Psalm 8

1: O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
2: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4: What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5: For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
6: Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:
7: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

8: The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
9: O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

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A Singular Event
by Andrew Richards

The scientist asked, in words loud and clear, the formula for the death-ray,
The machine it could talk, powered by a chip, it was smarter than man some now said,
An amazing machine, it even had laughed, as it stated the answer that day:
"The power of the ray equals mass times sound squared," by such force, "all foes will be dead."

The scientist built the energy ray, then he sent it out for a test,
To NASA he sent it, the group selected, by the computer smarter than he,
To outer space they would take it, the death-ray they'd aim, at the moon whereon it would rest,
He thought of the money, he thought of the glory, how famous his name would be.

To the machine he did say, like the Biblical God, your power will now astound,
I've taught you all things, so you'd be like God, even taught you the words He did say,
Said the machine with a laugh, I remember them well, God said, "Let there be sound!"
Then fear chilled his spine, as the machine did say sound, rather than light, as in day,"

The scientist jumped up, to the blackboard he ran, where he wrote the machine's math for the ray,
"Mass times sound squared," the machine had said, when it meant light squared, instead,
He the formula changed, from sound to light squared, in which the true power did lay,
Solving the math, he was stunned by the force, shocked at the power he read.

Now turning with hate, he cursed the machine, the one that was smarter than man,
With fear in his heart, through a window he saw, the moon rising full in the sky,
He thought of the ray, and the test under way, as to the window he ran,
At the moon he did stare, while he heard the machine, say laughing "all foes will soon die!"

With his telescope then, he looked at the moon, looking for signs of the ray,
The moon was all red, with a glow like the sun, and the sight left him nothing to say.
Then from shock he did faint, as the moon blew apart, killing all mankind that day,
As the end had come near, the machine it did sneer "all foes will die on this day."

End

We are conscious beings capable of self-giving love. We are also products of a Universe organized and built from the principles of design that support such conscious "life." Take a look at our own sun with its solar system. Take a look at your own body and the eco-system on planet earth that supports it. It is not reasonable to assume that we were produced by a chaotic Universe that, itself, lacks the order and capacities that it produced in us. And when we study the Universe, we don't find the "chaos" that would support the "no God" faith, rather we find that it follows principles of behavior, at all levels, macro and micro, that can be described by the orderly thinking inherent in mathematical language and statistics. Therefore, if we are to follow the evidence before our eyes to its logical conclusion, we will admit that the position of "no God" taken by those in love with their own "scientific" guru status, who ignore and bend the truth when it is found to be to their disliking, results from an anti-God bias, and "their blind faith in unbelief" rather than the clear evidence of the Intelligent Creator found in the Universe. These same scientific fiction writers can give you forty formulas, with lots of new "spiffy" scientific terms, to explain how the Universe brought forth the faces of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore. When someone objects that it was obviously the result of conscious design, they will just smirk as they think to themselves, "Who is this guy, and What books on scientific cosmology has he ever written?"

Nobel laureate Arno Penzias makes this observation about the enigmatic character of the universe:

"Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."

Here's what another observer has to say:

"The world as given demands a rational account of its present character. The proximate explanations of much, especially in the inorganic and non-living portion of it, can be furnished by material energies acting according to known laws. But reason demands an account of all the contents of the universe-living and conscious beings as well as lifeless matter- and, moreover, it insists on carrying the inquiry back until it reaches an ultimate explanation. For this, Mind, an Intelligent Cause, is necessary."(Catholic Encyclopedia, "Mind," Michael Maher)

The secular minded, some of whom consider themselves scientific thinkers, think they have displaced man from his center within the Universe. They stand back and look at man, and at each other, through a huge telescope which plots the coordinates of the nearest stars and gives them a number to indicate man's position relative to other celestial bodies in the galaxy. They say that they have displaced man from his self-important vantage point on planet earth and placed him where he belongs, in a remote corner of the Universe. And in the process, they say, they have proved that God doesn't exist because, according to them, if He did, He would have placed man right in the center of the whole thing, at coordinates quark43 and BSl7.

