In Naples, Pope Francis warns theologians against ‘collapsing’ into ideology

• In Vatican
• Inés San Martín
  Jun 21, 2019
  ROME BUREAU CHIEF

ROME - Pope Francis on Friday visited the southern Italian city of Naples and participated in a theology congress dedicated to interreligious dialogue and migration in the context of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Argentine pontiff revisited some of his core concepts, calling for theologians to be an expression of a church that is a “field hospital,” and to be merciful, because without this, “our theology, our law, our pastoral care, run the risk of collapsing into bureaucratic pettiness or ideology, which by its nature wants to tame the mystery.”
The theology summit was organized by the Pontifical Catholic University, a Jesuit institution. The scope of the gathering was to discuss the impact of the pope’s Apostolic Constitution Veritatis Gaudium, on theological studies. His speech was entitled “Theology after Veritatis Gaudium in the context of the Mediterranean.”
“Theology is the expression of a church that is a ‘field hospital,’ which lives its mission of salvation and healing in the world!” Francis said.
“Mercy is not only a pastoral attitude, but it is the very substance of the Gospel of Jesus,” he said. “I encourage you to study how, in the various disciplines - dogmatic, morals, spirituality, law and so on - the centrality of mercy can be reflected,” Francis said to around 1,000 people, including students and professors.
In the journey of leaving oneself and encountering others, it is important for theologians to be “men and women of compassion, touched by the oppressed life of many, by the slavery of today, by social wounds, by violence, by wars and from the enormous injustices suffered by so many poor who live on the shores of this ‘common sea’.”
“Without communion and without compassion, constantly nourished by prayer, theology not only loses its soul, but loses its intelligence and ability to interpret reality in a Christian way,” Francis said.
Francis also underlined the importance of universities having study plans that allow lay people, particularly women, to attend and not only seminarians.
“The contribution that women are giving and can give to theology is indispensable and their participation must therefore be supported,” he said.
Speaking in particular about the context of the Mediterranean - which he’s often dubbed the mare mortum for the number of people who’ve died trying to reach the European shore after fleeing hunger, violence and persecution in Africa and the Middle East - Francis said that it must be “in harmony” with the spirit of Christ, “with his freedom to go around the world and reach the peripheries, even those of thought.”
According to Francis, theologians are called to encourage “the meeting of cultures” with God’s revelation and the Church’s tradition, and even though “the ancient architectures of thought, the great theological syntheses of the past are mines of theological wisdom, they cannot be applied mechanically to current questions.”
The first sources of theology, meaning the Word of God and the Holy Spirit are, the pope said, “inexhaustible” and therefore, theologians are called to work towards a “theological Pentecost.”

Francis also said that “theological freedom” is necessary, because without the possibility of experiencing new paths, “nothing new is created” and there’s no room left for the newness of the Spirit.
Quoting his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, written by the Argentine pontiff in 2013, Francis said that, “For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel.”
The theology that should follow Veritatis Gaudium, according to the pontiff, is one that is done “in net,” and in the context of the Mediterranean, “in solidarity with the ‘castaways’ of history.”
The work of theological faculties and ecclesiastical universities, he said, contributes to building a “just and fraternal society,” that cares for creation and is set on building peace as the result of the collaboration between civil, ecclesial and interreligious institutions.
Francis also spoke about the importance of dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews, particularly as a tool that can foster understanding and peace.
“With Muslims we are called to dialogue to build the future of our societies and our cities; we are called to consider them partners to build a peaceful coexistence, even when there are shocking episodes by fanatical groups that are the enemy of dialogue, such as the tragedy of last Easter in Sri Lanka,” the pope said, referring to the deadly bombings in three churches and two hotels on Easter Sunday that left over 250 people dead.
Being docile to the work of the Spirit when it comes to theology, Francis said, means to proclaim the faith without a spirit of conquest or the will to proselytize. Instead, it implies a dialogue “from within,” with men and women, their cultures and different religious traditions.
If theology is to be consistent with the Gospel, it must also be open to the testimony “up to the sacrifice of life,” Francis said, quoting as examples Charles de Foucauld and the monks of Tibhirine, murdered in Algeria and “many brothers and sisters who, with the grace of Christ, they were faithful with meekness and humility and died with the name of Jesus on their lips and mercy in their hearts.”
Non-violence, he said, is a “horizon” to which theology must look as a constitutive element, with the help of the writings and practices of Martin Luther King, Italian philosopher Lanza del Vasto and “other artisans” of peace.
Lastly, Francis also urged theologians to work in an “interdisciplinary” way, overcoming “individualism.”
“The method of dialogue and listening, guided by the evangelical criterion of mercy, can greatly enrich the interdisciplinary knowledge and interpretation,” he said, making the prophecies of peace that the Holy Spirit “has never failed to arouse” emerge.
Francis spoke of this as a contrast to the “aggressive and warlike” attitudes that have marked the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, many of whom called themselves Christians: From colonial practices to the justifications of all kinds of wars and the persecutions perpetrated in the name of religion or an alleged racial or doctrinal purity.

Follow Inés San Martín on Twitter: @inesanma

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/06/21/in-naples-pope-francis-warns-theologian-against-collapsing-into-ideology/

'Momentary desires': Vatican rejects gender fluidity as unnatural

Vatican City: The Vatican has issued an official document rejecting the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisting on the sexual "complementarity" of men and women to make babies.
It said the idea of gender being determined by personal feeling rather than biology was an attempt to "annihilate nature".

Pope Francis walks past cardinals after celebrating a Pentecost Mass in St Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday.Credit:AP

Pope Francis has repeatedly argued the position that people cannot choose their genders. But the document represents the first attempt to put the Vatican's position, first articulated fully by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2012 speech, into a comprehensive, official text.

The document, published during LGBT Pride Month, was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people. Advocacy group New Ways Ministry said it would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.

The text, Male and Female He Created Them, was intended to help Catholic teachers, parents, students and clergy address what the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education called an "educational crisis" in the field of sex education.

It called for a "path of dialogue" and listening on the issue of "gender theory" in education. But even priestly advocates for LGBT Catholics noted that the text appeared to have relied entirely on previous papal pronouncements, Vatican documents and philosophers and theologians.

"The real-life experiences of LGBT people seem entirely absent from this document," said the Reverend James Martin, a Jesuit priest who wrote a book on improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBT community, titled Building a Bridge. "We should welcome the congregation's call to dialogue and listening on gender, and I hope that conversation will now begin."

Jay Brown of the Human Rights Campaign - the largest LGBT-rights group in the United States - said the Vatican's stance "sends a dangerous message that anybody who experiences gender diversity is somehow less worthy."

The document called for a new alliance among families, schools and society to offer a "positive and prudent sexual education" in Catholic schools so children learn the "full original truth of masculinity and femininity."

It called gender fluidity a symptom of the "confused concept of freedom" and "momentary desires" that characterise post-modern culture. It rejected terms such as "intersex" and "transgender" and said the purpose of the biological complementarity of the male and female sex organs was to ensure procreation.

Francis DeBernardo, head of New Ways Ministry, said such concepts are outdated, misinformed and ignore contemporary science on factors beyond visible genitalia that determine gender.

"Gender is also biologically determined by genetics, hormones and brain chemistry - things not visible at birth," DeBernardo said in a statement. "People do not choose their gender, as the Vatican claims, they discover it through their lived experiences."

He said the Catholic Church should encourage this process of discovery, saying it's "a process by which individuals discover the wonderful way that God has created them."
"This casts everything back to the Dark Ages," said Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, a group that advocates for LGBT equality and inclusion in the church. "I think it is incredibly insensitive, to be talking still about gender and sexuality as a choice and a momentary whim rather than a fundamental God-given identity."

The church's retrenchment hints at one of the challenges it faces at a time of growing secularisation - when many of its teachings on sexuality are being ignored as out of date. Francis has expressed an interest in outreach to LGBT followers, but he has also taken a clear stance on gender identity, decrying the idea that children are taught in schools that "everyone can choose his or her sex."

"And this is terrible," Francis said in 2016.
The church on Monday said it was important to listen and "understand cultural events of recent decades," but it also described a crisis in sexual education - a "disorientation" that was destabilising the family and cancelling out the differences between men and women.

The church made a case that children had the right to grow up in a family "with a father and a mother," and the document quoted an earlier Francis speech about how children benefit from seeing masculinity represented by the father and femininity represented by the mother.
"It is precisely within the nucleus of the family unit that children can learn how to recognise the value and the beauty of the differences between the two sexes," the document said.

Traditionalist groups lauded the 31-page Vatican document. CitizenGO, a conservative Madrid-based group that campaigns around the world, called the latest church teaching an "extraordinary guidebook."

"This authoritative tool is quite clear in the condemnation of gender ideology and of the grave damage it wreaks inside society," the group said.
….


AP, Washington Post

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/momentary-desires-vatican-rejects-gender-fluidity-as-unnatural-20190611-p51wh1.html

Until which “coming” would Apostle John live?

Beyond the “Second Coming”

 

Part Two:

Until which “coming” would Apostle John live?

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

^“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them.

(This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said,

‘Lord, who is going to betray you?’)

When Peter saw him, he asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’

Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return,

what is that to you? You must follow me’.”

 

John 21:20-22

 

 

 

 

The Apostles of Jesus Christ were the types who were never going ‘to die wondering’.

Philip, for instance (John 14:8): ‘Master, show us the Father; then we shall be content’.

And Thomas (20:25): ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’.

Now Peter: ‘Lord, what about him [John]?’

 

Jesus often met such questions with a mild rebuke.

In the case of Philip (John 14:9-11):

 

‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves’.

 

In the case of ‘Doubting Thomas’ (20:27): ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe’.

In the case of Peter: ‘What is that to you?’, etc.

 

But there may now arise a modern question: If, as most Christians seem to believe, Jesus has not yet come as He spoke of to his disciples - {and as they (e.g. Sts. John, Paul) wrote of with phrases like “soon”, or even “very soon”} - in what Christians term (wrongly, I think) the “second coming”, then how is it that the risen Jesus can say that He wanted John ‘to remain alive until I return’?

This statement, by the way, is perfectly in accord with what the pre-Resurrection Jesus had told his followers (Matthew 16:28): ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom’.

Apparently, while Peter was not going to be one of these, John was.

Had Jesus Christ, who had risen from the dead by his own power, by the power of his Father (John 10:17-18): ‘The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father’, all of a sudden, despite his now being in a higher (transformed) state of being, become confused about when He would actually come again?

No, the fact is that there was a “coming” before the final coming, as I estimated in Part One: https://www.academia.edu/29837194/Beyond_the_Second_Coming_ thus:

 

As the Americans say, Let’s do the math.

 

First: “In the Gospel the Lord shows us that His first coming was in humility, as a Servant, to free the world from sin”. http://www.ewtn.com.au/devotionals/mercy/coming.htm

 

Second: His soon-to-take-place “coming” as gleaned from the quotes above, follows that one. And it is this particular “coming” that I would designate the “Second Coming”.

 

Last: There is yet to be a Final Coming, as indicated by the Catechism: “God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the last judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world” (No. 667). The Last Judgment.

 

Peter’s lifetime approximated to only the First of these.

John would live on until the Second.

We still await the Final coming of Jesus Christ.

Francis has no intention of shrinking from the difficult task of changing a deeply entrenched culture

Editorial: Francis treats church's internal 'sickness'

Francis has no intention of shrinking from the difficult task of changing a deeply entrenched culture

Jun 7, 2019

by NCR Editorial Staff

Opinion

 

Pope Francis leads an audience with participants in the Congress for the Pastoral Care of Vocations in Europe, at the Vatican June 6. (CNS/Vatican Media)

With Pope Francis, the Catholic community is re-learning both the limits of papal power as well as the persuasive reach of papal imagination and symbol.
We've seen the latter before, especially during the reign of Pope John Paul II. He had no global mandate from any world body, but his presence and actions on the world stage contributed to historic changes in both civil and religious realms. He confronted communism in a unique way, and he forever clothed the words of Nostra Aetate, the document reforming the church's relationship with non-Christian religions, in unmistakable reality with bold gestures of cooperation with other world religions.

That example would have been impossible without the groundbreaking work of Vatican II, the multi-year council of the early 1960s that laid the foundation for ongoing reform. Current wisdom often holds that young Catholics have no memory of that council, are beyond its arguments and tensions and are wont to move on to a more placid Catholic reality. They may not have the same "issues" as their parents and grandparents, but make no mistake, they are living the working out of that council in ways their forebears could only have imagined.

While John Paul II established the church as a global force in a new way, he left the institution divided and at odds with itself. As the unmasking of the hierarchical culture reveals, he also left a church deeply corrupt and compromised at the highest levels.
Francis bears the burden of effecting interior change, of getting at the soft-tissue reforms that require the instincts of a pastor schooled in matters of the human heart. It is the more difficult task, by far, because it requires rethinking, at the most fundamental level, what it means to be an ordained cleric in the Roman Catholic Church and what it means to be Catholic.
If on the global stage John Paul went where popes previously had not gone, Francis is approaching reform of the interior life of the church in ways that are shocking the system. Read about a new proposed apostolic constitution on reform of the Curia. It emphasizes service and the need to include laypeople, especially women, in church governance.

