Mary Daly’s Review of

Creation Rediscovered

Response By Gerard Keane  (Feb 2008)

Future Link: Creation/Evolution & Age of Earth/Universe Themes (coming soon)

(Evidences which show that modern scientific discoveries harmonise fully with the traditional Catholic interpretation of Genesis.)  See Kolbe website color depictions.

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Need For Response (back to top)

This response to the review by Mary Daly (of Ye Hedge School) of my book should have been written in the early 2000’s but fairly sudden time constraints arose at the time which hindered me from writing a response, and afterwards I had to attend constantly to other matters, and eventually I let the response slip.  The time delay has proven beneficial however because a wide range of relevant information has since come to hand. In view of her inaccurate comments, I believe that it is indeed timely to revisit Daly’s review so that readers will not be misled by her.

I believe that it is essential to remain focused on trying to comprehend what God chose to do when He created the Universe and its life forms, instead of focusing too much on what He could have done, which is beyond our limited human intelligence and known only to God. There are various clues given to us by God from which we can fairly deduce what He chose to do when creating the Universe and Earth’s inhabitants: There are various clues given in the inerrant Bible, and clues contained in nature such as information gleaned from the intricate designs of life forms, the details of worldwide fossilized buried life forms, the evidence available concerning dating the ages of rocks, and the behaviour of objects in the Solar System.

A serious problem in focusing too much on what God could have done is the tendency to have Him undertake things that we like to think might have happened. It is then not a big step to assert that, since God can do anything, why couldn’t He have done these things? One can end up advocating weird speculation.  For example, it could be asserted fancifully that our earliest ancestors possessed two heads but gradually found that having only one head increased their chances of survival so that eventually one head was somehow done away with. When challenged to show supportive evidence for this speculation, it could be retorted that the early human beings with two heads died out fairly quickly leaving no trace that they ever existed.  An evolutionist could then assert that the Catholic Church has never directly condemned the idea that human beings originally possessed two heads, and that there are thus no theological grounds preventing one from believing that the first human beings possessed two heads! 

So it goes with Daly’s speculative reasoning. What God “could have done” features in her opinions at the expense of focusing on what was divinely revealed in Scripture and what is known from Sacred Tradition about what He actually chose to do. Her review is long on generalized assertions and short on detailed discussion. We should not forget that if our totally trustworthy Creator/Redeemer―“through Whom all things were made”―had not revealed at least a partial historical account of Origins, we would now be “in the dark” and have no way of knowing what happened. Genesis is an historical account which cannot clash with true natural science. Faith in God’s Word is not slavish literalism but rather a reasonable faith which cannot clash  with genuine scientific discoveries about the world and the Universe; it is not a “leap in the dark”.

According to the 1994 Catechism Of The Catholic Church (CCC) the catechesis on creation is of major importance for  “it concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life” [par. 282]. The CCC even mentions “the permanence and universality of the question of origins” [285].   The very point of the creation was not the creation of Earth nor of the Universe but rather it was the creation of human beings with rational souls to know, love and serve God:  “God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to Him. … For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist.” [358]   We know that God created space, time and matter from nothing ex nihilo [296-297] in an ordered creation [299]. As we shall see, Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium contain a tremendous weight of evidence that God created the entire world, rapidly, not only to facilitate interdependence [340] in the world of nature but also to hasten the coming of the central reason for the Creation―our first parents.

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The Importance Of  Sacred Tradition (back to top)

I am pleased that Mary Daly agrees with me about the importance of Genesis.  She writes:

Keane expresses, on page xxx, the concern that if we agree to take Genesis in a metaphorical sense and not in a literal sense, we may soon also take the Resurrection as a mere metaphor. This is an old concern and an understandable one.  Judging the complex interaction between an individual writer and the Holy Spirit in the act of written revelation is not easy.  It takes time, patience, study, and humility.  Fortunately for our fallen humanity and our crowded schedules, God has given us, in the Church, a reliable guide in these matters.  It is called the Magisterium.  We don't have to figure these things out alone; the Bible is not our only source of information.

Unfortunately, Daly’s comment is seriously deficient. She failed to mention that, most importantly, Catholics also have Sacred Tradition as our guide. As the 1994 Catechism declares: “… in the supremely wise arrangement of God, Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others.  Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” [par 95] … “Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church” [par.113]  (bold emphasis added) See Apostolic Tradition as defined in the CCC [paras 74-100].

It is most surprising that Daly mentions Tradition only once in her review, and it is in criticism of me: “Keane expresses concern that these ‘inconceivable’ time frames are contrary to majority opinion in Tradition.  However, majority opinion is not normative in doctrine…”  I by no means restricted Tradition to mean the majority opinion of the Fathers or of theologians.  On the contrary, Sacred Tradition contains many authoritative magisterial teachings—such as Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on marriage which reaffirms the creation of Eve from Adam’s side—that uphold the traditional Catholic understanding of Genesis 1-3.  With regard to the Fathers of the Church, Pope Leo XIII taught unambiguously in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus (on biblical exegesis) that Catholics must believe what the Fathers taught unanimously with regard to the Scriptures in a matter of faith (like the doctrine of creation) or morals (like contraception)! Authoritative magisterial teachings of the past and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers cannot be reduced to the level of “majority opinion.”  They will always be authoritative for Catholics.

I referred to Tradition extensively in almost forty pages of my book.  I fully agree that we don’t have to figure things out alone, and that the Bible is not our only source of information. The books that constitute the Bible were declared to be so by several Councils of the Church―an authority “beyond” the Bible―beginning some 300 years after the time of Christ.  But we also need to be discerning and not accept unquestioningly the misleading views of modern theologians who promote ideas which in fact are contrary to objective truth contained in Sacred Tradition.

Nor should traditional doctrinal beliefs be revised to conform with modern scientific speculation.  Daly actually admits that her firm belief in eons of time shapes her origins doctrinal views:  “As long as we can make observations and take measurements, we are rightfully in the realm of natural science, and that includes radiometric dating of rocks or red-shift measurement of star recessions.  These things are relevant to the earlier history of the universe, and to the evaluation of "origins theories" which teach an origin too recent to accommodate the reality of events for which scientists find clear and compelling evidence.” [I shall show later in this rebuttal that her dating claims are erroneous.]

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By definition, if theology and science clash on a particular point, then it is Theology which trumps Science; never the other way around.  This crucially important point seems to have been largely lost to sight in modern times in an era when many Church scholars seem prepared to disbelieve the Genesis account in favour of what they assume is proven science.  Vatican Council I (1869-1870), which was approved by Blessed Pope Pius IX, declared in Sacred Tradition the following prohibitions which are by definition irrevocable:

If anyone shall have said that the human sciences should be treated with such liberty that their assertions, although opposed to revealed doctrine, can be retained as true, and cannot be proscribed by the Church: let him be anathema. (Denz 1817)

If anyone shall have said that it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema. (Denz 1818)

Genesis is historical revelation and there is real danger in revising it “against the backdrop of an elementary cosmology” if one’s understanding of that backdrop turns out to be mistaken. Daly herself, in a discussion of the inerrancy of Scripture, even cautions us against, “giving to the background of the revelation the same authority as the revelation itself.”

Mary Daly’s Lack Of Credibility (back to top)

The most striking feature of Daly’s review of my book is this:  Despite the fact that her comments are entitled “A Review Of The Book: Creation Rediscovered” it is obvious from the text that she did not thoroughly read it.  Indeed, she actually confirmed this herself when she asserted upfront, “Here are my reflections on a few portions of this work.” Such a disclaimer is not good enough; her rambling reflections do not constitute a review at all and her posting should never have been labeled as a review. Her comments boil down to an outline of her own views against those who believe that God specially created life forms in their own kinds and who don’t “buy” the mythology of “long ages.” It is highly unprofessional not to thoroughly read a comprehensive book of 400 pages and then purport to dismiss it under the guise of a “review.”  Daly herself states at the outset that, “I believe that Catholics have the right and the moral obligation to seek the truth, including the free and unprejudiced examination of evidence from the natural sciences.”  I fully agree, but I also believe that all Catholics have a moral obligation to obey the 8^th Commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Mary Daly wonders in her introduction whether “he [Keane] has ever talked to a scientist who might have directed his attention to the most obvious answers to some of my issues with science.”  Mary will be delighted to know that the answer is “Yes, I have indeed done so many times over thirty years!”  And she can also rest assured that, contrary to her claim that I have not dealt with the most commonplace and accessible arguments which are often thrown at supporters of Special Creation, I have in fact addressed a wide range of such arguments. My book contains a very extensive Index and this alone shows that a wide range of topics has been addressed by me.

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Daly also asserts that I place myself above the Pope: “Keane's remarks about later devel-opments in the Church's understanding of evolution suggest that he puts himself above Pope John Paul II in his understanding of the Magisterium.”  In fact, I sent my book Creation Rediscovered to Pope John Paul II (April 22, 2001) and to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Dec 12, 1999). I also submitted my later 100 pages booklet Special Creation Rediscovered to Pope Benedict XVI (July 25, 2005) fairly soon after his elevation to the papacy. What more could I have done to invite correction from the highest authority in the Catholic Church?  Indeed, no rebuke was given to me by these two Popes!

Daly implies that it is arrogant for a mere layman to offer information to the Pope in response to a non-authoritative papal statement.  But the Pope would not agree with her.  Recently, several Catholic laymen offered Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI information challenging the majority view of Catholic medical “experts” that brain death equals human death.  Far from resenting this initiative, both Popes decided to reexamine the “majority view” in light of the information provided by these laymen and two bishops who supported them. (See “Vatican resuscitates issue of whether brain death means total death,” by Carol Glatz, Sept 15, 2006, 

Catholic News Service http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0605285.htm)

In her “review” of Creation Rediscovered, Daly sets up various strawman arguments, mis-represents them as though they are my views, and then proceeds to dismiss them with gusto. In reality, she is parading her pet dislikes of what she claims are the views of “creationists” irrespective of whether or not they really are the views of Catholics who defend the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation and whether or not such strawman arguments are advocated by me.  But readers of her review are left with the clear impression that they probably are my views.  In other words, she indulges in misrepresentation. Against her claim that I have not done my fair share of homework, her review contains so many inaccuracies that one gets the strong feeling that it is Mary Daly herself who needs to do lots more homework and be prepared graciously to be challenged by truth and to be open to changing her position.

 At the end of her review, Daly claims that the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) declarations were disciplinary and not doctrinal, and have since been superseded by later declarations! This is completely untrue. Those 1909 findings are theoretically open to revision but in fact have never been revised by the Magisterium.  In 1948 these very 1909 PBC findings were reiterated by Rome as still binding, in the letter sent by the PBC to Cardinal Suhard of Paris who had sought changes to these 1909 declarations.  [Pope St. Pius X granted teaching authority to the PBC declarations during his reign in the early 1900’s, and the PBC thereafter remained an official teaching arm of the Magisterium until 1971.] I challenge Mary Daly to cite chapter and verse showing exactly when and where, and by whom, those 1909 PBC findings were declared to be disciplinary and later superseded in Catholic Tradition!

In his book Sword of the Spirit: Which is the Word of God (Stella Maris Books, Fort Worth, 1977), pp.7–8, Msgr. John E. Steinmueller, a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission from 1947-1971, laid to rest the widely-circulated claim that the PBC decrees of 1909 have been revoked. He wrote:

I was a consultor of the first Pontifical Biblical Commission from 1947 (after the publication of Divino afflante Spiritu) to 1971; and I never heard any intimation that any decrees of the Commission were ever revoked. At most they were clarified (cf. Letter to Cardinal Suhard of Paris, 1948 [DZ, no. 2302]). Recently some Catholic scholars have asserted that the decrees were implicitly revoked by Divino afflante Spiritu (1943) and that this is confirmed by two articles written in 1955 by A. Miller and A. Kleinhans, who seem to restrict the scope of the decrees to matters of faith and morals (cf.. Jerome Biblical Commentary, Vol. 11, p. 629). The articles re­ferred to were unauthorized and were condemned by the voting Cardinal members of the Commission. A. Miller and A. Kleinhans were to be brought before the Holy Office because of the articles, but were saved from this ordeal through the personal intervention of Cardinal Tisserant before the Holy Father. It was my friend, Father Miller, O.S.B., who told me the whole story before his return to Germany.

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Decisions of this Pontifical Biblical Commission were sent to the Holy Father, who ratified them or sent them back for further consideration. The official decisions were published only at his command … This first Pontifical Commission as an independent commission came to an end by the apostolic letter issued ‘Motu Proprio’ by Pope Paul VI, June 27, 1971. As a new body the Biblical Commission was to be a dependent sub-commission under the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith presided over by its Cardinal Prefect. Its members are appointed by the Supreme Ponti­ff, on the proposal of the Cardinal president after consultation with the episcopal conferences.

Further, Daly incredibly claims, regarding the Magisterium, that I only considered the 1909 PBC findings in my book―but this claim is also completely false.  Amazingly, she asserts in dismissal of me that, “it is hardly respectful of the Magisterium to quote an old document [i.e., the 1909 PBC findings] and fail even to mention recent ones”  [italics and underlining by Daly].  If Daly had read my book properly and done her homework competently she would have seen that I did cite, over some fifty pages, material from Divino Afflante Spiritu, Humani Generis, the 1996 pro-evolution address by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), and more besides!  The very “ones” she accuses me of overlooking! In addition, I also referred to the 1994 Catechism of The Catholic Church on 27 pages in my book.

For the record,  Pope Pius XII is mentioned in my book on pages xxvi, xxx, 188, 190, 194-202, 205, 210, 219, 224, and 236.  His encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu is cited on pages 210, 210, and 224, and his encyclical Humani Generis [incorrectly named Humanae Generis by Daly] is cited on pages xxvi, 190, 193-202, 205, 210, and 219.  Pope John Paul II is cited on pages 177, 184, 186, 202-206, 211, 212, 217, 238, 352, 353, and 360.  I did not refer to his 1979 words regarding the Galileo Case but I did discuss his pro-evolution, non ex cathedra comments made at the April 26, 1985, Vatican symposium entitled “Christian Faith and the Theory of Evolution”. His speech to the PAS on Oct. 22, 1996, is discussed briefly on pages 204, 205, 211 and 212, and I lamented the fact that he did not define what he means by the term “evolution” and that his pro-evolution comments were too generalized and imprecise. For example, John Paul II mentioned “new discoveries” in his speech to the PAS but he did not identify nor describe in detail these new discoveries which supposedly favour evolution.

As it happened, six years after my book was published and several years after Daly’s review was posted, no less a highly placed member of the Curia than Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna and chief editor of the 1994 Catechism, in an op-ed piece entitled “Finding Design in Nature” which was published in the New York Times (July 7, 2005), commented on the late Pope’s speech to the PAS.  He pointed out that Pope John Paul II “did not define evolution” and he correctly referred to the Pope’s speech as a “rather vague and unimportant letter about evolution.”

Mary Daly overlooks the fact that various Popes sometimes make speculative private, non ex-cathedra statements about doctrinal matters which can clash with teachings officially declared true by earlier Popes and Councils.  However regrettable, the view expressed remains private opinion and is not official teaching. The teaching of Vatican Council I on papal infallibility guarantees that a later Pope cannot and will not officially contradict and invalidate an official teaching already declared true in Tradition.

