No conflict between faith and evolution

CON HAYES (Letters, October 22) claims that only ‘liberal Catholics and liberal Protestants’ would support Darwin’s evolutionary theories.

Not so. In Humani Generis (1950), Pius XII stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of faith.

In 1996, Pope John Paul II referred to that encyclical pointing out that in the interim, “new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis”, while the dean of the school of philosophy of the Catholic University of America said “evolution is perfectly compatible with the Catholic faith”.

Mr Hayes quotes Darwin: “ ... We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of the bivalve must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man.”

I agree. But I would then ask, as should Mr Hayes, how did the bivalve originate — and I don’t mean evolve?

In his first edition of the ‘Origin’, Darwin demonstrates this differentiation when, comparing the functions of the eye and the telescope, he writes: “May we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?”

Evolution explains how that which was created adapted to changing environmental conditions or, as Darwin himself more eloquently put it, “the innumerable species with which this world is peopled have all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent”.

Darwin distinguishes between the “common parents” and that which has been modified.

I suggest his disciples do likewise. Do not confuse creation and modification.

Seán Fitzgerald

Shournagh Drive

Blarney

Co Cork