In an analysis, ecclesiologist Richard Gaillardetz writes: "In the prologue of the constitution, we already encounter what will be the overarching theme of the document, its reconception of the work of the Curia as an exercise not in domination and control but in Christian service inspired by Jesus' ministry of foot-washing."

What remains to be seen is how bishops worldwide react to the constitution as they receive copies of the proposal. But the language is that of the reformer who, it is said, in the week before he was elected pope, sealed his fate with a talk to fellow cardinals that diagnosed the church's "sickness" as rooted in a preoccupation with self-preservation.
"The evils that, over time, happen in ecclesial institutions have their root in self-referentiality and a kind of theological narcissism," he said. "In Revelation, Jesus says that he is at the door and knocks. Obviously, the text refers to his knocking from the outside in order to enter, but I think about the times in which Jesus knocks from within so that we will let him come out. The self-referential church keeps Jesus Christ within herself and does not let him out," he wrote.
He described two images of the church, one a church that "comes out of herself" and another, "the worldly church, living within herself, of herself, for herself." The going out — evangelization — in his construct meant going "to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery."
The irony, of course, is that requisite for such going out — this is not the evangelization of totting up newly won souls — would be a deep change not only of ruling structures in the church but also, more importantly, a change of heart of those inhabiting the structures.
Half a century out, we are working on the most profound levels of Vatican II reform. So a pope on a plane is able to say what previously would have been unthinkable: "The tradition of the church is always in movement. The tradition does not safeguard the ashes." Francis spoke those words recently in a stinging rebuke of Catholic "fundamentalists" who yearn to "safeguard the ashes." Tradition, instead, he said, "is the guarantee of the future."
He is turning on its head the idea that developed (and to an absurd degree in the United States) that equated tradition with a strange list of orthodoxies that became determinant for some segments of the church of whether an individual could be counted in or out of the community.

Francis has changed the image for the community from one of rigid boundaries and border-patrolling bishops to a community of movement and accompaniment. He is moving us from a God of transactions to a God of transformation.
The need has been long understood. In an eerie example of art preceding life, novelist Morris West in Lazarus, one of his papal novels, depicts a cardinal who has come to a personal reckoning with his career, having a frank conversation about the failed hierarchical approach with a pope newly open to the conversation as he is about to undergo a major heart operation.
"You and I , all of us, Curia and hierarchy alike, are the nearly perfect products of our Roman system," the cardinal tells the pope. "We never fought it. We marched with it every step of the way. We cauterized our emotions, hardened our hearts, made ourselves eunuchs for the love of God! … and somewhere along the way, very early I think, we lost the simple art of loving."
The people, he said, "want care and compassion and love and a hand to lead them out of the maze. Does yours? Does mine? I think not."
The existential threat against which West sets his main character in this 1990 novel was a radical Islamic group. The more imminent existential threat to the church today is the corruption evident in the clerical/hierarchical cultures.
Francis may not tick off all the boxes of all the interest groups in this raucous and divided community. He may make errors. It is clear, however, that he has no intention of shrinking from the difficult task of changing a deeply entrenched culture. He has allowed the community to entertain disturbing, if fundamental, questions. What is legitimate tradition? What of the tradition gives nourishment? What are the ashes we should leave behind? Fiction, perhaps, anticipated the big questions. It doesn't hold the answers.
The illness, acquired over centuries, is not easily cured. It is encouraging to see Francis commencing the work and inviting the rest of us to join.

This story appeared in the June 14-27, 2019 print issue under the headline: Francis treats church's internal 'sickness' .

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/editorial-francis-treats-churchs-internal-sickness

Philosophy and Science – mutually autonomous

        

 

“Philosophy is called to judge pseudo-philosophical theories proposed in the name

of science, but the two disciplines are autonomous because they have different objects

and employ very different methods”.

Taken from:
http://www.kolbecenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221:philosophy-and-science-in-contemporary-culture&catid=10:articles-and-essays&Itemid=74



Sunday, 17 March 2002 05:00
Author: Josef Seifert



SUMMARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
By Josef Seifert (Full text article from Dr. Seifert can be requested at hugh@kolbecenter.org


….

Summarized by Rev. Victor P. Warkulwiz, M.S.S.
In this paper Professor Seifert examines the role of philosophy and science in shaping the image of man and in forming culture in the contemporary world, for the formation of a correct image of man and a respect for human dignity are of crucial importance as we enter the third millennium. Specifically, he concentrates on two opposite images of man derived from philosophy and science. One poses a threat to civilization; the other provides hope.

Professor Seifert observes: “Science and philosophy are not only parts of culture but they also shape decisively most of the other manifold cultural and artistic expressions as well as the ethical standards and laws, along with political actions and systems, of a given civilization”.

Philosophy and science exercise a vast influence on culture and moral standards. They strongly influence the popularly accepted image of the human person and society’s vision of man’s place in the cosmos. On the one hand, philosophers and scientists have made many contributions to what Pope John Paul II calls the “culture a life,” a culture formed by the Christian faith. On the other hand they have a large share of the responsibility for the ghastly “culture of death” that surrounds us.

Ultimately, the opposition is between a culture in which man is recognized as a human person made in the image and likeness of God and a culture built on an image of man as machine, a mere product of matter and chance. Professor Seifert begins the development of his theme by discussing the nature of philosophy and science. He makes the Platonic distinction between “authentic and certain knowledge” and “unfounded or insufficiently founded opinion.” Science, in its traditional and broadest sense, is directed towards the former. For Plato, the highest object of all science and knowledge is the supreme and absolute Good, which is the source of all authentic culture. Only knowledge that reaches truth about the good of man and the absolute Good can be, according to Plato, science in the full sense.

Today, the term science is applied almost exclusively to natural science. Furthermore, modern science consists of knowledge in the genuine sense along with many theories, paradigms, constructs and philosophical interpretations that are frequently false. It is a mixture of “authentic and certain knowledge” with “unfounded or insufficiently founded opinion.” And there is an increasing subjectivization of certainty in the thought in some modern philosophers of science that is moving toward the ideal of a purely hypothetical science without any certainty. Empiricist philosophy abandons the search for truth and reduces science to opinion and hypotheses subject to falsification.

Professor Seifert’s reflections favor a philosophy of science that upholds the high values of truth and certainty, a philosophy that is not a mere handmaid of science but one that orders science and distinguishes between “authentic and certain knowledge” and ‘unfounded or insufficiently founded opinion.” He goes on to make the distinction between philosophy and science. Philosophy is called to judge pseudo-philosophical theories proposed in the name of science, but the two disciplines are autonomous because they have different objects and employ very different methods. Philosophers study necessary natures, and natural scientists study non-necessary natures. Philosophic methods are unable to investigate such natures as those of animals or chemical elements. Such natures are non-necessary and must be studied using the empirical methods of natural science. Conversely, it would be absurd to study questions of ethics and oughtness by means of empirical studies of human or animal behavior. Scientists cannot solve philosophical problems by observation and experiment. Philosophy studies the intelligible and necessary aspects of reality, which are not susceptible to empirical methods.
Natural science studies the sensible and contingent aspects of reality. In the past some influential philosophers, such as Aristotle, have attempted to solve empirical problems by philosophic methods, thereby closing many minds to experimental sciences. But today philosophers are much less prone to intrude into the sphere of empirical matters than are scientists to pontificate about philosophical questions. Seifert gives a number of examples in which scientists tread on areas proper to philosophy. Konrad Lorenz and Wolfgang Wickler wrongly deduce ethical conclusions from observations of animal behavior. Albert Einstein ventures outside the domain of natural science when he speculates about the essence of time and the relativity of simultaneity. The same is true about the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg when he makes far-reaching philosophical deductions regarding indeterminacy, freedom, causality and the first principles of being. Jacques Monad in his Chance and Necessity makes outrageous metaphysical claims about chance, necessity and God. And the theory of evolution is, in most of its forms, a philosophical theory for which scientific research provides at most a starting point.

False philosophical theses that are blindly held by scientists as if they were empirically demonstrated become the source of many errors. The mutual autonomy of philosophy and science, however, does not mean that they are completely independent of each other. Scientists presuppose many philosophical categories such as reality, existence, proof, argument, logical laws, matter, space, time, indeterminacy, determinism and finality. Only philosophy can give express answers to philosophical problems concerning truth, the scope and purpose of each science, and the value and limits of scientific knowledge.

Seifert states that the work of physicist/historian of science Stanley Jaki shows that only a creationist metaphysics, which sees the origin of nature in a free divine act and therefore recognizes contingency in nature, is able to provide the proper metaphysical basis for the empirical sciences. The philosopher is called to be a critic of science. But he also profits from science in many ways. Philosophical questions are presented by science to the philosopher. Experience has a different role for philosophy than it does for natural science. It can widen the scope of philosophy and confirm its conclusions. Philosophers can be pleased when the experiments of the scientists corroborate the results of their philosophical studies. But the philosophical method is never the experiment. It is another kind of knowledge. It is insight into the highly intelligible and evident essences and states of affairs; it is knowledge of existing beings in cognition and the knowledge of other persons through empathy; and it is knowledge acquired from deductive demonstrations.

Everything discussed so far was in preparation for the main topic, viz.: “the image of man provided by scientific knowledge in the described sense of science.” Professor Seifert next discusses the theory of evolution as an example of scientifically inspired “unfounded or insufficiently founded opinion.” He says that the theory of evolution is one of the most widespread and dangerously confused philosophical opinions thought up by scientists. “The evolutionary account of the origin of all living things possibly shaped the image of man on which contemporary culture rests more profoundly than any other scientific or pseudo-scientific theory.” He distinguishes two elements in the theory of evolution. The first concerns the trans-species development of organic beings, which can be confirmed or refuted by observation and experiment. The second concerns the causes and principles that bring about trans-species development of organic beings, wherein lies the philosophical content. In Darwinian evolution, this philosophical content includes the vague concept of chance and the extension of certain natural principles, such as natural selection, into domains where they are not supported by scientific facts.
The author goes on to discuss the ambiguity of the notion of “evolution.” He distinguishes three senses in which the theory of evolution can be understood. The first is “orthodox Darwinism” in which there is no purpose in nature, no personal Creator, and no vital principle that is irreducible to matter. Even though Darwin himself was not an atheist, the theory attached to his name is virtually an atheistic one. Orthodox Darwinism is not a scientific theory but a philosophical one. Therefore, it can be neither proven nor refuted by empirical methods but only by philosophical ones. But these must confront the facts of nature and withstand the “test of reality.” Empirical facts cannot contradict authentic philosophical insights, but they can very easily contradict false philosophical claims.

In the second form of evolution, which is often associated with Teilhard de Chardin, the role of an intelligent Creator-God is not denied. The Creator uses evolutionary techniques that give rise to the hierarchy of living organisms from life-less matter. Although His intervention to produce the first primitive living being is not precluded, it is not seen as necessary. Neither the emergence of life nor that of the human person presupposes any new creative act. There is no essential distinction made between living and lifeless beings and between human beings and subhuman living organisms. Teilhard de Chardin goes so far as to suggest that Christ is the highest product of evolution. The second form of evolution can possess two features that the first one lacks. It can admit finality in evolution, and it can assume an intelligent cause (even a divine one) of all design in nature. But it retains the evolutionary mechanisms of the first form, such as the principle of natural selection. And, like the first form, it lacks an immaterial principle of life. Therefore, it is essentially a materialistic theory because it views all life as nothing more than an epiphenomenon of matter.

The third form of the theory of evolution is the least reductionist. Within it are a number of degrees of evolutionism. The most extreme version is like the second form in that it allows for life to spring from lifeless matter. But it draws the line at human life. It excludes an evolutionary account of the human soul. Other versions of this third theory of evolution draw even more lines. Seifert sees only the least radical version of the evolutionistic theory admitted as a possibility in the recent Papal speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This version does not claim that life could spring from life-less matter by evolution or that animals come from plants through evolutionary laws or that human minds could evolve from animal life. It only allows for evolutionary processes within the most fundamental living genus (plants or animals) or with respect to certain biological traits of humans. It does not attempt to explain the origin of life or of human personhood and the human soul through evolution. It does not even attempt to explain the origin of animals that way. This version could even further restrict evolutionary processes to within a given kind, group or genus of plants or animals. [This is what some other authors might call “microevolution.” or “variations within a kind.”] Church documents such as Pope Pius XII’s Humani generis and Pope John Paul II’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences regard evolution in some version of the third form as possibly compatible with Genesis.

