The eyes have it

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

When Sir Charles Sherrington described the forming of the human eye in the darkness of the womb, it took him nine pages. As he pictures, in a kind of scientific poetry, the steps, systems, materials, measurements and precision needed for this marvel, we share his wonder at this extraordinary example of God’s creation. We can see here the work of an intelligence far beyond our own. Indeed, our only and immediate reaction must be: Glory be to God.

But we haven’t yet grasped the true wonder. That may begin when we realise that eyes have evolved in the animal kingdom independently in more than 40 instances. Nature is profligate with eyes. God did not just fashion the eye, he gave us the system which would fashion the eye and a billion other outcomes. It is a progressive system, not in itself rational, but self-correcting through the filter of fitness to survive. Eventually, but seen and intended by him from the beginning, this resulted in an organism with such potential that it could only be complemented by an immortal soul made in God’s likeness.

That is the true wonder, and our imaginations cannot grasp it. Many people, among them readers of this newspaper, tell me that, while they can accept evolution in broad terms and recognise the mythic characteristics of the Creation story, there are certainly some phenomena so marvellous that we must assume God’s intelligent design.

I must distinguish such people from those who believe that everything is the outcome of God’s direct creation: that is, that Genesis is literal truth. Because this view is so unfashionable, some have adopted a modified form called “Intelligent Design” as a stalking horse for their larger idea. I do not have such people in mind here.

Over the decades many instances where it is proposed that only direct design could achieve the result have been cited. They have in common the claim that the steps required to develop the organism in question cannot be shown or even imagined. The argument started with the Rev William Paley who started his Natural Theology (1802) with the reflection that consideration of the pocket watch, which he found by chance, leads to the inevitable inference “that the watch must have had a maker.”

The first example I encountered was the bombardier beetle. This contains chambers of two different chemicals whose mixture was fearsomely and explosively ejected by the beetle in defence. It was claimed that the mixing of these chemicals would cause an explosion – thus prematurely destroying the beetle. This attractive theory came a cropper when the two chemicals were in fact mixed and no explosion occurred. In fact, catalysts are required to enable this to happen.

A more sophisticated example is provided by the rotational (wheel-like) motion of the flagellum in certain bacteria. It was argued that the intermediate steps required to build such a complex and rare mechanism could not be accounted for within evolution.

It is true that rotation does not occur at a larger scale. There are difficulties such as the provision of blood flow. But there is no such difficulty at bacterial level, and indeed rotation does occur in many other bacteria – but using substantially fewer genes. While, as far as I know, scientists have not been able to demonstrate all the intermediate steps, there is no reason to suppose that they did not occur. Proteins in different species can vary by 80 to 90 per cent, yet perform the same function. In fact, only two genes are unique to flagella.

Perhaps a less familiar example concerns the blood-clotting cascade. The process which leads to the clotting of blood, potentially bringing about healing, is very sophisticated. So many different processes are involved that “cascade” is an appropriate word. It has been argued that this complexity defies the power of evolution. It must have been directly designed. But it is possible to show how all the steps could have developed through evolutionary principles, enabling more sophisticated and efficient mechanism to develop, simply because the chance effects of each stage benefitted the owners, who survived to breed. We are living in a universe where a creature the size of a mouse can evolve to the size of an elephant in a mere 24 million generations, but retaining similar constituents and body parts, taking no more than a speck of evolutionary time.

It is important to note that such explanations do not claim that all these intermediate stages did occur in the fashion and the order which is suggested. Think of that old stone archway. We do not need to suppose that the scaffolding needed for its construction did not exist because it has been removed. What such explanations do show is that the end result could have been achieved through evolution, and Occam’s razor indicates that this is the preferable explanation.

And this, of course, is the problem. It will never be possible to disprove every claim that a biological phenomenon could only have been produced through Intelligent Design. In many ways our understanding of biology is still in its infancy. If one proposition is shown not to prove Intelligent Design, another can be put forward. There will always be cases where the intermediate stages cannot be identified.

But those who, perhaps through piety, argue for Intelligent Design do disservice. Each time one of their candidates is felled, a little damage is done to true religion. The god-of-the-gaps shrinks a little, and disbelievers mock.