Of course, such reasoning fails to explain how the microcosm relates to man's position in the universe, and all this macrocosm positioning. Maybe if you throw in germs and quarks man should still be physically in the center of the Universe? Then there's the fact that man has the only instrument that is aware that it knows there "is" a Universe, and that builds other instruments to measure it. That's his consciousness. Shouldn't we get recognition as being something special in creation for being the only conscious center that fathoms the length and breadth of the whole thing? And before the pseudo-scientific types went about dethroning man, and destroying God, shouldn't they have waited for all the evidence to come in from outer space, beyond our puny solar system?

But unfortunately, some post-modern thinkers have a tendency to create evidence when it is needed to support their materialistc belief system. They think man is just a bug living in abject loneliness in a universe that will eventually give up all its secrets and disclose all the hidden mysteries of life. Of course this will all take place long after they are dead and gone, and have wasted the opportunity to "live the Truth," instead of forever seeking after it, and to develop the relationship of Love, in time, for which they were created, and which will be their prime occupation in eternity.

Unfortunately for many scientific types right now "we are what we eat!" And we are, for some reason, at the top of the food chain on planet earth, even though they say, "animals are people too," and "we're no better than they are!" But look out when strange visitors come from outer space who havn't had a burger for several weeks. Now that's a scenario that every scientific type finds completely plausible. Why? Well, if they're smart enough to come here in the first place, to quadrant BS, then they're smarter than we are, and probably like meat like we do, and will therefore be at the top of the new food chain which serves "us" on the menu.

Meanwhile, getting back to the true story of man, we have to admit that the true-believer scientists havn't got a clue. For them, the natural dimension embraces the whole story of man. It doesn't. There is a supernatural dimension which contains the explanation of the true story of mankind. Just because you can't grasp it with the natural instruments of the senses. doesn't mean it doesn't exit. It's a spiritual dimension of beauty and self-giving love that forever creates a new universe in an explosion of being undergirding all the possibilities of existence. It brooks no relationship with selfishness and hateful behavior. It created man as the "center" of creation, a being made to manifest its own characteristics, and its own self-giving, and loving image within the Personal Relationships of the Godhead.

This God created each man to manifest a particular aspect of the overall possibilities of the nature of man's essence. The life story of each man, not in worldly terms, but in spiritual terms, is meant to convey an unbelievable tale of beauty and overcoming love. Each life is meant to be a beautiful novel and story, a concerto, and a glorious rhapsody like no other. And all this is within the context of the Church, Revelation, and a love that knows no limit. For our finite lives in this world image a quality and an aspect of the Divine Exemplar of that image. Our lives, under grace, and overcoming love, give us intimations of Another Life, and Another World of Ineffable Beauty, and Inexpressable Glory.

For we must ask ourselves a question. Where do we think this love of art and music, poetry, novels and drama, and stories manifesting the noble spirit possible for mankind come from? Where does the love of lifelike motion pictures come from? Do we think that these things were never heard of in that Infinite, Undiscovered Country from whence creation comes? Where does the love of those saints, and great spirits who overcame the evil in the world originate? Why else would God allow evil to exist, even though it lasts but for a "blip" on the infinite radar screen, but that it is the only way to demonstrate the power of heroic love "overcoming," with the help of grace, something unbelievably difficult and odious to natural man, by himself. Why did the Incarnate God teach great truth in homely parables, that are not easily forgotten?

So we have to remember that there is more to this life than meets the eye. The mysterious circumstances which surround us are far more than items to be added up on a scientific calculator. For this world is the natural field by which the supernatural dimension expresses its purpose, its care and nurturing by which fallen man learns about charity and unselfishness. The drama of life, with supernatural resonance, is played out in the natural dimension. Each of us is being called to become that perfect image of God manifested in the Divine Prototype, Jesus Christ. And the stories of each of our lives will take their place besides His in that Supernatural Divension, "the Undiscovered Country from which no traveler returns."

The results of the latest and most sophisticated experiments into the origin and nature of the universe clearly indicate that it began by a single creation event, and that it has been in existence for a finite number of years. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that the universe was designed in such a way as to support life. If there had been slight changes in the physics and parameters, the universe would have been unsuitable for life. So on the basis of the evidence produced by the latest and most sophisticated experimental techniques of science, still based on the traditional Newtonian Physics at the macro-level, we are logically let to posit "Transcendent Creative Power and Rationality" as pre-existing the universe. So while our Faith in God is still a Gift of Grace from this Transcendent Creator, it's nice to know that natural observations of the universe, as they become more refined and sophisticated, fully support such Faith.