Professor Seifert next turns to St. Augustine’s theory of rationes seminales, which develops the idea of trans-species development of organic beings in a way quite different from Darwin or the Neo-Darwinians. Augustine may have believed in far-reaching cross-species development and so proposed an “evolutionist” theory for the origin of species. But he developed a profound metaphysical theory of the causes of such an evolution that is wholly opposed to the atheistic spirit of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism. Seifert says that the Church too has to separate the “evolutionary” idea of the transformation of species from the idea that Darwinian principles are sufficient to explain the origin of species.
Augustine employs many different terms when speaking of the so-called rationes seminales. He mentions it in at least seven places in three different works, chiefly in his Genesis ad litteram. It is not easy to discern what he means by rationes seminales, but one meaning seems to imply a sophisticated and profound theory of the origin of new species from existing ones. It is clear that Augustine rejects the first two forms of the theory of evolution described above. But he seems to say that God inserted into matter at creation rationes seminales (seminating/ germinating ideas or plans) for different forms to be possibly developed in matter. This seems to leave room for the transformation of one species into another.

But Augustine replaces the Darwinian principles of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” with a principle similar to Aristotle’s entelechy. That is an inner active principle that contains in potency an elaborate form and potentially dynamically unfolding teleological plan that could originate only in a supreme intellect. Thus not mindless “natural selection” but an ingenious creative plan of God “inserted into matter” is the cause of evolutionary development. Augustine did not believe that all living things could spring from any matter. Rather, he held a more restricted view that allowed for the transformation of species subject to limitation by some nature. Augustine also held that living beings are distinct from non-living beings. In living beings the rationes seminales involve a soul that is not reducible to properties of matter.

Finally, Augustine sounds as if he meant that the rationes seminales are not principles immanent in matter, but that they are divine creative ideas that exist in God long before the things exist that correspond to them. This is a sign of the influence of Platonic philosophy on the thinking of Augustine. Seifert then goes on to give a philosophical critique of the theory of evolution in its first two senses. He shows them to be examples of “unfounded or insufficiently founded opinion” and therefore classes them both as pseudoscience. He says that many arguments can be advanced in favor of rejecting the theory of evolution in the first sense (Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism). Some of them apply to the second form and extreme version of the third form as well because they concern implausibilities common to all three. He says that the first theory is completely absurd because it rejects the role of an intelligent Creator, which is absolutely necessary to explain the origin of species. Its absurdity is so glaring that it doesn’t deserve to be treated seriously. But because it is taken so seriously by many scientists it has to be addressed. He takes on the argument that the generation of life came about by mere chance and the laws of chemistry and physics. He quotes Jay Roth who says that the probability that even a single protein can form by chance is about 1 in 10300. [I think that a case can be made that the probability is exactly zero.] And even the chance production of a protein would not explain that of a cell and the phenomenon of life. The idea that life was originated by chance processes could not be given credence even if scientists succeeded in making life emerge from lifeless materials in the laboratory. For, as Johannes von Uexcüll pointed out, this would not prove that chance can produce life, but only that the highest terrestrial intelligence, after years of study, was able to produce one simple form of life. And Seifert says that only a madman can believe that both a man and a woman sprang up together by chance to give birth to the whole human race. It is almost incomprehensible that generations of intelligent persons could believe it!

Seifert then says that one might object saying that his arguments apply only if nature was entirely chaotic. But nature is dominated by laws, and these laws can lead to the production of new species according to non-random principles. Seifert would reply by asking where the laws came from. They themselves require a sufficient reason for their existence; they cannot be explained by the invocation of “chance.” But if their origin lies in an intelligent maker of nature, we are no longer dealing with the first form of the theory of evolution.
Professor Seifert then devotes a section of his paper to argue why the phenomenon of life is not reducible to mere material causes. First of all, living organisms violate one of the basic laws that governs all non-living matter, viz., the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics condemns nature to greater and greater states of disorder. But living organisms escape this condemnation. Through its faculties of assimilation, nutrition, growth and reproduction the living organism creates higher order from less ordered materials.

Quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger in his book What is Life says that the living organism “drinks order from its surroundings” and that only death subjects organisms to the second law of thermodynamics. Also, the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be reduced to a material causes as atheistic evolutionists would maintain. Scientists are unable to produce empirical evidence or convincing arguments to support such a claim. Seifert’s next argument concerns the human soul. He states that the existence of the mind and the human soul as subject of consciousness constitutes an absolute refutation of an evolutionism that believes that matter can produce the life of the human spirit. And so it is a refutation of the first two forms of the theory of evolution. He says that we are on epistemological high ground here from which we can refute any reductionist interpretation of life. This is because we are appealing to the immediate inner experience of our own conscious experience. [We know and we know that we know.] Seifert states that any reduction of consciousness to an epiphenomenon of brain events or to those events themselves is untenable. He supports this assertion by first looking at the indivisibility of the subject of conscious experience. He quotes Leibniz who reasons that “it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine that perception must be sought for…”. A conscious experience, such an aesthetic experience, the enjoyment of music, for example, clearly calls for an indivisible subject. This rules out material substance, which by its nature is divisible. This is because conscious experiences would lose their being and unity if there was not the one and same identical and indivisible self as their subject, the non-composed simple “I.”

Next, he demonstrates the existence of the non-material human soul through the freedom of the human act. The existence of free acts cannot be denied. A man even presupposes some free acts when he resolves to defend materialism and deny the existence of free acts. Material processes cannot produce a promise, for example, or any other free act because such an act proceeds from the self. And the self, who is master over the free act’s being or non-being, is not reducible to material causes. For matter cannot transcend itself to abstract the essence of something or perceive and respond to a good for its own sake.

One of the favorite arguments of scientists in support of Darwinian evolution is that countless scientific discoveries have been made under the influence of Darwin’s theory. Seifert points out first of all that scientists have ignored many empirical facts not favorable to evolution because evolution has been accepted like a religious creed. He refers to Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson for details. He then proceeds to make the following objections: Both philosophical truths and philosophical errors can inspire scientific discoveries. But that fact does not vindicate any errors that may inspire such discoveries. The scientific success of a theory does not guarantee the truth of the philosophical assumptions underlying the theory. As an example he chooses the concept of the relativity of time in Einstein’s theory of relativity. The concept of the relativity of time is not the reason for the scientific success of Einstein’s theory. That time is relative is a purely philosophical thesis, not a scientific fact.