Meanwhile, you can see God’s work here. This brief YouTube video was recommended by our contributor Nektarios – and is most impressive.

Tell us if you agree with my thoughts.

Posted in Bio-ethics, Catholic Herald columns | Tagged , | 163 Comments

Views on the Jews

Posted on March 29, 2012 by

The 16th March 2008 marks the tenth anniversary of a remarkable document, We Remember, A Reflection on the Shoah, issued under the auspices of John Paul II. (Shoah is the Hebrew name for the Jewish Holocaust.)

Apologies for the past are somewhat unusual in official Catholic circles, and this was undoubtedly an apology. In referring to those Catholics in Germany and the occupied territories who failed to protest and protect, it said: “We deeply regret the errors and failures of those sons and daughters of the Church.” The message is that we must remember, then we must repent. And we must ask ourselves whether, and to what extent, anti-Jewish prejudice has contributed to this calamity. Pope John Paul, in his introduction, says “May it enable memory to play its necessary part in the process of shaping a future in which the unspeakable iniquity of the Shoah will never again be possible.”

So, in the spirit of Pope John Paul, I want to dig a little deeper into memory, and reflect on the Reflection. But I have an initial difficulty to unravel: it is not always clear in the document what meaning is given to the entity of the Church. There is an unspoken distinction between the Church as a formal institution of teaching and authority – in effect what nowadays we call the magisterium – and the unfaithfulness of many members of the body of the Church. But history suggests that the Church, taken as a total community, has been riddled with anti-Judaism from the beginning. If blame is to be apportioned, it lies most heavily with its leadership – which by no means excuses those of the rank and file who followed that lead. And, although there is more than a technical difference between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, all too often the two streams flow in the same channel. You will have to test the soundness of my judgment from the sad summary which follows.

We may not easily blame St Paul for referring to the Jews as the killers of Christ who will reap their reward, nor his epithet of “dogs”. He was writing in the middle of the first century when the incidents were almost contemporary, and he had been much troubled by their opposition to his apostolate. He could scarcely have guessed that accusations of deicide would quote his authority throughout two millennia.

The Early Church Fathers, who are frequently quoted as high authorities in Vatican teaching, had no such excuse 400 years later. Tertullian, Origen, and Ambrose make a representative list. But they all fall way behind John Chrysostom (“golden-mouth”) whose public abuse of the Jews was used by the Nazis in defence of their activities.

St Augustine is, by comparison, almost liberal – teaching that since their offence brought about salvation, they were not to be destroyed but only to be dispersed so that their fate would be obvious to everyone. But this was a two-edged sword stretching into the future: one edge forbade violent persecution, the other promoted marginalisation. The two edges were eventually to come to a point.

In 306, the Council of Elvira was to rule “If any cleric or layperson eats with Jews, he or she shall be kept from communion as a way of correction.” Over the next three centuries at least eight synods restricting Jews in various ways took place. The Third Lateran Council (1179) ruled that no Christian ought to be servant to a Jew, and that Christian evidence should always overrule Jewish evidence. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) ruled that Jews should be distinguished by their clothing, forbade them from appearing in public at Eastertide and – confirming the Synod of Toledo (589) refused them preference in public office. It would never be proper for a Christian to be ruled by a Jew.

Over the following 500 years there were more than 20 Papal Bulls unfavourable to Jews. They cover such matters as the obligation to live in ghettoes, restriction of the trades they could adopt, including the practice of medicine, and refining the regulations on dress. Jews were at one time required to wear distinctive yellow items – which should cause a shiver of memory. The Talmud was to be destroyed. Pontifical documents often described the Jews as impious and perfidious; and it was not until the insistence of Pope John XXIII that such epithets were removed from the official liturgy. The severity of these rulings applied variously in times and places, but they were not abrogated before the mid 19th century, although semi-official anti-Semitic propaganda was to continue.

Forced conversions were forbidden, although they took place. This was flagrant under the Spanish Inquisition, which was then to put major focus on such converted Jews, and their descendants, to root out and punish any continuation of Jewish practice.