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How could Daly have failed to see all the above Magisterial origins material cited in my book and then rail against me for supposedly failing even to mention later Magisterial declarations regarding evolution!  In doing so she drew the spotlight onto her own lack of credibility.  How can she wish to be taken seriously if this is the level of her scholarly research? Why would anyone trust her assertions? I urge Catholics to be extremely wary about trusting the misleading Origins opinions of Mary Daly, and I strongly recommend instead that they take time out to read my book Creation Rediscovered and check out the truth for themselves. See also my papers posted on the Kolbe website www.kolbecenter.org:  “Is Evolution An Open Question” (posted 2002) and “The Pontifical Academy of Sciences And The Crisis Of Faith” (posted 2004). And also read my 100 pages booklet Special Creation Rediscovered (published 2004) which is available from the Kolbe Center.

Mary Daly’s Unlikely Concept Of Evolution (back to top)

Mary Daly displays strange reasoning in her dismissal of Special Creation and acceptance of evolution.  To her, the idea of the Universe being billions of years old is a “given”―despite the fact that all long ages scenarios unavoidably contradict the “Good Creation” teaching held dear in Tradition since antiquity. The possibility for change within life forms is determined by the genetic information already programmed into them, and no amount of time can enable macro-evolution to occur because the gaining of higher genetic information cannot occur naturally.

How exactly does Mary Daly define the term evolution? It is most revealing that, as Daly herself makes clear, her own belief about how life forms ascend is completely dependent, not upon genetic changes which she acknowledges do not help evolution, but upon belief in what she claims are sequential species appearance via changes in chromosomes. As she says,

It is useful to offer a verifiable definition of design which exhibits this truth.  Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box) does this, and I take my inspiration from him in saying that the scientific evidence for design may be defined as the discovery of elements which are coordinated beyond their present (or past and present) functions.  Evolution (in the Darwinian sense of survival of the fittest) can only be invoked to explain what is retained by the organism because it is (or was) useful, not because it will be useful down the road.  This is a verifiable proposition, and Behe is wonderful.

[As an aside, readers may be surprised to discover that leading advocates of Intelligent Design (which advocates superb arguments such as Irreducible Complexity and that Design is empirically detectable) are actually in favour of evolution yet do not specifically define the term.  Michael Behe wrote in his book Darwin’s Black Box that, “I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.” (p.5).  And William Dembski wrote in his book Intelligent Design that, “Information theory is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the mechanism of evolutionary change proposed to date.”  (p.183) “Intelligent design … can accommodate any degree of evolutionary change …” ( p.252)]

But notice that it is Design which is under consideration in the above paragraph in Mary Daly’s review of my book, and not evolution per se. So what if aspects of design are reckoned by some researchers to be useful in the future? How does such an assertion verify that chromosomes “jumps” actually took place?  Are such jumps supposedly still taking place, which one would expect if they once supposedly occurred in large enough quantities for evolution to proceed? Can Daly show us some concrete examples? For example, when and where did the last “jumps” take place?

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In reality, Daly simply asserts, with no real supportive evidence, her contention that evolution necessarily “took place with jumps, according to physical and chemical laws” but she does not explain to readers precisely what are these so-called physical and chemical laws.   It follows that, in effect, she defines the term “evolution” as sudden, inexplicable, unverifiable “jumps” in chromosomes spread over eons of time.  On one hand, this means that there is no need to explain the well-known fossil gaps which plague the idea of gradual evolution.  But on the other hand, she still has to overcome the stupendously high odds which accompany her “jumps” scenario!  And let us not forget that the odds against evolution’s credibility are immensely greater than those regarded as impossibly high in the science of fingerprints!

Daly would have us believe that incredibly rare changes in chromosomes would have to have occurred time and again, involving both sexes simultaneously, yet she cites no concrete evidence when such evidence should be voluminous if these “jumps” really occurred. Readers of her review are left unclear whether these “jumps” supposedly take place naturally or only by means of God’s incessant interventions. Daly’s version of evolution suffers from the absence of a mechanism: What indeed drives the jumps in chromosomes?  This places her in the weak position of arguing from the absence of evidence. How does she account for all the fossil “missing links” (known also as “transitional forms”) which should be innumerable in the rocks but which are uniformly missing?  Her version of evolution still requires the existence of transitional forms such as would be needed for the transition of reptiles into birds. In reality, the odds against Daly’s version of evolution are much too high for credibility.  In her ill-thought-out evolutionary concept, she has little choice but to invoke God to have “created” life forms by intervening incessantly to implement all the many required “jumps” of chromosomes.

In opposition to Daly’s progressive creation, traditional Catholic teaching on origins holds that creation per se ceased on Day 7. All of the Fathers and Doctors hold that the creation of new kinds of creatures ceased at the end of the creation period.  Moreover, the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation contained in the firmiter of Lateran IV and Vatican I, the decrees on creation of the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent, and the rulings of the PBC on Genesis 1-3 in 1909―holds that God created “all things” at once “from the beginning.” As St Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa, one of the elements of the goodness of the original creation was its completeness―a completeness which depended upon the co-existence of all of the different kinds of creatures at once, like various instruments in a vast symphony orchestra.  Mary Daly’s innumerable “chromosome jumps” contradict the goodness of the original creation in this important respect, and in other respects as well, as we will see later on.

Daly’s concept would have us believe that the eye (which some evolutionists claim evolved independently about 40 times) is not the result of specific design rapidly implemented by an omnipotent Designer but came about over long periods of time which were marked by sudden innumerable jumps of chromosomes―for which she can cite no evidence.

Let us be practical and leave aside fanciful opinions. Why not allow God to get on with creation of all life forms rapidly, just as all of the Church Fathers interpreted Genesis to say that He did?  As I pointed out in my 2004 booklet Special Creation Rediscovered, we know that God instantly and thus rapidly created "space", "time"  and matter "ex nihilo"  (i.e., from nothing). The Creator/Redeemer brought the dead back to life rapidly, cured blindness and diseases rapidly, and transformed water into wine rapidly—so why balk at the idea of rapid creation of Adam in adult form, rapid creation of all life forms and rapid stretching out of the Universe? Ironically, both theistic evolutionists and progressive creationists―who all postulate that God must have chosen to drag out the Creation events over billions of years―are themselves driven ultimately to invoke innumerable rapid interventions by God in their respective creation scenarios! One gets the impression that few Christian long ages proponents perceive this conceptual inconsistency within their views.

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After all, complementary interdependence and diversity among Earth’s life forms requires that all had to be brought into life almost simultaneously. The fruit trees and the birds and bees all had to be created fairly close together for cross-pollination to occur. All life forms had to be brought to life rapidly so that Secondary Causes could immediately begin to function smoothly without the need for God constantly to intervene.  [I acknowledge of course that God constantly keeps all matter in existence but that is not the aspect under consideration here.] Mary Daly queries my understanding of  Secondary Causes but her comments are vague and unclear:

Although I have read several portions of the book dealing with secondary causes, I have not been able to identify Keane's negative concern about their relationship with theology.  Ordinarily, positive Catholic teaching about secondary causes is the very reason for Catholic openness to theories of indirect creation through secondary causes.

In fact, I have no negative concerns about secondary causes. Catholic Tradition holds that creation per se belongs only to God!  Created things cannot truly “create” anything; they only can replicate as designed within the specified information imposed upon matter by the transcendent Designer.  For example, human parents co-operate with God as secondary causes in the creation of new human life when each baby is conceived (and God creates the soul).  Indirect creation in life forms occurs but only within kind; as distinct from God’s direct creation ex nihilo of “kinds.

Secondary Causes are highly praised in the 1994 CCC: “God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus of cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan” [306], “God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes.” [308] Secondary Causes are thus integral to the notion of direct Special Creation in a “young” Universe. Interdependence requires that they all be set in train quickly:  “The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow [not to mention the myriad other life forms as well]: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient.”  [340]

Let us now look more closely at exactly what Mary Daly is asking us to swallow “hook, line and sinker” about evolution:  Regarding evolution per se, Daly declares that, “the evidence for a single family tree is fairly compelling” yet she cites nothing to support such a fantastic claim. It seems that she expects us to take her word for it!  Macroevolution offers no support since extensive research into the designs of all sorts of life forms shows that only change within kind is possible; never change beyond kind. In addition, laboratory research strongly suggests that macroevolution is virtually conceptually untenable.  So where is the “fairly compelling” evidence to substantiate her claim in support of a single family tree?  If Daly really has a strong case she should easily be able to cite lots of compelling evidence.  Here are her own words:

The significance of this much-needed change in perspective―from genes to chromo-somes―is that it exhibits very clearly why evolution had to proceed in jumps.  Genetic changes―mere changes in individual genes―are not going to jump, and are never going to change the species.  All you're going to get is different colors of hair and eyes, different heights, things like that.  To change a species, a new chromosome must come into play (or go out of play). This cannot happen often; when it does happen, it cannot often be viable; and even if it is viable, it cannot survive unless it happens in two individuals who meet and mate.  When it does happen and is viable, the changes are radical and immediate.  (emphasis added)

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…  But the designer did not need to lay out all his work in three days (days three, five, and six).  Design does not, as creationists claim, mean “special creation” of each individual unit within a particular time frame. It just means work which is thoughtfully―and artfully ―planned. … the scientific evidence for design may be defined as the discovery of elements which are coordinated beyond their present (or past and present) functions.  Evolution (in the Darwinian sense of survival of the fittest) can only be invoked to explain what is retained by the organism because it is (or was) useful, not because it will be useful down the road.

It is nice to see that Daly actually believes that genetic changes cannot result in evolution, and nice also that this necessarily places her in opposition to most evolutionists.  It is widely known among specialists that no amount of microevolutionary changes within kind (i.e., genetic variation) can accumulate into macroevolution beyond kind.  It is also well known in both Science and Theology that “nothing can give what it does not have” and “the lesser cannot give rise to the greater” and this contradicts claims made in favour of evolution’s general “upwards” direction from the less complex to greater complexity. In contradiction of the great majority of those who believe strongly that genetic changes do give rise to macroevolution, Mary Daly is correct in pointing out that, “Genetic changes―mere changes in individual genes―are not going to jump, and are never going to change the species.  All you're going to get is different colors of hair and eyes, different heights, things like that.”

So what then is Daly’s position?  The answer seems to be that she believes that evolution is explained by “jumps” which occur in chromosomes, but she needs to explain much more than simply acknowledging arguments against genetic evolution’s credibility and then leaping to a highly tenuous conclusion: “When it (i.e., changes in chromosomes) does happen and is viable, the changes are radical and immediate.”   But that’s it―that’s all we get from Daly in support of her case! She seems to expect readers of her review to simply accept her thirteen-words-assertion as compelling reasoning, but such an imprecise statement wouldn’t stand up in a peer-reviewed journal nor under cross-examination by a barrister. She would be expected to cite much more specific detail and provide rigorous argumentation.

Daly should be able to cite concrete examples from modern scientific research, and not stay in the “safe” ground of speculative theorizing.  Show us, for example, exactly how did the unique platypus supposedly evolve? One of only two monotremes (egg-laying mammals) on Earth; its closest relative is supposed to be the echidna, but the echidna has many spikes and looks nothing like a platypus! The platypus is a charming creature beloved by Australians and the good news is that it is doing very well in the wild.  However the spur of the male platypus can be excruciatingly painful for someone who gets stung. The platypus possesses a unique combination of traits found individually across various creatures, so how did it come to exist? Who put this unique package of traits together? When and where did the necessary changes, which Daly’s scenario requires to have occurred, take place and what or who brought them on each time? When and where did “radical and immediate” changes occur in what creatures which enabled the ascent of the platypus? And what did the platypus’s supposed antecedents look like? There are only a few examples of platypus bones found fossilized in the rocks and they look just like modern day platypus bones!

Not surprisingly, Daly is unclear about how many chromosomes “jumps” occurred; were there only a few or were they almost innumerable before each kind of modern day life form came into existence?  Again, why force God to take an incredibly circuitous route over an enormous amount of time when we are reliably informed in Genesis that He created all life forms over several days!  Maybe God, the totally trustworthy Creator who cannot deceive nor be deceived, actually revealed the truth of Creation in His historical Genesis account but too many modern human beings have stopped believing Him!

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Mary Daly also needs to show us how all the other multitudes of life forms on Earth came to ascend via extremely rare yet favourable chromosomal jumps in complementary occurrence within both sexes.  Does she, for example, advocate that dinosaurs evolved back into the water to become sea creatures after having supposedly evolved out of the sea in the first place?  If she does, can she please show us chapter and verse how it all proceeded and maybe show us some fossilized transitional stages as well?  How can she be sure of exactly what progenitors were the immediate predecessors of the platypus and of all the other creatures?  As if all this were not Mission Impossible, Mary also has to show relevant examples in complementary male and female evolving predecessors who just happened to be born in close proximity of time and place!

More still! There is yet another profound conceptual problem which confronts all versions of evolution and it has also to be addressed by Mary Daly.  It is known as symbiosis, and I referred to it on p.167 of my book.  How come such amazing relationships exist around the world between radically differing life forms? How did these cross-relationships come into being by means of evolution; whether by chromosomes jumps, beneficial mutations, miracle mutations or otherwise?  Some examples: 1) Why does the beautiful anemone fish (known in cartoon form as Nemo) co-exist with the otherwise deadly tentacles of a sea plant; why do these tentacles allow the anemone fish to take refuge therein, and why do the tentacles actually protect the eggs of the anemone fish? 2) The amazing cleaner fish behaviour in which smaller Blue-Streak Wrasse fish are allowed to enter the mouth of the larger Oriental Sweetlips fish (during a trance-like state) to clean up bits of food caught between the teeth of the larger fish and also to trim off loose flesh in the mouth which has been torn by coral. 3) Various other examples are known, such as the Yucca Plant and the Yucca Moth which need each other for common survival.  No doubt many other examples of symbiosis can be cited.

      And how does Mary propose to explain the origin of instincts which drive life forms? Where do her jumps in chromosomes fit in here? For example, the instinct which impels migratory birds to travel huge distances back and forward around Earth each year, some utilizing a number of different wind currents?  After all, if you are going to become a migratory bird and fly across huge oceans, you have to make it the first time―or you drown!  There is no time available for a third choice. You can’t evolve overnight the necessary stamina and navigation ability; you have to possess such features right from the start.  And why do predatory wasps and spiders sometimes act as if they had an exact knowledge of the anatomy of their victim and knew how best to paralyze it?  How do spiders know to only place a sticky substance on central web fibres and not on outer support fibres?  Multitudes of Design questions such as these are easily explained by rapid Special Creation implemented over several days but are virtually impossible to explain by natural evolution. (And remember―it’s not really evolution if it’s not natural. So-called theistic evolution is not evolution as commonly understood because it requires incessant divine intervention by God to tweak things to drive evolution!)

Exactly how does Mary Daly envisage that jumps in chromosomes could have brought about symbiosis and all the other amazing interdependent relationships which exist in the world of nature between radically differing life forms?  Perhaps she does not even realize the depth of such conceptual problems confronting not only her version of evolution but all versions of naturalistic evolution.  Yet the concept of Special Creation can easily explain how such things came about: They were designed to interact that way by a transcendent Creator!

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And that is not all! Since Daly rejects the traditional Catholic understanding of Creation, the responsibility of proof lies upon her.  In accordance with the 1893 encyclical of Leo XIII, she has to show that the literal-as-given sense understanding of Genesis is better explained by another sense. In doing so she must explain convincingly how all the various life forms came to be and how symbiosis and interdependence became activated in her preferred evolution hypothesis of “jumps” in chromosomes.  Does she even realize the gravity of the task she has set herself, in her vain effort to effectively overturn Creation teachings held dear in Sacred Tradition from the time of Christ?

