from a restrieted point of view: It becomes free from the tasks connected with is self derstanding as “vera pilose a", but acquires the possiblity of developing a be cr understanding ofthe contingent history of as the I vation and ofthe ceil and fu Because Albert transforms the heritage of the traditional concept of wisdom into understanding of wisdom on the way of science, he opens a way of “justify (Chaitin) faith” (1Pete3,15) under the condition of an emancipated human rea- son that understands the world ina sientific fashion, Creation and the Foundations of Evolution Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome: 14 November 2008 politcal, social, and pl taken on cultural connotations, markers, with the result that each has come to stand for a competing ¥ some, to embrace evolution is to her welcomed of relected on such grounds. As Michael Rus, the distin philosopher of science, argues, “creationism” and what he calls “evoltionisn” rep resent val religious views ofthe word: “val stores of origins, rival ucgments about the meaning of human lif, rival sets of moral dictates." What Ruse calls “evol tionism” i a collection of cultural clams which have thelr oots in, but ought to b distinguished from, the sientifc discipline of evolutionary biology. Salary, too often “creation” Is confused with various forms of “creationism,” which embrace either a Iteraliste reading ofthe Bible or think that ¢ tion must mean a kind of species of living things.46 ice for many seems to be between a purely natural explanation ofthe o and development of life, an explanation interme of commen descent, gentle muta nmeshed (sn a wider intellectual framework which I wish to addres In this es This broader context has is sourein recent developments in the natural sciences, esp cially in cosmology and biology, which have led to wide-ranging speculations about implications for traditional theological and philosophical understandings of cretion, that i, ofthe complete dependence ofall that son the unique creative act of God. often these scientific developments have been used to support a kind of “totalizing sion coresponds to the philosophical claim that existence is a “brute fat” which does not call for any explanation beyond itself. Thus, only the emergence of new things from already existing realities, or their going out of existence, or other varieties of change, need to be explained; what does not need tobe explined, so this position contends, the mere existence of that which changes “The argument is that the nat ural sciences are fly suficient, a eatin principle, o account for al that needs to be accounted for in the universe. Whether we speak of explanations ofthe Big Bang tet (such as quantum tunneling from nothing) or of some version ofa multiverse hypothesis, o of self-organizing principles in biological change (including, atime, ppeals to randomness and chance as ultimate explanations), the conclusion which Seems inescapable to many is that there Is no ned to appeal toa creator, that Is 0 any cause which is outside the natural order. It is this topic, the self-sufficiency of nature, and is relation tothe doctrine of creation, which wil be the focus ofthis es God as Superfluous Heinrich Caro, a German chemist, writing a litle more than a century ago, not ec that "science has conducted God to its frontiers, thanking him for his provision al services.” Stephen Hawking, commenting upon the implications of his own vie that the universe does not have a beginning, concluded that there is nothing fora «reatorto do; the universe just Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, workin from principles of evolutionary biology, reach a similar conclusion, Dawkins writes that belief in God “Isa computer virus of the mind” and thatthe universe disclosed by evolutionary biology “has precisely the properties we shoul expect if there is, at bot Deacon, author of The Symbolic Species: The Co-volution of Language and the Bain makes the fllowing claim: "Evolution is the one kind of process able to produce Something out of nothing... Aln evolutionary proces is an origination process In some contemporary cosmological citcles there is a clear desire to get rd of the troubling singularity” ofthe Big Bang since, so conceive, the Big Bang has times been identified with an original act of creation, Nell Turok of Cambridge Uni- versity, for example, using a development of “super string theory,” offers a model in ‘which the bisth ofthe present universe i the result of a collision of enormous four mensional membranes. Tucoks universe i, as he says, "philosophically very appeal ng. Time s infinite, spaces infinite and they have always been here. I is exact ly what the steady-sate-universe people wanted, Our model realizes thele goa that