How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [82]
Scientists are even talking about the possibility of sending rockets completely outside of the earth’s atmosphere and causing them to move in an approximately circular orbit, permanent satellites of the earth for special laboratory studies. It has been estimated that perhaps ten years or so will elapse before such a ladder to the skies will have been perfected.
My contingent gem came later that day in the same room, when I opened the paper to view the magnificent newly released color photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope—our “ladder to the skies.”
It may have taken four decades instead of the estimated one, but the prize was well worth the wait. In science, as in most cultural productions, time frames rarely match expectations. But there is no disputing the fact that science changes faster than religion. Compare this 30-year discrepancy to the 360-year abyss between Galileo’s 1633 indictment for the heretical support of Copernicus’s heliocentrism and Pope John Paul II’s acquittal of him in his April 1993 address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission; or the 137-year gap between Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species and Pope John Paul II’s acceptance of evolution as a viable theory in his October 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
As Popes go, John Paul II is relatively progressive in embracing science and its underpinnings of logic and empiricism. He is both broadly and deeply read, and sensitive to the relationship between faith and reason, religion and science. In his 1993 address he explained that “it is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say,” and in order to do so “the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences.” His 1996 address, entitled Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, was written to update and revise Pope Pius XII’s 1950 Encyclical Humani Generis, in which Catholics were told that there is no conflict between reason and faith when dealing with the theory of evolution: “The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from preexistent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.” For Pius XII, however, evolution as a theory was still up in the air and could one day be proved false. Thus, while there had been no opposition to provisionally accepting evolution (of the body only), if it turned out wrong, Catholics have lost nothing:
However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighted and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure … . Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
With this level of equivocation on the part of his predecessor, John Paul II felt it necessary to bring his over one billion followers up to date on the outcome of half a century of scientific research. The verdict is now in, the Pope explained in 1996, evolution happened:
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of evolution. It is indeed remarkable