Daly is really asking us to swallow an incredibly tenuous version of evolution which she herself has not comprehensively addressed!  To quote her words, “of course the Designer of the Universe did not need to lay out His work of creation over six days.” Agreed!  He could have done it all rapidly in the twinkling of an eye or He could have chosen to take six days just as Genesis indicates!  Alternatively, He could have taken many billions of years to unfold Creation but modern discoveries from genetics and from dating methods, as well as compelling objective truth known from Sacred Tradition and Sacred Tradition, all point towards fairly rapid creation of life forms (more or less instantaneous/concurrent over several 24 hours days).  Let us focus on what God chose to do in implementing Creation, instead of what He could have done.

Define Evolution Accurately (back to top)

The origins debate is greatly hampered by the fact that so few individuals give a succinct definition of evolution and this allows confusion to prevail. What is this thing called “evolution” about which so many heated arguments take place?  And why does evolution, which is widely regarded as “irrelevant” on all sides in the modern Catholic Church, receive such constant attention in the secular media and why is it so often defended by Catholic intellectuals who appear to still rely on long outdated arguments?

Let it be understood that “evolution” is not just “change over time”; it is not natural selection which at best only conserves the existing; it is not survival of the fittest which has been criticized as a tautology (how do we know that it was not survival of the luckiest?); and nor is it theistic evolution in which God is invoked conveniently as “the God of the gaps” to drive evolution.  To avoid confusion and cross purposes, it is essential to define succinctly exactly what evolution amounts to as understood by most secular evolutionists.  My definition of evolution given in the 1999 TAN Books edition of my book is reproduced below in Fr Baker’s 2005 HPR editorial:

As it happened, six years after my book was published, and several years after Mary Daly’s review was posted, Fr Kenneth Baker SJ, in his Dec 2005 editorial in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, called for evolution to be defined succinctly.  He cited my definition of evolution in his editorial entitled “Define Evolution Accurately” which is reproduced here in its entirety:

This month we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Jesus is not a human person; he is a divine Person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, become man for us men and for our salvation.  He is “true God from true God” and “of one substance with the Father.”  In the total history of the human race, no matter when it began, Jesus Christ is the most important Person who ever lived and who ever will live, because he is God among us or Emmanuel.

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Jesus is the son of David who is the son of Abraham who is the son of Adam. We have all descended from Adam and Eve, our first parents. We know by faith that Adam and Eve were created by God. Genesis tells us that Adam was created from the dirt of the ground and that Eve was formed from a part taken from the side of Adam.  Our Catholic faith teaches that each human soul is created individually by God.  It also teaches that God actively preserves every being in existence by his divine power and that he governs this world by his providence.  In a very true sense we are the products of his hand and constantly sustained in being by him.

Since the time of Charles Darwin, about 150 years ago, some philosophers and scientists have been promoting the idea that God did not produce living things (as the Bible tells us) but that they developed naturally from molecules to man by what is called “evolution” which is a type of “unfolding” or growth in perfection.  The claim is made that evolution takes place by random changes and natural selection over millions and billions of years. 

The Darwinian theory of evolution has never been proved and it cannot be proved because it is not only contrary to Catholic faith, but it is also unreasonable.  Evolution is a myth, a fairy tale for adults that makes it possible for skeptics, materialists and atheists to explain order and purpose in the world and in the universe independent of any Orderer (=God) or Mind.  It is a deceiving but ultimately futile attempt to explain the existence of the proverbial watch without a watchmaker. This is totally unreasonable. Everyone knows, even atheistic scientists, that there is order in nature – in the elements, in plants, in the planets and the stars.  Everywhere we look there is order and purpose.  Things that are planned out in advance do not happen by chance; they are the result of mind and intelligence. Evolutionists want us to believe that the extreme complexity and order in animals and man happened by chance.  To believe that takes a greater act of faith than to believe that Jesus Christ is both God and Man and the Savior of the world.

The debate between evolutionists and creationists would shed more light if all could agree on a clear definition of evolution. For the word is very ambiguous and means different things to different people. The best definition I have found is that of G.J. Keane, author of  Creation Rediscovered. He says that evolution as understood by contemporary science is this: “Evolution is molecules-to-man natural transformation in which new, ‘higher,’ genetic information is gained which was not possessed by one’s ancestors.”  Evolution understood in this way is contrary to the laws of nature and reason.  The reason for this is that every agent produces something similar to itself.  Dogs generate dogs and fish generate fish; fish do not generate dogs and cats.  There are changes within species but evolutionary scientists have not been able to prove one case, not one, of one species changing into another, either higher or lower.

If Darwinian evolution were true, there would be millions of intermediate stages found in the fossil record. But note well, folks, none have ever been found.  This does not daunt the evolutionists so one of them came up with the idea that species appear suddenly by what he calls “Punctuated Equilibrium.”  So take that, you ignorant, fundamentalist creationists!  Some Catholics have tried to baptize evolution by saying that God made things that way and ultimately directs it and creates human souls.  At present, one is not forbidden by Catholic teaching to hold that position which is called “Theistic Evolution.”  In my opinion, this compromise is a capitulation that is ultimately self-defeating.  Faith supported by reason tells me that God created the heavens and earth and everything in them according to their species, including Adam and Eve, from whom our Savior descended.  For those who have eyes to see, we live in a world governed by Divine Providence, not a world of blind chance and chaos.

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As a footnote to Fr Baker’s editorial, it is worth noting that genetic information can be lost but can never be gained naturally.  For example, it is widely believed by specialists on all sides of the Origins debate that all of today’s species of dogs have descended from an original pair (the created “kind”) which contained the full complement of genetic information. Modern dogs now  have a reduced and specialized amount of genetic information; they each have lost genetic information that was possessed by the original pair.

Scientific Evidence Is Against Evolution (back to top)

As things happened, from 1953 onwards things have only gotten much worse scientifically for evolution’s credibility. Following the 1953 Crick and Watson DNA spiral helix announce-ment it became possible for the first time in history to succinctly define the term “evolution”; brilliant human research into the Lilliputian world of molecules has subsequently shown beyond doubt that life forms can only change within kind and never beyond kind. It is out of the question that, for example, reptiles could change over time into birds because multiple, horrendously complex, changes would have to occur in a very short time span.  It is beyond doubt that the avian lung system is radically different from those of reptiles and it could not possibly have been derived from a reptilian lung.

Another huge conceptual problem for evolution’s credibility is this: As reported in pages 28,29 of my book Creation Rediscovered there is a wonderful, self-evident, pro-life scientific argument against evolution right inside the heart of the unborn baby.  Many mothers may not even be aware of this wonderful aspect of the unique baby developing inside their womb. There is simply not enough time for evolution to bring about all the wonderful features found inside every human foetus.  (How outrageous and immensely sad that millions of unborn babies are aborted annually!)

The marvelous temporary ducts/vessels which exist in the heart of every unborn baby are essential for life while in the womb.  But they close off at birth and this closing-off is also essential for life once the baby is born.  It is obvious that the heart of the unborn human being could not have arisen by evolution; there is no time for evolution to bring about such profound changes so rapidly. The use of human reason and common sense shows that this wonderful example of Design was achieved rapidly by a brilliant Designer/ Creator; evolution had nothing to do with it. 

The Fingerprints Precedent Against Evolution (back to top)

Let us now consider the fact that evolution cannot have occurred because there are colossal odds against its possibility: The very idea of uniqueness stands in stark opposition to the possibility of evolution being true.  We know beyond doubt that each human being has unique fingerprints and toeprints; each fingerprint is radically unique and thus no two fingerprints are identical. Because of the immensity of odds involved, this scientific belief is held unanimously by everyone (of all religious beliefs and of none) working in the science of fingerprints.  Similarly, because of the immensity of odds involved, this unanimous finding is also upheld in the profession of Law across the world.

The odds cited by Harold Cummins and Charles Midlo in their 1943 textbook Finger Prints, Palms and Soles against the probability of identical fingerprints occurring is approximately 1 in 2,980,232,238,769,531,250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!

  This fingerprints finding in fact constitutes a precedent in Science and Law against evolution theory which should be deferred to because evolution to this day depends upon acceptance of immense odds occurring time and again.  Put simply, to believe in evolution requires belief in colossal odds which are immensely greater than those regarded as impossibly high in the science of fingerprints. 

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Other examples of uniqueness are easy to cite:  Every giraffe has a unique pattern on its hide, and so does every zebra and every meerkat, and such uniqueness probably exists everywhere in nature.  Cummins and Midlo in their 1943 textbook also mention a widely held suspicion in the world of science that every leaf of each similar type of tree is probably itself unique!  What a truly amazing Creator we can point to!

Michael Denton, in his mid 1980’s book Evolution, A Theory In Crisis pointed out the astonishingly high odds against the possibility of a reptile changing into a bird.  The avian  lung is radically different from all others and the necessary transformation changes are much too many for evolution to be a practical possibility.  There could never be enough time for it all to occur!

As for the possibility that evolution could have been facilitated by beneficial mutations, empirical data show the ratio of beneficial to harmful mutations to be 0.0000001% (Sandford, I, 2005, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, Lima NY, Elim Publishing, 26).

Mary Daly asserts that “design need not mean intervention”. Agreed!  I am pleased that she does not advocate the widely assumed but ill-thought-out theistic evolutionist “God-of-the-gaps” concept in which God is assumed to have constantly intervened, on innumerable occasions, to override His own  institution of Secondary Causes to enable creatures to advance to new, higher, levels.  But she insists that her vague scenario of chromosomes “jumps” explains evolution and so she cannot avoid dependence upon impossibly high odds occurring time and again. Thus the effective precedent which exists in the science of fingerprints against impossibly high odds also rules out Daly’s chromosomes “jumps” scenario as a practical possibility.

Catholic Tradition Is Against Evolution (back to top)

Pope Pius XII made abundantly clear in his Sept 7, 1953, speech to the First International Congress Of Medical Genetics, three years after his famous Humani Generis encyclical, that he could see no grounds in support of evolution. On the contrary, he stated unambiguously that the concept of evolution was highly unconvincing to him.

As pointed out by Fr Brian Harrison OS, Leo XIII taught in his 1880 encyclical Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae that Adam was made from the slime of the Earth and that Eve was specially created from a portion of Adam’s body. The four conditions which Vatican Council II would later recognize in Lumen Gentium (para. 25) in order for a doctrine to be proposed infallibly by the ordinary Magisterium had been fulfilled by the year 1880 with respect to the origin of Eve as taught by Leo XIII. The Church has thus declared that the first female human being was specially created; her body did not come via evolution. The origin of Eve’s body is not an open question.

Leo XIII also implicitly ruled out polygenism (i.e., “many first parents”) by insisting on monogenism in the same 1880 encyclical. Polygenism was also strongly condemned by Pius XII in Humani Generis. He declared that Catholics, “cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.” Further, polygenism was also ruled out in the 1994 Catechism (see para. 360, footnote 226 reference to the Book of Tobit 8:6: “Thou madest Adam of the slime of the earth and gave him Eve for a helper.  From them the race of mankind has sprung. …”.  The “one ancestor” mentioned in the CCC could only be the first male human being, namely Adam). Therefore, polygenism is not an open question for Catholics.

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Leo XIII effectively pulled the rug out from under human evolution with his 1880 teaching on the special creation of Eve. With polygenism ruled out, the only possibility left is that of evolution-of-the-male-only (i.e., rapid special transformism within monogenism) but what evidence is there for such a highly unlikely concept? Yet another possibility—that God inserted a rational soul into an adult male member of a race of “almost human beings”—is much too convenient and devoid of supportive evidence. And the implausible idea that God intervened directly to change an apelike creature into that of a human being (i.e., Adam) makes no pretence at qualifying as “evolution” as most evolutionists understand the term.

Pontifical Academy Of Sciences  (back to top)

Mary Daly made no mention of the heavily pro-evolution stance of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences but it is most important that Catholics understand the lamentable role being played by the PAS in the ongoing crisis of faith within Catholicism.

The PAS activists proclaim a very strong pro-evolution position, despite all the abundant arguments against the possibility of evolution, and the idea of Special Creation is given almost no credence.  Why was the atheist physicist Stephen Hawking invited to become an academician when no Catholic opponent of evolution ever gets an invitation?  One has only to read the PAS material on the www.vatican.va website to see how the mostly non-Catholic PAS is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church and in particular to multitudes of children in Catholic schools.  How much longer will joint PAS/Templeton Foundation evolutionary conferences be allowed to proclaim non-Catholic viewpoints such as Free Will being derived from an evolutionary process? In a 2002 interview, the then Director of the Vatican Observatory,  Fr. George V. Coyne SJ, admitted that his views about God and the Universe have been greatly influenced by his studies of astronomy. In an interview article in the Chicago Catholic New World newspaper (June 23, 2002), entitled “Searching the Heavens: Vatican Astronomer sees Hand of God in the Stars”, Fr Coyne made some astonishing admissions which contradict Catholic doctrine:

      When I was a young child going through grammar school, I was taught that God created the universe,” he said.   “What kind of God would create this kind of universe?”  “The answer,” he said, “is not the God of Isaac Newton, the watchmaker who created the world, wound it up and watched it go.”  The universe Coyne knows doesn’t fit that image of creation. “It’s evolving, physically evolving, biologically evolving. The universe has a certain creativity of its own. Human life came to be because of necessary processes, chance processes, and what I call opportunity.  God made a universe that held a certain opportunity.”   And for human life to arise from the stuff of stars¾all 10 to the 22^nd power of them¾took the vast majority of the universe’s 15 billion years, with various kinds of chemicals zooming through the void, eventually bumping into one another and combining in ways that allowed for complex life to happen.  “As the universe ages, you get more complicated molecules, and eventually you get the human brain,” Coyne said. “Did God do this? Do I need God to make the human brain?  As a scientist, I can get completely satisfactory answers without bringing God into the picture.  But I find it difficult to accept.  It’s a mystery that the universe could come from nothing. … Once I believe in God it’s not just a rational process.  I can’t prove to you that God exists, but you can’t prove to me that he or she doesn’t. …The God I now believe in is very different from the God the sisters taught me about.  He’s not keeping control of everything. The universe has a dynamism about it, and even the Creator can’t know everything.  I see God with the universe as sort of hoping and wishing and setting things up so there’s a strong possibility for human life.  There’s a precariousness about that, but there’s also a creativity about it.  God with respect to the universe is like a parent with a child.  You have to educate the child, but there comes a time when they have to make their own choices.”  (bold emphasis added)  [See Vatican.va website and also the Catholic New World Newspaper (Chicago) website:  www.catholicnewworld.com/archive/cnw2002/062302]

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Fr. Coyne was Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1977 to 2006 and he obviously believes that he can with impunity publicly reject Tradition regarding origins, and articulate beliefs which endanger the doctrine of Original Sin. If the doctrinal foundations laid down within Genesis 1-11 are allowed to be open to revision, then why not allow the entire Bible to be open to revision¾which can only lead to doctrinal chaos?  The historical credibility of the Genesis creation account impacts directly upon the credibility of the entire Bible.

      The Interpretation Of Scripture (back to top)

      Mary Daly harps constantly in her review of Creation Rediscovered that I focus inordinately on a “literal” understanding of Scripture but readers of this rebuttal can see for themselves just how shallow and inaccurate is her case against me.   Daly herself makes clear that she prefers the Catholic Church to defer to “modern cosmology” as the deciding “given” on which Origins doctrines should henceforth be evaluated.  This can never be.  Since when should objective truth known via Sacred Tradition about a supernatural event―the creation of all things in the beginning―be subject to override by speculative findings gleaned from the ever-shifting sands of the subjective interpretation of empirical data from natural science?

