A Discussion on Theory of Evolution and Faith

Aquino | Orantes | Gadian

Growing up Catholic, we held the belief in the Creation Story. Our parents and early teachers
taught the Genesis account to us as a cosmogony, a literal explanation of how we came to be. Now, the
problem started when we began to learn science and make sense of the world through explanations of
science. We accept scientific explanations, especially when evidences are strong, as truth. Our
conversation reminded us of one lesson in our Communication Theories class – Cognitive Dissonance. It
says that when a belief that you hold is threatened by another belief that contradicts it, the human mind
will struggle to ease or erase the uncomfortable tension. It will seek to restore balance. Our mind takes
either one of three modes: 1) reject the new belief to preserve the other, 2) Abandon the original belief
to adopt the new one, or 3) convince the self that there is no conflict and that the two beliefs are not
necessarily clashing. When discussing the questions, we found out that we reconciled this dissonance
differently. For Gianpaolo, “Theory of Evolution does not affect my faith because I don’t believe in the
theory of evolution in the first place. I believe in God and in the creation story in Genesis. I don’t believe
in science and explanations of science regardless of evidences. It is enough that I believe and trust that
God is behind everything.” With this stance, there is no difficulty with answering the second question.

Keneth, on the other hand, is convinced that the Evolution theory and the Creation Theory do
not necessarily contradict each other because they are not of the same field/ genre. The Genesis
account is not a “literal” nor a “factual” account of how the world came to be. But it is “truthful”
because it holds truths about how the world and man came to be: that is, created with a purpose and
order and not just an accident, how everything was created good and how man is meant to relate to his
world and to other human beings (the woman). Science, on the other hand, would explain the processes
and the specific stages of how the world came to be as seen in the Theory of Evolution. These
explanations did not necessarily negated the truths presented in Genesis: that man was created out of
love and created good. In a very scientific world, faith in God still makes sense because science cannot
provide us answers for our inner, deepest, questions: that of identity, purpose and mission, relationships
and our end.

Louisse pointed out, however, that it is impossible to wade into two different bodies of water at
the same time without one polluting the purity of the other. The theory of evolution stands on the
principle that all life on earth has no spiritual substance, only flesh and bones. It also rejects the idea of a
Creator. For a Catholic, much more a seminarian, to subscribe to this worldview is dangerous to one’s
faith. He proposed a belief in science with reservations. We should only pick its explanations but not its
rationalizations.

As for making sense of the beginning of life and the world, answers of science do satisfy a
different kind of ‘hunger’ than that of our belief in God. The creation story also provides us with a
different kind of “nourishment” or knowledge that the Theory of Evolution cannot provide, because in
the first place, it is not the theory’s concern to take on these kinds of questions. The Genesis account
also fails to discuss the nitty-gritty factual processes because in the first place it is not concerned with
such questions.