My ds is a sophomore at a boys’ Catholic high school. He is in a regular, non-honors biology class. Today he informed us us that his class has spent the last two class periods watching “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. This pseudo-documentary features the actor Ben Stein and focuses on science professors who have been expelled from academia for teaching intelligent design. It also conflates evolution and social darwinism/eugenics, and talks about the purported links between evolutionary scientists/atheism/ Nazism ( I think communism gets thrown in there, too).
My husband and I are very upset, but before we approach the school, we have been trying to find out if this is typical at most Catholic schools. I don’t think it is, and from my internet research it doesn’t appear the church is against the idea of evolution. If anyone has had similar experiences, I would welcome advice and feedback.
When I was in Catholic high school many eons ago we were taught that God created the evolutionary process that eventually led to homo sapiens with a soul. We were taught the figurative, not literal, interpretation of the Old Testament. That was long time ago before everything was labelled “intelligent design” or whatever.
My Catholic K-8 taught “intelligent design” and evolution was proposed as a “theory” and then our books and teachers proceeded to dismiss it. This was early 2000s.
“The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man”
There have been some opposing opinions within Catholic, but Pope Francis seems to be a strong evolution supporter.
"The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.”
Probably depends somewhat on the school. S attends a Catholic college prep school with a very strong science curriculum. Evolution is taught, “intelligent design” is not. FWIW, the discoverer of the “big bang theory” was a physicist named Georges Lemaitre - who also happened to be a Catholic priest! The 2nd largest observatory in the world is run by the Jesuits. His school focuses on critical fidelity to Catholic teaching, with the expectation that what we know and are able to know about the world (and, for that matter, about God/the divine) is necessarily incomplete.
I know of Catholic schools that don’t go so far toward science, though, or don’t discuss the interplay of faith and science.
Never had anything like that happen with my 3 kids in several Catholic schools. It wouldn’t fly at all in our community. We only have science taught in science classes. Religion is only in religion classes.
This is from Pope John Paul II’s address to the Magesterium:
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points (read the rest here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp961022.htm).
We ran into this issue at our Catholic middle school. The science teacher refused to teach evolution as she felt it was contrary to Catholic beliefs. Several parents (including MDs and PhDs in the sciences) protested, and the priest, a former biology teacher, ended up coming in to the classroom to teach evolution.
At their Catholic high school, and my daughter’s Jesuit Catholic college, there has been no question, evolution has absolutely been taught.
There are many points of confusion as to what are the true teachings of the Catholic church. Evolution should not be one of them.
I went through nine years of Catholic school never even hearing that there were people who believed in things like “intelligent design” or “creationism”. The first time I did hear about them, I honestly thought it was a joke, that’s how ingrained the idea of “don’t take the Bible literally word-for-word” was.
But before you go doing anything drastic, make sure that they are in fact presenting that as fact. Sometimes teachers show videos as a starting point for conversation about why it’s problematic. Or perhaps so they could show the other side since they themselves are very biased against it.
Or they’re a bunch of idiots who don’t even realize that they’re contradicting the catechism they’re supposed to be following. Which is the most likely scenario unfortunately.
@downtonabbess You have only heard your son’s account of this film. As someone suggested it may have been shown as a discussion topic to emphasize the differences between Catholicism and what fundamentalist Christians believe.
Well, I’ve spent the evening watching it, so while I’m disturbed it was shown in science class , rather than religion class, I’m going to wait and see how things play out in his class next week. Thanks to everyone who responded.
The Catholic church is not against the evolution theory…not at all. It supports the theory that the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. The only caveat is that the Church believes that God was the Uncaused Cause. So, a Big Bang was caused by God. The big bang couldn’t cause itself.
The Church believes in Intelligent Design, but that does NOT conflict with evolution, and it doesn’t mean that it believes in the young earth belief of fundamentalists…who truly believe that the earth was created in a week and that the earth is just thousands of years old.
I have never heard of a Catholic School that teaches a young earth theory.
TomSr, you do know many orders of nuns have been in trouble lately because they are too independent, spending time helping people instead of preaching the church line? I had quite liberal nuns teaching in high school in the late 70’s.
From the CS Monitor -
The reform order was issued in 2012 under now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, after an investigation concluded the nuns’ group had taken positions that undermined Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Investigators praised the nuns’ humanitarian work, but accused them of focusing too much on social justice and ignoring critical issues, such as fighting abortion.
Intelligent Design absolutely does conflict with evolution, perhaps just not quite as much as young-earth creationism as ID does allow for an expanded timeline. Beyond that, it disregards the scientific drivers of evolution at every step of the way.
^Absolutely correct. Intelligent Design is not science. Just like creationism, it can’t be tested with the scientific method because it relies upon faith. It’s religion packaged as science.
So the film has 3 main points: 1) intelligent design believers/teachers are being forced out of academia in violation of free speech; 2) belief in evolution leads to loss of religious faith, as most scientists are atheists; 3) there is a link between belief in evolutionary theory and the Holocaust. The last one is just patently offensive.
The Catholic Church does NOT teach intelligent design. Individuals inside the church might, but the official catechism is very clearly in favor of evolution. As far as I can tell, it never was in favor of anything else, but its stance wasn’t clarified until 1950. The complicating factor is it also leaves it open for people to still believe what they want to believe.