God made pre-humans into people, Vatican newspaper says

" "The formation of human beings necessitated a particular
contribution by God, though it remains that their emergence was
brought about by natural causes" of evolution, it said.

"The article, published in the May 5-6 edition of L'Osservatore
Romano, was written by Italian evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo
Facchini.

"The article said that, "when the biological conditions necessary for
supporting a being capable of reflective thought were attained, the
will of God, the creator, freely desired it, and man came to be."

"The article posed the question: Does this mean that humans evolved
from chimpanzees?

" "No, it might be better to say that at some point God willed a spark
of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus
came into existence the human as a being, as a subject capable of
thought and the ability to decide freely," it said."

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0802496.htm

It's not new, but I think that's the point right now.

With Catholic Behe out there blithering about God putting equal care
and concern into designing sensitive and valuable humans and into
designing P. falciparum to violate humanity's sensitivity and value,
plus some comments from Schoenborn and the current pope that were
somewhat worrying, the Catholic church seems to have settled down to
their old position of not challenging science, just adding some
miracles not subject to investigation.

Potentially, this position could cause trouble for neuroscience, but
practically I don't believe it does, even at Catholic universities.

What I like is that it seems to leave Behe dangling vis-a-vis his
church's position.

Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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