1. A. Lorentz explained the same phenomena as Einstein did but with a non-relativistic concept of time.

[Physicist J. S. Bell is in agreement with Seifert here. In his Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics he states: “The approach of Einstein differs from that of Lorentz in two major ways. There is a difference of philosophy, and a difference of style. The difference of philosophy is this. Since it is experimentally impossible to say which of two uniformly moving systems is really at rest, Einstein declares the notions ‘really resting’ and ‘really moving’ as meaningless. For him only the relative motion of two or more uniformly moving objects is real. Lorentz, on the other hand preferred the view that there is indeed a state of real rest, defined by the ‘aether’, even though the laws of physics conspire to prevent us identifying it experimentally. The facts of physics do not oblige us to accept one philosophy rather than the other.”]

The truth of Einstein’s philosophical conceptions is in no way guaranteed by the practical success and universal acceptance of his scientific theory. The same is true of Darwin’s theory of evolution and of certain of Heisenberg’s metaphysical musings. In contrast to philosophical errors, which can lead to both good and bad results for empirical science, philosophical truths per se can never lead to scientific regress. Only the incorrect interpretation or application of them can do so. Philosophical truths can and have led to experimental findings and scientific progress. Seifert gives the example of Sir John Eccles who, by recognizing freedom in human acts, was led to important discoveries in brain research. False philosophical ideas frequently impede scientific progress. The false ideas of Darwinism have already done so. Embryologist Erich Blechschmidt demonstrated that the evolutionism of Darwin, Spencer and Haeckel led to serious prejudices and false assumptions concerning human embryology and other empirical matters.

In the last section of his paper, Professor Seifert concludes that only a very restrained version of the third form of the theory of evolution is true and possible. He starts the section by pointing out that the raison d’etre of the theory of evolution lies in the first form and, to some extent, in the second form. Evolution was designed to be a substitute for the doctrine of creation by God. Within that doctrine it is pointless and useless to accept a general evolution of living species. Darwinian evolution makes sense only if there is no Creator-God. If God created nature, why would He use such a primitive technique as Darwinian evolution with its countless mishaps and chance events to realize his creative idea? What artist, sculptor, architect or engineer with great skill at his disposal would even consider using chance events and innumerable failures to produce his masterpiece?

In the third form of the theory of evolution, the Darwinian explanation for trans-species development must be rejected for the reason given above. The Augustinian version of “evolution” is acceptable, but it should no longer be called “evolution” because that is a term that invokes Darwinian principles. The Augustinian version of trans-species development would be divinely organized and based on a well-ordered finalistic plan executed through a new and wondrous capacity of living species. Living species would then not only have the powers of nutrition, growth and reproduction, but would also be able to undergo mutations, adapt to new environments, and thus engender new and enduring species.

All three forms of evolution meet serious difficulties when faced with empirical facts. The first is the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. These theories have to demand countless “links” from one species to another. Such links are missing in the fossil record. The only explanation for this seems to be that a true explanation of the origin of species does not lie in a “complete evolution” of all plant and animal organisms. The next difficulty that Seifert sees is that Darwinism is based on a mere morphological consideration of nature.
That means that it relies on a mere examination of external forms. But studies on bacteria, for example, show that even though external appearances between certain species may be very similar, close examination shows that they use totally different ingenious systems, of swimming for example. Such phenomena as the “geographic distribution of species” and “adaptation to surroundings” are explained much better as coming about by divine creative planning than by evolution. Professor Seifert states that he rejects the theory of evolution, except in part for extremely limited biological trans-species developments. He says that even great geneticists as Jerome Lejeune doubted a restricted theory of evolution of the third form. That, he goes on to say, confirms his purely philosophical conviction that “universal evolution” as an explanation for the origin of species is not an established fact but is merely an implausible hypothesis. But Seifert does not reject the fact that a restricted theory of evolution of the third form is theoretically compatible with all purely philosophical and theological truths and might therefore be regarded, as some Church documents assert, as one possible theory of how the Creator generated the immense variety of life and the human body.

But many empirical facts and philosophical considerations about the dignity and origin of the human body should move us to re-examine very critically even those versions of the third form of the theory of evolution that Church teaching allows us to accept. ….

Professor Giertych’s assault on evolution

"... all scientific evidence points to a decline".

Professor Maciej Giertych

 

 

 

We read at: http://kolbecenter.org/the-arrow-points-down/

THE ARROW POINTS DOWN:

 

THE ROLE OF INFORMATION IN BIOLOGY

 

By

Dr. Maciej Giertych

Life is more than just chemistry and physics. It also includes information. Information is part of biological reality. We can study it from the point of view of molecular biochemistry but also in terms of mathematical relations, logic and transformation.

 

 

Comparison with Computers

 

There is some analogy with computers. A computer has a shape, dimensions, a chemical composition, physical parameters etc. All of this we refer to as hardware. But there is also software, currently much more expensive than hardware. We have the programs, the databases, the files, the calculation sheets etc. Without the software, a computer is a pile of junk. With the software in place it does not change its shape, weight, or the chemistry of physical parameters, but it becomes functional.

 

Working with computers we have learned certain facts about the role of information in dealing with almost anything. We know that a program can become spoiled on its own through faults in the discs that carry the program. We know that we can spoil a program by mistake. We know that it will never correct itself. By accident it will not become better or more useful. After an accidental change the number of functions a program has will not increase. We know also that an error can protect a word or file from being erased when deletion is commanded. A computer program has an intended plan, a purpose meant for it by the programmer. There is an intelligent input.

 

Breeders

 

Similarly a breeder has a plan, a purpose, and a direction for the intended improvement. However, a breeder does not create new information. He only selects among the information available in nature and strives for such a combination of it so as to direct the breeding program towards the desired improvement.

 

Natural reproductive processes maintain biodiversity through recombination. Natural selection acts on existing forms. It reduces the number of forms by eliminating genotypes that are not adapted in the given environmental conditions. It does not create anything new. Breeders replace natural selection with their own, favoring what meets human needs.

 

Physicists

 

In the physics of micro- and macro-cosmos there are doubts about the probabilistic model of explaining reality. There is a school of thinking that favors an information model. They speak of the Unitary Information Field Approach (UIFA) assuming that somewhere there is information that is being realized in the functioning of the cosmos. They envy biologists that have found their Information Field in the genetic code. It needs to be pointed out that we have known where this information is located only since mid 20th century. When the theory of evolution was proposed, and during the time its role in dominating biological thinking developed the most, we had no idea that information for the realization of biological systems existed and was specifically located in a particular place within a living cell.

 

 

Fate of Information

 

Now let us look at what happens to the information accumulated in the genetic code during the functioning of biological systems, or when man manipulates these systems. In Table 1, some of these biological functions and human activities are listed, segregated into those that reduce information, mix information and increase information.

