Religion vs Science

Gerard J. Keane, whom I once had the great pleasure of meeting here in Sacramento, has written widely on the problems of evolution from a Catholic perspective. In this 2001 paper titled The Current State of the Origins Debate here, Mr. Keane summarizes the improbability of an old earth:

Evolutionism is a theory that badly needs refuting, but you’re not going to do it by telling me that the creation of man and the creation of the fruit fly were equally miraculous events …

OK, I promise not to do that.

… nor by asserting vague reservations about the speed of light and the properties of matter.

Few things are more likely to arouse the contempt and derision of modern intellectuals — even Catholic intellectuals — than stating one’s belief in a young earth. Today’s image-savy Catholics apparently see the young-earth controversy as an opportunity to prove that they are not wooden fundamentalists or biblical literalists or anti-science or anti-intellectual or anything else considered by the world to be backwards and unsophisticated. It is the mentality of the herd.