder tends to increase in closed systems. They call what they do not understand "random." Therefore, randomness in the former sense in no way precludes teleology as does randomness in the neo-Darwinists' sense."

What is possible is something commonly called microevolution, which is not evolution according to the Darwinian sense. It is to say that species, by means of a natural ability built into them by the Creator, can adapt over time to certain environments, producing variants that are not new species, but simply subspecies which do not differ substantially from other animals or plants within the same species. There is a lot of evidence for this. Darwinian evolution has no evidence to support itself, and there is indeed much evidence against it.  For example, some Thomist philosophers and theologians taught contra Neo-Darwinians (Weissmann) and the Neo-Lamarckians, the possibility ("possibilis est evolutio intra plures inferiores gradus classificationis") of evolution "within" the lower grades of classification, such as species, genus, and family; but not "between" species ("non habetur evolutio ab una specie proprie dicta ad aliam").

The scientism of Dawkins and company is old, stale cereal. Catholics have the capacity of being true scientists because they have the Faith which prevents them from becoming slaves to Scientism which is a pseudo-philosophy. 

The fact that you take an absolutist stance in empirical science shows you're under the influence of scientism and have a poor understanding of the nature and methodology of empirical science, which is, because of it's the observation in nature of secondary causes, constantly developing and changing. And your philosophy should presuppose the proper place of empirical science and it should be in conformity with Aquinas' metaphysical underpinnings and natural philosophy. And the rejection of the consensus of the Church Fathers which is a Loci Theologici shows ignorance of theology and that one wouldn't be a very good theologian. I expect more out of a Dominican especially one from the Central Province.