As Received - Our Readers

May God Flatten You Soon
Readers share their opinions.

May God flatten you soon

[George Sim Johnston's] article on Darwin [March/April, 1997] was helpful, but his not quoting where Darwin said he was against religion is a bit like saying that Mickey Mantle hit .365 the same year Ted Williams hit .387, and not saying which teams they played for, or what year. Could the author please supply the source of his quote? Second, you sometimes border on the irreverent and blasphemous in some of your titles, including one about the Blessed Virgin Mary. I hope you will change. If not, may God flatten you soon. Sorry, I don't mince words on this one.
Robert C. Anderson, via e-mail

Heaven can wait (a bit)

I'm loving the magazine. You're doing a great job, and a great service to the Church. I'm sure you'll be rewarded amply. And I'm hoping you see some of that reward here, before you pass on to the heavenly portion. Keep up the great work!
Mary Beth Bonacci, via e-mail

I just received the first issue of my subscription (March/April 1997). My fiance and I love your magazine! As my fiance said, "It's meaty" (ie. "chock full of stuff"). Keep up the good work! I wanted to share with you a humorous story: I read the cover article, "Apes 'R' Not Us" by George Sim Johnston, and I thought it so well-written that I was trying to figure out a way to get my mother to read it. My mother is a self-proclaimed "humanist" and proponent of man's evolution from apes. She also does not listen to reason. However, Johnston's article was so tight that I thought it might make an impression on her. At the dinner table one night, my mother made a comment like, "Isn't it amazing how the redwood trees evolved to what they are today?" To which I responded, "God probably just made them that way." She looked at me and said, "I read that article, you know."
My father, sister and brother left the table at this point because they knew what was coming. Mom and I spent the next hour discussing the article, evolution and the lack of evidence for the theory. Even though there is no evidence of transitional forms linking past and present species, Mom still believes this is how it happened. However, she had no real answers for Johnston's arguments. In her words, she "just knows evolution is true." Finally, she told me that the only reason she read the article is because of the cover photo. She said to me, "Look at all the similarities between the faces of the man and the ape! This is the best argument for evolution ever!" I just started laughing. I bet you never thought your cover design would be used by a humanist as an argument for the theory of evolution!
Sharon Niehaus, via e-mail

Can we talk?

The devil, you say

I refer to the article, supposedly written by the devil himself. I am a Catholic from Singapore. It is so obvious the evil one did not write it but instead, it was composed by a very intelligent human being. Although the information is true and valid (ie. the instances in which the "devil" refers to Pope John Paul II and Our Lady of Guadalupe), the writer can't just say it was written by the devil. The devil would not refer to the CIA, among other things. At least, if the article had been presented with the opening words: "What the devil is most likely to say, if he observes today's world," or "Below is what the devil is most likely to say about the present day situation on Earth and how we should prepare for the third millennium," would have been much, much better. Written by the devil indeed! Bestseller in hell indeed! I know you all are trying very hard to present Roman Catholicism to people, but unless the Pope himself acknowledges the letter is written by the evil one, it would be very wise not to continue the article as written by the devil, but what the devil might say.
Anthony, Republic of Singapore, via e-mail

He's so fine

You are to be commended for the fine work of Envoy magazine. What a gift to the Church! It is truly refreshing to see such a fine magazine reaching so many. The upbeat format, orthodox content and outstanding sense of humor make it one of the best instruments of the New Evangelization called for by our Holy Father. Be assured of my prayers, especially at daily Mass. Keep up the good work!
Father Albert R. Cutie, Archdiocese of Miami, FL

From the Ex files

Just wanted to say thank you for producing this magazine. As an ex-Jehovah's Witness, I am always having to "make sure of all things." As director of St. Joseph's Radio Evangelization Society and an active member in the Legion of Mary, I find your articles to be very effective in defending the Catholic Faith to all I come in contact with. I know all the work that is involved in your magazine truly makes it a labor of love.
Ed Gerber, Orange, CA

Message from a czarist dissident

While I enjoyed Rick Sikorski's article, "If I Were the Catholic Media Czar," I disagree wholeheartedly with his conclusions. I am 26 years old, and I see my generation bombarded with thousands of media messages every day. Advertisers spend billions of dollars in an effort to sell young people (and old people, too) products by splashing their advertisements on TV, radio, the Internet, newspapers, magazines and billboards. These messages eventually become just static that we learn to walk through. I see no reason why the Catholic Church would even desire to spend millions to become a blip of static competing with Budweiser, Nordstrom, McDonald's and Mormons. The Catholic Church has all it needs to reach the world. As Mr. Sikorski mentioned, there are many "franchise outlets" of the Catholic Church, called parishes. I have lived in four cities in the last five years, and I have seen parishes where there is standing room only for Mass; where people worship with zeal and desire to grow in faith. I've also seen parishes that struggle to convince five percent of the Catholic community to attend Mass. A parish that strives for powerful liturgies, prays constantly, serves humbly, teaches faithfully and offers many opportunities to pray and learn will attract people like a magnet. I hope to see more articles from Mr. Sikorski in the future.
Jim Huck, via e-mail