Now each of us is in some measure a product of this same universe. And the conscious life forces within us also support the conclusions of science in relation to creation by this Transcendent, Spiritual Power. For when we live our conscious life in harmony with the Revelation received from this "Transcendent Creative Power and Rationality," we find that, in this way our life in the universe works out better than in any other way. And using the same observational methods of science, we find in our own more effective, more fulfilling lives, experimental supportive proof for the validity of the spiritual laws of Revelation as they support the survival and enhancement of human life in the universe.

The spiritual laws of meekness, humility, unselfishness, service to others, and Self-Giving Love, Transcendent laws of God we know through Revelation, all work to provide increases in the abundance of "natural" energy and life-giving forces which "reach out" to embrace the universe of creation, and enhance our own lives, as well as the lives of others with whom we interact. So this is additional scientific evidence for the importance and relevance of the God of our Faith, to our effective life in the universe. And none of this has changed because of new physics, or because we, as yet, have no clear, or precise, understanding of the behaviour of micro-phenomena.

"While a clear philosophical understanding of quantum reality is not yet agreed upon, physicists do agree on the results expected from quantum events. Quantum mechanics merely shows us that in the micro world of particle physics man is limited in his ability to measure quantum effects. Since quantum entities at any moment have the potential to behave either as particles or as waves, it is impossible, for example, to accurately measure both the position and the momentum of such an entity (the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). In choosing to determine the position of the entity, the human observer loses information about its momentum.

"The observer does not give "reality" to the entity, but rather the observer chooses what aspect of the reality he wishes to discern. It is not that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle disproves the principle of causality, but simply that causality in this case is hidden from human investigation. The cause of the quantum effect is not lacking, nor is it mysteriously linked to the human observation of the effect after the fact.(Hugh Ross, Ph.D."Quantum Mechanics, "A Modern Goliath," Resources)

Often in the post-modern world, the freedom enjoyed by the scientist has come to mean "license:"

"There is an even more profound aspect which needs to be emphasized: freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.(John Paul II, "Evangelium Vitae")

Here how one modern scientist-philosopher views the universe:

"The very fact that in the material universe things are engaged in a system of stable relations and that a certain order among them exists and endures shows that they do not result from chance. A purpose is at work in that republic of natures which is the world. But such purpose cannot proceed from the things which compose the world of matter, and which are devoid of understanding. This purpose or intention must exist in an intellect on which things depend in their very essence and natural activities. Thus in the last analysis it is necessary to recognize the existence of a transcendent Intelligence, the existing of which is its very intellection, and which is the Cause of all beings."

"In the first place I shall mention all the complex regularities (presupposed by statistical laws themselves), and the mixture of organization and chance, resulting in a kind of elusive, imperfectly knowable and still more striking order, that matter reveals in the world of microphysics. It make our idea of the order of nature exceedingly more refined and more astonishing. And it makes us look at the author of this order with still more admiration and natural reverence. In the Book of Job Behemoth and Leviathan were called to witness to divine omnipotence. One single atom may be called to witness too, as well as the hippopotamus and the crocodile. If the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the world of micro-particles and micro-waves. (Jac Maritain)

God has given us the power to choose for ourselves whether to live our lives for good or for evil. For He did not create robots to live with Him in Eternal Bliss. The certainty of philosophy or science has no power to generate the qualities necessary to participate in supernatural Love. Nor do the certainty of Scriptures and the Messianic prophesies overwhelm our intellects to the extent that they compel us to comply with what they say. The mystery of our "freedom" is always left intact by Almighty God, as it was in the Garden for our First Parents, so that we must "choose" the good, even in the face of the negative statements of academic phonies, and purveyors of materialism and disbelief writing the latest book, movie, or TV documentary.

That to which we are invited is not available to those who run away each time their Faith is challenged by those with a philosophical or scientific credential who deny the possibility of the supernatural and worship at the altar of skepticism and "so-called" historical and scientific disbelief. Do we find it surprising that those who start out disbelieving in the possibility of the supernatural always end-up finding historical and "scientific" theories that supposedly support their lack of belief. Does not the existence of thousands of believers on the opposite side, doctors of every kind of science, who are firm believers in God and the authenticiy of Religion, tell us that we can't look to someone else to do what we must do for ourselves!