Of course the general Catholic population followed the official line with all the enthusiasm of a mob given licence to behave cruelly while feeling virtuous about it. There were outbreaks of violence, pogroms, expulsions and general abhorrence of anything Jewish. And these continued throughout history. The grotesque Dreyfus affair (1894 to 1906), in which a Jewish officer was unjustly imprisoned, was sustained by widespread anti-Semitism in France. Civiltá  Cattolica, a Jesuit journal, which worked in close collaboration with the Vatican, was publishing anti-Semitic articles right up to 1938.

A recurrent theme has been the allegation of deicide. I am glad to see that it is now accepted that St Matthew may have exaggerated, for polemical purposes, the part which the Jewish mob played in the crucifixion but, even without this, it is obvious that a local crowd of Jews without the slightest belief that Christ was God, whipped into frenzy some 2000 years ago, could not damn their entire race into the future. Or if it could, what burden do we bear for our prolonged and much more recent sins against the Jews? One bright star shines from the Catechism of the Council of Trent, which declared that the guilt for the crucifixion lies more heavily on us since, when we are unfaithful to Christ we know, unlike the Jews, what we are doing. I am not going to give the “blood libel” (the sacrifice of Christian children for Jewish ritual) even the credence of refutation.

I do not consider here questions such as the behaviour of the German bishops over the period of Nazism, nor the steps taken, or not taken, by Pius XII, for my purpose has been to review in what ways we (and here I speak of the whole body of the Church) may, historically, have prepared the ground for the Shoah. Should we have been surprised that the German people, and those in several occupied countries, took so meekly, and sometimes so readily, to the persecution of the Jews? The soil of Europe had been composted with anti-Judaism for hundreds of years, when it received the Nazi’s poisoned seed.

It is clear of course that the Shoah was the direct responsibility of the Nazis and their wicked collaborators. But is also true that it occurred against a background of Christian European culture, of which we are so proud. The Reflection ends with the words “To remember this terrible experience is to become fully conscious of the salutary warning it entails: the spoiled seeds of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism must never again be allowed to take root in any human heart.”

The Council document, Nostra Aetate, firmly proclaimed our debt to Judaism and repudiated any form of anti-Semitism. But the human heart is another matter. Anti-Semitism can take many forms from the simple stereotyping of Jews to confusing it with legitimate criticism of the State of Israel as a political entity. It can even take the form of envy, for Jews have been remarkably successful, for instance in financial and artistic fields. Was the shock of the Shoah sufficient to eradicate it, or will it like bindweed only have been cut back to reappear in another year? Pope John Paul called for metanoia – a deep change of direction through repentance. Has the Church, at all levels made that deep change? If you have found this article as uncomfortable to read as I have found it to write, it may help us to remember his words: “Guilt must always be the point of departure for conversion.”

From The Catholic Herald, 25 Jan 2008

What do we find acceptable within the Church today, of which we shall be ashamed tomorrow?

Posted in Catholic Herald other, Church and Society, Moral judgment | Tagged , , | 91 Comments

Holy Soul

Posted on March 22, 2012 by

 

Do you ever think seriously about the soul? Consider the holy souls who have worked their time through purgation and are now waiting, very happily, for the Day of Judgment. In fact, from their point of view, not waiting at all. They are outside the realm of time. They experience no time between death and resurrection, just as there was no time for those who lived before Christ but benefitted, as the Creed assures us, from his redemption. While we have to use “time” words in order to express these mysteries in human language, that is no reason for interpreting them literally.

Ensoulment is an interesting concept. We encounter it at two major points: one is the ensoulment of the first human being and the other is the ensoulment of every human being at, or after, conception. How do we think this works? Perhaps God identified a member of the species homo erectus who, as the result of a mutation, was brighter than usual, and decided that this was worth a soul – and injected it. Similarly, he recognises the zygote (the first cell after conception) and does the same. I am not trivialising: this is how I know many Catholics think and, when I am not wary, I think myself.

The old (and splendidly scholarly) Catholic Encyclopaedia gives us: “The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated.” And it goes on to speak of the faculties and the powers of the soul. Written 100 years ago, the Encyclopaedia was clear that these powers worked in some sense through and with the biological processes.

