Chesterton Society Conference --- Intelligent Design Session With Father Stanley Jaki

I attended the Saturday sessions of the 25^th Annual Conference of the American Chesterton Society over at the University of St Thomas. It was my first visit to one of their events and it was well worth the time.

Other than browsing through the many book stalls, I was intrigued by a small group presentation on Intelligent Design that was going to take place.

I’ve wondered what the “Catholic position” on Intelligent Design is. I know it’s not “7 Days and 4004 B.C.” And I know it’s not the atheistic Darwinian Natural Selection Theories of the Origin of the Species and Evolution about which I know very little other than what I read “in the papers.”

But I know the Intelligent Design folks want to prove that God created the world. Some want to prove that he did it in 7 Days.

What I “know” of the Catholic position is that the Darwinian Theories are acceptable for belief as long as we acknowledge that at some yet unknown point God “intervened” and “created a Man and a Woman.” There may be more to it, but that’s what “I know.” So I came to learn more.

Dale Ahlquist, President of the ACS and host of a popular show presenting the many thoughts and ideas of Gilbert K. Chesterton on EWTN, joked when he made the small group announcements that while the three other presentations would be “discussions”, Father Stanley Jaki’s presentation on Intelligent Design would be a “talk.” Boy, that’s for sure!

Room 114 was full to the rafters. That should have been a clue that the guy was worth listening to. I walked in right at 1:30 and lucked out with a seat right in the front row, right in front of him. This 82 year old priest (I found out later) “shuffled” in at the same time and made a few dumb jokes with a sometimes heavy accent and I wondered if I had selected the right session.

So we ended up with full chairs and maybe 20 people seated on the floor after all the folks finally arrived. He kept getting distracted by the late arrivals and I thought “this doesn’t bode well.” Well then he got going!

Later that day I discovered that this priest and scholar, born in Hungary, has PhD’s in Theology and in Physics and is a past winner of the Templeton Prize, that has also been given to Mother Theresa, Billy Graham and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.

A commenter on the American Chesterton Society blog gave some sources that might be worth looking at if you are interested in more about Father Jaki and the subject matter:

Resume of Stanley L. Jaki

Review of his book, “Bible and Science”

Scientific Materialism, Intelligent Design, and the Cosmological Argument

He knows whereof he speaks and he speaks well and he tolerates no fools, large or small. He started out by slamming Cardinal Christoph Shoenborn of Vienna for his letter of last year endorsing “intelligent design.” Father Jaki asserts that “design” is not a scientific term and “intelligent design” ignores all of the things that science has proven.

Over the course of the session, his forcefully delivered emphatic statements and criticisms of religious fundamentalism and even mainline Protestant churches caused a half dozen people to leave, one woman nearly in tears and very angry.

But then he spent 30 minutes going precisely over Genesis Chapter 1, diagramming it on the blackboard and pretty much demolished the “7 day creation” theory by pointing out its inconsistencies. I could see by his “asides” that he really knew what he was talking about, but I couldn’t see the point since I had known that 55 years ago. It seemed a waste of time to me.

He did mention that he had written a book on the subject and recommended it for further reading (Genesis 1 through the Ages ), Then looking at his audience and probably wondering about the dolts (including me) in front of him, he suggested that we might want to start by reading his 30 page pamphlet summary ( The Creator’s Sabbath Rest: A Clue To Genesis 1).

Then he opened it up for questions and pretty much shot down everybody who asked them, quickly and incisively.

I was a bit frustrated and, still not knowing who this priest was, otherwise I’d never have dared to ask a question, when called on, pointed out that I had been taught in grade school that the Genesis creation story was an “allegory.” But I wanted to know what was the Catholic “Intelligent Design Theory” that called for that Divine Intervention that created Man and Woman. In a couple of sentences he blasted my “allegory” reference, calling Genesis a “metaphor.” (Even after reading the definitions in my dictionary, I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m impelled to find out. That’s how good he was). He never dealt with my second question. That wasn’t his purpose in that short session.

He went on to others, generally shooting them down, even the ones from knowledgeable people who wanted to know how to demonstrate that “evolution” can’t explain through natural selection the presence of all the data present in DNA and cells. Father Jaki just nodded and indicated that that was correct. But that wasn’t why he was there that day. [If you want to argue that point with a Darwinian, you’d better know your genetics would be his first answer].

To make it short, his mission was to make it clear to us that the language of science (and by extension, the Darwinian theories) is measurement. That is not the language of theology or philosophy, or “design.” So basically, we cannot communicate with them in a common language. So there is no sense trying. “Sometimes”, he said, the correct answer is to say that “We just don’t know.”

Now that leaves a huge gap because we are not always talking to Nobel laureates when we are discussing evolutionary theories. Most times we are talking to people who are just as ill-informed as we are. But still it is critical to know that you can’t argue with someone coming from a scientific point of view, using theological, philosophical or literary arguments. Getting that through to me in an hour I guess was a success for him.

As the session ended all too quickly, I turned to the man on my right and observed “Well, that’s not what I expected at this session.” He just laughed and said “He’s always been that way.” He had not asked any questions and as we were walking out of the room I heard someone address him as “Dr.”, so he no doubt knew enough not to ask any.

I wish I had another twenty hours with Father Jaki. Lacking that, I’m going to get that 30 page pamphlet for starters.