Abstract
In theoretical matters, ecclesiastical claims to knowledge have lead to various conflicts with science. Claims in orientational matters, sometimes connected to attempts to establish them as a rule for legislation, have often been in conflict with the justified claims of non-believers. In addition they violate the Principle of Autonomy of the individual, which is at the very heart of European identity so decisively shaped by the Enlightenment. The Principle of Autonomy implies that state legislation should not interfere in the life of individual citizens, as long as his or her actions do not violate the rights of others. This paper—using the example of the theory of evolution—rejects ecclesiastical claims to theoretical knowledge as completely unfounded and preposterous. In the case of orientational knowledge—using the example of euthanasia—ecclesiastical claims to (universalizable) knowledge are shown to be unfounded as well. The Church’s position with respect to euthanasia and a range of other bio-ethical topics, such as pre-marital sex, contraception, abortion, indissolubility of marriage, and homosexuality, rests on a very peculiar ethical position. This ethical position is the natural right theory, which—far from being universalizable—is shared by very few people. Among other things, this position presupposes the belief in God as the creator of nature, and the assumption that ethical norms can be derived from this premise. Thus ecclesiastical knowledge claims, cannot be justified in a way which could be reasonably supposed to be universally acceptable. Kant (see the quote) was the first to require this sort of justification. Claims that fail to implement Kant’s stipulations should be eliminated by what I would like to call “Kant’s razor”.
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Notes
“Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Anleitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung” (Kant 1784, A 481).
Bacon (1597, p. 14). The context of this little piece deals with the knowledge of God.
“Europe” in this respect includes, of course, the United States and Canada and other extra-european democratic countries, even if the US only in 1865 abolished slavery and also later found ways and means to exclude parts of its black citizens from voting. Only the “National Voting Rights Act” of 1965 put legally an end to discriminatory practices. The last actual attempt, however, to prevent black, or to use the typical “politically correct” “African”, Americans from voting occurred, by the way, in Florida on the initiative of the Governor Jeb Bush prior to 2000 and paved the way for the “victory” of his brother G. W. Bush in this state that, in turn, was decisive for winning the presidential election in 2000.—This is at least the assessment of the “Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement”. See their web page at: http://www.crmvet.org/info/votehist.htm—In Europe itself it was also a long way to equal voting rights. For a long time voting rights in almost all European countries was made dependant on property, sex, religion or whatever. In Switzerland, for example,—in many respects the most democratic of all European countries—the voting right for women on a federal level was introduced only in 1971, and it is less than 20 years (1990) that women, finally, were also allowed to vote in the canton of Appenzell-Innerhoden. But this result was achieved against the will of the (male) voters of this canton only by a decision of the Swiss Federal Court (Bundesgericht).—There is a superb German language Wikipedia article on this topic (“Frauenstimmrecht in der Schweiz”).
I am aware, of course, that the latter does not hold without reserve e.g. for the US and particularly its war in Iraque.
See Mittelstraß (1970), who gives (ibid. § 1) an illuminating account of this topic.
At latest, when Christendom became state religion under emperor Theodosius I in 380, after it had become tolerated already in 313 by Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan.
One should keep in mind that there is no exclusive right of the Catholic Church to the horrors of inquisition. Also Protestant countries knew various forms of inquisition and were particularly active in witch hunting.
See SCDF (2007). There Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, gives the following dry answer to the self-posed question why ecclesiastical pronouncements do “not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century”: “these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These communities […] cannot […] be called “Churches” in the proper sense.”—About the Orthodox Churches, which qualify as “Churches” even in the Roman understanding, I know too little to include them in this analysis.
The definition of knowledge as justified true belief goes as far back as to Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus (201d–210a), where it is dismissed, however. Recent discussion has been dominated by Gettier’s counterexamples (see Gettier 1963) that show that this definition does not give a sufficient condition for applying “knowledge”. This means that there are beliefs, which fulfill the requirements of being true and being justifyably believed but, nonetheless, cannot count as knowledge. Gettier’s examples and similar ones that have been added in the meantime are freak cases, however, that do not render inadmissable the understanding of “knowledge” as “justified true believe” in almost all other cases. They only exclude taking this characterization as a definition in the strict sense of the word.