And nothing has changed, although our knowledge of the brain and, through types of scan, its functions has grown mightily. So much so that many neuroscientists, of a secular turn of mind, mistakenly believe that all of what we call the powers of the soul are determined psychologically.

We do not have to cross this Rubicon to grasp something of the integration between body and soul. Take, as an obvious example, our use of free will. We know that our decisions are so strongly influenced by our genetic inheritance, by our nurturing experiences and by the nature of our subjective perception, that it is hard to determine, in any particular instance, that our decision is free. Aquinas taught that virtue is a habit which makes us good and our work likewise. And we recognise habit as an outcome of strengthened neural connections; just try to imagine exercising any of the soul’s functions without the help of both instinctive and conscious memory.

Since the human soul works through biology, but in some mysterious way transcends it, it can make no sense to us to think of a human soul without its body. But of course we don’t have to, if we go from our mortal body immediately to our resurrected body. The alternative idea of souls, minus time and space, blipping immaterially around eternity seems odd to me. (Please don’t ask me about angels; they can furnish their own explanation if they wish.) I have parents, a brother and a sister, and a miscarried child in heaven. I can pray to or for all of them – confident that they know I am praying and that not a word is wasted. Exactly how is not yet my business to know.

One Catholic asked me why it is that God cooperates with immorality by giving a soul to a foetus conceived in a petri dish. This is a reasonable question if one accepts the injection theory of ensoulment. But if the soul, both naturally and supernaturally, is bound in with the body, then the creation of the body with its human faculties (through evolution, as I think, or otherwise) is the occasion of the soul. God cannot make a fully human body without a soul, for without a soul it would not be a fully human body.

Are new issues raised by the fact that the foetus is initially not capable of exercising the powers of the soul, other than the power of animation? I think not, because the human foetus is by intrinsic nature ordered to developing the required biological form for their exercise. Even the axis of the nervous system is affected by the entry point of the sperm at conception. I am not speaking of a soul that develops, but I am speaking of a developing body and brain, and that means that the ability of the soul to exercise its powers must similarly develop. For example, it will be a matter of years, not months, before a human being can exercise reason, notwithstanding our recognition that rationality is a cardinal characteristic of human beings.

In this matter I go back to Heraclitus, who famously said: “You cannot step in the same stream twice.” His doctrine of continuous change applies a fortiori to the human organism.  We change and develop throughout our lives, stopping only when the bell tolls. A human life is a continuously changing identity. Even reading this column you have been subject to thousands of mutations: my hair has grown a little thinner, and all of us are nearer to our graves.

But feel free. I speak with no authority beyond the force of argument – although I do not think that my speculations on the soul take me outside the perimeter of orthodoxy. But if you disagree, or wish to take my speculations further,  and tell us about it.

 

 

Posted in Bio-ethics, Catholic Herald columns, Moral judgment, Philosophy | Tagged , , | 50 Comments

The killing instinct

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

When I was a young subaltern in the army (doing my National Service) I would talk with my company commander about his war experiences. He was in a Highland regiment then and took part in the invasion of France and Germany.  He told me how he had shot a German woman at long range. “It was just a bet,” he said “it was a difficult shot. Oh, and I’ve still got her watch. Or, at least my wife has – I gave it to her as a present.”

My disapproval must have showed because he went on to say “You know, when you’re continually killing people you simply have to blunt your feelings. Otherwise you couldn’t be a soldier. But of course, after weeks of that, human life just doesn’t seem important.”

I remembered reading that, in the early centuries of the Church, you were indeed allowed, albeit reluctantly, to be a soldier. But when you came back you had to do penance. It was not that you were guilty but that you were contaminated. True or not, Christians generally took pacifism for granted – the new life of love in Christ was incompatible with killing. They were to develop a taste for it later when the government of the Church was sufficiently well established to be able to overlook Christianity.

I would like to think that, had I taken part in direct military action, I would have regretted every man I killed, and would still be praying for their souls. But would I have felt like that if I had fought my way across Normandy, or had an opportunity to see Belsen after its liberation? And how would I have felt if my lack of aggression led to the death of men I was commanding?

