"Is Evolution an Open Question for Catholics?"
Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation
Notice the reference to the genetic code. This refers to the famous 1953 Crick and Watson watershed announcement of the double helix spiral model of DNA. As well as being of crucial importance from a Special Creation perspective, this announcement was also most important from a pro-life perspective in helping to clarify man’s understanding of what happens at the Lilliputian level of cells and molecules.
But is the acceptance of Karl Rahner’s evolutionary views impossible to understand? His belief in evolution seems to have come to influence his theological beliefs; Catholic doctrine had to be turned on its head to accommodate the supposed fact of evolution. It seems fair to conclude that, for Rahner, objective truth had given way to questionable subjective truth known from natural science.
For those who are unaware of it, the idea referred to by Rahner - that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, otherwise known as “recapitulation theory” - is pure fiction which was invented by the German evolutionary zealot Ernest Haeckel, who was strongly peer-rebuked by fellow scientists in the 19th century for blatant forgery of pictorial evidence. Nevertheless those sympathetic to evolution beliefs readily embraced this fiction and, amazingly, it is probably still being published in some school textbooks. The very idea of recapitulation theory-that foetal embryonic development takes on the resemblance of one’s evolutionary animal-like ancestors-is quite insidious. It blurs the truth that a human being is fully human from the moment of conception, and gives rise instead to the idea that the newly formed embryo in the womb is only “becoming a human being”.
If this is what influential Catholic dissenters such as Karl Rahner really believed, then it shows how profound the confusion has been over what constitutes evolution, and the degree to which false evolutionary consciousness had turned the minds of even highly educated theologians. I contend that an unquestioning belief in evolution-as-fact played a central role in ushering in the widespread dissenting contraceptive/ pro-abortion mindset within Catholicism.
What Is Evolution?
The Origins debate is hampered by the fact that so few bother to define precisely what is meant by the term “evolution”. Instead of precise terminology arrived at by rigorous investigation, the term evolution remains confusing and ever-elastic in public perception. Almost any evidence can be given an evolutionary interpretation as supposed proof. For example, creatures that became extinct were by definition less suited for adaptation yet those who survived were obviously able to adapt. Both outcomes are explicable by evolution theory. The discovery of living Coelacanth fish off Madagascar in the 1930’s showed that they had not become extinct millions of years ago and were identical to the fossilized ones. Did this cause zealous evolutionists to question the credibility of evolution? Not at all, the still-living Coelacanths were simply labelled as “living fossils”; they had somehow survived unchanged for supposed millions of years! So the live presence or dead absence of the Coelacanths can both be explained in favour of evolution theory.