A new book critiquing theistic evolution is hitting the shelves. But meanwhile, a Catholic book along the same lines, Aquinas and Evolution by Michael Chaberek, OP, is performing a much-needed service: Helping people understand that Catholicism is not a branch of naturalist atheism. To listen to some Catholic evolutionists, we might find it hard to distinguish.
Brief excerpt from Chaberek:
Thomistic critics of ID reject ID for “philosophical reasons” and adopt the Darwinian explanations for the “scientific reasons.” But this means that they fight the alleged mechanistic reductionism of intelligent design and, at the same time, they accept the real and quite blatant reductionism of the Darwinian theory. Indeed, there is no greater misunderstanding of life and no greater reductionism in biology than saying that all species came about by the mechanism of blind mutations and natural selection. Yet, this is the main tenet of neo-Darwinism. The reason why some Thomists make this fatal mistake is that they do not adhere to the distinction between science and philosophy. when they think about intelligent design they judge it by philosophical categories, whereas when they think of neo-Darwinism they adopt the “scientific” point of view. Both theories, however, are on the same level of science and should be judged according to the requirements of science.
Yet even if we apply the same scientific measure to both theories, new-Darwinism, unlike ID, will still fall into the category of reductionism (scientific reductionism). The reason is that on the very level of biological investigation we can discover intelligent causation, which is the only type of cause able to produce the type of structures/events we find in living beings. Neo-Darwinism a priori and by definition excludes this type of causality. In contrast, ID by definition allows all types of causes and appeals to intelligence only after rigorous investigation. As the ID proponents say: “Scientists should go wherever the evidence leads.” Thus, the way to overcome reductionism in science (a dream of many Thomists) is not by adopting neo-Darwinism and trying to show how it is compatible with classical philosophy, but rather by embracing intelligent design as the alternative scientific explanation, and then showing how ID is compatible with classical metaphysics. — Chaberek, Aquinas and Evolution,, pp. 199 – 200
See also: Michael Chaberek: Darwinian theory is past its best-before date
More tales of the tone deaf: Catholic intellectuals who say that Thomas Aquinas would not have supported ID
and
Top Vatican official says Catholic scientists should “come out”