Op-Ed: Vatican cardinal Levada calls science-based atheism absurd

Roman-Catholic cardinal William Levada has said Tuesday that the Catholic Church is not against scientific realities like the theory of evolution, but he also says that the atheist notion that evolution proves there is no God, is absurd.

Most religious believers are not particularly interested in science, and for good reason. Religion promotes belief, not critical thinking and research. Nobody said it better than one of the great Church Fathers, St. Augustine:

There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.

William Levada nicely demonstrates this lack of curiosity in a statement he made Tuesday, as reported by MSNBC. Let's be clear: there is no such thing as an atheist notion that evolution proves there is no God. That is indeed absurd. No atheist, except possibly for a next-to non-existent minority, will ever claim that, because it simply doesn't. The theory of evolution through natural selection shows us that we are evolved beings, not created beings. It explains why we are so imperfect, and we have the evidence to back this up. We have, for example, an appendix, wisdom teeth, the minor psoas muscle that are all vestiges of something that once was, and is no longer, useful. Once hailed as an example of perfection, our eyes are perfect examples of natural evolution. A designer, so stupid as to put the cabling and lubrication ducts in front of the optic capturing surface, would be fired on the spot. Yet, that's exactly what happens in our eyes. They are clearly the product of evolution. We have fossil evidence of our evolution as well. We can retrace our entire evolution back to little shrew-like mammals, and further. None of this is disputed by the Catholic Church. They did in the past, but no longer. The evidence is too massive. Does this prove that there is no God? No. People who claim this, have not understood evolutionary theory. All it does, is show that the God-hypothesis is not needed to explain our evolution. Given what we know about the natural world, and not just the theory of evolution, it has become crystal clear that a designer God that intervenes in the natural flow of things, is very unlikely indeed. Worse, even without knowing anything about science, it is still crystal clear that the God described by the holy books of the Abrahamic religions -and most others- is extremely unlikely to exist. So, there we have it. Science has shown us that a God is extremely unlikely to exist, and the holy books of religion show us that the particular make of God they defend is also extremely unlikely to exist. That is the atheist view. We cannot prove that a God, in this case the Catholic one, does not exist, but we can establish that its existence is so unlikely that we do not need to bother ourselves with it. In other words, God is irrelevant, and until there is evidence that indicates otherwise, no atheist will seriously contemplate the nature of this probably non-existent God. So, the cardinal is half-right. The notion that there is no God is indeed not proven by the theory of evolution. The idea that atheists believe it does, is simply wrong. The man is putting up a straw-man argument. He makes a claim about atheists that is clearly wrong, and then attacks that idea, hoping that this will discredit atheists in the eyes of his credulous, ignorant flock. It shows that the Church is not looking for the truth. It is looking for maintaining the power it has over people, it is looking for maintaining the rather comfortable lifestyle it enables so many of its members to lead, at the expense of the populace. Does the cardinal believe in his own God? I'm inclined to agree with Jill Mytton that he probably doesn't. In short, what is the atheist view? Science shows us that we do not need a God to explain the natural world. Religion shows us that it has no evidence to back up its claims of a God, and that religion itself is a very strong argument that a God does not exist. As a result, atheists live their lives as if there were no God, all while leaving open the possibility for its existence, no matter how remote that possibility might be.