This innate enthusiasm for killing is called the “Schrumpf effect” after a marine sharpshooter who was reported as rejoicing in the number of people killed, and saying of an Iraqi woman caught in the crossfire, “I’m sorry, but the chick was in the way,”

In fact World War II experience tells us that most men will go to some lengths to avoid killing. Men subjected to lengthy combat were likely to suffer from psychiatric symptoms, while those who seemed comfortable with it had “aggressive, psychopathic tendencies”. Some surveys discovered that only 15 to 20 per cent of soldiers fired their weapons when in combat – even when ordered to do so. This so concerned the US authorities that they changed their training in order to increase the killing rate.

Do any of us feel that killing even in wartime is so wicked that we would not do it? Is there a difference between shooting a woman or child directly and killing a score of them by dropping a bomb from a few thousand feet? How do we react to the idea of blanket bombing – Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima? Would any of us argue that we should never use a hydrogen/atomic bomb even if that were the only way of avoiding being bombed in return?

Posted in Moral judgment, Quentin queries | Tagged | 119 Comments

St Socrates

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

Come down with me from the beautiful heights of the Acropolis, and walk with me in the dust and the bustle of the agora. It is in the late years of the fourth century BC, and the temple of Hephaistos dominates the scene, just as it will do for over two thousand years. There is the stoa of Zeus with its fine columns and comforting shade. The mint, the Fountain House and the law courts, backed by the prison, are on the south side. And in the south stoa there is a little group of people just discussing.

The whole agora is busy; it is the public centre of Athens. People walk to and fro on their way to their business. Produce is sold. A juggler entertains a few bystanders. Under the porticos other groups are standing, some of them arguing energetically.

But we turn back to the south stoa because we recognise one of the men in the group. He is about 40, pudgy – nothing to look at. We know about him because he is mocked as a character in that splendid comedy by Aristophanes we went to see last week. What a card! He is one of those airy philosophers who’ll leave you knowing less than you did when you started.

And we don’t realise that this is history in the making: that pudgy man will change the thinking of the world, and he will die for it – convicted in the court a few yards from him as he speaks.

What was so dramatically new about this man? His method of teaching was radical because he did not claim to know the answers. All he could do was to ask the questions and then show the inadequacy of the answers. So his disputants got closer to the truth even if they did not quite reach it.

But his approach to philosophy was dramatically different from the academic philosophy of the time. His predecessors were concerned with lofty and academic questions like the nature of the common substance of the world or the configuration of the heavens. The pudgy man kept his eyes lower. The only philosophic question which mattered was: how should I live my life?

For Socrates, the body, and all material things, were secondary. What mattered was the condition of the soul. Our task was to “flourish”. The Greek word is eudaimonia, the good daemon which enables us to be fulfilled and content as human beings.

The route to flourishing was, quite simply, the development of virtue. Not that discussing a virtue with Socrates was always an enlightening experience. One was less likely to get from him a clear definition than to be left sitting in the wreck of one’s misconceptions, and having to start again. We may have to wait for rescue by his pupil Aristotle who will spell out the cardinal virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics.

Virtue was not to be sought, at least primarily, for the benefit of others but for the benefit of the soul. For example, to eschew the Greek tradition of revenge on one’s enemies, was not so much to benefit those enemies as to avoid damaging the one thing which mattered – our own souls.

At this point we may think that Socrates loses himself for he claims that the only reason why we do wrong is because of ignorance. With full knowledge we would never sin. But this goes against all our experience, there are all too many occasions when we know what we should do but fail to do it.

But there is a way of understanding Socrates here. It is suggested by the word for sin in both the Greek and the Hebrew scriptures: it means ‘to miss the mark’. And that suggests a mistake, albeit often a wilful one. We simply got it wrong.

We must remember that we arrive at this knowledge through the development of virtue. Those who champion virtue ethics argue that the higher our degree of virtue the more clearly we see what love demands, and so are drawn to embrace it. Knowledge is not merely intellectual, it is something which we grasp with our whole being, and on which we put the right emphasis. It follows that, when we know moral good and understand its importance, it becomes the good we must follow just as we are obliged to worship the goodness of God when we see it in the light of glory.

Few of us reach this depth of knowledge but it seems that Socrates may have done. His contemporaries recognised that he lived his life according to his principles, and with a remarkable strength of will. And so he died, unjustly accused, but determined to uphold the rule of Athenian law.

