For decades now the “poster girl” for evolution was “Lucy,” the prehistoric woman whose remains were discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and who was estimated to have lived 3.3 million years ago. She was relatively small — only 3.5 feet in height, but her skeleton indicated clearly that she was one of the predecessors of the human form we have. They called her “Lucy” because at a celebration on the evening of her discovery, one of the workers was playing a recording of the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and someone suggested the name for the new find.
But now a new poster girl has been found — “Ardi” — short for Ardipithecus ramadus, her scientific name. Ardi’s bones were discovered in Ethiopia nine years ago but within the past few weeks detailed reports of the results of examination of the skeletal remains have been published. She was about 4 feet tall and lived 4.4 million years ago. She is not the “missing link,” i.e. the species from which both human and ape bodies evolved. But she is close to it.
I mention all of this because when such discoveries are announced I invariably am asked: “What is the position of the church on evolution?” My answer is: recent popes have given support to the theory of evolution in general, although they have never condemned the theory of “creationism (the view that God created everything at once, a few thousand years ago). On Oct. 12, 1996, Pope John Paul II addressed the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who were meeting to discuss the topic of evolution.
The pope used the occasion to say: “In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the faith. … The encyclical treated evolutionism as a serious hypothesis. ... New findings lead us toward recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. … The convergence of results in these studies constitute a significant argument in favor of the theory.”
Pope John Paul II insisted on treating evolution as a good theory. Some scholars today want to go farther. Richard Dawkins, one of our militant atheists, has just published a book titled The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. He tries to claim that evolution “is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the Northern Hemisphere.” Nonsense! Evolution is subject to change, modification, alteration, nuancing, variation, etc. In other words it is a theory.
But there are two absolutely critical points about evolution upon which Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II have insisted: first, evolution did not arise by random chance. God decided that the world would evolve. He did not create the universe and then stand back to see what would happen! He knew what would happen; he knew that the bodies of human beings would evolve from more primitive types, because he willed it so. We may not yet see how to understand the randomness implied in natural selection and God’s will, but that becomes a challenge for our thinkers.
And secondly, at the time chosen by God, humans came into being because God created souls for them. Spiritual souls cannot evolve from material bodies. Humans came into existence because God breathed upon some primitive hominids — and they became human.
So here’s a toast to Lucy and Ardi and all their kind. They prepared the way for us.
Father John A. Leies, SM, STD, is president emeritus of St. Mary’s University, and was formerly head of the Theology Department there.