* He makes a straw man when he calls the theory "blind chance." There is hardly any more blind chance to a species developing through natural selection than there is to development through unnatural selection, such as livestock breeding. Natural selection predicts that environment and genetic variation combine to influence the direction of a species' development. Thus, if you stick fish in a cave for many generations, it predicts that they will lose the use of their eyes. Although there is some probability involved in natural selection and in the genetic variation that it draws from, the loss of sight is a solid prediction that is not fairly characterized as "blind chance." Dismissing it as such is grossly oversimplified and entirely unfair.

* He quotes many people out of context. Steven Jay Gould is especially targeted as someone who has serious problems with the idea of evolution by natural selection. Gould has his own ideas about the rate that natural selection occurs, but he in no way doubts the fact of it. I hope that Gould (apparently an atheist) never sees the misrepresentations and out-of-context quotes that this article presents -- they would only serve to further confirm his beliefs that religious people only achieve their ends by misrepresentation and disrespect for truth.

* The "God of the gaps." This is a biggie, and I think it is very, very dangerous. I even think it deserves much of the blame for the spread of atheism today. The "God of the gaps" tactic is to say, "Science can't explain X, so there must be a God Who did it." What this does is, quite simply, put God to the test in a scientifically testable way. This is the underlying reasoning behind Johnston's arguments about the supposed gaps in the fossil record, the origin of DNA, micro versus macroevolution, etc. Johnston claims these are not understood by science, and these gaps in our knowledge can thus implicitly be viewed as evidence of God's direct intervention in creation. Suppose that next week a scientist comes up with a really convincing natural explanation for the origin of DNA. Suddenly, Johnston's use of this gap in our knowledge as implicitly supporting the existence of God is disproved. In the long term, "God of the gaps" thinking just sets up a long, drawn-out losing battle where God's power is seemingly chipped away little by little by human endeavors. The result is that people are left disillusioned and bitter about having been duped by those blind religious fools. The problem, of course, is that the original formulation is faulty. God's existence does not depend on propositions that we invent. Nevertheless, both sides wrongly make use of this argument. First, the religious people draw some line that they declare science will never cross and use it to "prove" God. Later, science comes up with a way to cross that line, and some Carl Sagan type then states that the test can be used to show that God is nonexistent. Clearly, both are wrong. It is unlikely that we can convince atheists to stop arguing this way, but a Catholic apologist should know better than to engage in such a flawed tactic.

* Misrepresenting the fossil record. Johnston asserts that paleontologists have never found the "series of transitional fossils which Darwin's theory demands." I have no idea what he is talking about. There are, on the contrary, countless transitional forms, no matter how many scientific authorities he can name (whether quoted in context or not) who supposedly deny this. It is impossible to describe them all, but many species-to-species, genus-to-genus, or even larger changes such as reptiles-to-mammals are abundantly documented, and become more so every day. (On the Internet, a good web page on this is at http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/dorman/ trans_faq.html.) Even newspapers sometimes report such discoveries. The "whale with legs" was a popular example from a few years back. What is Johnston's explanation for closing his eyes to these hundreds (or thousands) of examples, other than an appeal to authorities who supposedly back him up in pretending that they don't exist? The game is somewhat unfair to science. A scientist posits that evolution by natural selection can explain the development from A to Z. But the doubter says that there is no good transitional form between them. Years later, someone finds a transition form M. Now the doubter says that there are two gaps: from A to M and from M to Z. G and T are found to fill these, but now there are four gaps! And so on. The scientist is a victim of his own success: the more transitions he discovers, the more gaps the skeptic will claim, even though he is really the one being disproved with each find.

* Johnston declares that paleontologists "make up a scenario" from the fossils and forget about it. Briefly, this completely ignores countless other ways of verifying evolutionary lineage, as shown by such independent means as geology, embryology and DNA analysis.

* Horse lineage. Contrary to Johnston's claim, there is indeed a quite convincing gradual chain of transitional forms (at least 12!) for the horse from the prehistoric Hyracotherium to modern-day Equus (see the above Web page). So what, specifically, is the evidence for Johnston's disagreement?

* Another straw man: his "refutation" of evolution by natural selection, based on lack of recent development in horseshoe crabs and sharks. What, again, is precisely the problem here? Natural selection makes no demand that species change for change's sake in the absence of environmental pressure. If he has really read Gould, he should know that.

* Attacking evolution for being misused. Yes, the theory of evolution is and has been misused for all sorts of wrong-headed ideas, and this should justifiably be decried. However, Johnston's logic seems to be that anything that leads to abortion, atheism and the Nazi Holocaust must be wrong. Using similar tactics, anti-Catholics will tell you that Catholicism led to the Spanish Inquisition, the slaughter of Native Americans, and the Nazi Holocaust, and must be wrong, too. Both arguments are equally faulty -- any truth may be misused for bad means. A Catholic apologetics magazine should know better than to accept reasoning like this.

* Cheap shots. The sidebar "Was Charles Darwin a believer?" is irrelevant to the truth of evolutionary theory. Imagine if an anti-Catholic magazine had a sidebar "Were Renaissance Popes Chaste?" in an article on papal infallibility. (The whole question also looks very odd in a Catholic magazine -- the parceling of the world into trusted "believers" versus untrusted "unbelievers" strikes me as more of an Evangelical Protestant thing to do, with Catholics usually on the outs.) "Darwinism," like "Papistry," is a term that is primarily used by its detractors. Even if it could be shown that the Origin of Species was just the product of a million monkeys randomly pounding at a typewriter, the scientific theory is something apart from Darwin that must be judged on its own merits. It is also unfair to say that because various scientists (such as Leakey and Johansen) disagree about the details of human ancestry, there must be something inherently false about the whole idea. This is about as sensible as the argument that, because Catholics and Protestants can't agree, Christianity must be bunk.

* Impugning motives. Johnston writes, "Why, in the face of so much negative evidence, does Darwin's theory maintain its hold over scientists and educators? Mainly because it is an effective club with which to beat religion." Passing over the fact that Johnston has actually presented no negative evidence of substance, his attack strikes me personally. Speaking as a scientist and (as a homeschool father) an educator, I emphatically reject this supposed motive for why I find the theory of speciation by natural selection convincing. I love the Church, and accept Her teaching. For myself, I have looked deeply into the matter, and I accept the scientific theory of evolution (indeed, I am compelled to accept it) because it is the truth. That God is our Creator and that we are made in His image apart from the beasts is revealed truth. The scientific theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific truth. The Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, in his discussion of the subject, said, "truth cannot contradict truth." St. Augustine put his finger upon the danger here in his On the Literal Meaning of Genesis:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world . . . about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience . . . If [non-Christians] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and {not} on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?"
I submit that practically anyone who takes the trouble to fairly and honestly investigate the mountain of varied evidence behind the theory of evolution by natural selection will find it convincing. Yes, faulty philosophies that reduce man to "only an animal" are harmful falsehoods that we, as Catholics, must oppose. But St. Augustine's writing should caution us against using any means other than forthright honesty in promoting our ideas for the worth of man. Where the salvation of souls is involved, the truth must not be taken lightly. This is, after all, what true apologetics is all about.
Michael Lounsbery, via e-mail

George Sim Johnston replies
Mr. Lounsbery did not read my article very attentively. I get the impression that the scientific authorities I mustered against Darwinism (which is not the same as "evolution") hit a nerve. This happens when one adduces facts which falsify a secular faith system. Herewith, a point-by-point rejoinder:

* Pope John Paul II did not talk about materialistic philosophies "made" from
"the scientific facts of evolution." Rather, he warned about materialistic philosophies disguised as science. Darwinism, in the hands of people like Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan, is a prime example of this.

* I do not "tear into science" in order to refute Darwinism. In fact, well-informed thinkers, ranging from the great biologist Pierre P. Grasse to the philosopher Etienne Gilson, argue that Darwinism itself is a deformation of science -- an ideology, if you will, planted like a foreign body in the heart of biology.

* "Blind chance" is certainly at the heart of Darwinian evolution, since its engine is small, totally fortuitous DNA copying errors. I am not impressed by the "prediction" that fish in caves will go blind, since it is made after the fact. Also, the fish case is an example of microevolution -- ie. an ecological adjustment which is not at issue.

* Mr. Lounsbery asserts that I quote writers like Stephen Jay Gould out of context. Since he gives no examples, I am hard-pressed to reply. The Gould quote which no doubt irritates him is: "the synthetic theory [neo-Darwinism] . . . is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." Gould wrote this in a 1980 essay published in Paleobiology, entitled "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?" Mr. Lounsbery is welcome to read it. He will see that the quote is quite in context. Further, Gould's notorious article raises many additional questions. For example: If all is well with Darwinism, why would evolution's leading American spokesman assert a need for a "new and general" theory?