What Daly does not acknowledge is that Catholic and Orthodox believers in Special Creation do not hold to a completely literal reading of Genesis.  All the Fathers of the Church favor the  literal-as-given sense when interpreting descriptions of natural phenomena and human actions, but adopt a figurative interpretation where God’s action is described (e.g., God “walking” in the Garden.)  From the perspective of Catholic Tradition, following the teaching of Pope Leo XIII (that the literal-as-given sense must hold ground until disproven), the meaning of yom is related to a natural phenomenon―the 24 hour cycle of light and darkness―and thus the overwhelming majority of the Fathers interpreted the days as natural days. The few who did not, like St. Ausustine, did not expand the days of Genesis but contracted them into an instantaneous creation. No-one has yet shown proof beyond doubt that the unanimous teaching of the Fathers on this point should be overturned, and the onus of proof is upon those who favour a Universe age of billions of years to show that the overwhelming patristic support for yom should be ignored.   After all, both a literal resurrection and a literal 6 days creation are clearly what the Sacred Writer wished to assert and to be understood by the reader. Where is the slightest clue given in Genesis that the Sacred Writer intended to convey a radically different meaning (unknown for some 1,800 years) and that it should be understood as such by the reader?

            I remind Mary Daly that belief in a six days Creation period in a “young” universe was the unanimous, consistently held teaching within the Catholic Church for some 1,800 years. Highly flawed uniformitarian long-ages assumptions began to be accepted by various 19^th century theologians on the most shallow of evidence, long before enough research had been done to support any firm conclusions, and this capitulation led to the modern phenomenon of Catholic researchers trying to justify long ages beliefs which unavoidably contradict the Good Creation doctrine known since the time of Christ.  Given the actual modern scientific discoveries now documented in many scientific disciplines―which do not support long ages―it is untenable for Daly to appeal simply to “modern cosmology” and argue that Catholic doctrines should defer to flawed scientific speculation. After all, Christ himself taught directly in the context of marriage that “from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female” (Mark 10.6, Matt. 19:4), and the reliable Biblical genealogies place Adam and Eve as living only about 6,000 years ago.  Why would He assert from “the beginning of the creation” unless He intended to leave clues to confound modern-day skeptics and indicate that the Universe really is “young”?

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      Daly sets up yet another strawman argument when she asserts, “On pages 8-9, Keane makes a statement which suggests that he believes revelation is something like a process of dictation. It is not.  … The sacred authors were ‘true authors’ not merely secretaries; they were not omniscient, even if God is, and it shows.”   Her assertion is completely false.  She could not have noticed that on page 207 of my book I actually wrote the following text which was largely paraphrased from Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus concerning biblical senses: “Although written by an unknown number of human authors, the collection of books which comprise the Bible have God as the principal author. While the human authors were the instruments used by God, they were not mere puppets.  In a mysterious way, God by supernatural power so moved and assisted them that they correctly conceived with their minds the things which He had ordered, and then they faithfully determined to record them in the most suitable manner. The Catholic Church teaches that all the books which it accepts as sacred and canonical were written wholly and entirely at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the human authors wrote all those things and only those things that God wanted written.”  That’s what has been taught in Tradition in modern times and it is still official Catholic magisterial teaching; why would we not accept Leo XIII’s encyclical teaching?

            Later, on page 210, I further referred readers to this same encyclical teaching (which has not been superseded by later magisterial declarations): “Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Providen-tissimeus Deus established new criteria for understanding the various senses used in Scripture, in response to the gradually unfolding Origins controversy.  Recognizing the very serious threat posed by Higher Criticism (which had arisen in German Protestant circles earlier in the 19^th Century), the Pope encouraged scholars to study diligently the languages in which the sacred books were written and to study the art of criticism. However, he strongly cautioned against extreme and unacceptable forms of Biblical criticism:

There has arisen, to the great detriment of religion, an inept method, dignified by the name of “higher criticism”, which pretends to judge of the origin, integrity, and authority of each book from internal indications alone. It is clear, on the other hand, that in historical questions, such as the origin and handing down of writings, the witness of history is of primary importance, and that historical investigation should be made with the utmost care; and that in this matter internal evidence is seldom of great value, except as confirmation. To look upon it in any other light will be to open the door to many evil con-sequences. It will make the enemies of religion much more bold and confident in attacking and mangling the sacred books; and this vaunted “higher criticism” will resolve itself into the reflection of the bias and the prejudice of the critics.  It will not throw on the Scripture the light which is sought, or prove of any advantage to doctrine; it will only give rise to disagreement and dissension, those sure notes of error, which the critics in question so plentifully exhibit in their own persons; and seeing that most of them are tainted with false philosophy and rationalism, it must lead to the elimination from sacred writings of all prophecy and miracles, and of everything else that is outside the natural order.  In the second place, we have to contend against those who, making an evil use of physical science, minutely scrutinize the sacred book in order to detect the writers in a mistake, and to take occasion to vilify its contents. Attacks of this kind, bearing as they do on matters of sensible experience, are peculiarly dangerous to the masses, and also to the young who are beginning their literary studies; for the young, if they lose their reverence for the Holy Scripture on one or more points, are easily led to give up believing in it altogether.

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      I also pointed out on page 212 that Genesis is primarily historical revelation:  “In the sacred books of Scripture, which have God as the principal author, can we not expect to find some indication of what was meant to be conveyed? Genesis is obviously not a detailed scientific textbook, and Leo XIII taught in Providentissimus Deus that the sacred writer(s) did not intend to teach men about the essential nature of things in the visible Universe.  But who can deny without fear of contradiction that Genesis is primarily historical, and was intended to be understood as such?  If one denies the weight of Tradition concerning the genuine historicity of Genesis, is there not an attendant danger of unwittingly imposing unwarranted and mistaken views of fallible modern scholars?”

            Mary Daly mentions the word “literal” a dozen times in her review of my book but fails to point out that this term has two quite distinct meanings which need to be clearly understood.   I addressed these distinct meanings on page 218 of my book, and I pointed out the most important teaching by Leo XIII concerning priority of the literal-as-given sense:

While the Church declares that Scripture is totally free from error, this does not mean that every passage can be read in the literal-as-given sense.  It is known that a variety of literary genres exist in Scripture―poetry, sacred psalm, legal material, prophecy, apocalypse―but not myths. Judgement has to be made as to whether the meaning intended to be conveyed by the sacred writer is given in one of several possible senses―e.g., literal as given, figurative, parable.

Confusion arises, however, from the fact that the term “literal” has two distinct meanings:  (a) the apparent and obvious sense as written, and (b) the deeper, proper, sense intended to be conveyed by the sacred writer.  Strictly speaking, every passage has a literal meaning.

The sacred writer may be describing real history as it actually happened, or describing real history using figures of speech―in other words using the language of appearance. [Some Biblical figurative expressions, such as “the ends of the Earth” (e.g. Ps.98:3), are still in everyday use.] He may be using poetry to praise some great work, perhaps relating a parable, or pronouncing a prophecy regarding the drift of a people from God, and so on. The Catechism of the Council of Trent noted in passing the use of figures of speech in Scripture: 

“[In] the words He sitteth at the right hand of the Father … we observe a figure of speech; that is, a use of words in other than their literal sense, as frequently happens in Scripture, when, accommodating its language to human ideas …”

However, the primary rule of Biblical interpretation, made clear by St. Augustine and long recognized in Tradition, was reiterated by Leo XIII (1893) in Providentissimus Deus: “carefully observe the rule so wisely laid down by St. Augustine―not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity permits”. (Benedict XV in Spiritus Paraclitus (1920), and Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) and Humani Generis (1950) all later wrote in support of Leo XIII.)

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Thus, Scripture texts must each be taken as meant literally, unless reason or necessity demand that we understand them otherwise.  Most importantly, the onus of proof is therefore upon the person who contends that another sense is superior to the literal, obvious sense.

Scripture cannot, of course, always be understood in the literal-as-given sense and spiritual meanings may also be applicable.  The idea of Adam and Eve hiding after they “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air” (Gen 3:8) suggests a figur-ative sense, for God is spirit and does not “walk” in the way that human beings do; His presence must have been made known to them by somehow making use of matter.  The “serpent” in Gen.3 is understood to mean Satan but the manner in which he “talked” to Eve is mysterious. Did Satan speak, using human words spoken through a reptile or dragon-like creature, or did he plant thoughts in her mind to tempt her to doubt God?

While Scripture is divinely inspired and totally free from error, this is not to say that everything recorded in it actually happened. Christ’s advice, “if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off” (Mark 9:43) was very likely intended as an exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. The purpose of parables seems primarily to convey moral teaching and not necessarily to record history. To insist upon complete inerrancy is therefore not slavish literalism nor funda-mentalism.

Mary Daly claims that a literal reading of Gen. 1 can contradict the Gen. 2 creation account but in fact they are obviously complementary accounts. Gen. 1 describes the unfolding of Creation whereas Gen. 2 focuses on the creation of Adam and Eve. Daly also seems ambivalent about the miracles in the Bible and believes that “we take them or leave them based on whether we think miracles can be part of God’s plan”!  This statement sounds very muddled; what does she mean? Are we to accept that miracles are only believable in some sort of existentialist faith?

Daly also notes that, “… we do not for a moment imagine that the sacred writer could have given us the revelation in a language other than the one he himself spoke. Some might claim that Hebrew is the best language for revelation, and it may have been …”  So why―unless she did not read my book thoroughly―is Daly silent in her review about the fact that I clearly pointed out in my book that the most specific term available in the Hebrew language for a single day was in fact chosen by the Sacred Writer in Genesis 1, and a different Hebrew term denoting “when” was chosen for use in Genesis 2:4.  (See p.253 of Creation Rediscovered for display of these Hebrew terms.) Further, a different plural form was also used in context of “for signs and for seasons and for days and for years” in Genesis 1:14.  Yet another Hebrew term denoting indefiniteness was not chosen, so how much more specific could the Sacred Writer have been in asserting that a six 24hrs days creation period was chosen by God?

    A Brief History Of The Catholic Doctrine Of Creation (back to top)

    In 2004 my booklet Special Creation Rediscovered (100 pages) was published by the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation. It included a list which provides a snapshot summary of important origins teachings that have been authoritatively taught by the Church.  They show that creation/evolution/origins rightly belongs in the category of Religion and not only in the category of Science. There is very little support in Catholic Tradition for evolution:

• God created everything “in its whole substance” from nothing (ex nihilo) in the beginning. (Lateran IV; Vatican Council I )

•  Genesis does not contain purified myths. (Pontifical Biblical Commission PBC 1909) Genesis contains real history—it gives an account of things that really happened. (Pope Pius XII )

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• The “beginning” of the world included the creation of all things, the creation of Adam and Eve and the Fall (Pope Innocent III (Denz 421); Pope Pius IX (Denz 1783), Ineffabilis Deus).

• Adam and Eve were real human beings—the first parents of all mankind. (Pius XII)

• Polygenism (many “first parents”) contradicts Scripture and Tradition and is condemned. (Pius XII; 1994 Catechism, par. 360, footnote 226: Tobit 8:6 —the “one ancestor” referred to in this Catechism could only be Adam.)

• The body of Eve was specially created from a portion of Adam’s body (Leo XIII). She did not originate via evolution.

• Adam and Eve were created in an earthly paradise and would not have known death had they remained obedient (Pius XII).

• After their disobedience, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. The Second Person of the Trinity would subsequently pay the ransom for fallen man (Nicene Creed).

• Original Sin is a flawed condition inherited from Adam and Eve (Council of Trent).

• The Universe suffers in travail ever since the disobedience by Adam and Eve. (Romans 8:19-23, Vatican Council I).

• Various senses are employed in the Bible, but the literal obvious sense must be believed unless reason dictates or necessity requires otherwise. (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus).

• We must believe the interpretation of Scripture that the Church Fathers taught unanimously on a matter of faith or morals (Council of Trent and Vatican Council I ).

• The majority of the Church Fathers who wrote about the Creation Days (e.g., Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Victorinus, Ephraem the Syrian, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Hippolytus, Chrysostom, and Athanasius) overwhelmingly believed they were 24 hours each. Origen disagreed but believed in an instantaneous creation. Following Origen’s line of thought, Augustine, while not opposed to the idea of 24 hour creation days, wondered if all the Creation events occurred in one day. But none of the Fathers envisioned a creation period for the Universe longer than six natural days.

• The work of Creation was finished by the close of Day 6, and nothing completely new has since been created.

• St Peter and Christ Himself in the New Testament confirmed the global Flood of Noah. It destroyed all land dwelling creatures except eight human beings and all kinds of non-human creatures aboard the Ark. Pope Boniface VIII taught in 1302 that the Ark prefigured the Church and that all living things on Earth were destroyed during the Flood.  (Unam Sanctam, Denz 468).

• Pius II in 1459 condemned the idea “that God created another world than this one, and that in its time many other men and women existed and that consequently Adam was not the first man. (Cum sicut Denz 717a)

• The historical existence of Noah’s Ark is regarded as most important as symbolic typology, as central to Redemption (1566 Catechism of the Council of Trent).

• Evolution must not be taught as fact and instead the pros and cons of evolution must be taught. (Pius XII, Humani Generis)

• Investigation into human evolution was allowed in 1950 because Pope Pius XII feared that an acceptance of evolutionism could adversely affect doctrinal beliefs.

      The Documentary Theory Of The Pentateuch (back to top)

For someone who expresses strong concern about obedience to the Magisterium, Mary Daly has some strange views.  In a side note, she seems to inadvertently cast doubt on whether Moses was the author of Genesis: “In the end, the literal reading of Genesis 1 should mean the reading of Genesis 1 as Moses read it. (Or whoever the author was.)”  This last sentence indicates that Mary believes the erroneous idea that the Pentateuch was written long after the time of Moses and some six centuries later was incorrectly ascribed back to him.  If Daly really understood the danger which modern-day revisionist exegesis poses for the credibility of the divinely revealed Genesis account, she would not even inadvertently give any credence to the now-discredited Documentary Theory.

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      Let us not forget that Moses was not a typical citizen.  He was both raised in and highly educated in the court of Pharaoh and would have been well aware of pagan mythology concerning Creation. Here is what I wrote in Creation Rediscovered, on pages 224-228, about Moses and the so-called Documentary Theory (which Mary Daly may not have bothered to read):

“A most important Origins controversy, affecting the credibility of Scripture, is the possibility that the first five books of Moses, (commonly known as the Pentateuch) may be the work of many editors (“redactors”), who revised the documents until they reached their final form.  It is contended that the work was finally developed long after the time of Moses and has been incorrectly ascribed back to him.  Involved also is the question of whether the belief in only one God (monotheism) was itself developed from earlier beliefs in many Gods.

The Documentary Theory (known also as the JEDP Theory) has its origins in antiquity but the modern movement gained great momentum from the evolutionary inspired religious preconceptions of liberal scholars such as K. H. Graf (d.1869) and Julius Wellhausen (d.1918).  The theory rejects the belief that Moses was substantially the writer or editor of the first five books of the Old Testament. What is proposed instead is that four “traditions” ―Yahwist, Elohistic, Deuteronomic, and Priestly―are spread throughout these books.

Scholars who support the JEDP Theory simply assert that the first Genesis Creation account is chronologically later than the second account, and that Genesis is explicable as mythology. However, creationists offer another possible explanation which does not resort to calling Genesis “mythology”. The initial account given in Genesis 1 may be entirely the supernatural inspiration of God given to the sacred writer, since no human beings could have witnessed all the Creation events. The remainder of Genesis may be the work of Moses, under divine inspiration certainly, but also drawing as editor on documents or clay tablets handed down by earlier patriarchs (in the line from Adam to Noah and Abraham and finally to Moses), and perhaps drawing on oral transmission of the earliest events handed down to Moses.  It was then recorded in the form of expression popular at the time of writing.

Whereas Gen. 1 is very likely the actual order in which Creation took place, the remainder may only be the record of the most significant events which took place. Thus only some information is recorded.  It would not necessarily have to be in strict chronological order.

If the Earth is no more than about 6,000 years old, it would be easily possible for an accurate account of the earliest events to have been handed down to Moses.  Man’s knowledge of these events could have been transmitted by both oral tradition and written methods, such as clay tablets.  However, with respect to the age of the Earth, God was also involved in the production of the Old Testament; it did not depend solely on human beings.

The Documentary Theory has long been rejected by many scholars as being both incorrect and obsolete.  Critics of it point out that the so-called “doublets” (e.g., repetition of various incidents), alleged to be found in the Pentateuch, do not mean that multiple authorship was involved. Also, the Graf-Wellhausen system predates the recovery of vast libraries of the ancient world, and the information discovered therein of the methods and styles used by ancient scribes.

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About 20,000 clay tablet fragments, ranging from one inch to two feet and dating back to 2300 BC, were recovered at Ebla, Syria, in the 1960’s. As Clifford Wilson notes, these discoveries show that the ancient Canaanite culture was contemporary with ancient Samaria and Egypt, and all three civilizations date back only to about 5,000 years ago.  The cuneiform inscriptions on clay tablets dealt with trade, literature, dictionaries and religious texts, and colophons [publishers inscriptions] were used when indicating a series of tablets. Among the Ebla discoveries was an account which attributed creation to one great being, known as “Lugal, the Great One”. This shows that written clay records about the Creation were in existence about 1,000 years before the time of Moses.

… The Documentary Theory has itself undergone many revisions. It  was rejected in 1906 by the Pontifical Biblical Commission (then an organ of the Magisterium), which declared that Moses was the human author of the Pentateuch, but that he may have utilized and edited earlier documents and oral traditions; and that there may have been some modifications or additions or even some faulty readings on the part of the copyists after the time of Moses. Although still discussed as though credible among scholars, it seems impossible that the Catholic Church can ever officially accept the Documentary Theory because JEDP speculation conflicts with crucial non-evolutionary Original Sin doctrine already declared in Tradition [which is thus unchangeable], including Genesis being primarily historical and devoid of mythology.

… the entire Mosaic law is supposed to have been practically non-existent until centuries after the time of Moses. Thus, the “law of Moses” supposedly did not precede by many centuries, but was itself later than the golden age of prophecy.  We should therefore speak of “the prophets and the law”, rather than “the law and the prophets” as referred to in Matt 22:40.

Christ’s own words strongly support the Mosaic authorship:  “For if you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”  (John 5:46-47),  “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him.” (Luke 24:27) If we believe in Christ the Creator about his promised Second Coming, with the fiery destruction of Earth, why not also believe Him in his assertions about Origins?   (emphasis added in this 2008 rebuttal of Daly)

The Flood Of Noah (back to top)

Mary Daly claims that, “… the problem remains that creationist opposition to evolution does not take serious account of the order of the fossil record. It is simply a guerrilla warfare against Darwinism which is certainly dead in its pure form, but which still gives its name to the concept of time-sequenced appearance of species.”  Unfortunately for Mary, her claim is completely false, as will become clear in the following comments. Supporters of Special Creation do indeed take very seriously the order of the fossil record.  Maybe she doesn’t properly read their books!

As already shown, Daly asserts with an air of certainty―as a “given”―the fantastic idea that there was a time-sequenced appearance of species over eons of time.  But she cannot deny with certainty the possibility that God really did choose to create life forms “in the beginning.” Many evolutionists and progressive creationists have long speculated that multitudes of new life forms appeared throughout the so-called Cambrian Era (over supposed millions of years). But a more credible explanation―consistent with extensive analysis of the buried evidence―is that the Cambrian Era is in reality evidence of a vast museum of rapid death and entombment; of multitudes of fossilized life forms which were rapidly caught up in the global Flood of Noah and its aftermath.

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The Cambrian Era contains an abundance of Earth’s fossils and is considered by many researchers to have formed in too short a time duration for macroevolution to give rise to new life forms during that time. [Some leading advocates of Intelligent Design actually now contend that the Cambrian Era is evidence of new life forms being brought into existence via Progressive Creation over millions of years.] In reality, contrary to Daly’s insistence, most of the fossils found in the strata record display an order of appearance consistent with their ability to withstand flooding and entombment in the vast sedimentary strata which now covers most of Earth.  For example, creatures that can fly would have survived much longer than fishes and animals, before being overwhelmed and buried.

It is well-known that the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould candidly admitted in the early 1970’s that the fossil record is devoid of intermediate stages, and he famously labeled their absence as “the trade secret of paleontology.” Charles Darwin long ago declared that the numbers of transitional links “should be inconceivably great if my theory be true” but he later became well aware that the missing links were not being found.  On the other hand, if the fossils in the various strata mostly trace from the cataclysmic global Flood of Noah only some 4,500 years ago, then it follows that the transitional links never existed and thus have never been missing!

Daly’s theology is seriously flawed in her assertion that our antecedents could have been animals. One of the conceptual problems facing all versions of evolution is this: When is a human being a human being?  How does one specifically define what constitutes a human being? I fully agree with Mary in her assertion from the 1994 CCC that “it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul” (para. 364). Many modern-day theologians, keen to somehow embrace evolution without adequately defining the term, have advanced the simplistic idea that God implanted a rational soul into an evolving animal. The problem facing them is this: At what point of time and evolutionary progress could an almost-human-being have reached (with multiple deaths occurring all along the way over hundreds of thousands of years) before God intervened and created the rational soul which denotes a human being. What became of all the multitudes of other almost-human-beings; did they all die out over hundreds of thousands of years before and after the time of Adam leaving no trace they ever existed?  None of the famous apelike fossils has stood up to close scrutiny; they all have been shown to be either mistakes (e.g., Nebraska Man) or fakes (e.g., Piltdown Man) or fully human.

The Catholic Church has long taught that human beings would not have known death if Adam had remained obedient to God and that Earth would otherwise have continued to remain in paradise-like condition.  As we know, everything changed radically after the tragedy of Original Sin occurred.  Mary Daly’s theological origins opinions are largely shaped by her pro-long ages scientific conviction and this mindset leads her to claim that, “the Church does not teach that any but human death was the result of Adam's sin, so the scientific time frame which implies animal death before Adam's sin is irrelevant.  Animals may certainly have died before Adam's sin; and plants must have, since he ate them.”  But alternatively if Earth really was created only about 6,000 years ago then there was little time anyway for animals to have died before the occurrence of Original Sin.  (Plant life does not contain blood, and man, animals and birds were all directed by God to eat plants (Gen. 1:29,30) before Adam’s disobedience, so Mary’s argument about the death of plants is itself irrelevant.)

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Daly makes a very misleading claim―that the Catholic Church has not specifically taught against the death of animals before Adam’s disobedience.   (One could also argue that neither has the Church specifically taught against the idea that the original human beings had two heads.)  Daly overlooks the fact that the Church has indeed taught constantly right from the beginning about the terrible state of travail brought on Adam’s disobedience (Original Sin). The very term “travail” strongly indicates that life on Earth before the occurrence of Original Sin is most unlikely to have involved the infamous “kill or be killed” evolutionary scenario involving dread, violence and great bloodshed. 

So that I am not open to misrepresentation on the question of animal death, I should also make clear that, since animals do not possess rational souls, there seems no reason to argue that animals couldn’t have died in the short time after their creation and before Adam’s sin.  Just as man’s intrinsic nature was not changed but became flawed after Adam’s sin, perhaps either divine or angelic protection over animals’ intrinsic predatory nature was removed because of Adam’s sin. The mode of animals’ deaths in a state of paradise is mysterious to us. Here is a section of what I wrote in my book about the question of death:

… But if many generations were involved, leading up to the time when Adam would arrive and make his awesome decision, then many deaths must also have occurred among his ancestors, as they were slowly evolving up to the time when human beings would acquire sufficient intelligence with which to comprehend the result of disobedience to God. Further, if evolution took place by random chance and life-death struggle, then death as a natural process was a deliberate part of God’s means of making man the pinnacle of evolution.

Scripture informs us otherwise. The death of human beings only entered into the world as a direct consequence of Original Sin; it only began to occur after the sin of Adam.  St. Paul teaches that “as by one man (i.e., Adam) sin entered into the world, and by sin death (Romans 5:12).  The teaching in the Bible is quite clear―death began with the sin of Adam ―“death reigned from Adam.” (Romans 5:14)

The writer of the book of Wisdom indicates that death of human beings was not intended by God: “For God made not death, and hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living. For He created all things that they might be. ... But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world.” (Wisdom 1:13-14, 2:23-24)

Vatican II reaffirmed this essential teaching in the Pastoral Constitution On The Church In The Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), and Pope Paul VI endorsed it in his Credo Of The People Of God (1968).  Pope John Paul II also endorsed it in the 1994 Catechism:

Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground,” for out of it he was taken.  Death makes its entrance into human history. [400]  God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. [413]  Even though man’s nature is mortal, God had destined him not to die. [1008]

…  In contrast to the creation deemed “good” by God, both Theistic Evolution and Progressive Creation unavoidably require belief that conditions on Earth were grim right from the beginning, and intended so by the Creator.  The disobedience of Adam was thus immaterial to this situation. Such belief stands in stark contrast to Catholic doctrine, reiterated again in the 1994 Catechism:

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Adam and Eve were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”... As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have had to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice”.  [375,376]   This entire harmony of original justice [was] lost by the sin of our first parents.  [379]

But what about the death of life forms other than human beings? Were animals, birds and fishes, especially predators, affected by the Fall?  Of creatures on Earth, only human beings possess rational souls and thus are destined for immortality. The Catholic Church is clear in the teaching on human death but has not given a definitive teaching on death of other life forms.  Much caution is therefore required here.

All Catholic long-age proponents face this same conceptual problem concerning death.  According to the reliable biblical genealogies given in the totally inerrant Bible [complete inerrancy of Scripture has been reiterated down the centuries by the Magisterium as an essential Catholic doctrinal belief] we know that Adam lived only about 6,000 years ago, thus travail on Earth has only been in existence for that amount of time.  As the 1994 Catechism states, “The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man”. [390] (italics in original)

Long age proponents do not seem to realize that their assumptions of eons of time necessarily contradict this “Good Creation” teaching long held dear in Catholic Tradition. All long ages theories postulate that all the features harmful to man (such as adverse mutations, destructive viruses, diseases, deformities, etc) must have been in existence for eons of time before Adam yet Catholic doctrine declares that these man-harming features only came into existence after the time of Adam. [CCC paras 400,401]. Similarly, long ages theories postulate a series of localized floods long before the time of Adam whereas Catholic doctrine declares that the Flood occurred long after the time of Adam. Long ages speculation in effect subtly denies that the original Creation was good and instead promotes the idea that Creation must always have been rotten. This blasphemous doctrine brazenly attributes to the Good God what is actually the effect of Original Sin committed by Adam!  It holds that the cancers, birth defects, and deformities found in the fossil record, long before the alleged “emergence” of man, are the result of God’s deliberate plan, not, as St. Paul taught―with all of the Fathers and Doctors―the consequence of Original Sin.

Thus, the pro-long ages enquirer unwittingly reinterprets and revises the traditional under-standing of Genesis, ironically in order to conform with highly unconvincing scientific speculation (e.g., the supposed existence of invisible 96% matter known as “dark energy” or “dark matter”). How can pro-long ages scientific speculation be accepted by Catholics when it unavoidably contradicts the “Good Creation” teachings given in the 1994 Catechism, and invites the two anathemas pronounced by Vatican Council I cited earlier (Denz 1817,1818)? 

Three quarters of the Earth's land surface contains sedimentary strata deposits, down to 10,000 meters deep, with massive coal beds, showing evidence of water-borne deposition. Mary Daly rejects the unanimous teaching of the Fathers that God brought on a worldwide Flood in punishment of sinful man.  The Flood is in fact highly regarded as symbolic typology denoting the waters flowing from the side of Christ.  Daly prefers a flawed scenario―a series of localized floods. This simplistic scenario overlooks the fact that many creatures could readily have moved away from localized danger to more agreeable locations elsewhere. Indeed, how would so many birds have been caught up in localized floods? How does she explain fish fossils found at mountain tops and the many fossilized jellyfish now lying on the open desert floor in central Australia? The localized flood idea doesn’t really account for the vast fossils graveyards which have been found; nor does it account for the rapid entombment of so many huge creatures such as dinosaurs and whales.

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Daly refers to “the insurmountable difficulty of finding evidence for a single, simultaneous, worldwide flood” but the voluminous evidence for a global cataclysmic event is easy to cite, and  I did so in my book. Either Mary Daly simply ignores evidence when it doesn’t suit her, or perhaps she did not read that part of my book!  One only need consider the many examples found around the world of polystrate fossilized tree trunks standing vertically through various layers of strata; it is self-evident that the strata must have been deposited in less time than it takes for a tree to rot away.  Many other evidences of worldwide rapid burial/entombment can easily be cited, such as the fascinating recent discoveries by secular scientists of soft, stretchy material (looking very much like blood tissue and with a deathly smell of cadavers) within the large leg bones of huge dinosaurs. Such findings are hardly consistent with dinosaurs being dead for 65 million years but they are quite consistent with an age of some 4,500 years since the Flood.

According to a recent newspaper article entitled “Tree of long life endures 4700 years” (THE AGE newspaper, Melbourne, Sept 24, 2007), the oldest living life form on Earth just happens to be bristlecone pine trees in California and they are dated at 4,700 years old.  Remarkably close to when the global Flood occurred, according to the reliable biblical account!

Regarding evidence for a cataclysmic worldwide Flood, there is a fascinating example on display for all the world to see in the open air at Disneyland, Los Angeles.  It is a large section of a petrified tree trunk which was donated by Mrs Walt Disney in 1955, and is located near the New Orleans section.  The wording on the plaque reads as follows:

PETRIFIED TREE
from the Pike Petrified Forest, Colorado

This section weighs five tons and measures 7.5 ft in diameter. The original tree, estim-ated to have been 200 ft tall, was part of a sub-tropical forest 55 to 70 million years ago in what is now Colorado.  Scientists believe it to be of the Redwood or Sequoia species. During some prehistoric era a cataclysmic upheaval caused silica laden water to overspread the living forest wood. Wood cells were changed during the course of time to sandstone. Opals were formed within the tree trunk itself.

Note that the plaque mentions “a cataclysmic upheaval.” A more likely explanation for the existence of the petrified forest in Colorado is that is was entombed rapidly under great pressure about 4,500 years ago during the global flood of Noah.  How could a localised flood account for a whole forest of huge trees being entombed rapidly and then being petrified before the trees could rot away? Further, as I reported in my book (p.139), it has been discovered in recent years by an Australian miner (Len Cram) that opals can now be “grown” in bottles in only several months.

Mary Daly also ignores the fact that both St Peter and Jesus Christ are quoted in the Bible as asserting their belief that a global Flood definitely occurred.   The first Pope, St. Peter, testified to the historical reality of the global Flood: “When they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water.” (1 Peter 3:20).  Jesus Christ also made clear that the global Flood definitely occurred (Matt. 24:37-39). Why would the Creator of the Universe, Jesus Christ―“through whom all things were made”―liken His glorious Second Coming to a fictional account about a non-existent flood?

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Morever, we cannot overlook the findings of the French Catholic researcher Guy Berthault and his colleagues in showing how strata formed under action of rushing water.  He has effectively overturned the simplistic principle of Superposition in which one layer of strata is assumed to have been poured over earlier layers.  Filmed experiments show how sediments form under the action of fast flowing water. Berthault has demonstrated the fallacy of the underlying assumptions of the geologic time-scale, while advances in genetics, embryology, information theory, and many other scientific disciplines confirm the utter bankruptcy of macroevolutionary theory.

Many readers would be familiar with the pro-long ages term “the present is the key to the past” but this slogan is incorrect.  The uniformitarian concept [the idea that processes operating in the remote geological past were not different from those observed in the present] popularized by Charles Lyell is contradicted by field evidence. Investigation into strata formation undertaken by Berthault shows that most strata develop sideways and vertically at the same time in turbulent water currents. He took the 800km long and 500m high “Tonto Group” in the Grand Canyon as an example of the rapidity with which such structures can form. From the size and position of the particles of sediment, the velocity and erosive force of the original current could be measured. His calculations showed that the complete structure would have taken just several weeks to deposit, not the 70 million years attributed to it as part of the Cambrian Period.

Thus, the principle of superposition—that each layer was laid down slowly and separately in succession—has now been challenged in a profound way. Indeed, Berthault’s research shows that the strata provide no chronology, either for the rocks or the fossils in them.

The evolutionist idea of “living fossils” should also be rejected.  Modern findings of the fish species Coelacanth —rediscovered alive in the 1930’s and unchanged over supposed millions of years—show no trace of evolution. Giant specimens of many creatures have been found as  buried fossils (e.g., a five-feet-high “wombat” was found in Australia, and a forty-feet-long crocodile skeleton discovered in Niger, Africa) but still nothing of transitional forms. All fossilized creatures found in the strata are very complex, and none is simple, and the reality of “stasis” (i.e., no change) cannot be ignored. Paleontologists and geneticists at the 1980 Chicago conference concluded that there is no grading-up [with transitional forms] found in the fossils, but instead there are regular gaps between species, which indicate that there never was a transition from one kind to another.

The Water Vapor Canopy (back to top)

Daly indulges herself in strawman arguments in attacking 1) the idea of a water vapor canopy providing all the water for the global Flood, and 2) a colossal amount of water in the global Flood that would be higher than Mt Everest. I know of no modern creation writer who advocates the latter concept.  Readers of her review are left with the misleading impression that she is refuting my views when in fact I do not advocate the canopy model which she attacks!

Instead I referred in my book to the very credible Flood scenario advocated in particular by Dr. Walt Brown (Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, M.I.T.). I pointed out that the pre-Flood mountains would have been much lower than those of today, and that the great bulk of water would have come from underground.  Fish fossils have been found at high mountain tops, and this indicates that immense changes took place upon Earth during and after the year-long Flood cataclysm. Careful researchers such as Walt Brown argue that high mountains such as Mt Everest would have been pushed up to great heights and underwater valleys sank down to great depths as Earth’s crust sought a new isostatic balance following the catastrophic events associated with the Flood.   Daly must surely be aware that such credible scientific scenarios have been canvassed for many years by highly credentialed origins researchers, yet she fails to even mention this in her haste to demolish her strawman arguments.

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On page 77 of my book I even made the following point: “It must be made clear, however, that the water vapor canopy theory still remains scientific speculation; other creationists are not convinced it even existed and have argued against it.”   So why does she accuse me of advocating views which clearly are not mine?

Cosmology (Study Of The Structure Of The Universe On The Largest Scale) (back to top)

Mary Daly mentions “the vast pre-human time frames of modern cosmology” in her dismissal of my book.  She also asserts that, “the cosmology of a particular culture is like its language.  It’s the way its members understand words.  God speaks to us within the parameters of our cosmological understanding for the same reason he speaks to us in our own language.  There is no other way!”   But whose cosmology is she referring to, and how can she claim with certainty that God intervened to correct and shape the ancient Hebrew cosmology?   What is the source of the authority on cosmology to which she defers?

And what actually is now known about the workings of the Universe?  Answer: Nowhere near as much in support of eons of time as is commonly supposed. The following secular science book contains surprising statements which show that the modern understanding of the Universe has serious limitations: Philip’s Astronomy Encyclopedia, A comprehensive and authoritative A-Z guide to the Universe  (General Editor: Sir Patrick Moore, 456 pages A4 size, first published in 1987.  Revised edition and expanded version published in 2002 by , an imprint of Octopus Publishing Group, 2-4 Heron Quays, London E14 4JP)

In his foreword to this very comprehensive book, Leif J. Robinson, Editor Emeritus, Sky & Telescope magazine, candidly states the following admissions: (emphasis added)

The progress of astronomy―or, more precisely, astrophysics―over the past century, and particularly the past generation, is not easily pigeon-holed. On the one hand,  profound truths have tumbled abundantly from the sky. Here are four diverse examples:

1. Our universe began some 14 billion years ago in a single cataclysmic event called the Big Bang.

2. Galaxies reside mainly in huge weblike ensembles.

3. Our neighbouring planets and their satellites come in a bewildering variety.

4. Earth itself is threatened (at least within politicians’ horizons) by impacts from mean-spirited asteroids or comets.

On the other hand, ordinary citizens may well feel that astronomers are a confused lot and that they are farther away than ever from understanding how the universe is put together and how it works. For example, ‘yesterday’ we were told the universe is expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang; ‘today’ we are told it is accelerating due to some mysterious and possibly unrelated force.  It doesn’t help that the media dine exclusively on ‘gee-whiz’ results, many of them contradictory and too often reported without historical context.

… It’s sobering to catalogue some of the objects and phenomena that were unknown, or at least weren’t much on astronomers’ minds, only a generation or two ago.

The one that strikes me most is that 90% (maybe 99%) of all the matter in the universe is invisible and therefore unknown. We’re sure it exists and is pervasive throughout intergalactic space (which was once thought to be a vacuum) because we can detect its gravitational influence on the stuff we can see, such as galaxies.  But no one has a cogent clue as to what this so-called dark matter might be. …

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A scientific ‘war’ was fought in the 1960s as to whether clusters of galaxies themselves clustered. Now even the biggest of these so-called superclusters are known to be but bricks in gigantic walls stretching across hundreds of millions of light-years.  These walls contain most of the universe’s visible matter and are separated from each other by empty regions called voids.

… Where do astronomers go from here? ‘Towards the unknown’ may seem like a cliché, but it isn’t.  With so much of the universe invisible or unsampled, there simply have to be many enormous surprises awaiting! When it comes to the Big Questions, I don’t know whether we are children unable to frame our thoughts, or teenagers at sea, or adults awash in obfuscating information.  Researchers find the plethora of new discoveries―despite myriad loose ends and conundrums―to be very exciting, for it attests to the vibrancy and maturation of the science. Yet, as we enter the 21^st century, astronomers are still a very long way from answering the two most common and profound questions people ask: what kind of universe do we live in, and is life pervasive?

That all this should appear in a modern, comprehensive, scientific textbook shows that we should not accept Mary Daly’s aggressive insistence that the Universe has been in existence for eons of time. Indeed, if, as indicated in the Bible, our omnipotent and omniscient Creator created all matter in the twinkling of an eye, and chose to unfold the creation over six days, and stretched out the heavens (i.e., the Universe) on Day 4, then what is being observed by astronomers today is what has been occurring for only about 6,000 years.

In the scenario which I suggested in Creation Rediscovered, whatever was created in rudi-mentary form throughout the Universe on Day 1 was rapidly transformed and adorned on Day 4, and light from immensely distant stars in the firmament (i.e., space) of the heavens would already have been seen from Earth by the first human beings and immediately able to be used “for signs and for seasons” (Gen.1-14). Since God created space, time and matter anyway, such a divinely instituted cosmology is not out of the question and it can reasonably be deduced from historical clues given in Scripture. After all, we are told repeatedly in the Bible that God “stretched out the heavens” (e.g., Isaiah 40:22).  And all that was needed for light to shine upon Earth before the Sun was brought to completion on Day 4 was a source of light, which God could easily provide―so on what ground do we reject this historical revelation in Genesis! Again, we need to keep in mind what God chose to do and not what He could have done.

The Solar System is truly astonishing in the way that various objects behave within it.  What is the explanation for the natural formation of the incredibly varied Solar System? Scientists still cannot formulate a fully comprehensive theory of how it could come into existence naturally following the supposed Big Bang. The very existence of Uranus and Neptune constitutes a baffling, well nigh impossible, conceptual problem for modeling of naturalistic Solar System formation.  Consider some fascinating recent discoveries: Two moons of Saturn (i.e., Janus and Epimetheus) overlap by 30 miles in the center of their orbits but actually swap places every four years instead of colliding. The faster inner moon slows down and moves to the outer orbit and the slower outer moon speeds up and moves to the inner orbit, and then they chase each other for another four years before swapping places again!  Saturn’s “rings” are accompanied by patrolling shepherd satellites, which effectively contain the particles. The dwarf planet Pluto and its moon Charon actually gyrate around each other—around the center of gravity which lies between them. Such discoveries are acknowledged by the Smithsonian Institute in their book Planets―A Smithsonian Guide, and also by NASA.  And, as reported in Philip’s Astronomy Encyclopedia, the fact that the Solar System teems with resonances (intricate interdependent behaviour patterns affecting planets, satellites, rings and asteroids) is also completely astonishing and baffling. Such fascinating curiosities in the Solar System are more easily explained as the products of intelligent design rather than chance events. And they are entirely explicable in a young-age cosmology model divinely instituted only some 6,000 years ago on Day 4!

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Mary Daly insists that, “the six-day schedule of Genesis 1 contradicts geology, astrophysics, microbiology… ” but she doesn’t explain exactly how it does; we only have her word for it.  On the contrary, her preferred Big Bang long-ages scenario clearly contradicts the order of creation given in Genesis.  In the Bible we are informed that Earth was created before light was made, but Big Bang theory holds instead that a tiny speck of matter which amazingly contained all the atoms in the entire Universe came out of nowhere and then it blew up and then it stretched itself out, and Earth and its inhabitants only arrived on the scene billions of years later.

There are some fascinating clues given in Scripture which indicate that God chose instead to implement the creation rapidly:  “I made the earth; and I created man upon it: my hand stretched forth the heavens, and I have commanded all their host”. (Isaiah 45:12)  “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, and made it, the very maker thereof: he did not create it in vain: he formed it to be inhabited.  I am the Lord, and there is no other”. (Isaiah 45:18).  We know also that God made human beings male and female “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6). 

The crowning achievement of Creation was the creation of human beings, and not creation of the Universe per se.  Creation of human beings almost 14,000,000,000 years after creation of the Universe, with Earth effectively lying idle for almost 4,500,000,000 years, is highly inconsistent with the idea of Earth being formed to be inhabited!

Mary could just as easily claim that the instantaneous conversion of six jugs of water at Cana into delicious wine contradicts physics and biology. After all, natural scientists can demonstrate that to produce a delicious wine requires several years.  And yet Jesus produced wine from water in an instant.  A theistic evolutionist may claim that God could not have made the stars with an appearance of great age if they are only thousands of years old, because God would then be a “Deceiver.”  But such reasoning is fallacious; modern claims about the “appearance” of age can be highly misleading.   Consider what happened in the creation of Adam.  It seems beyond doubt that Adam must have been created in adult form so that  1) he would be able to fully comprehend the awesome choice of obedience given to him by God on behalf of all future human beings, and 2) so that he would be old enough to soon be married to Eve. It follows that ten minutes after he was created Adam would have appeared to be aged about 25 years old when in fact he was only ten minutes old.  Who has been deceived about Adam’s age? No-one, yet fallible modern human beings, conditioned to the incessant background “noise” in society that the Universe must be billions of years old, can easily come to the wrong conclusion that God has indulged in deceit because He created Adam with the appearance of age beyond his true age.  Yet God cannot and has not deceived anyone; rather, it is fallible modern human beings, acting on incorrect scientific speculation, who simply have jumped to the wrong conclusion!

So it is with the “appearance” of age for the Universe. God showed truthful witnesses, including St. John and the Blessed Virgin Mary, exactly what He did at the wedding of Cana.  It is up to us whether we believe truthful God-appointed witnesses or the limited testimony of our fallible, limited sense experience. Almost every day we hear news reports in the media of events taking place around the world and, since it is impossible for us personally to travel to all of these places rapidly and evaluate each one individually, we have little choice but to consider these reports as being either correct or erroneous to some extent.  Ultimately we have to trust the credibility of others close to the scene.  God has revealed to us in the plainest possible language in the totally inerrant Bible that He created everything by fiat, supernaturally, only some 6,000 years ago―so why ignore the totally trustworthy Creator who can neither deceive nor be deceived! If Mary Daly  chooses to believe that the stars were created billions of years ago, it is not because the evidence compels her to do so but because she prefers to trust the fallible opinions of modern natural scientists who were not there when the Universe was created, rather than trust the plain testimony of the trustworthy divine Creator who was there when the Universe was supernaturally created.

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Fr Georges Lemaitre, the “father” of Big Bang theory, was the very first President of the strongly pro-evolution, pro-long ages Pontifical Academy of Sciences when it was re-instituted in 1936.  He obviously was well placed to try to convince subsequent Popes that the Genesis text can be disregarded and replace it with long-ages Big Bang cosmology.  It seems clear that he tried to convince Pius XII into supporting the idea of long ages.  Ironically for Fr Lemaitre, Big Bang theory has in recent times come under increasing rejection by scientists as unacceptable because it is completely dependent on fudge factors which would not be tolerated in other scientific disciplines.

Why force God to take such a colossal amount of time (incomprehensibly long for human beings to truly envisage) before getting around to the very point of the creation―the creation of human beings with rational souls to know and love and serve God?  God could have done so―but where is the slightest clue given by the Sacred Writer than He did? Where is the clue in Genesis that the obvious literal-as-given sense is not to be believed but instead we are to believe that God took billions of years to create the Universe and Earth and its inhabitants?  Are we seriously expected to believe that the Catholic Church misled everyone for some 1,850 years about the very integrity of the Genesis foundational doctrines? Can we trust Mary Daly’s  assertion that the Genesis text can only now truly be understood in a revisionist sense dependent upon flawed scientific assumptions?  Was she there when God created the Universe?  I believe that we should instead trust the totally trustworthy Second Person/Creator/Word/Redeemer/ Judge―who cannot deceive nor be deceived―who was there at Creation and who ensured that a partial account of what really happened was revealed in the totally inerrant Bible.

It’s fascinating that Daly scolds me for reporting on the possibility that the speed of light may once have traveled faster than now: “The ever-lengthening string of supporting miracles which the literalist must add to the act of Creation, (faster travel of light, for example…” Ironically for her, some long-ages theorists, grappling with the very nasty light-travel problem known as the Horizon Problem (which holds that the Universe is twice as wide as it is old), have themselves postulated the idea that the speed of light may initially have been much faster than it is today to accommodate inflation of the Universe!

