Monday, November 17, 2008

On a worthy attempt to advance the Catholic case against evolution

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0805667.htm

I read an interesting C.N.S. article, carried in yesterday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly, about what seems to be an otherwise unpublicised gathering of Catholic scientists opposed to the evolutionists’ account of the origins of the human race:

One group of detractors [from the Darwinian account of man’s origins] came to Rome Nov. 3 to offer its opinions and evidence that Darwin's theories of natural selection and the appearance of complex organisms out of simpler beings are outdated, erroneous hypotheses that prevent the discovery of the real origins of life and humanity.
With the help of Hugh Owen, founder and director of the U.S.-based Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, the French-based Center for Studies and Prospective on Science organized a conference dedicated to "A Scientific Critique of Evolution."
The French center invited five Catholic scientists to reveal "the bankruptcy of the evolutionary hypothesis," said a Kolbe Center press release.

Via a Google search I found a bit more information. Apparently the dissenters’ conference was to be hosted by Rome’s La Sapienza University and its five speakers were:

  • Guy Berthault, on ‘Experiments in Stratification do not support the Theory of Evolution’
  • Josef Holzschuh, on ‘The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Evolution’
  • Pierre Rabischong, on ‘The Concept of Evolution in Biology’
  • Jean de Pontcharra, on ‘Are Radio-dating Methods reliable?’
  • and Maciej Giertych, on ‘Impact of Research on Race Formation and Mutations on the Theory of Evolution’
    (http://www.knightsofourlady.org/Newsletters/Hugh_Owen_Flyer.pdf)

Interestingly, one of the scientists speaking at the conference was from Australia, according to a letter from the Kolbe Centre’s director, Dr. Hugh Owen, posted at the Catholic Answers Forum: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=4307503. Does anyone know any more about the proceedings of this conference? I’d be particularly interested in knowing who the Australian participant is.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop, Confessor, 2008 A.D.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Australian scientist is Dr. Josef Holzschuh. "Dr. Josef Holzschuh has a Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Sydney. He works in the field of seismic processing."

Conference details and abstracts of the papers can be found here:
http://sites.google.com/site/scientificcritiqueofevolution/conference2

Cardinal Pole said...

Thank you very much for that information, Anonymous; I'll check out that link soon.