Also, evolution and other fast-growing scientific fields of investigation are so interesting in themselves that it seems like a shame when Christians are fearful or hostile towards science. The Catholic Church is not fearful or hostile, but sometimes Catholic PEOPLE are, and sometimes non-Catholic Christians set up a false disagreement between science and God's Word in the Bible. This seems unfortunate because God created the universe for us to explore and He meant it to show us something about Him and His power. It is a remarkable place.
Read carefully! I'm giving you some challenging things to read and I don't expect you to understand every word, but I do want you to be familiar with the basic thoughts and ideas.
What does "evolution" mean?
continued from here
Any intelligent understanding of a complex problem requires, at the outset, a definition of terms. In fact, much of the present confusion stems from a vague association of several meanings with the term "evolution." Properly speaking, the word should embrace a biological concept founded on careful scientific study from several interrelated disciplines. But by extension the term has also been used in other senses--historical, sociological, and philosophical. We will concern ourselves here with the two principal definitions that impinge upon religious faith: the biological and philosophical.
For a properly scientific definition of the term, we may cite a formula established by fifty internationally known scientists at the Darwin Centennial Celebration, held in 1959: "*Evolution* is definable in general terms as a one-way irreversible process in time, which in its course generates novelty, diversity, and higher levels of organization."
In the field of biology (where revolutionary studies have been most extensive and productive), the term more specifically means: "a process whereby organisms change with the passage of time so that descendants differ from their ancestors."
Note that these definitions deal with a *process*, a succession of observable events measured over time. Science deals essentially and necessarily with material phenomena, those which can be measured. It tries to deduce reasonable explanations for the cause-and-effect relationships between events. Because it limits itself to material facts, its generalizations are necessarily mechanical. A biologist concerns himself with *how* events occur. For him, the question *why* lies outside the proper limits of his discipline.
This is important because, in the properly scientific sense, "evolution" as a *how* question poses no problem for Catholic belief. For decades now, scientists have established a chronology of how life forms succeeded one another over eons of time. It is beyond reasonable doubt that some sort of process has taken place. (As we shall see later, the mechanics of this succession have yet to be fully understood.) Whatever science determines on this *how* level is compatible with a Catholic principle: that God ordinarily carries out His creative acts in natural ways.
KTR
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