L’Osservatore Romano on Evolution

L’Osservatore Romano has published an article by the Italian evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo Facchini.

Facchini’s article takes the evolutionary explanation of life and of the human body at face value, but insists that at some point “God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human as a being.” His analysis preserves the unique position of man in the universe and also the supernatural aspects of man’s nature, but concedes to natural processes under a sovereign God the formation of man’s physical aspects.

Facchini emphasizes the purposefulness of man’s appearance in the world as part of God’s design, but dismisses the concept that this has anything to do with “intelligent design”, saying that

“[D]ivine intervention “does not represent an unwarranted intrusion (of theology) in the field of science — as is the case with intelligent design — but is called for in order to explain the presence of man’s spirit” which cannot come from or evolve out of the material world…”

Why Facchini considers intelligent design theory to be an “unwarranted intrusion” into science is not clear from the CNS commentary on his article.