In any event, is it not normal procedure for an author to make some mention of opposing views in a book? In her haste to criticize me, Mary Daly failed to mention the fact that on p.160 of my book I wrote, “However, various creationist physicists have disagreed with the reducing speed-of-light idea [proposed in the mid 1980s by Setterfield and Norman], citing especially doubts about the credibility of the data gathered many years ago. Russell Humphreys proposes instead …”

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On p.103 of Philip’s Astronomy Encyclopedia there are further surprising statements about the nature of the Universe which one seldom sees in secular media reports, and which are almost never reported or considered by dissenting scholars in their fantastic pro long-ages revisionist opinions which contradict the “Good Creation” doctrinal teaching held dear since antiquity in Catholic Tradition:

… according to supporters of the Big Bang … the whole Universe was created in a single instant about 20 billion years ago and is presently expanding. In the future it may continue to expand or possibly collapse back on itself depending on the total amount of matter and energy in it, that is, whether or not the Universe is open or closed. An important cosmological question is the Missing Mass Problem: the amount of matter we see in the Universe is far smaller (by a factor of about 100) than the amount we infer from the motions of the galaxies.

… Attempts to obtain a grand view of the Universe have led to the construction of cosmo-logical models. A starting point for many cosmologists has been the finding that the Universe appears much the same in all directions (the so-called Isotropy) and at all distances (Homogeneity). [This is important in comprehending the “Horizon Problem”. How could the various temperatures throughout the Universe after the supposed Big Bang occurred mix together and dissipate down to a uniform extremely low temperature throughout the empty void regions of the entire Universe in only 14 billion years?  It should take much longer than that.]

… Another important discovery in cosmology was the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, which provided strong evidence against the Steady-State Theory. Its discovery also brought with it problems of its own: we do not understand how this background radiation can be so uniform in all directions when it comes from different parts of the universe that have never been in communication with each other. Attempts have been made to invoke a very rapid period of expansion in the Universe’s history in order to remove this difficulty (the so-called inflationary uni-verse), but these attempts appear to many cosmologists to be less than convincing.

Who would have expected to find an open admission by secular scientists that only about 1% to 4% of the matter required to “drive” the forces of gravity throughout the Universe has been found?  It’s amazing to contemplate what kind of blind faith is required to accept on faith (without a Creator to defer to) that the other 96% is invisible but yet it somehow still must exist somewhere. But perhaps the most astonishing comment about cosmology in the Philip’s book is this extract from page 104:

Cosmology is presently based on a considerable amount of speculation fuelled by relatively little observational material. Future generations of cosmologists will be presented with plenty of problems―and opportunities. Even if we were to obtain a good understanding of the present and future behaviour of the Universe, we would still be far from comprehending what happened before the Big Bang.

Big Bang Credibility Problems (back to top)

            As I reported in my 2004 booklet Special Creation Rediscovered, Big Bang theory has severe conceptual problems which the general public seldom gets to hear about.  Consider some  important points raised by the pro-long-ages science writer John Gribbin in his book The Case Of The Missing Neutrinos (and Other Curious Phenomena of the Universe):

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1) What came before the supposed singularity? [Did everything arise from an infinitely tiny speck of matter—containing all the atoms in the entire Universe and which somehow came into being out of nothing—which suddenly exploded in the supposed Big Bang? Did such a speck ever exist, or is it wishful speculation?]

2) From the supposed super-dense fireball which then emerged, how did incredibly hot matter get segregated from cold matter out of the uniformity of the fireball?

3) Immensely vast spaces exist throughout the Universe at an incredibly cold temperature—about minus 270 degrees Celsius—yet there are also billions of stars at immensely hot temperatures! How could this seeming contradiction come to be, from a supposed original tiny speck of matter?

4) How did the Universe get into the universally acknowledged state of tending inevitably towards increasing entropy?

5) What natural force could have “stretched the heavens? To naturalistic theorists, it is as though some force gave the Universe a violent push outwards when it was at an infinitely tiny stage. Others believe there are innumerable universes and that time warps give rise endlessly to new universes via wormholes [theoretical passages] within Black Holes.

            Mary Daly obviously believes strongly in Big Bang theory which not only contradicts the order of creation revealed in Genesis but also has been attacked in recent years by secular scientists. In a surprising twist since Daly posted her review of my book, the following 2004 protest letter against Big Bang speculation was made by 33 physicists.  They have been joined by over 400 scientists who agree with them. (See the website www.cosmologystatement.org). Here is the protest letter in its entirety (emphasis added):

An Open Letter To The Scientific Community (New Scientist, May 22, 2004):

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed―inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypo-thetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.

Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.

What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.

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Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that “science is the culture of doubt,” in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.

Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific inquiry.

Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method―the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe. [End of Open Letter]

In view of such mounting criticism of Big Bang theory, Mary Daly may have little option but to retract her aggressive assertions about acceptance of Big Bang theory.

Age Of The Universe (back to top)

    Whereas it seems unlikely ever to prove scientifically that the Universe is only 6,000 years old, a strong case can be made, with sound scientific and theological arguments, that it cannot be billions of years old.  But, as already noted, Mary Daly has no doubt that there was an “earlier history of the universe” and thus she is driven unavoidably to hold that the six 24 hour Creation days belief in Tradition must be mistaken.

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For over 1,800 years the Church had no problem with 24 hrs creation days, notwithstanding the well-known views of St Augustine and a few others who speculated about the possibility that the creation may have been instantaneous. In terms of the modern Origins debate, one can ask the following question: Why are doctrinal teachings known with certainty from Sacred Tradition now in the dock when it is mistaken scientific beliefs which should be in the dock? Much more accurate information is now known about scientific aspects affecting cosmology and no doubt much more is yet to be discovered. While profound problems are gradually coming to the surface through scientific research, one gets the impression that these problems are barely known among most Catholic scholars who support long ages.

            Why was it only when various 19^th century Church scholars caved in to mistaken scientific opinions in favour of long ages that various Catholic teachings on Origins began to go so horribly wrong? For example, Fathers Francis Spirago and Richard F. Clarke SJ in The Catechism Explained (first published in 1899, then republished again in 1921 with an Imprimatur from the Archbishop of New York, and later republished in 1993 by TAN Books, pp.132,133) simply dismissed 24 hours creation days because they assumed that modern science seemed to have proved that the Universe is billions of years old! The authors gave no details whatsoever and did not even address any possible clash with declared teachings already known in Tradition. This seems incredible in a book which is supposed to guide the faithful on theological matters, including the integrity of the foundational Genesis creation account.

    According to the Douay-Rheims Bible, in the Genesis account Adam was called by God to name all the “beasts of the earth” (Gen. 2:19-20), so he must have named the dinosaurs only thousands of years ago. But according to the long-ages idea the dinosaurs were by then already long extinct and buried out of sight some 65 million years ago!   And now in recent years secular scientists have discovered soft tissue, which appears to contain blood vessels, in the huge leg bones of giant dinosaurs fossils found entombed in the strata!

      St Augustine did not reject the idea of 24 hours days; he simply wondered whether the Creation events may have been accomplished much more quickly. He did not insist that his speculative view was superior to 24 hours and he made clear that his instantaneous creation speculation may be incorrect and that he had no real quarrel with the idea of 24 hrs creation days.

      And what of deference to the greater majority of Fathers who taught that the creation days really were 24 hours creation days? As already noted, the majority of Fathers who wrote on it favored 24 hrs for each creation day. Those who did not, opted for an instantaneous creation.  This unanimous interpretation of the Fathers—that creation took place by divine “fiat” in a period no longer than six natural days—ought to be deferred to in accordance with Pope Leo XIII’s teaching in Providentissimus Deus (1893) that the unanimous teaching of the Fathers must also be believed by modern day Catholics.  Since that Pope also taught that the literal obvious sense must take pride of place, I contend from his encyclical teaching that those who propose an alternate view for a particular text have the onus of proof upon them. A young-age proponent does not have to prove that the Universe is “young”; rather, the onus lies with the proponent of long ages to prove that the Universe is indeed millions/billions of years old. A meaning of 24 hrs for the creation days is clearly the literal obvious sense which comes across to the reader and the Church did not question this understanding until the flawed concept of uniformitarianism began to take hold in secular society in the late 18^th century and to be advocated by some Church scholars in the 19^th century.

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Mary Daly however insists that there is no doubt that the Universe is billions of years old:  

The radiometric dating of rocks and the calculations of star recession and red-shift have left our cosmologists with no doubt that the age of the universe is in the billions of years.  I am aware of no substantial doubt about this except from creationist circles where a small number of degreed professors engage exclusively in creationist alibis.  The evidences behind these conclusions are available in any elementary physics, astronomy, or geology text.  As long as we can make observations and take measurements, we are rightfully in the realm of natural science, and that includes radiometric dating of rocks or red-shift measurement of star recessions.  These things are relevant to the earlier history of the universe, and to the evaluation of “origins theories” which teach an origin too recent to accommodate the reality of events for which scientists find clear and compelling evidence.

      So what is the truth about radiometric dating of rocks or red-shift measurement of star recessions?  Where is the compelling evidence to which Daly refers? Are there dating methods that can give us accurate information about the age of something, free of bias on the part of those doing the dating? John Woodmorappe has written an excellent reference book The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods: Why million/billion-year results are not credible  (1999) which examines the limitations of dating methods.

    The Carbon Dating method was intended by Willard Libby to be useful for only some tens of thousands of years, but many individuals mistakenly think that this method can be used to prove ages of millions of years. Carbon-14 is an element that continually enters the atmosphere (and the carbon cycle) by the action of cosmic rays, which convert nitrogen (N-14) into carbon-14. It continually leaves the atmospheric system by its radioactive decay back into N-14. Researchers contesting the credibility of long-ages cite the fact that equilibrium of N-14 to C-14 has not yet been reached, but it should have been reached after only a supposed 30,000 years.

    Various dating methods can give widely varying ages for the same object, and there can be subtle pressure upon scientists to ensure that they discern the “correct” age to suit one’s presuppositions. The problem remains: How can we know for sure the exact isotopic (atomic) composition of certain elements during ancient times, and any impact upon them since then of environmental factors, such as a global Flood?

            Discerning the real age of an object from the apparent age can be quite difficult. For example, regarding the method known as potassium-argon (K/Ar), since as much as 1% of Earth’s atmosphere consists of argon, and rocks can easily absorb this gas, how is one to know how much of the isotope Argon 40 has come by decay from potassium and how much from the atmosphere? And if radioactive decay rates believed to be constant actually varied in the past, the presently calculated ages may be misleading and invalid.

The decaying strength of Earth's magnetic field poses another serious problem for the idea of an ancient Earth. Careful measurements of the declining strength of Earth's magnetic field suggest an upper limit of its age at requirements far below the eons of time postulated by long-ages proponents. If the rate of decay measured during the past 160 years is extrapolated to a mere 10,000 years ago, Earth would have been too hot to sustain life!  In Creation Rediscovered I reported on the fine scientific research done by the physicist Russell Humphries:

[Thomas G.] Barnes’ contention that Earth’s magnetic field was caused by a decaying electric current in Earth’s metallic core stands in opposition to the self-sustaining dynamo model favored by evolutionists. Russell Humphreys has more recently proposed that rapid reversals of the magnetic field could have been brought on by the plunging of tectonic plates at the onset of the global Flood, with hot fluids rising and cold fluids sinking. He proposed that magnetic reversals should be found in rocks known to have cooled in days or weeks. As Jonathan Sarfati has pointed out, rapid reversals and fluctuations would result in even faster decay.  Subsequent confirmation, by others, of Humphreys’ predictions lends great support to the likelihood that Earth cannot be older than about 10,000 years.

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    Since Daly’s review of my book was posted, the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) group of highly qualified scientists, of whom Humphreys is a member, have published their findings after eight years of intensive research in a book entitled Thousands … Not Billions (Master Books 2005). It is a most impressive and informative document. These scientists are not indulging in “creationist alibis,” as Daly claims, but instead are careful researchers who have shown overwhelmingly that radiometric dating methods do not support an age of billions of years. Here are their comments about Radioisotope Dating Assumptions (p42.):

There are three basic assumptions in the radioisotope dating methods.  The first assumption is that the initial conditions of the sample are known accurately. This includes any daughter isotope atoms existing in rocks at the time of formation. Isochron plots may help to indicate the presence of such daughter isotopes. The second assumption is that we can tell whether or not the rock has exchanged atoms with the surroundings during its history. Isochron plots may help in determining the closed or open nature of rocks. The third assumption is that the nuclear decay rate or half-life of the parent isotope has remained constant since the rock was formed. However, if the rate of decay has changed during the rock sample’s history, similar to a clock that runs either fast or slow, the calculated radioisotope age would obviously be incorrect. Isochron methods are not sensitive to testing the correctness of this third assumption.

The RATE team has found numerous examples for which the first two assumptions fail to apply. Perhaps the most significant results of the RATE project, however, relate to the third assumption, namely, the constancy of nuclear decay during the earth’s past. … RATE research has obtained multiple lines of objective physical evidence that nuclear decay rates have been much higher in the past than we can measure today.  This evidence can account for why the radioisotope methods often give ages in the range of millions or billions of years.

            The RATE team also show that the existence of Carbon14 is indeed a strong argument in favour of “recent” creation: “The presence of C-14 in “very old” fossils, rocks, coal, and diamonds is clearly in conflict with the long-ages timescale.”(p.56). Another RATE finding concerns the fact that helium found in great abundance in the bedrocks is inconsistent with long ages dating.  Helium should easily leach out through rocks (p.78):

The RATE helium diffusion measurements show that such high concentrations of helium simply cannot be sustained for more than a few thousand years.  The only way we can reconcile the observed amount of uranium decay with the observed levels of helium retention is with one or more periods of accelerated nuclear decay in the earth’s recent past.  We conclude that the RATE helium diffusion experiments give strong evidence for accelerated decay of the uranium atoms inside zircon crystals, and a young age for the earth.

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The RATE scientists have also examined the polonium radiohalos controversy made famous by the work of Robert Gentry.  Mysterious secondary sources of polonium radiohalos were also found in compressed coalified wood in Colorado in three different geological formations one above each other, yet supposedly millions of years apart in age. The parentless polonium halos point to a young age for these rocks and for Earth exactly as Gentry predicted years ago. (p.176):

Radiohalos are tiny spherical defects in rocks.  They result from the decay of clusters of radioactive atoms, mainly uranium and polonium.  The frequent occurrence of these halos in rocks is evidence for widespread nuclear decay.  Halos are present in abundance in granites whose formation accompanied the Genesis flood.  This indicates that a large-scale acceleration of nuclear decay occurred during the year-long Flood event. … The RATE research suggests that the polonium isotopes are derived from uranium via accelerated decay. The polonium atoms then were rapidly removed and transported away from their uranium sources by underground hydrothermal fluids.  The polonium atoms accumulated at new sites and formed secondary radiohalos near their uranium parent halos.  Thus, the short-lived isotopes are not parentless after all, but instead were physically removed from their point of origin.

On another aspect concerning the age question, a huge mound (now called Uluru and formerly known as Ayer’s Rock) in central Australia has sharp-edged sand crystals, instead of crystals with rounded sides, and this is consistent with rapid deposition and hardening.  It is the “tip of the iceberg” of a vast underground sandstone deposit (all in vertical strata), and it could not have survived for millions of years because wind erosion would have worn it down long ago.