This holds as long one does not subscribe to the theory of an objectively existing realm of norms and/or values.—With respect to beauty this evaluative and non-descriptive aspect is aptly expressed in the popular saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
“Scientific” is used throughout this paper in the English sense of the word, i.e. relating only to the natural sciences as distinguished from the social sciences and the humanities (theology included).
This does not mean that scientists not often believe (for examples see Wolters 1999) they could derive norms or values from scientific findings. But such belief rests on a category mistake called the “naturalistic fallacy”, i.e. the fallacious attempt of inferring norms from facts.
I am well aware that the concept of universalizability in an strict sense relates only to Kant’s ethics, where the categorical imperative accordingly states that moral rules are valid only when they are suited to become general law. In this paper ‘universalizability’ is used in a wider sense, which also encompasses political power and theoretical knowledge. The best exposition and critique of Kant’s conception is still Wimmer (1980), unfortunately never translated into English.
I am following here Wolters (2009).
This topic is also particularly dear to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI. It was during his tenure (1981–2005) as Prefect of the “Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (SCDF) that Pope John Paul II promulgated the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (September 14, 1998; John Paul II 1998). Apart from that there is e.g. an interesting exchange between Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas on this topic (Habermas and Ratzinger 2005).—Pope Benedict has addressed it furthermore in important speeches, e.g. in his lecture (“Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections”) at the University of Regensburg, Germany, on September 12, 2006, which stirred much controversy and violence in the Muslim world (see Benedict 2006) or in the lecture he planned to give during a visit to the Roman university La Sapienza on January 17, 2008. This lecture was cancelled because violent protests had been announced (see Benedict 2008).
See Brooke (1991, p. 2f). Brooke lists only the first three.
This is basically the content of the famous, for not to say notorious NOMA (NOn-overlapping MAgisteria) conception of Gould (cf. 1999).
A protagonist of this view is the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).
Freud (1927) (Die Zukunft einer Illusion).—Freud’s psychoanalytic explanation of religion, however, is in my view far from being convincing.
Augustinus (1961/1964)—Particularly instructive is book I, Chap. 19 (quotation there), where Augustine distinguishes central tenets of faith (he mentions the resurrection of Christ and the hope for an eternal life) from what is said about the material world. For Augustine there is “nothing more embarrassing, dangerous and to avoid” (turpe est autem nimis et perniciosum ac maxime cavendum) than insiting on wrong statements about matters of fact with reference to the Bible.—In parts of Protestant theology, e.g. Rudolf Bultmann, the allegorical reading extends also those parts of the Bible, whose literal understanding is—different from e.g. astronomical matters of fact—essential for the Catholic Faith. This holds, for example, for the resurrection of Christ from death.
There are basically three types of teachings, which under certain conditions are regarded as infallible: (1) Pronouncements of ecumenical councils; (2) Papal proclamations ex cathedra, and (3) teachings of the “ordinary and universal magisterium” of the college of bishops while dispersed throughout the world, but maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and the Pope. Whereas the first two types of infallible teachings, which form the extraordinary magisterium, are comparatively easily identifyable, there is with respect to the third much dispute about the lack of clear identity criteria, i.e. criteria that allow to identify a certain teaching as infallible.—A general critique of Papal infallibilty gives Küng (1970).
The respective passage reads: “That the earth is neither the center of the world or motionless but moves even with diurnal motion is philosophically equally [i.e. compared to the assumption that the sun is at the center and motionless] absurd and false, and theologically at least erroneous in the Faith.” (Finocchiaro 1989, p. 288).
This passage, in turn, reads: “That the sun is the center of the world and motionless is a proposition which is philosophically absurd and false, and formally heretical, for being explicitly contrary to Holy Scripture.” (Finocchiaro, ibid.)—This relates to the notorious passage Joshua 10, 12f. Where Joshua after consulting with the Lord is reported as saying: “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed.”—The standstill of sun and moon upon command logically implies that there are normally in motion, and this, in turn, is regarded as divine revelation.—St. Augustine’s views about how to read the book of Genesis seem very far away here.
The charge of “materialism” is a recurrent theme in the archival materials in the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (SCDF).
Artigas et al. (2006, p. 4).—The authors give a careful analysis of documents preserved in the Archive of the SCDF, which contains material both from the former Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books and the former “Holy Office” (which is the follow-up institution to the Holy Inquisition, and which preceded the SCDF). The authors, furthermore, relate these documents to publications in the leading Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica that fiercely opposed evolutionism. They address the policy issue extensively in the last chapter of the book (p. 270ff).
Raffaello Caverni, whose De’ nuovi studi di filosofia. Discorsi a un giovane studente (1877) was put on the Index because of its “evolutionism”, believed until his death that he had finished on the Index because of his critique of the Jesuits. See Artigas et al. (2006, Chap. 2).
An example of such a process is the so called allopatric speciation that occurs when a small group is geographically separated from the main population and quickly becomes reproductively isolated from the source population, thus becoming a new species or “founder population”.—Comprehensive information about the present state of the art on speciation one finds in Coyne and Orr (2004).
The “Original Sin” is the theological teaching that the sinful behavior of Adam and Eve that led to their expulsion from paradise was “inherited” (hence the German term Erbsünde) to all of humankind.
Catechism (1994), Nr. 360, p. 82.—The encyclical Humani Generis (Pius XII 1950, no. 37) makes it clear that polygenism is not compatible with Catholic Faith, and that “the children of the Church” do not have the liberty to embrace it. More on Humani Generis will be said below.
“And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all te face of the earth.”
With the exception of the monogenic origin practically no fact related ecclesiastical thesis, however, runs the risk of actually being falsified empirically. Take, for example, the historicity of Adam’s fall (Catechism 1994, nos. 397ff., p. 89ff.); or the historicity of the resurrection of Christ from death (ibid. no. 639, p. 146). The resurrection, however, is in conflict with what biology and medicine has to say us about death.—This problem is basically the same that we encounter in the case of miracles in general. Belief in miracles, however, does not create a Galileo conflict, because, e.g. in the case of the resurrection of Christ, no faithful puts into doubt biological and medical regularities. Belief in miracles insists rather on the possibility of having them broken by supernatural intervention. As a consequence, belief in miracles leads to a possible conflict between religion and epistemology or philosophy about their possibility, but not to a conflict with science proper.
Catechism (1994), no. 397ff., p. 89ff.—The historicity of Christ’s resurrection from death (no. 639, p. 146) is certainly in conflict with what biology and medicine tell us about death. This, however, does not amount to a Galileo conflict, because the teachings of the Church do not generally reject bio-medical laws. They rather claim a miraculous exception to their action in the case of Christ’s resurrection from death. The issue of miracles, however, is not a scientific issue, but rather an epistemological one. Two epistemological conceptions about miracles are in opposition to each other.
Rudolf Bultmann’s program of demythologization seems to be a first step in this direction.
Gould, who obviously has the political objective to get science in general, and evolutionary theory in particular, out of the line of fire by American Creationists does not touch this sensitive topic.
Here is the text of the relevant passages: “35. It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion take these sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted. 36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favourable and those unfavourable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.” (Pius XII 1951).
I wonder how Gould (1999, p. 80) could celebrate Pius XII as accepting the NOMA principle of the two non-overlapping Magisteria of science and religion, when the Pope states that the hypotheses of the “positive sciences, are […] more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith” and that the Church has the last word in case of contradictions of scientific hypotheses to the Catholic Faith. These claims of the Pope constitute a major incursion into and, therefore, overlap between the two Magisteria.
The whole text of the letter is in: Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2003, pp. 370–374). Embarrassingly enough the English translation (“new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of evolution”) of the French original of this passage is wrong. The original text is: “de nouvelles connaisances conduisent à reconnaître dans la théorie de l’évolution plus q’un hypothèse” (John Paul II 1997, p. 378).
This evaluation is, however,—again in the terminology of Vatican epistemology—bluntly contradicted by Pope Benedict, who maintains that John Paul II “had reasons, when he said this [“evolution more than a hypothesis”]. But it holds at the same time that the theory of evolution is not yet a complete scientifically verified theory.” (Horn and Wiedenhöfer 2007, p. 151).—Whatever the Pope may mean—as is well known, there is no “verification” of theories—he certainly wants to play down the evaluation of his predecessor—and, he does so, given the usual Vatican language, in a rather outspoken way. I will discuss this and other recent Vatican ambivalences in the next section.
This has been emphasized, for example, by the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Sanchez-Sorondo (2008).
Well known in this context is William Paley’s famous analogy argument for design that contends that the perfections of living nature can as little be explained as having been developed by chance as can a watch that is found on a beach. This argument was convincing before evolutionary theory offered a third way of explanation, i.e. natural selection.
To quote just one: Michael Ruse, a philosopher of biology has dealt with the topic in various books, the latest of which is Ruse (2005).
Cf. footnote 38 and below.
Pope Benedict seems to mean the same, when he complains “that “evolution” by transcending its scientific content has been elevated to a model of thinking, which claims to explain the whole of reality and thus has become a sort of “first philosophy”.” (in: Horn and Wiedenhofer 2007, p. 9).
Schönborn does not give any quotations that would show his acquaintance with the basic methods and results of current evolutionary theory. As the above list of objections against it show, his information about evolution comes almost exclusively from the creationist literature.
In one of his “catecheses” in the Vienna Stephansdom later that year or in 2006 he declared: “To believe in God, the creator is not identical with the attempt of certain Christian circles to understand the 6 days of creation, which the first chapter of the book Genesis speaks about, as a sort of protocol report as six chronological days, and then with all means attempt to prove that the earth is 6,000 years old” (Schönborn 2007, p. 38).
It might be no coincidence that Cardinal Schönborn in his contribution to the Castel Gandolfo conference takes also sides with the political agenda of American creationism: “It is not acceptable, why it should be forbidden (this is the debate in the U.S.A.) to put the question about God in science classes in school, and at the same time never ask, why it is allowed to teach materialism (which is a highly arguable Weltanschauung) together with Darwin’s theory.” (in: Horn and Wiedenhofer 2007, p. 85).
The Hesse state minister of education had to resign and the Berne textbook did not go into print.
In the background here is the important philosophical distinction between the genesis of a phenomenon and its validity. So one could, for example, psychologically and culturally explain how Franz Josef Gall in the early nineteenth century arrived at his phrenology. Such an explanation would, however, not be a (dis)proof of this wild theory that alleges a correlation between the form of the skull and mental faculties.
E.g. Num. 21,2f; 25, 16f.; 31,1-25; 32, 27; Ps. 2,7-9; 18, 38-48; 44,6; Deut. 2,30-34; 7,1ff.; 20, 10-17; Ex. Kap. 11f.
E.g. Gospel of St. John 8,44; Letters to Rom. 1, 29–32; 2nd Thess. 2, 12–16; Tit. 1, 10–16; 2nd Petr. 2, 10–14; 2nd John 10f.
A well reasoned rejection of all claims of this sort is given in Hoerster (1998, Chap. 9).
As one example for many I recall the case that occurred in Brasil in March 2009, when both the mother of a 9 year old girl and the doctors involved were excommunicated by the Archbishop of Olinda and Receife (José Cardoso Sobrinho) because they had agreed to or carried out, respectively, an abortion on the child that had been raped by his stepfather.