* Of course, Gould "in no way doubts the fact" of natural selection. Nor do I, since natural selection is true by definition. If there is a flood, the cows will drown and the fish will survive. What Gould and other punctuationists argue is that natural selection is a necessary but not sufficient explanation of evolutionary novelties. This is why their writings make true Darwinists like John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins so angry.

* Where in my article do I champion the "God of the gaps"? I think it unwise for a scientist puzzled by a phenomenon ever to say, "Well, God does it." It's the job of a scientist to explain things without reference to a Creator, but also to honestly admit when he lacks an explanation for the dilemma that faces him. The systematic gaps in the fossil record prove nothing about God; they simply falsify gradual Darwinian evolution -- at least in the opinion of paleontologists like Gould, Eldredge, Schindewolf, Raup and Stanley.

* Regarding the gaps in the fossil record, I could fill this magazine with quotes supporting this fact (none "out of context") from the highest scientific authorities. For example, Ernst Mayr of Harvard confessed, "What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of higher categories" (The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 524). Or Eldredge and Tattersall: "The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change" (The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 163). In other words, the fossil record does not confirm Darwin's prediction of innumerable, slight changes in fossil sequences. Most fossils offered as "transitional" are in reality intermediates, a very different thing.

* The horse lineage is not a simple ladder. Biologist Michael Denton calls the oft-reprinted horse series "largely apocryphal." (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 182). Gould writes the following: "Paleontologists have documented virtually no cases of slow and steady transformation, foot by foot up the strata of a hillslope -- not for horses, not for humans." (New York Times, Jan. 22, 1978). It is not even clear that Hyracotherium (including Eohippus) was a horse at all.

* The persistence of species like horseshoe crabs and sharks for tens of millions of years illustrates how species are hard-edged and refuse to change much. All these particular species managed to do is avoid the mass and local extinctions which have terminated other species, which, like the sharks and crabs, did not change much before their final exit. This non-Darwinian message of the fossil record is discussed at length in paleontologist Niles Eldredge's recent Reinventing Darwin (read: Retiring Darwin).

* I did not say that Darwin's theory must be wrong because moral monsters like Lenin, Stalin and Hitler embraced it. I simply observed that, given the horrible uses to which Darwin's theory has been put, its retirement might not be something to regret.

* I did not offer the violent disagreement between Leakey and Johansen about human origins as proof that evolution is bunk. It simply shows that we have very little certain knowledge in this area. As a Catholic, I could not care less whether man has non-human biological antecedents. But I am struck by the discrepancy between the claims about human ancestry made by the average high school textbook and what the experts actually say when they debate one another.

* Regarding the hostility toward religion of many prominent Darwinists, Mr. Lounsbery again misrepresents my position. Scientists like Dawkins, Gould, Simpson, Hull and other Darwinists are perfectly free to be atheists. However, they are not free as scientists to argue, "There is no God, therefore it had to be that way." And this is the position of many of them, if you cut through all the verbiage. This mode of argumentation began with Darwin himself. His great German disciple Weissmann actually wrote that natural selection had to be defended as the only mechanism for evolution because it is the "only alternative to design." Is this Mr. Lounsbery's idea of hard science? Norman Macbeth has a very good chapter in Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason on how Darwinian science often masks a crusading materialism. Since Mr. Lounsbery is rightly concerned with "evidence and reason," he ought to read this book (which was endorsed by Karl Popper) and see how Macbeth exposes the verbal shell games which people like Mayr and Simpson use as a substitute for logic.

* Mr. Lounsbery states that "the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific truth." He should read the following books, all by scientists, before making such a remark: Pierre P. Grasse, The Evolution of Living Things; Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis; Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box; Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin; and D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form. He should also go to the magazine stacks of his local library and look up David Berlinski's devastating article "The Deniable Darwin" in the June 1996 issue of Commentary, and Roger Lewin's "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire" in the Nov. 21, 1980 issue of Science. The latter was a report on a Chicago conference on macroevolution attended by all the major players. The upshot of the conference was that macroevolution has to be decoupled from microevolution; if this is true, then Darwin's argument in the Origin, which rests mainly on the extrapolation of macro changes from micro, deserves no more than a footnote in the history of science.

* I could not agree more with St. Augustine's remark. It is more up-to-date than anything Mr. Lounsbery has to say about the relationship between science and religion. The great Bishop of Hippo was a kind of evolutionist; but he was also an expert at unmasking false ideologies, and I think that if he were living today, he would have a field day with Darwinism.