Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith Quotes

“What constitutes the various species? [...] Here we come up against the perennial question of human thought, which even evolutionism cannot evade: we can only ever consider single, concrete individuals—this dog, and that spruce tree, this grasshopper, and that man. “Humanity” is not something we can see, nor is “catness” or “spruce-ness”. Behind these considerations lies the perennial dispute about “universals”. Is there really such a thing as “humanity”, or are these just “nomina nuda”, as Umberto Eco says in the final sentence of his famous novel The Name of the Rose? Nominalism, which was widespread in the fifteenth century, says that we cannot actually know anything properly. Is there such a thing as “man” as a kind of creature, a species? I have the impression that many scientists do not really like this question because it is too philosophical. It leads us unavoidably into metaphysics. Is there such a thing as a “species”? Are there such things as “beings” at all?”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith

“The variety of creatures is the multiform expression of the goodness of God. This has one fundamental consequence: as a result of belief in creation, creatures are to be seen in a positive light. At one place in the Book of Wisdom, it says, “ Thou hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made” (Wis 11:24). All creatures have their own value, their own kind of rightness. Every creature, whether it be a star or a stone, a plant or a tree, an animal or a human being, reflects the perfection and the goodness of God in its own particular fashion. They all have their own value and likewise their own effect on the world. [...] Evolutionism as a way of seeing the world (not as a scientific theory) has far greater difficulty with this. For this worldview, there are not really any species, for things have no existence of their own. What we regard as “species” are in fact merely “snapshots” in the great stream of evolution. Everything is just transition and a stage being passed through, and each individual is merely a fluke, which had the luck to survive because it was “more fit” than the others. This is certainly a short-sighted view of the variety of creation. The way men marvel at the variety of nature gives us a hint of something different. Above all, it seems to me, evolutionism as a worldview cannot actually offer any reason why anything has any value in itself, if everything is, so to say, merely a transitory stage in the stream of evolution.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith

“The variety of creatures is the multiform expression of the goodness of God. This has one fundamental consequence: as a result of belief in creation, creatures are to be seen in a positive light. At one place in the Book of Wisdom, it says, “ Thou hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made” (Wis 11:24). All creatures have their own value, their own kind of rightness. Every creature, whether it be a star or a stone, a plant or a tree, an animal or a human being, reflects the perfection and the goodness of God in its own particular fashion. They all have their own value and likewise their own effect on the world.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith

“The knowledge of Christ strengthens the often weak and flickering light of reason, and it grants us that straightforwardness of living through which reason, too, becomes clear and bright. Finally, knowledge of Christ grants to us that hope which never disappoints us. This is the hope that all the fascinating beauties of creation, all its wonderful complexities, the most finely adjusted interplay of forces and elements—the hope that all of this is not an empty game over the inevitable abyss of death, but rather the premonition of a world to come in which death no longer has the last word. And Christ himself, in his whole existence, with his life and his suffering, is the sole really sustainable response to the tormenting question of evil in the world. Only in him can the restless heart find peace. He alone was able to give to suffering, to failure, disaster and death, an unsuspected value. What seems according to reason to be valueless, in the light of Christ acquires a significance and begins to shine out in the credible testimony of men.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“To a great extent, chimpanzees and men share the same genome. Yet no chimpanzee would ever take an interest in its genome, still less be able to decipher it. His world is limited to bananas, to reproduction, to his environment and his needs. Man is able to investigate his own genome and the chimpanzee’s genome as well. He can take an interest in his relationship to the chimpanzee and study it. He even has the freedom to deny being any different from the chimpanzee. Yet he can only do this because he is endowed with a mind. Only a human being could have the idea of writing books to deny that he is any different from other animals. Even for that, you need mind, reason, and will.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“The notion that we are lords of creation simply because animals are subject to our will, he rebuts with the impressive argument that not only do men eat animals, but animals eat men. The fact that we plan and build marvelous cities is no reason for us to think ourselves superior, says Celsus, “for bees and ants make societies and buildings that are just as wonderful”. Finally, “All things were created not for the sake of man, any more than for the lion, the eagle, or the dolphin”, since—thus his central argument runs—it is a matter of the whole. God created the whole of the world, he says, and God concerns himself with the whole. Each thing within this whole has its particular destiny, its own place, man no more than the ape and the rat, says Celsus.11”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“man—“man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself”.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“What the Bible says about man has amply shaped the Christian and Jewish tradition. In the “Letter to Diognetus” (early second century) we read the following: For God loved mankind for whose sake he made the world, to whom he subjected all things which are in the earth, to whom he gave reason, to whom he gave mind, whom alone he enjoined that they should look upward to him, whom he made in his own image, to whom he sent his only begotten Son, to whom he promised the kingdom in heaven—and he will give it to them who loved him.4”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“Without plate tectonics, the mobility of the plates that form the earth’s crust, there would be no life upon earth. The experts say that this is one of the preconditions for the earth’s being able to maintain a stable average temperature over billions of years—something without which life could not have evolved.15 The earth is the only planet in the solar system that possesses this flexible geological structure. It is also the only place in which higher life forms have been able to develop. We are confronted by a paradox: the thing that causes earthquakes, which time and again bring about the deaths of many people, is at the same time the precondition for the existence on this earth of ourselves, and of all complex life forms.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“When Michelangelo had finished his Moses, he is supposed to have thrown his hammer at it, saying, “Well then, speak!” No work of art, however perfect it may be, can express or exhaust everything that the artist has in his heart or in mind. It will always be a limited expression—limited by the material framework that always sets limits to all ideas.”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“Creation seems more like an accumulation of unplanned steps, and we see only those “products” that have survived (and evince a certain degree of functional use).”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith

“We could find as many other examples as we liked. Who has not heard of the “praying mantis”, the female of which eats the male alive, during sexual coupling? Where is “intelligent design” there? Where is the kind and loving Creator who can say of his creation that it is good?”
― Christoph Schönborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith