Letters

Evolution hoax

Fr G.H. Duggan SM

Contents - Oct 2006 - Buy a copy now Editorial: The way ahead for the education of Catholics - Michael Gilchrist Generation Y: New survey confirms low belief and practice levels of young Catholics - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around The World Spanish bishops attack false theologies - AD2000 Report Benedict XVI interviewed by German journalists Educating young Catholics: a bold initiative in Wagga Wagga - Michael Gilchrist University: Campion College: a pioneer in Australian higher education - Stephen McInerny Modernism's 'second wave' continues to impact on the Church - Fr Martin Durham Letters: Missal translation - Philip Holberton Letters: Counter Reformation - Alan Barron Letters: Early baptism - Frances McEniery Letters: Pessimistic view - Francis Vrijmoed Letters: Church teaching on baptism - C.V. Phillips Letters: Accuracy needed - Tony Sheehan Letters: Intelligent Design - Michael Griffiths Letters: Evolution hoax - Fr G.H. Duggan SM Letters: Abortion and health insurance discounts - Robert Bom Letters: Homosexuality - Daphne Preston Books: ARMS OF LOVE by Carmen Marcoux - Jacinta Cummins (reviewer) Books: Towards A People's Liturgy: The Importance of Language, by Mark Twinham Elvins - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Book Launch: Lost! Australian Catholics Today, by Michael Gilchrist Books: Order AD2000 books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: Philosophy and theology: avoiding the pitfall of human pride - Fr John O'Neill

Peter Barnes has written that "there is a considerable body of evidence" supporting the view that evolution was the mode of God's action in creating the universe and the living bodies within it.

The trouble is that the crucial evidence is all missing.

Sir Julian Huxley in his magnum opus, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, frankly admits this.

It is a well-established fact of palaeontology that there is no trace in the earth's strata of the transitional forms that are absolutely essential if Darwin's theory of gradual transformation is to have the slightest credibility.

It is a well-established fact that living forms, whether invertebrates, reptiles or flowering plants, all appear suddenly in the strata, fully-formed, in great variety and with no trace of any intermediate forms that would enable us to link them with each other or any hypothetical ancestors.

Darwin was confident that with the progress of geology, these forms would turn up. But they have not. Darwin's theory is that the diversity of organisms in the living world is the result of natural selection, which has ensured that among countless chance variations in offspring only those have survived that conferred some advantage in the endless struggle for existence.

It is now quite certain that things happened differently.

The verdict may be unkind, but it is warranted by the facts, if one describes Darwinian evolution as "the hoax of the 19th century".

FR G.H. DUGGAN SM
Silverstream, New Zealand

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 19 No 9 (October 2006), p. 16