As far as ethics is concerned the theory of natural law rests on the highly controversial claim that there exist non-conventional ethical norms that (1) express a natural law, given by god, that is authoritative over all human beings, and (2) can be known by all human beings. Natural law theories of ethics are incompatible with both consequentialist (e.g. utilitarian) and deontological (e.g. Kant-type) ethics and contradict also Aristotelian ethics.—A good introduction is Mark Murphy’s (2008) entry (“The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics”) in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
The writer Piergiorgio Welby (1945–2006) was diagnosed with a form of muscular distrophy in his late teens. For years Welby fought for his right to die. After he, finally, succeeded the Church refused a catholic funeral.—Reliable and well documented information is in the Italian Wikipedia entry on Welby. Welby (2006) is a moving document of his long fight for the right to die.—Whereas Welby’s case is a clear case of voluntary euthanasia, the second case, i.e. that of Eluana Eglaro (1970–2009), who died after 17 years of a vegetative state after a traffic accident, was build on the reports of her family on her ideas about life and individual dignity. After a decision of the highest Italian court her father was allowed to have feeding and hydration suspended.—Both cases, regardless of their serious individual, moral and legal implications, fell victim of the unconditional (some say: cynical) pursue of personal political interests that has characterized much of Italian policy in recent years. In the case of Eluana Englaro Silvio Berlusconi himself had his government giving consent to a decree to force doctors and family of Englaro to continue the treatment. Giorgio Napolitano, the president of the Italian Republic, however, refused to sign this decree (see Corriere della Sera, February 10, 2009). After this failure to intervene by decree Berlusconi started an accelerated legislative process for the case, which was only thwarted by the death of Eluana Englaro. (for a detailed presentation of the case see http://www.repubblica.it/2009/02/dirette/sezioni/cronaca/eluana/6-febbraio/index.html.
An excellent report about the present situation in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as an overview about the legal situation in various European countries is Griffiths et al. (2008).
This does, however, not hold for theologians. See Küng in: Jens and Küng (2009, pp. 21–84) for a well-reasoned view that dissents from the ecclesiastical one.
The definition given is: “By euthanasia is understood an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated. Euthanasia’s terms of reference, therefore are to be found in the intention of the will and in the methods used.” —To this definition should be added in any case that euthanasia is carried out at the request of the person killed.—In order not to complicate matters I am not dealing here with the distinction between voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide.—For a good legal (and ethical) discussion cf. Lewis (2007). An excellent ethical presentation from the standpoint of preference utilitarianism is given by Singer (1993).
The concept of biopolitics (le biopouvoir) was introduced in the 1970s by Michel Foucault in order to characterize the power technologies of controling reproduction, health, birthrate etc.
A sort of official primer on biopolitical interfering with state legislation is the Doctrinal Note on some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life with comments of Cardinals Meisner and Biffi (SCDF 2002).
In this section I am partly relying on Wolters (1997b).
This holds for simple logical reasons already. The laws of science have the logical form of universal statements (“for all x holds y”). Apart from very special cases we can never empirically verify a universal law, because only single cases can come under scrutiny. We can test the law of free fall in many single cases and find that it holds. There remain, however infinitely more possible instances that remain untested. We are, therefore, not in a position to say “the law of free fall is true”. What we may justifiably say is that this law possesses an extremely high degree of empirical confirmation.
An extensive list of such properties that by its very nature cannot be exhaustive gives e.g. Kosso (1992).
These properties of justified enforceable orientations might be regarded as an analogon of the properties of well-confirmed scientific hypotheses.
I think particularly of pedophilia.
This is made clear in an unequivocal way by Coniglione (2005) in his critique of positions taken by the philosopher Marcello Pera, who served as President of the Italian Senate for the Berlusconi party Forza Italia, and who has been fighting (sometimes hand in hand with the present Pope) what they call European “relativism” and “multiculturalism”. Coniglione rightly remarks that Pera’s project of “cultural integration” of muslims in Europe presupposes “first to regard religion as a private affair that should not pretend to transform itself into public morality; secondly a conception of a secular (laico) state that has to remain completely indifferent and neutral with respect to all particular religious traditions, which cohabitate in it.” (ib., p. 604).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) for providing me with the opportunity, as a Fellow-in-Residence, to complete this paper. I gratefully acknowledge the great support of my work by this wonderful institution, especially the help of Petry Kievit-Tyson B.A. who edited the text. I furthermore would like to thank Francesco Coniglione (Catania) for his critical reading of the text and his valuable suggestions.
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Wolters, G. The Epistemological Roots of Ecclesiastical Claims to Knowledge. Axiomathes 19, 481–508 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9092-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-009-9092-1