Yes or no to evolution?

In a column that appeared in July in the New York Times and attracted worldwide attention, Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, explained that while the Church can accept some aspects of evolutionary theory, the notion that human life evolved through "an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection" contradicts the belief that God created human life.

Fr George Coyne, SJ, writing in The Tablet of August 6, contradicts the cardinal's position, claiming that a Christian can recognise God's providence while still holding the belief that life "evolved through a process of random genetic mutations and natural selection".

Fr Coyne is no ordinary Jesuit (though many would say that there is no ordinary Jesuit). He is an astronomer who divides his time between two posts: teaching astronomy at the University of Arizona and directing the Vatican Observatory, which is located on the grounds of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

Cardinal Schönborn is a theologian, and the chairman of the editorial committee that produced the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

According to Fr Coyne the theory of evolution, rather than negating the need for God, helps believers understand that God's relationship to the universe is that of a nurturing parent. But there is a "nagging fear in the Church" that evolution is incompatible with a divinely planned universe and this fear has historically created "murky waters" in the Church's relationship to science.

In clarifying comments made afterwards in Austria and reported by Kathpress, an Austrian Catholic news agency, Cardinal Schönborn said that evolution as a body of scientific fact was compatible with Catholicism, but that evolution as an ideological dogma that denied design and purpose in nature was not.

Fr Coyne said that science is "completely neutral" on the philosophical and theological implications of its findings, but this does not prevent believers from using the best scientific data available to improve their understanding of God. Evolution is not only compatible with Catholicism but also "reveals a God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God," he added.

"God is working with the universe. The universe has a certain vitality of its own like a child does," Fr Coyne said. God "is not constantly intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."

Based on the results of modern science and modern biblical scholarship "religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator or designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly," he continued. "Perhaps God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words."

Fr Coyne criticised Cardinal Schönborn for saying that the scientific processes of "chance" and "necessity" cannot explain the presence of purpose and design in nature. He gave the example of two hydrogen atoms meeting in the universe.

"By necessity (the laws of chemical combination) they are destined to become a hydrogen molecule. But by chance the temperature and pressure conditions at that moment are not correct for them to combine," he added. "And so they wander through the universe until they finally combine," he said.

"By the interaction of chance and necessity, many hydrogen molecules are formed and eventually many of them combine with oxygen to make water, and so on, until we have very complex molecules and eventually the most complicated organism that science knows: the human brain," he said.

Evolution is a continuous process and "has a certain intrinsic natural directionality in that the more complex an organism becomes the more determined is its future," he said.