Our eighty-first show debuts on June 21, at 8:00 PM Eastern. Rebroadcasts will take place according to the Crusade Channel programming schedule (note:all times listed are Central time). The topic is Examining Evolution. My guest is Father Michael Chaberek, OP.
Listen now! (link goes live Wednesday night)
- Father Michael Chaberek’s homepage — at mchaberek.com
- THOMAS AQUINAS AND THEISTIC EVOLUTION — by Father Michael Chaberek at epsociety.org
- The problems with evolution: A Catholic overview — at irishcatholic.ie (a reveiw of Father Chaberek’s book)
- Catholicism and Evolution — Father Chaberek’s book, for sale at Amazon.com
- Aquinas and Evolution — another book by Father Chaberek’s book, for sale at Amazon.com
Father Michael Chaberek, at a conference on Thomism and Intelligent Design
“Reconquest” is a militant, engaging, and informative Catholic radio program featuring interviews with interesting guests as well as commentary by your host. It is a radio-journalistic extension of the Crusade of Saint Benedict Center.
Each weekly, one-hour episode of Reconquest will debut RIGHT HERE on Wednesday night at 8:00 PM Eastern (7:00 PM Central). It will then be rebroadcast according to the Crusade Channel programming schedule (note:all times listed are Central time).
Excellent show, Brother. Fascinating topic, and certainly one that isn’t discussed often enough.
Adding to the fascination was the last bit about how the neo-Darwinist standpoint can be used to aid the progressive liberals in their gender identity battles–apparently they really *can* choose if they are a man or a woman or a dolphin, because science said so!
Thank you, Kim. Once you reduce the human being to a product of Evolution, and not a special creation of God, you virtually remove from him a moral dimension. You also make him something he’s not. It will effect your ethics, your politics, your economics, your approach to law, etc. — everything. Both the Nazis and the Bolshevists used biological macroevolutionary theory to bolster their cases. It’s no surprise that today’s sexual revolutionaries use it, too.
With all due respect Father (and I do mean that most seriously) from my understanding of St. Thomas and St. Augustine I think that neither of them would set up the dichotomy between a scientific understanding of evolution and questions of philosophy, theology, as you seem to do. It is important to distinguish, I think, between evolution as science and those like a Richard Dawkins who would stand up and give us his philosophical pronouncements upon what his scientific facts has to tell us about God and our relation to Him, ethics, law, and some of the other things that you mention. Evolution does not entail materialism, ontological naturalism, atheism etc.
“Communion and Stewardship” Under the direction of Ratizinger
“Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage.”
Albert the Great:
In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.
— De Vegetabilibus (“On Vegetation”)
The Metaphysics simply does not work. This question has been addressed by Father Chad Ripperger in his book, The Metaphysics of Evolution. No Thomist should be an evolutionist.
He also has some treatment of it here, but much more in his book: