Sybilla Oritur

As a man of faith and education, I find it very frustrating sometimes to listen to people who have neither attributes spout loud declarations about important and serious ideas like the origin of mankind. Worse still to hear them mouth off either for or against a specific point of view that they misattribute to a specific religion. I am an Orthodox Jew, but I have had the opportunity to study some Christian theology and philosophy, as well as that of my own tribe, so I feel I can say this with a fair amount of authority:

Neither Christianity nor Judaism rejects the idea that man might have evolved from the beasts.

No doubt some people find that shocking. Now, I’ve met Rabbis who reject the very idea of evolution – both those who are learned, and those who are just morons who really haven’t earned the title properly – but they are few and far between, and it is safe to say that Judaism readily accepts the possibility and evidence that man’s origins in Genesis are in fact metaphorical. If you’re interested, Gerald Schroeder – an American Nuclear Physicist and Israeli Yeshiva lecturer, not to be confused with the once German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder – discusses it in detail in his books Genesis and the Big Bang and The Science of God.

Now I know that some people are saying “OK, that’s Judaism, but Christianity does not accept evolution, I’ve heard the morons yelling about it!” … and I’ve heard them too. That doesn’t generally define a religion though. It tells us about morons, but not about Theology.

Christian theology is a bit problematic though, because it’s split into many groups, and most of those don’t accept the teachings of the others. So when Pius XII (March 1939-October 1958) made it a point to allow Catholics to study & teach evolution as a theory, and later Pope John Paul II (October 1978-April 2005) stated clearly that Evolution is more than a theory, that ONLY applies to Catholic Theology, and can be easily dismissed by the rest of Christendom.

On the other hand, the debate in the US today is about Evolution versus Intelligent Design, not Special Creation versus Evolution. Even the Evangelicals have stopped pushing Special Creation – you know, the idea that G•d just went “poof” and there was Adam, ready made – and accepted that ID fits better.

So the argument has become a lot more subtle, and most people don’t understand it. I’ve met pro-evolution people who think ID is Special Creationism, and I’ve met pro-ID advocates who think that ID is Special Creation.

Wait.

Does that mean that NO ONE understands what ID is? I think that might be the problem. Evolution is a slow process that happens over countless generations in which the random mutations that come into a species that favour survival and procreation become a characteristic of the species… sort of. That’s much too simple, but it’s clear enough for this debate. ID argues that there’s a lot we don’t know about how Humans evolved, and that the fossil record is incomplete, and that the fact that we haven’t found any evidence of ‘false-start’ humans – mutations that survived for a while, but eventually failed, like a feathered early-human or something, of which there should be tens of thousands– implies that Evolution must have been guided by something more intelligent than random chance.

ID does not specifically talk about G•d. Evolutionists who think so are wrong. ID advocates who think so are wrong. You’re all morons.

The theory of Evolution is incomplete. There are aspects of the theory that are backed up by lots of compelling evidence. There are aspects that have little to no evidence, and are supported only by conjecture. As with all scientific theories, this is normal. WE ARE STILL LEARNING! I’ve read a few theories of how the eye developed through Evolution, for example, and they have been built not on evidence and fact, but on the theories and conjecture of very intelligent and learned people. This does not make them false, it just means they are unproven, and so unsatisfactory.

The lack of a fossil record for ‘false-starts’ alone, however, is not evidence of an intelligence guiding human evolution. It is evidence of a thoroughly incomplete and spotty fossil record. We don’t even know the order in which to put the fossils we HAVE! Yes, textbooks always show the development of man and talk about those stages with authority. It’s a lie. They don’t know, and every few years someone updates the order, but no one updates the pictures in the textbooks or the charts on the classroom and museum walls until the next printing… if then.

I’m off topic. This was going to be about Catholics who didn’t know that their own theology has already accepted Evolution, and how people should study their own religious beliefs. Then while researching it, I learned that this idiot Ratzinger – Pope Benedict XVI (April 2005-present) is trying to dial it back, now. Ratzinger is trying to fit what his predecessors have said into a brand of ID that … well… if he undermines their Auctoritas then he undermines his own.

Can someone explain to me how the Church got a German for a pope, another white pope while the vast majority of Catholics are not white, and the largest populations of Catholics are in not-white countries? Where is the Brazilian pope, or the Mexican, or Phillipino? Damnit!