For it is only through the exercise of our own, individual "freedom" in choosing God, and cooperating with grace by "overcoming" the temptation to doubt precipitated by the flurry of articles, books, movies, and TV documentaries seeking fame and ratings by never-ending efforts to destroy and "reinvent the truth," that we shall rise above the robot level and be worthy of this Love. For there is no room for the timid, lukewarm, and the cowardly here. We have been given all the Scriptural, historical, philosophical, and personal light we could ever need as reasonable motives for our belief. We cannot let ourselves "off the hook," by, in effect, calling God a liar because of what some "intellectual genius," with a credential, seeking professional or religious notoriety, chooses to say or believe. If everyone automatically believed because of the coercive force of the evidence, we'd be back with the same robot problem we started with.

But we must voluntarily choose to exercise our freedom in cooperation with grace! It's no good blaming science or some credentialled egghead for destroying our faith. For there are many, many scientists and doctors of philosophy who are men of prayer, and who have the highest regard for the supernatural truths of the Faith. Therefore, nothing has changed in regard to the requirement that we, exercise freedom, "our freedom," in cooperating with grace to overcome the Babel of disbelievers "who are always learning...but never coming to knowledge of the Truth." We have seen enough to know no one can do it for us! We must use our gift of choice to freely find our happiness in eternal love. And, in like manner, we must use our gift of choice to freely abandon ourselves in the loving trust required before we can receive the gift of Contemplative Prayer.

Let's take a look at what Walter Farrell, O.P., has to say about the impact on our thinking of the scientific hypothesis of "Evolution."

"A first cause means no more than an utterly independent cause; that is, a cause that has nothing or no one before it, that is in every sense first. To be independent in this full sense of the word means to be completely self sufficient as well as to be the first source of all else. Creation is commonly defined as "making something out of nothing"; more profoundly, it is the production of something independently of any pre-existing subject. In a word, it is the production of the whole being not merely a part of it, not disposing for it, or bringing it forth from something else. So that creation, the truth so eminently clear to reason and so solidly taught by faith, means simply that the world was produced by the first cause in the way proper to that first cause, that is, with complete independence. If we postulate anything on which this first cause depends, we are simply denying that this is a first cause and we push the problem just that much further back; we do not solve it. For it will always remain true, that where we discover someone leaning, depending, there will be something to lean on, to depend on; and the stability of this latter will not be the product of the feeble one who drapes himself on it. Complete independence in act means the production of the effect from nothing.

"The reasons given for this explanation of the universe are those given for the existence of God. They can be put briefly by saying that either this was the way things were produced or there are no things -- which last is evidently false. There is no other way to account, not only for the universe, but for the very least thing in it. The question here is not merely of mountains, continents and planets; but of even a speck of dust or the wink of an eye. one cries out the existence of the first cause as loudly as the other, or of all together. An endless chain of dependent causes does not explain any one of them or all of them, for their very dependence precludes the possibility of their being self-sufficient, the source or the first; that dependence demands something upon which to depend. Either there is an independent or first cause, or there are no effects; either that first cause created, if it acted at all, or it is not first. The fact of creation, with its strict adherence to the facts of the world, is not something a man needs to feel self-conscious about or to apologize for. Rather, it is something demanded in the name of all that is reasonable.

Different senses of the word "evolution

"Reasonable or not, this fact of creation has been swept out of men's minds along with the rest of the account given in Genesis. But the house need not be left empty; in place of creation we can have evolution, either all at once or on an installment plan that eases the pain of its acceptance by spreading the burden over millions of years. Lest such a statement bring on, with the promptness of an echo, the charge that we are anti-scientific, ultra-conservative or behind the times, let us investigate the meaning of the world "evolution."

"Such an investigation is important for the word designates a strange set of triplets; one or the other may enjoy the confusion of a stranger who cannot distinguish them, but each will indignantly resent having the faults of one of the others attributed to her, especially the faults of the weak sister of the three.

A scientific hypothesis

"Most properly, the word is taken to refer to a scientific hypothesis. As such it was, and is, advanced as a scientific record of the development of life. As a scientific hypothesis, and within its own field, it has immense value. The mass of cumulative evidence supporting it certainly classifies it as a first class working theory; and this is all the scientist seeks. It is not, nor is it in this sense intended to be, a final explanation of the universe. The object of science is not an explanation but the uncovering of a universal; it does not seek the last cause, but a general law; its reasoning does not terminate in conclusions or explanations, but rather in the generalizations which are called scientific laws.