 

Table 1. Fate of information in living systems.

 

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INFORMATION

 

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Reduction Recombination Growth

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Isolation Panmixy

 

Inbreeding, self-pollination Hybridization, introgression

 

Transformations, engineering

 

Genetic drift Meiosis, crossing-over

 

Selection Heterozygocity protects recessives

 

Adaptation Migration

 

Domestication Protection of gene resources

 

Improvement Care for biodiversity

 

Breeding Increasing heterozygocity

 

Race formation Going wild, mongrelization

 

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Deleterious mutations Positive mutations

 

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Reduction of Information

 

Isolation of a biological population will lead to a reduction of genetic information. Inbreeding is the consequence of isolating a population.

Sexual reproduction occurs between relatives and, in extreme cases, we see self-pollination. This always leads to accidental loss of some information. This loss of some genes is referred to as genetic drift. (This can be compared to the accidental reduction in the number of surnames in a small group of colonists who are left without new arrivals for several generations. Such a phenomenon was known to have occurred on several Caribbean Islands during the 18th and 19th centuries). A gene once lost is lost forever. It does not reconstitute itself. It can only reappear if it is reintroduced.

 

Selection acts much faster. Forms that are not adapted to a given environment will perish together with their genes responsible for the lack of adaptation. As a result a population develops that is adapted to the specific conditions of the place, adapted in the sense that it is deprived of the genotypes that are unable to live in this environment. The gene pool is reduced relative to the one it was derived from. One can observe some vegetation on industrial spills. Many seed fall there, but only a few survive. The population that develops there may be adapted to the spill, e.g., a high level of heavy metals, but it is genetically much poorer than the population of seed that fell on the spill.

 

Based on this adaptation mechanism, much work has been done by breeders leading to the domestication of plants and animals. The domesticated plants and animals are genetically poorer that the wild organisms they were derived from. When we speak of genetic improvement we mean "improvement" from the human point of view. The yield of sugar from sugar beets is increased or the yield of milk from a cow. But this is always at the expense of some other functions, and results in the "improved" varieties becoming less able to live in natural conditions, becoming dependent on man. The more improved the varieties, the more dependent on humans they are and the poorer they are in genetic diversity.

 

Breeding, as well as natural adaptation, leads to the formation of races. Races are genetically poorer than populations they were derived from. All races of dogs can be bred from wild wolves, but it is not possible to breed a St. Bernard from a terrier.

 

It is of course well known that mutations can destroy genes. Since mutagenic agents (radiation, chemicals) bombard us all the time, the number of damaged, and therefore defective genes in any population increases. We speak of an increase in the genetic load. When such defective genes meet in a homozygote, the defect shows, and natural selection eliminates the genotype with the defect.

 

Reshuffling of Information

 

Population genetics recognizes recombination of genes as the primary source of variation in nature. It is universally accepted that panmixy occurs in nature. Panmixy is the random meeting of gametes in the process of sexual reproduction. Each gamete (pollen grain, sperm, ovule, egg cell) has its own genetic identity, and therefore, when two combine, a new entity arises.

 

In extreme cases we have hybridization, the meeting of gametes from different species.

When the hybrid is viable and fertile with one of the parental species we get introgression, the entering of genes of one species into the population of another.

 

Transformation is the transfer of genes from one population to another by some other method than through sexual reproduction. A parasite may introduce its genes into the genome of the host to use its metabolism for its own purposes. A sawfly will cause a willow leaf to produce a gall that is useless for the willow but is a home for the sawfly. The genetics of the willow was modified. Its metabolic potential was utilized according to genetic information from a foreign entity. Now we do the same in genetic engineering. We transfer genes from a fish to a tomato. We produce modified organisms referred to as transgenic. We mix genes from organisms that do not hybridize in nature.

 

In sexual reproduction we observe a mechanism for the mixing of genetic information at the reduction division. During meiosis the information inherited from the father and the mother is reshuffled. During pachytene, crossing over of chromatid parts occurs. During anaphase, homologous chromosomes separate and, together with the parts exchanged during crossing over, they travel to the opposite poles. In the process the chromosomes (or their parts) originating from father and mother get mixed so that each resultant haploid gamete is genetically different.

 

If a haploid gamete contains a gene that is not adapted to a particular environment or in some way defective, this will cause difficulties to the gametophyte, resulting in it being impoverished or simply perishing. In this way defective or non­adapted genes get lost. However after fertilization, in a diploid zygote and the resultant sporophyte, the non-adapted or defective gene can survive, thanks to the presence of a functional homologous one from the fertilization partner. This is referred to as dominance of some genes over recessive ones. The net result is heterozygocity or genetic biodiversity in the population. This is a natural mechanism for the protection of genes useless in a given environment, but possibly useful in another, in which some descendant will happen to live. Unfortunately this is also a mechanism that protects defective genes, the genetic load, as it is called.

 

Gene mixing results also from plant and animal migration. Each species constantly places some of its progeny beyond its current range of occurrence. Man also frequently transfers populations beyond their natural ranges. The new arrivals, whether naturally or artificially introduced, if they find it possible to interbreed with the local populations, become a source of an increase in the genetic biodiversity. As new territories are being colonized by a species, sometimes separate waves of colonization from different refugia meet, and then recombination between them occurs, giving a rich genetic diversity of the population.

 

Seeing the genetic resources of our planet decline, man has made efforts to protect them. We now often speak about the protection, or even promotion, of biodiversity. It needs to be stressed that breeding and gene pool protection have opposite effects on genetic information. However, in breeding work it is possible to deliberately increase heterozygocity to assure greater stability of the improved population. Highly bred pure lines are especially hybridized to achieve heterozygocity. The breeding population is often deliberately kept diversified to counteract the loss of genes accompanying selection.

 

Highly bred and improved plants and animals need human protection. Usually they need special environmental conditions that only man can supply (fertilizers, fodder, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides etc.). But not only that. They require human protection from outbreeding. They have to be kept isolated. Once the isolation is discontinued, we get mongrels; selected varieties go wild.

 

Increase of Information

 

There is only one mechanism that is credited with increasing genetic information. It is mutagenesis. It is assumed that once in a while a mutation occurs that is positive, in the sense that it increases the survival potential of the individual, and of the population derived from it. A positive mutation is the only possible source of new information. The whole theory of evolution hinges on the existence of positive mutations. But do we have good examples of them?