From time to time we hear of those who refer to Christ and Socrates as though they were on the same plane. And this is understandable although those who hold this opinion often appear to know little about either. But I bear in mind that the Pope at Regensburg spoke warmly of Socrates’ determination to ask the fundamental questions. And I recall his remark in 1991, that “Socrates, the pagan, could become in a certain respect the prophet of Jesus Christ”.

Such a view gives Socrates a place in the history of salvation, not as a perfect human being – for he was not that, but as an early forerunner who prepared the world for a message yet to come.

Posted in Catholic Herald columns, Moral judgment, Philosophy | Tagged | 121 Comments

Childish behaviour

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

Our last topic, the Church and the Rule of Law, was the occasion of some ill-tempered bickering – in which more than one person was involved. I was saddened by this, and indeed one contributor – concerned for the good name of the Blog, suggested that I should close the thread. Without question it damaged an important discussion.

The purpose of the Blog is to provide a forum for courteous and thoughtful discussion, focussed on the topic proposed, or its legitimate ramifications.

I have had to consider the possibility of closing the Blog altogether. I have no intention of presiding over a forum which could bring the Catholic name – and indeed my, and the Catholic Herald’s name –  into disrepute. However I will take the provisional measure of simply trashing contributions which damage discussion. But I really should not have to do this.

You may express any view you wish about a topic or the view of any other contributor. But the rules of the Blog require you to do so courteously, to give your reasons and to eschew
personal remarks. If you feel that you have been insulted and are not able to ignore this, then email me and I will speak to the contributor concerned.

Posted in Quentin queries | 10 Comments

The Church and the rule of law

Posted on March 1, 2012 by

With Quentin’s blessing, John Candido writes: -

According to journalist Peter Stanford, writing in ‘The Independent, Jack Mahoney could be headed for controversy and an appointment with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  Mahoney has previously been in trouble with the Vatican with a book he published in 1984 called, ‘Bioethics and Belief: Religion and Medicine in Dialogue’.  In this title he examined the ethics of abortion and the question of ensoulment, or when does a foetus acquire a soul, among other issues.

If Professor Jack Mahoney SJ is brought before the CDF, for his recent book called, ‘Christianity in Evolution: An Exploration’, will the Congregation operate as if the modern world had passed it by?  Will the CDF replicate past examples of its treatment of academics and operate without contemporary standards of legal due process?  If the treatment of the recently sacked Bishop of Toowoomba in Australia is anything to go by, then Jack Mahoney could be headed towards interesting times.

In a recent article in ‘The Age’ newspaper in Australia  it has been estimated by two authoritative sources that Bishop William Morris (who was removed from office five years after he wrote a pastoral letter indicating he would be open to ordaining women and married men if Church rules changed to allow such a possibility),

‘…was denied procedural fairness and natural justice, and that his treatment was ”offensive” to the requirements of both civil and canon (church) law’,

The above quote is attributed to Queensland Supreme Court judge The Hon. W. J. Carter.  The other critic of the Morris case is leading Australian canon lawyer, Father Ian Waters from Melbourne.  Procedural fairness is a natural part of due process in law, and the goal of such guidelines is to ensure justice and fairness for anyone who is accused of an offence under law, state or ecclesiastical law.  These guidelines are terribly important as a safeguard to anyone’s human rights.

According to Father Ian Waters,

“Pope Benedict breached canon law and exceeded his authority in removing Bishop Morris without finding him guilty of apostasy, heresy, or schism, and without following the judicial procedures canon law requires”.

Can a sophisticated society such as ours tolerate any organisation which operates without recourse to fairness and justice?  Or can we, or must we, reluctantly or otherwise, make an exception for religious entities?

(Quentin  adds the following from The Tablet’s Vatican Correspondent, Robert Mickens.  Mickens writes in the same context: “Quite simply, the crisis is this: the structures of the Catholic Church are no longer adequate for life in the modern world or responsive to the developments of the Church’s own ecclesiology and self-understanding. “ 25 Feb 2012.)

Posted in Moral judgment, Quentin queries | Tagged , , | 335 Comments