"In this proper sense, no philosopher or theologian can have any objection to it. To contrast an adherent of the creation explanation and an evolutionist in this sense is as silly as it would be to consider as mutually exclusive terms the words "democrat" and "nordic." The only possible source of conflict here would be the extension of this scientific working hypothesis to the origin of the human soul. That would be stepping outside the field of science immediately, for it would be to step outside the field of experimental observation; moreover, it is a step not taken by the scientist.

A pseudo-scientific solvent on a universal scale:

"The word "evolution" is also widely used for a pseudo-scientific theory that is in the nature of a patent medicine to remedy all intellectual ills by resolving all difficulties. It is considered applicable to nearly all fields and is actually wielded with the recklessness that formerly characterized the use of arnica or camphor. It is, for example applied to comparative religion and adduced as the explanation of the present existence of monotheism; to sociology and hailed as the explanation of the alleged development of monogamy from promiscuity; to ethics as the explanation of Christian ethics developing from a completely amoral condition -- and so on and on and on.

"This approaches the ridiculous. If a man concludes, from the fact that the theory of relativity works beautifully in mathematics and explains many phenomena in physics, that everything is relative, he might, at any moment, logically start to use a pair of shoes for a handkerchief. These pseudo-scientific statements are quite groundless from a purely scientific point of view. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows no development of monotheism from polytheism or atheism; there is much more evidence for the conclusion that monotheism was the primitive form. A promiscuous society has yet to be discovered; and again the evidence of anthropology, insofar as it allows of a conclusion, points to monogamy as the primitive form of marriage. An amoral condition of men is a modern nightmare, not a scientific fact; some of the most surely primitive peoples we have yet discovered hold a high moral code and practise it. These things are flatly unscientific; yet they are solemnly advanced day after day, in publication after publication as though no scientific discoveries had been made since first the theorists started their castle building untrammeled by the brick and mortar of evidence.

"For these things, there need be no sympathy whatever. They are without justification. They have none of the beauty of a fairy tale, the utilitarian efficient of a swindler's story, the venerable dignity of a myth, the plausibility of a lie or the humor of a whopping joke. Least of all have they any of the characteristics of a fact. They have only the ugly repulsiveness of intellectual degeneracy.

A philosophical explanation of the universe:

"In its third sense, "evolution" is seriously advanced as a philosophic answer to the question of the origin of the world. This philosophic theory, which denies causality and finality, assumes that the process of change is a self-sufficient explanation both of itself and of the perfection of the universe. One form of this explanation declares that the story reads like this: some primary stuff -- very imperfect -- eternal or mysteriously coming into existence of itself, has slowly developed, thanks to chance and environment, with the force of inexorable law into the complicated world as we know it today. A scientist would have a graphic picture of all this if, in the vacuum he has created, there should suddenly appear a puff of smoke fragrant of a blend of Virginia and Turkish tobacco; and then, under his astonished eyes, the smoke took form, developing into a perfect ring slowly floating off (without air to float on) and, as a last delicate touch, sporting just the suspicion of a bit of lipstick to support the illusion that there had been a smoker's mouth and a cigarette in back of the whole thing.

"Another form of this explanation pictures a mysterious life force, again utterly imperfect, necessarily surging its way up through matter (which is unexplained and, indeed, not a reality at all) into the perfections we know today. In this opinion there is no material world, for only the process of change is real and that does not stop long enough for it to be recognized, let alone given a name. The words seem obscure, but the idea becomes perfectly clear when you picture the change of expression from joy to sorrow on a man's face, first blotting out the joy, the sorrow, the face and the expression. Both these forms of the philosophic explanation called by the name of evolution are extended to include man, body and soul. Both deny the idea of a cause, or a starting point, outside the process of change. And both necessarily deny an intelligent finality to the whole affair.

Interrelation of creation and evolution:

"All three of these senses of evolution -- the scientific, the pseudo-scientific and the philosophical -- must be seen in relation to creation if there is to be any dissipation of the confusion that has come from using the one word in three distinctly different senses. Quite evidently there is no possibility of conflict between evolution as a scientific hypothesis and the fact of creation. Creation is explicitly a statement of the last cause, the ultimate explanation of the universe; and, just as explicitly, science is not interested in last cause or ultimate explanations but only in the uncovering of general laws. Science has no professional interest in the source of these laws or in the nature of the law-giver, or, indeed, in the very existence of such a legislator.