 

Darwinian Evolution

Darwin observed variation within species (beaks of finches). He observed adaptation to various environments and diversification of isolated populations (now referred to as genetic drift). What he observed was the consequence of recombination and of reduction of genetic information. Yet his conclusion was Evolution, a natural process giving growth of information.

His conclusion was wrong! Adaptation, often referred to as microevolution, is not an example of a small step in macroevolution. It is a process in the opposite direction!

 

In school textbooks the world over we find the example of the peppered moth Biston betularia that sits on the bark of birch trees. It was found to change its color to black when, in industrial areas, the bark of birches was soot covered. When the industrial soot was cleaned up, the peppered moth returned to its whitish gray color. This is an example of adaptation, reversible adaptation, since there was a breeding link with wild populations living outside the polluted area. Natural selection, birds feeding on the moths, leaves only those that are least seen when sitting on the birch bark. Genes for the dark color are present in the wild population and dominate it when environmental conditions demand it. The dark colored race has no new genetic information. It has only a portion of the information present in the wild genetic pool. In fact, only proportions of black and gray moths change. These are differences in numbers, not in kind.

 

[Editor's note: The peppered moth (Biston Betularia) experiment has been discredited in recent times, but evolutionists have not given up. See for example this article from Answers in Genesis.]

 

It must be stressed that the formation of races is not an example of a small step in evolution.

 

 

Lessons from Breeding

 

Breeding work has taught us several important things.

 

First of all, we now know that there is a limit to the possibility of breeding in any particular direction. The information content of a gene pool is finite. In breeding we can use what is available, and no more.

 

Secondly, we know that our improved varieties need isolation to maintain their improvement. Without the isolation they will go wild, interbreed with the wild varieties, and thereby lose their identity.

 

Thirdly, we know that highly bred and improved varieties are biologically weaker than the wild varieties.

 

We have painfully learned that wild varieties are absolutely necessary for breeding work. We must have the rich pool of genes in the wild conditions to be able to select from, and incorporate into, our bred varieties, as new demands on the breeding program are articulated.

 

To summarize, we must learn how to manage the resources of genetic information available to us in nature, because they are finite and can be irretrievably lost.

 

Mutations

 

Now a word is needed about mutations, the only potential source of new genetic information. We have been studying mutations for over 70 years and some definitive conclusions are permissible.

 

First of all we observe a general decline of interest in mutagenesis as a breeding method. Most laboratories all over the world are closing their mutagenic programs. Some useful varieties have been obtained through mutagenesis, but few and far between, and they are only useful from the human point of view. Some dwarf forms were obtained, useful as root stocks for grafting or for rock gardens. Some very sensitive plants were obtained that were good for monitoring pollution. A seedless variety of oranges was produced. There are many ornamental varieties of flowers that have been deprived of certain natural pigments by mutagenesis. In each case, however, the plant obtained is biologically poorer, and usually weaker than its unmutated progenitor. It is deprived of something that, in natural conditions, is useful.

 

We know of many mutations that are deleterious. We are afraid of them. We try to protect the wild gene pool and ourselves from various mutagenic agents. We discourage nuclear tests, redundant X-rays, asbestos, etc. If a mutagenic environment favors positive mutations it is deluged by a multitude of destructive, negative mutations.

 

We know of the existence of mutations that are biologically neutral. These are changes, either in the non-coding part of the genome or in the genetic code, but not affecting the functionality of the protein they code for. We refer to these variants as alleles. When copying a text we can make mistakes. If the mistakes do not alter the meaning of the text, we can refer to them as neutral. As long as the meaning is preserved, the changes are tolerated, but usually they are also considered a nuisance. Also in the genome, the information change - when neutral - is tolerated, but if it only slightly reduces functionality of the protein it codes for, then there will be selection against it. However, when the meaning is changed, when functionality is significantly altered, we can speak of a change, either negative or positive.

 

Positive mutations are more a postulate that an observation. Usually races of organisms resistant to man-made chemicals (herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, antibiotics, etc.) that have developed only after marketing the given product, are quoted as examples of positive mutations. When dealing with such arguments it is necessary, first, to realize that the new forms are not new species. They are usually interfertile with the original population, and usually disappear when the use of the chemical is stopped. Thus they appear similar to the reversible adaptation of Biston betularia. It is quite possible that the adaptation was similarly achieved, by recombination. There are very few examples where a documented change in the genome is responsible for the newly generated resistance to a chemical.

 

In the known examples it can be shown that the change involves a defense of natural functionality. It is not a creation of something new but a protection of something already existing.

 

Defense of Functionality

 

There are various ways in which functionality can be defended in the natural conditions.

 

Natural selection is one such mechanism. By eliminating defective forms natural selection protects the population from deteriorating.

 

Natural selection also occurs on the level of cells. Within a tissue defective cells will be eliminated and prevented from multiplying.

 

There are various mechanisms for correcting defects. Healing of wounds is one such mechanism. There are others, also on the genomic level. Defective nucleotide sequences can sometimes be corrected. Just as computer programs can have some back-up information allowing corrections, so do biological systems.

 

Finally biological systems have a method of identifying and neutralizing an invading foreign factor. On an individual level this is referred to as immunity. An invading protein is recognized and antibodies are custom made to neutralize it. This immunological adaptation can also occur on a population level. An organism that adapts its biology to the combating of the foreign chemical, multiplies and replaces the whole population that fell under the heavy selection pressure of the chemical. This has been particularly demonstrated for chemicals that were custom made to destruct a single vital protein in a specific organism. These chemicals are developed to attach themselves to a specific sector of the protein, with a specific sequence of amino acids. A mutation that is neutral (not affecting the functionality of the protein it codes for) but which alters the sequence of amino acids defining attachability of the chemical, can be considered positive from the organism's point of view. It frustrates the effectiveness of the chemical as a killing agent. But it is positive only because it protects existing functions, and not because it provides new functions or organs.

 

This in no way helps to support the theory of evolution.

 

Information and Time

 

There are two visions of the Universe. Relating those visions to information and time we can say that one vision starts with total chaos at the beginning of time (Big Bang) and sees gradual accumulation of information through evolution of particles, molecules, compounds, organic compounds, through life all the way to man and on towards an ever improving and, increasing in information content, glorious future. The other vision starts with a glorious, plentiful beginning, and then sees gradual corruption, extinction of species, deterioration of genes, dissipation of energy and movement towards an inevitable end of the visible reality. This is available to our senses and our scientific cognition for only a small sector of the time postulated in these visions.

 

The big question is: In the time available to us, do we see an increase of information, or its decline? As I see it, all scientific evidence points to a decline!