"Is Evolution an Open Question for Catholics?"
Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation
Unless evolution is defined precisely, we can be at cross-purposes with each other. It is hardly surprising that evolution is kept ill-defined by those atheistic evolutionists who indulge in semantic games, but why is it not fully addressed and defined rigorously by Christians who propose alternative concepts to the idea of Special Creation? Divine interventionist concepts such as Theistic Evolution and Progressive Creation are also vague and elastic, as though all sorts of fanciful speculation are compatible with Tradition. Even some members of the Intelligent Design movement are vague about evolution definition and state that they have no trouble with evolution by common descent. So what exactly is the process commonly called “evolution”, over which so many heated arguments have taken place and which has produced deeply divided scientific and religious opinions?
Evolution is not natural selection, which at best only conserves the existing. Nor is it simply “change over time”. Each “kind” of life form has its own specific DNA coded structure and complementary protein molecules. Each has its own pre-programmed encoded specification which ensures that the various kinds remain unique; allowing great variety of change within kind but effectively preventing change beyond kind. Thus, reptiles cannot evolve into birds. The complex message specification which denotes a reptile allows for variety but this information content cannot naturally acquire the minimum number of instructions necessary to produce both the wings system and the unique lungs system possessed by birds.
The true definition of evolution discovered by science is this: Evolution is molecules-to-man, natural transformation in which new, “higher”, genetic information is gained which was not possessed by one's ancestors. If this is a fair and reasonable definition, then we can be certain that evolution as commonly understood has never occurred because it cannot occur. Why? Because God has designed life forms so that only variety within kind is possible. The missing mechanism of evolution is doomed to remain missing because it never existed. That’s why there are no intermediate stages found in the fossil record-they have never existed! This absence of intermediates was candidly admitted by the famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould.
Evolution per se-correctly defined-stands in contradiction to the reality of entropy, for the gaining of higher genetic information requires an increase in order and this clearly violates the second law of thermodynamics. The idea of the natural gaining of higher information is what the creation/evolution scientific debate is all about, despite the fact that zealous evolutionists don’t want to concede the point and prefer to keep things vague.