"In the sense of a pseudo-scientific theory, there is no possibility of honest conflict between evolution and creation, or indeed between evolution and anything else, any more than there is a possibility of the babbling of a child clashing with some eternal truth. This theory is a positive insult to human intelligence; the audacity of its proposal assumes that we know nothing of the actual state of science, that we have heard nothing of the findings of science for the last twenty years.

"In the sense of a philosophic explanation of the origin of the universe, evolution dashes head on with the act of creation -- and it is just too bad for evolution if reason be the witness of the accident, or even the undertaker. In this sense, evolution is nothing more than the process of change on a grand scale, the change from potentiality to actuality, the realization of potentialities. To use some examples from an earlier chapter, it is the becoming of the statue from a marble block, the becoming of the surgeon from the butcher, the becoming of the masterpiece from the paints and canvas. To claim self-sufficiency for such a process, to posit it without explanation and blandly declare that it explains itself and everything else, is contrary to reason, unintelligible and so patently false.

"Let us look at it a bit more closely. It is frankly a denial of the principle of causality and finality, that is, it makes the world a lustry brat that was unborn but is growing, a play unfolding without beginning or end, a book without starting point, plot or finish, a motion that not only did not start and is not going anywhere but which has absolutely nowhere to go. This denial is reducible to the contradiction which is an identification of opposites and it brings the mind up sharply against a dilemma. Either there is no difference between the potentiality and the actuality, between the canvas and the masterpiece, for the potentiality is the producer of the actuality by the mere process of change, by merely moving itself, of itself, to that perfection; and this amounts to a denial of evolution itself for it is a denial of change. Or, the other horn of the dilemma, this latest perfection produced by evolution is not the same as the potentiality from which it developed; in this case, it came from nothing of itself. This gives us something from nothing with no other cause adduced; more simply, it staggers the mind with the incredible contradiction that nothing is something.

"This may seem much too brutal a simplification of evolution, since nothing has been said of the million of years involved, the power of the process of change, environment and chance. In a sense, the charge is just; this is a simplification of evolution. It has disregarded the table decorations, the hors d'oeuvres and the liqueurs to concentrate on the meat and potatoes of the meal. But, as a matter of fact, millions of years do not help or hinder the problem; time has nothing to do with the central difficulty, it is merely a measure of the method of development not the explanation of that development. The process of change is merely a statement of the method of development, of how the change was brought about: it is not an explanation, not a statement of cause, it does not tell us why there is a world at all.

"But then look at the part environment plays in the scheme; and necessity; and chance! Well, look at them. What produced the environments? What is the source of the necessity? What is chance, in this case, but the mathematician's "x", a statement of a common factor. The whole thing has been succinctly put in these words: "When there is change, there is reason for change -- and the reason for change can be found only in something not involved in that change. It follows that if there is such a thing as a process of change with a definite and discoverable law which embraces the whole of physical reality, the whole physical reality must have a non-physical environment." For change and evolution presuppose the environment and the environed interacting on one another.

Conclusion:

"As a scientific hypothesis, and within its own field, it(evolution) has immense value. The mass of cumulative evidence supporting it certainly classifies it as a first class working theory; and this is all the scientist seeks. It is not, nor is it in this sense intended to be, a final explanation of the universe.(Walter Farrell, O.P.)

Jac Maritain:

"In the first place: if nature were not intelligible there would be no science. Nature is not perfectly and absolutely intelligible; and the sciences do not try to come to grips with nature's intelligibility taken in itself (that's the job of philosophy). They rather reach for it in an oblique fashion, dealing with it only insofar as it is steeped in, and masked by, the observable and measurable data of the world of experience, and can be translated into mathematical intelligibility. Yet the intelligibility of nature is the very ground of those relational constancies which are the "laws" -- including that category of laws which deal only with probabilities -- to which science seen phenomna submitted; and it is the very ground, in particular, of the highest explanatory systems, with all the symbols, ideal entities, and code languages they employ (and with all that in them which is still incomplete, arbitrary, and puzzlingly lacking in harmony) that science constructs on observation and measurement.

