[extropy-chat] Prelate: Catholicism incompatible with neo-Darwinism.

[Amara Graps]

It is not difficult to find more incompatibilities in current news
events.

On 5/24/05, I wrote a piece here (subject: Bioethics Essay- Revised)
giving a view of Thomas Aquinas (14th century) regarding the role of
the woman's womb in relation to the sperm, and how he defined
'rational' soul as the union of the male and female, and that without
this union it was merely a 'sensitive' soul, and incomplete. (1)

To continue with describing Thomas' philosophy (treatise:_On Being and
Essence_), he said that the rational soul is produced by special
creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to
receive it. In the first stage of embryonic development, the vital
principle has merely vegetative powers; then a sensitive soul comes
into being, formed from the evolving potencies of the organism --
*later yet*, this is replaced by the perfect rational soul (2). In
other words in this medieval man's (the 'Angelic Doctor') view, the
soul did not start at conception but started some considerable time
afterwards.

Thomas' view was an enormous step forward for the Catholic Church, and
the accepted truth for a long time afterwards. So then if one wishes
to be a 'good' Catholic, how to reconcile the view of the 'modern'
Church that a fully rational soul is infused into the embryo at the
first moment of its existence?

This irony was not lost on some Italian media journalists in the May
and June discussions of the (now failed) Referendum last month, since
one of the four points on which the Italians were voting was
_at conception_ 'Rights given to a human embryo under the law' (3).
Unfortunately, even though most Italians are not 'good' Catholics,
the public's technophobias and the Vatican's large-scale mass public
relations and undemocratic voting strategies (urging the Italians
to *not vote*), resulted in the shockingly low (esp. for Italians)
25% voter turnout, hence torpedoing the Referendum.

References
(1) http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2005-May/016333.html
and
_Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature_
Nonfiction. By William R. Newman. University of Chicago Press, pg.
188.

(2) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14663b.htm

(3) 
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/print_report.cfm?DR_ID=27656&dr_cat=2

-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
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