The Pope & Intelligent Science
On the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday this year, Pope Benedict XVI explained in his Easter Vigil homily that, “If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason.”
I am impressed that Pope Benedict chose to include in his Easter Vigil homily an assertion of the reality of intelligent design in the origin of mankind. That testifies to the importance of the subject in his mind.
The pope’s statement that “Reason is there at the beginning” is not a restriction upon science, but a liberating principle that can free science and scientists from the oppressive force of scientific materialist philosophy. This philosophy compels them to conclude that man, and all other species, is solely the product of purposeless material causes, even when the evidence is pointing towards the necessary role of an intelligent cause in the history of life.
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Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Darwin on Trial, The Wedge of Truth, The Right Questions (InterVarsity Press), and other books challenging the naturalistic assumptions that dominate modern culture. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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