Fr. Martin Hilbert, a priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Toronto, tackles the sensitive topic in two chapters of his new book, A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design (Discovery Institute Press, 2024).

Generally, Catholic thinkers do not approach the topic of evolution from the standpoint of the age of Earth, as do many evangelicals. Two obvious issues are that Scripture interpretations differ and science-based reckonings are not written in stone.

For example, as I have pointed out elsewhere, I use conventional dating practices established by geologists when writing about, say, the tyrannosaur (150 mya through 65 mya). But I don’t swear by them. Perhaps a decade from now a shockwave discovery will show that Earth is twice as old — or half as old — as geologists think it is today. Then all those dependent time frames must be recalculated.

But the estimates we use have served their purpose anyway if they illustrate that the tyrannosaur was long gone before the mammoth (2.6 mya to 11.6 kya ago) was a prize for human hunters. It’s the same story but with different numbers.

Fr. Hilbert, who has a PhD in the history and philosophy of science, approaches the topic of human evolution from the perspective of evidence, reason, and faith — and realism about what is at stake in the discussion.

First, the realism

“Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” — George Gaylord Simpson, American paleontologist

At the inaugural mass of his papacy, Benedict XVI said, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” It is hard to imagine that the newly minted Pope did not have Simpson’s words in mind when he delivered his homily. If Darwinism were restricted to all life except human beings, it would only be an affront to common sense and empirical evidence. But it also offers a creation account of man, and one diametrically opposed to the book of Genesis and the Magisterial teaching about original sin. So Darwinism does not just offend common sense; it is a direct attack on Christianity. A Catholic Case, loc. 2827

Indeed. Darwinian evolution has never been simply a theory in science. If it had been, it would have been much easier to discuss. For one thing, its defects would not have been nearly so widely ignored or stoutly defended. Doubters would not be so intensely attacked and persecuted. Any philosophical discussion of Darwinism that does not take into account the emotional attachment that so many of its defenders have to it — and to attacking Christianity — is seriously handicapped.

How strong is the evidence for any specific origin story for the human race?

Not nearly as strong as we might have been led to believe:

The reconstructions are often based more on the biases of the researchers than on anything truly objective. And the field is known for its strong personalities competing with one another to make a name for themselves and snag fresh grant money for future additional field research. In 2002, Mark Davis, who interviewed several paleontologists for a PBS documentary, remarked, “Each Neanderthal expert thought that the last one I talked to was an idiot, if not an actual Neanderthal.”

It should also be noted that when some new fossil is found, it is usually accompanied by an admission of previous ignorance which had been vehemently denied before. Geologist Casey Luskin, co-author of Science and Human Origins, cites the hype accompanying the find of a few teeth that were interpreted as linking Ardipithecus to Australopithecus. Apparently these few teeth from some 4 Mya made the “most complete chain of human evolution so far,” which does not say much for the complete chain. And yet armed with this new “knowledge,” the science reporter could write, “Until now, what scientists had were snapshots of human evolution scattered throughout the world.” A Catholic Case, loc. 2901–2902

Fr. Hilbert provides other similar examples and there are many more of them out there. One dominates the field, then another. Anyone who abandons Christian — or, for that matter any other faith — because of the shifting sands of these controversies in paleontology is, to quote a parable, building a house on sand.

The role of reason

We know instinctively that humans are not like other animals but we can’t always offer a simple explanation as to why. Fr. Hilbert offers a thought from the great Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who chose an argument from philosophy in order to clarify the difference:

Saint Thomas teaches that the human soul must be a spiritual reality, meaning that it is not made of matter. He arrives at this conclusion by examining how we come to know universals. Other animals can know particulars: this or that tree they see before them. But only humans can form an idea of a tree in general. If we are to understand what a tree is, we must grasp in our mind the form of a tree. For Saint Thomas, these forms do not exist in some Platonic realm; they exist first in the mind of God and then in individual trees. They also come to exist in our intellect, once we have abstracted the universal form of tree from the one or more individual trees we have encountered. A Catholic Case, loc. 3443

The ability to abstract doesn’t sound like something that could simply “evolve” from unthinking nature and there is no evidence that it ever did.

And faith?

Some things remain puzzles and mysteries. Timelines are one. The account of origins in the Book of Genesis seems unrelated to geological timelines. And we have little knowledge of what most modern humans were doing for much of our history. But, as Fr. Hilbert points out, puzzles and mysteries are not refutations:

It would, of course, be much easier for Christians if the first appearance of human-like fossils coincided with the first appearance of impressive human cultural artifacts. It would also be easier if the book of Genesis were more transparent to the modern reader regarding the details of early man. But alas, it is not so. Nevertheless, the Church’s teachings about human origins do not contradict the evidence of archaeology. And it is only the dogmatic belief in materialism that prevents most modern scientists from recognizing humans as exceptional, different in kind, not just in degree, from all other forms of life. It is perfectly right and just to see in us, although tainted by original sin, the imago Dei. A Catholic Case, p. loc. 3378

One problem with evidence for human culture from, say, the Paleolithic era (the Stone Age) is that the vast majority of humans who lived during that period died without leaving any traces of their existence. We find an artifact here or a drawing there, now and then. The rest of the story is a vast total silence.

But as Fr. Hilbert shows, we have not found anything that justifies a Darwinian approach to life as somehow more compatible with science than a Christian one.

You may also wish to read: The Catholic Case for the Design of Nature. Fr. Martin Hilbert notes that the history of life seems more like a separate collection of bushes than a single tree. The great Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas noted that “what happens in the working of nature is either always, or mostly, for the better,” which rules out chance.