Creation Rediscovered by Gerard J. Keane
But Theistic Evolution is not condemned, so it is further claimed, because the Church makes no judgment on the intrinsic merits of scientific hypotheses not contrary to faith and morals. And further, say its supporters, Evolution understood theistically uniquely underscores the prerequisite purpose and intelligence in the world which demonstrates the existence of God.
Now Mr. Gerard Keane's study: Creation Rediscovered, thoroughly revised and expanded, shows that no evolutionary hypothesis has been conclusively demonstrated as factual. Far from it: scientific theorizing about Origins tends more to favor the creationist version than the evolutionist one.#
But there is one other, often overlooked point about such "scientific" theorizing about the origins of the world and of the species, very telling for the future direction the discussion of Origins will take. The point is this: These scientific theories of origins cannot be verified or falsified definitively on scientific grounds.
What is the significance of this point? An hypothesis incapable of scientific demonstration, of being verified as true or false, is not, strictly speaking, a scientific hypothesis. It may be true, but the truth or falsity of the theory must be decided on grounds and with methods of reflection proper to other branches of learning: those dealing with the theological, above all dogmatic theology, if the hypothesis is primarily theological. For the question of Origins - of the world and of man - is not a question of science, but of theology (including sound metaphysics).
Sound science recognizes its limits, even in regard to the sensible. Empirical science does not, because it cannot, tell us all that might be known about the material world. Wherever there is a question of the supernatural, of the miraculous, there it is beyond the limits of empirical science to tell us about material reality and what are the principles of its operation. For example: Creation as a distinctively divine mode of producing; the virginal Motherhood of Mary as a true, but higher mode of begetting; Transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; the glorified state of the risen human body.
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