Evolution Undermines Faith

1. Why does it surprise some persons to learn that many of the clergy of Christendom endorse evolution?

THE teaching of evolution is not designed to build faith in God. It does not encourage one to view the Bible with deep respect. So it comes as a surprise to some persons when they realize that large numbers of the clergy of Christendom freely endorse evolution and that it is advocated in the textbooks used in their church-supported schools.

2. (a) What have Catholic spokesmen said about belief in evolution? (b) How does their view conflict with the Bible?

² As to the development of this trend in the Roman Catholic Church, the New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “In 1950 the encyclical Humani generis [issued by Pope Pius XII] marked the starting point of a new development . . . evolution was expressly recognized as a valid hypothesis.” In line with this, A. Hulsbosch, a seminary teacher in Holland and a member of the Order of St. Augustine, has said: “We can no longer deny that, on the biological side, man originates in the animal kingdom.”a And Peter Schoonenberg, S. J., a visiting professor at Duquesne University, a Catholic school, wrote: “When we now consider the genesis of the human species we meet with the lowest grade of parenthood, for the first men had no human but animal ‘parents.”’b However, this is in direct conflict with the Bible, which plainly states that Adam was the “son of God” and that he was made ‘in the image’ of God.​—Luke 3:38; Gen. 1:26.

3. To what extent do some Catholic schools push the teaching of evolution, and with what effect on their students?

³ These Catholic teachers of evolution are not passive about it, but want to make sure that their students have it thoroughly impressed on their minds. This is indicated by the fact that the preface of one edition of the biology textbook used at Iona (Catholic) College says: “The most general principle of all in biology is evolution. Most treatments of the subject make such a statement, but fail in conviction that it is really true. . . . In this book we have tried to make evolution as pervasive as it really is in the world of life. Every topic has its evolutionary background and aspects.” Can there be any doubt as to how such instruction affects the students? Not long ago U.S. News & World Report, when featuring “Growing Unrest in the Catholic Church,” said: “A St. Louis priest estimated that 25 per cent of his Catholic students definitely doubted the existence of God and another 25 per cent were agnostics. Notre Dame University officials were taken aback recently when a graduate complained that ‘as I was exposed to the best that Notre Dame had to offer, I grew farther and farther away from Christianity.’”

7. (a) How do some evolutionist clergymen view that Bible account about Adam? (b) What facts show that the Bible does not allow for that view? (c) By trying to fit the Bible to evolution, what are these clergymen actually doing with the Bible and with “science”?

⁷ In their endeavors to fit the Bible in with the theory of evolution, it is common for clergymen to argue that the Bible account about Adam is simply an allegory, a parable, but not historical fact. Says Dutch Jesuit Trooster: “Let us first of all become completely aware that the story of paradise is not history in our modern sense of the word.”c He reasons that Adam here was not “the first man” but that he represents every man, and that every man, though he has the opportunity for communion with God, commits his own act that alienates him from God. But the Bible does not allow for this view either. Adam is said to be “the first man,” not every man. (1 Cor. 15:45) The Bible writer Luke lists Adam along with seventy-four other men in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. (Luke 3:23-38) If one was simply allegorical, what about the rest? Also, Jude, a half brother of Jesus, wrote that Enoch was “the seventh one in line from Adam,” but Enoch certainly was not the seventh in line from every man. (Jude 14) And Genesis 5:3 says that Adam fathered a son by the name Seth at the age of a hundred and thirty years. Is that true of every man? Of course not! By accepting evolution as fact, and seeking to interpret the Bible to fit evolution, they are downgrading God’s Word and exalting materialistic “science.”

A. Hulsbosch, of Holland, claims: “The earthly man taken as a whole is a two-sided being; on the biological side he is related to the animal, and on the personal he is the image of God.” In this way the body is viewed as a product of evolution, but there is said to be another part of man that did not evolve. On this point, Rudolph Bandas, a member of the Roman Pontifical Academy of Theology, has written: “The soul is outside the process of evolution. The soul is rational, simple, spiritual and immortal​—it cannot evolve out of mere animal life.” Similarly, Raymond Nogar, a Catholic priest, in his book The Wisdom of Evolution, says: “Biologically, man like the lynx, is a special kind of animal. He belongs in the animal kingdom with all the rest of the animals. . . . The soul of man (and woman) was created immediately by God and is spiritual and immortal.”

At the conclusion of a recent UNESCO conference in Paris, France, a published news report announced: “The only certainty about the origins of modern man (homo sapiens) is that they are ‘uncertain.”’ And the book Creation and Evolution, by Ulrich A. Hauber, a Catholic monsignor whose publication bears the imprimatur of the bishop of Davenport, acknowledges the uncertainty of it, saying: “The theory of evolution does not explain all the facts, it seems to run counter to some of them.” Despite this, he goes on to say: “But it is an eminently reasonable theory.”

12. What position have the Jesuits taken on the teaching of evolution, and are they really following through on this?

¹² About four years earlier, Le Figaro, a Paris daily, in its religious news of June 15, 1965, took note of an event of similar significance. It reported that the general of the Jesuit order, Pedro Arrupe, in his talk following his induction and in which he defined the new policy of this religious body, said they would put emphasis on the knowledge of the books of Jesuit evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin. “The importance of this declaration,” notes Le Figaro, “is stressed by the fact that there is no doubt in the clerical circles of Rome that ‘Father’ Arrupe’s point of view completely harmonizes with the sovereign Pontiff’s.” That this news report was no misinterpretation of matters is evident from the facts, already examined, showing that Catholic spokesmen definitely are among the foremost advocates of this faith-destroying dogma.

As the Jesuit writer S. Trooster put it: “We must even bear in mind that Adam as ancestor has been as artificially invented as other legendary tribal ancestors.”

It is not only outright atheists who say they do not believe in these Bible teachings. Says Newsweek of August 22, 1966: “Canadian Jesuit Biblicist Father David Stanley points out, . . . ‘If you accept evolution, Adam . . . was only a primate. The myth of a fall doesn’t fit at all.”’ Also, the book Evolution and the Doctrine of Original Sin, published in 1968 with the imprimatur of the archbishop of Newark, takes the same view. It first states the fundamental Bible belief that “every human being begins his life in a sinful state because of the sin of Adam,” but then adds: “Those who take the scientific doctrine of evolution seriously can no longer accept this traditional presentation.” And the book shows that its author definitely does take that “doctrine of evolution” seriously. So seriously does he take it that he is willing to mold his viewpoint of the entire Bible to conform to it.