"Now how would things be intelligible if they did not proceed from an intelligence? In the last analysis a Prime Intelligence must exist, which is itself Intellection and Intelligibility in pure act, and which is the first principle of the intelligibility and essences of things, and causes order to exist in them, as well as an infinitely complex network of regular relationships, whose fundamental mysterious unity our reason dreams of rediscovering in its own way.

"Such an approach to God's to existence is a variant of Thomas Aquinas' fifth way. Its impact was secretly present in Einstein's famous saying: "God does not play dice," which, no doubt, used the word God in a merely figurative sense, and meant only: "nature does not result from a throw of the dice," yet by the very fact implicitly postulated the existence of the divine Intellect.

"But science offers us a second philosophical approach, which, this time, relates to man's intellect. The sciences of phenomena, and the manner in which they contrive ways of knowing and mastering nature -- ceaselessly inveigling it into more and more precise observations and measurements, and finally catching it in sets of more and more perfectly systematized signs -- give evidence, in a particularly striking manner, of the power that human intelligence puts to work in the very universe of sense experience. Now the intelligence of man -- imperfect as it is, and obliged to use an irreducible multiplicity of types and perspectives of knowledge -- is a spiritual activity which can neither proceed from matter nor be self-subsisting, and therefore limitless and all-knowing. It has a higher source, a certain participation in which it is. In other words, it necessarily requires the existence of a Prime, transcendent and absolutely perfect Intellige, which is pure Intellection in act and whose being is its very Intellection.

"To conclude, let us remark that our knowledge of the created world naturally reverberates in the very reverence and awe with which our reason knows the Creator, and on the very notion, deficient as it is and will ever be, that we have of His ways.

"By the very fact that science enlarges our horizons with respect to this world, and makes us know better -- though in an oblique way -- that created reality which is the mirror in which God's perfections are analogically known, science helps our minds to pay tribute to God's grandeur.

"A number of the most basic notions and explanatory theories of modern science, especially of modern physics, recoil from being translated into natural languages or from being represented in terms of the imagination. Nevertheless a certain picture of the world emerge from modern science; and this picture (unification of matter and energy, physical indeterminism, a space-time continuum which implies that space and time are not empty pre-existing forms but come to existence with things and through things; gravitational fields which by reason of the curvation of space exempt gravitation from requiring any particular force, and outwit ether and attraction; a cosmos of electrons and stars in which the stars are the heavenly laboratories of elements, a universe which is finite but whose limits cannot be attained, and which dynamically evolves toward higher forms of individuation and concentration... ) constitutes a kind of framework or imagery more suited to many positions of a sound philosophy of nature than that which was provided by Newtonian science.

"Furthermore, at the core of this imagery there are a few fundamental concepts which, inherent in modern science and essential to it, have a direct impact on our philosophical view of nature.

"In the first place I shall mention all the complex regularities (presupposed by statistical laws themselves), and the mixture of organization and chance, resulting in a kind of elusive, imperfectly knowable and still more striking order, that matter reveals in the world of microphysics. It make our idea of the order of nature exceedingly more refined and more astonishing. And it makes us look at the author of this order with still more admiration and natural reverence. In the Book of Job Behemoth and Leviathan were called to witness to divine omnipotence. One single atom may be called to witness too, as well as the hippopotamus and the crocodile. If the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the world of micro-particles and micro-waves.

"In the second place comes the notion of evolution evolution of the whole universe of matter, and, in particular, evolution of living organisms. Like certain most general tenets of science, evolution is less a demonstrated conclusion than a kind of primary concept which has such power in making phenomena decipherable that once expressed it became almost impossible for the scientific mind to do without it. Now if it is true that in opposition to the imobile archetypes and ever-recurrent cycles of Pagan antiquity Christianity taught men to conceive history both an irreversible and as running in a definite direction, then it may be said that by integrating in science the dimension of time and history, the idea of evolution has given to our knowledge of nature a certain affinity with what the Christian view of things is on a quite different plane. In any case, the genesis of elements and the various phases of the history of the heavens, and, in the realm of life, the historical development of an immense diversity of evolutive branches ("phyla"), all this, if it is understood in the proper philosophical perspective, presupposes the transcendent God as the prime cause of evolution, -- preserving in existence created things and the impetus present in them, moving them from above so that superior forms may emerge from inferior ones, and, when man is to appear at the peak of the series of vertebrates, intervening in a special way and creating ex nihilo the spiritual and immortal soul of the first man and of every individual of the new species. Thus evolution correctly understood offers us a spectacle whose greatness and universality make the activating omnipresence of God only more tellingly sensed by our minds.

"I do not believe, moreover, that science fosters a particularly optimistic view of nature. Every progress in evolution is dearly paid for; miscarried attempts, merciless struggle everywhere. The more detailed our knowledge of nature becomes, the more we see, together with the element of generosity and progression which radiates from being, the law of degradation, the powers of destruction and death, the implacable voracity which are also inherent in the world of matter. And when it comes to man, surrounded and invaded as he is by a host of warping forces, psychology and anthropology are but an account of the fact that, while being essentially superior to all of them, he is the most unfortunate of animals. So it is that when its vision of the world is enlightened by science, the intellect which religious faith perfects realizes still better that nature, however good in its own order, does not suffice, and that if the deepest hopes of mankind are not destined to turn to mockery, it is because a God-given energy better than nature is at work in us. (Jac Maritain)

"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man.... (Albert Einstein, Archive 42-601)

"Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near.
Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked man his thoughts; Let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:6)

Einstein did not have the Gift of Faith in Revelation, nonetheless he believed in a spirit, vastly superior to man, manifest in the laws of the Universe. Some of us have seen this Spirit at work in the Universe and in our own lives today. Some of us recognize this Spirit, and His complete identity with the Wisdom, Kindness, and Lucidity of the Spirit described in Isaiah . Some of us have seen Him at work for fifty, sixty, and seventy years of our contemporary lives which has provided first-hand, experimental proof of the Reality of this God.

So in addition to the evidence of peace and fulfillment in our own lives over many decades, we have the written testimony of Old Testament believers, and Christians from the beginning to the present day, and have observed the record of this Spirit's activities on society, and in the lives of individuals, in the thosands of years of written history. We may honestly say, that this tremendous weight of evidence is overwhelmingly compelling to those "who are able to see."

"Finite as we are," they say--and here they speak not for themselves, but for the race--"lost though we seem to be in the woods or in the wide air's wilderness, in this world of time and of chance, we have still, like the strayed animals or like the migrating birds, our homing instinct. . . . We seek. That is a fact. We seek a city still out of sight. In the contrast with this goal, we live. But if this be so, then already we possess something of Being even in our finite seeking. For the readiness to seek is already something of an attainment, even if a poor one."(Royce, "The World and the Individual," vol. i. p. 181)

"Further, in this seeking we are not wholly dependent on that homing instinct. For some, who have climbed to the hill-tops, that city is not really out of sight. The mystics see it and report to us concerning it. Science and metaphysics may do their best and their worst: but these pathfinders of the spirit never falter in their statements concerning that independent spiritual world which is the only goal of "pilgrim man." They say that messages come to him from that spiritual world, that complete reality which we call Absolute: that we are not, after all, hermetically sealed from it. To all who will receive it, news comes of a world of Absolute Life, Absolute Beauty, Absolute Truth, beyond the bourne of time and place.(Evelyn Underhill, "Mysticism")

All this indicates that this God, the Father of all knowledge and science, is very real, but remains mysteriously "hidden" from those scientific types who try to "capture" Him through the knowledge of the intellect. Before a man may "find" God, his search must be something besides "science." For intellectual pride puts "blinders" on the intellect of the one searching for truth, just as humility opens the intellect to receive truth. And God is Love, and infinitely self-giving, while intellectual pride is infinitely self-taking. And at the level of consciousness, there is no connaturality between the two, i.e., they never meet.

For the critical thing about man's life and existence is not "knowledge," it is something infinitely greater. For our own good, God demands that we learn to seek Him "in truth." And the truth of our existence is not "knowledge," it is "Love." And it is a Love that can only be found in the truth that, in this life, one's intellect is the servant of this Love. For to surrender to God from the certitude of knowledge is a form of fear and slavery that, "in truth," will never find Him. But to surrender to God in a humble spirit of seeking is to establish connaturality with Him, as a free being. It is to capture His heart by opening yourself to the truth of the self-giving relationship for which you were born. For God is not an object. He is a Person. And you don't discover the loving heart of a person through the cold gaze of scientific knowledge. You discover that heart when you gaze at that person with the goodness and humility found in your own loving heart. And until you do, God will do you the favor of staying "hidden" from your gaze.