Daly accuses me of arguing that God would have to have held the matter which He created on Day 1 in miraculous and intense refrigeration for two days:

But the Genesis author was certainly not aware of the transcendent refrigeration requirements of Keane's cosmology, nor, perhaps, is Keane, so they are not walking in faith when they believe these things.  Indeed, there is there is no reason why this refrigerant should be an article of faith for anyone else.  It is just nonsense, just ignorant theorizing by someone who has not done his physics and astronomy homework.

From where does she get such a conclusion?   I have never heard of this scenario and I did not even imply it; I simply stated what can reasonably be deduced from the trustworthy divine Genesis revelation―that God created light and protostars on Day 1 and later on Day 4 He rapidly transformed and stretched out and adorned the Universe in the twinkling of an eye! I am not forcing God to do anything.  Daly’s refrigeration assertion about me is another strawman argument which she then dismisses in her “take-no-prisoners” style! Moreover, Daly deviates from the teaching of all the Fathers of the Church when she attempts to limit God to what could be done through natural processes during the creation period when God acted supernaturally.

Indeed, as already shown, Daly’s certainty about cosmology is not shared by the scientific authors of  Philip’s Astronomy Encyclopedia which was published at about the same time she posted her review of my book. In contrast to the style employed by Mary Daly, they write in dispassionate terms in presenting their information and conclusions. I wonder if she will accept their carefully considered finding that “Cosmology is presently based on a considerable amount of speculation fuelled by relatively little observational material.”

Geocentrism (back to top)

            Mary Daly also finds fault with me over the issue of geocentrism. Her unwarranted comment of, “Keane's unwillingness to take a firm stance even on this matter …” implies that I have not taken a firm stance on anything! Her opinion is, once again, incorrect: “The issue of geocentrism, which is no longer in doubt, is Keane's opportunity to show how well he can handle this matter.  Clearly, he has nothing to offer.”

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      In fact I am not convinced that there is an overwhelming case in favour of geocentrism and I politely made this clear in Creation Rediscovered. But, in contrast to Daly, I think that ongoing discussion of the merits of geocentrism should be welcomed and carried out calmly and objectively so that all sides are seen to be heard free from ridicule.  I wrote on p.240: “Clearly we are faced with a most mysterious Universe, and its physical form ought to be investigated in a spirit of searching for truth.”  What is there to lose from such debate? How often in the history of science has a minority view eventually been found to be correct, or has led to substantial modification of prevailing scientific beliefs? Who can say with absolute certainty that a scientific discovery is fully understood and can never be improved upon? Rather, it is much more appropriate to assert that a scientific finding is known only to “a high degree of near-certainty.”  Indeed, scientists are supposed always to keep an open mind and to never be fully satisfied with the prevailing wisdom in their disciplines―this is how errors are discovered and dealt with as soon as possible.  Here are extracts from my book (p.235-237) concerning geocentrism:

Some researchers argue that a valid scientific case can be made for geocentrism and various experiments have been conducted with respect to solar eclipses. Unfortunately, direct observation from outer space is impossible; to observe the solar system fully, in order to judge relative motion, would require traveling an impossibly long distance away from Earth.  Nevertheless, things are certainly not black and white about the physical form of the Universe, as the physicist Wolfgang Smith notes [in Teilhardism and the New Religion (p.134)]: “In the light of 20^th Century physics one can no longer say that Copernicus was right and Ptolemy wrong. All that one can legitimately claim is that the Copernican coordinate system leads to simpler laws of planetary motion (which, incidentally, is precisely what Copernicus himself did claim).”   …

For the layman, in addition to trying to cope with baffling concepts such as relativity, the issue is further complicated by difficulties in definition of terms. What exactly is geo-centrism? Is Earth located at the center of the Universe? Is Earth regarded as stationary or does it rotate on its axis, and does it move through space?  Does geocentrism function according to the old Ptolemaic theory, with the Sun and all the planets rotating around the Earth in circular orbits, which would involve the old problem of epicycles? [Note added in 2008: The Tycho Brahe model of geocentrism postulates that Earth revolves on its axis and that the Sun travels around it daily, while all the planets travel around the Sun in elliptical orbits.  This is radically different from what the Church had always believed about circular geocentrist orbits prior to the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. It seems to differ in only one very major aspect from heliocentrism.]

Could the Sun really travel about 585 million miles daily around the Earth (over 24 million miles per hour), with no sign of a fiery trail?  And how could the incredibly distant galaxies also travel daily around the Earth, at speeds far exceeding the speed of light? Further, does the Bible actually assert geocentrism?  A strong case can be made that the Earth is the cultural centre of the Universe, as this is the only known place where life exists or has existed. … However, the Earth being the cultural centre of the Universe is one thing but what about its actual physical location?  Are we at the very center of the Universe or somewhere else, and where does Scripture really teach that Earth is physically at the center of the Universe? …

Recent Popes [e.g., Leo XIII] have taught definitively that figurative senses―conveyed “according to appearances”―are also employed in the Bible, and we know that Scripture must be understood in the sense intended by the sacred writer.  Various passages (e.g., in Psalms 93,96,104), often cited as proof that geocentrism is asserted in Scripture, would require acceptance only in the literal-as-given sense, but the same passages are open to under-standing in a figurative sense, thus not necessarily supportive of geocentrism.

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Moreover, I believe that there are better arguments which are much more easily grasped and much more likely to achieve beneficial results in convincing high ranking members of the Magisterium to return the concept of Special Creation to center stage within Catholicism. These arguments are outlined throughout this response to Mary Daly’s review.  They are theological and exegetical arguments such as the fact that long-ages belief unavoidably contradicts the “Good Creation” doctrine long taught―and still taught―as obligatory belief in Tradition, together with many modern scientific arguments which contradict macroevolution and which are fully consistent only with a “recent” creation of the Universe and its life forms.

Creation Of The Heavens (back to top)

            Mary Daly curiously makes only a fleeting comment about relativity in her review:

Keane closes his section on geocentrism with some remarks about the confusions of relativity (p. 238ff). People have heard the rumor from physics that “everything is relative” meaning every motion is different depending on your point of view. They have drawn the conclusion that  every value undoubtedly depends on other values in a completely circular manner. Such ideas are very destructive.  However, the most fascinating point about relativity,  a point that needs to be better understood, is that Einstein did not say that “everything is relative” but that “everything is relative to the speed of light in a vacuum.” 

I welcome Mary’s reference to the “confusions of relativity” which I discussed in p. 238 of Creation Rediscovered:

Addressing the impact of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity upon 20^th Century society, the historian Paul Johnson articulates [in his book Modern Times (p. 4) (1992)] deep concerns felt by many about the continuing, amoral, cultural drift:

For most people, to whom Newtonian physics, with their straight lines and right angles, were perfectly comprehensible, relativity never became more than a vague source of unease. It was grasped that absolute time and absolute length had been dethroned; that motion was curvilinear. All at once, nothing seemed certain in the movements of the spheres. … At the beginning of the 1920’s the belief began to circulate, for the first time at a popular level, that there was no longer any absolutes: of time and space, of good and evil, of knowledge, above all of value. Mistakenly but perhaps inevitably, relativity became confused with relativism. 

But the surprising brevity of Daly’s comments concerning relativity perhaps indicates that she may not be well informed on this highly important aspect of origins research; otherwise she would have been more vocal about it in her review. She does assert, however, that, “The radiometric dating of rocks and the calculations of star recession and red-shift have left our cosmologists with no doubt that the age of the universe is in the billions of years.”  Unfortunately she did not raise the pertinent question: The age of the universe measured by what clocks?

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Daly does not mention that I referred in my book (p.160) to the ground-breaking research done by physicist Russell Humphreys concerning relativity and the question of age in his 1994 book Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe:

Humphreys proposes instead that the theory of General Relativity has validity, and that this makes explicable the idea of vast distances in the Universe within only about 6,000 years time period (Earth-time). He suggests that the Universe was created initially in a type of time warp, and this gives new insight on aspects such as “red shift” phenomena which are regarded as indicative of the speed and direction of objects in outer space.

I also reported on Humphreys’ proposal of relativity and time-dilation in comprehending how light could travel vast distances in a “young” creation (p.161):

Humphreys proposed a remarkable hypothesis which could explain the baffling problem of starlight travelling vast distances within a “young” Universe only about 6,000 years old.  He points out that, if the Universe has a substantial (water) boundary, this makes possible a radically different cosmology from the Big Bang concept which has no center and no boundary. Gravity and black hole physics are of crucial importance:

In particular, an experimentally-measured general relativistic effect, called gravi-tational time dilation by some authors, causes clocks (and all physical processes) to tick at different rates in different parts of the Universe. (This is not the more familiar “velocity” time dilation of special relativity.)   By this effect on time itself, God could have made the Universe in six ordinary days as measured on Earth, while still allowing time for light to travel billions of light-years to reach us by natural means.  The theory also appears to explain the two other major cosmological phenomena we see: the red shifts of light from distant galaxies and the cosmic microwave back-ground radiation. Thus, this biblical foundation appears to lead to a young-Earth cosmology which is consistent with Einstein’s general theory of relativity and astronomical observations. As measured by clocks on Earth, the age of the Universe today could be as small as the face-value biblical age of about 6,000 years.

Humphreys also points out that an “event horizon” is essential to both “black holes” and “white holes” cosmology, and that strange things happen to time near an event horizon.  The term “black hole” describes a collapsing star whose matter has all fallen within its Schwarzschild radius, and from which neither light nor matter can escape.  The sphere defined by this radius is called an “event horizon” because one can never see events happening inside the collapsing star.  (An “event horizon” is the point at which light rays trying to escape from a black hole bend back in on themselves - it is also where time is massively distorted.) As more matter falls into a black hole, its mass increases and the event horizon is always moving outward.  In contrast, a “white hole” is a term used by some astro-physicists to describe a black hole running in reverse.  As matter is expelled and leaves the white hole, its mass decreases and the event horizon moves inward until its reaches radius zero and disappears, leaving behind a scattered collection of matter moving away from a central point.

The interest triggered off by Humphreys led to significant developments which have come to light since his book was published. Observations which conflict with the modern conventional wisdom about the nature of relativity and the functioning of the Universe have emerged while conceptual weaknesses such as fudge factors in Big Bang theory have also surfaced.

The secular astronomer, Halton Arp, has raised concerns about conclusions drawn from red-shift recession theory. He and others contend that quasars have been ejected from the hearts of their parent galaxies and that new galaxies are formed by this ejection mechanism. Concerning the quasar found in a nearby active spiral galaxy NG7319, the Australian physicist Dr. John Hartnett Ph.D reports in his 2007 book Starlight, Time and the New Physics (p.98,99) that,

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Certainly it is not behind the galaxy. … We see a V-shaped stream of gas trailing behind it, as would happen if it were ejected from the gas-filled region of the galaxy nucleus. … The quasar was initially found from its X-ray emission and subsequently identified in visible light with the Hubble Space telescope. It has been classified as an extra-luminous X-ray object (ULX), because of its very high emission of X-rays.  Other ULXs have been found in, and near, galaxies, and astrophysicists Geoffrey and Margaret Burbridge and Halton Arp have suggested that they are quasars.

From the Hubble Law and the galaxy redshift … the galaxy should be at a distance of 360 million light-years. Again applying the Hubble Law to the quasar redshift … we get a distance for the quasar of billions of light-years. So according to the prevailing big bang belief,  these objects cannot be physically connected. … [But the quasar] is seen interacting with gaseous material in the host galaxy. … In addition, a very strong outflow of gas is detected, consistent with the ejection of the quasar entraining material with it. … It is seen that there is a luminous connection reaching from the nucleus … It was also apparent that this connection or wake is bluer than the body of the galaxy [‘Bluer’ means that it is moving towards the observer relative to the galaxy (i.e., it was ejected)].

… The idea that quasars are ejected from galaxies is vigorously rejected by the big bang community, as it demolished their key assumption of the creation of all matter at the big bang. Furthermore, the evidence from quasars casts enormous doubt on the distribution of galaxies in the universe, and thus the interpretation of big bang expansion models.

Hartnett, like fellow pro-creation physicist Russell Humphreys, believes that relativity is valid. He has investigated the important contribution made to the understanding of relativity by the Israeli physicist Moshe Carmeli. The results are surprising and most encouraging, as he explains on p.41-44 of Starlight, Time and the New Physics:

In the years predating Einstein’s relativity theory, it was assumed that time and space were independent and that there existed a frame of reference, fixed in space, in which time had the universal property such that it would be the same for all observers, independent of their motion. Lorentz, Poincare and Einstein broke that connection.  Einstein’s special theory, the speed of light (in a vacuum) became a universal constant, c.  Time and space became entwined as spacetime, which would warp according to the motion of the observer.  No one observer’s determination of when and where an event occurred was any longer absolute. Another observer moving with a different relative velocity would determine the sequence of events differently.  This seemed crazy at the time but it has been borne out with many experi-ments over many decades since then. Later, Einstein took this a step further by adding the effects of gravity to these dimensions of the universe, which introduced the idea of curvature to spacetime.  This development is what led to a theoretical understanding of the anomalous motion of the planet Mercury.

In the early 1990s, an Israeli theoretical physicist, Moshe Carmeli, extended this concept to the cosmos. … On the largest scales of the universe, he saw that astronomers really could only take still pictures of the galaxies as they are seen in the sky.  From these pictures, the redshifts are derived and then, using the Hubble Law, distances are determined.  From this, he initially developed his new theory: cosmological special relativity (CSR), and then his general theory, which included matter.

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In 1996 … Carmeli predicted that the universe must be accelerating. This was almost two years before the observations determined it to be so. Carmeli’s new spacevelocity is an extension to Einstein’s general theory, which incorporates a new dimension, the velocity of the expanding fabric of space itself. His general theory incorporates all of Einstein’s theory that has been found valid for our solar system at least, but extends it to the larger scales of the Galaxy and the cosmos.

Using his new metric, Carmeli was able to replicate the form of the observed data from the high redshift type Ia supernova teams.  In turn, I have been able to extend that treatment and, by properly describing the matter density dependence on redshift, eliminate the need for ‘dark’ matter on the scale of the cosmos as a whole.  Also, Carmelian cosmology does not explicitly incorporate a ‘dark’ energy term. ‘Dark’ energy really has resulted from the application of incorrect physics to the large-scale structure of the cosmos.  Using the correct physics, what has been perceived as ‘dark’ energy is really a description of the properties of the vacuum itself. Vacuum is not ‘nothing’ and it has properties that the new metric (i.e., new physics) correctly incorporates.

I have also applied this theory to the actual observational data and have found that normal matter density equals only about 4% of the critical matter density of the universe.  This is the same as the small amount of baryonic matter we observe in the luminous matter. No ‘dark’ matter at all is required. The fits to the observational data are far better than those used to fit to the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre models.  The new Carmeli-Hartnett model eliminates the need for any exotic ‘dark’ matter at all.  For an in-depth study, I recommend the books [by Moshe Carmeli] Cosmological Special Relativity, Cosmological Relativity and the Appendices in this book.   (bold emphasis added)

Hartnett further describes on p.59 of his book the significance of the new physics towards comprehending what is happening in the cosmos:

Initially astronomers calculated a speed for extragalactic sources and noted that most were redshifts. Therefore they were rushing away from us. Nowadays, this interpretation has been replaced by cosmological expansion of the fabric of space and the idea that the galaxies are not moving through space but that the space is expanding, or stretching, and the galaxies are going along for the ride, so to speak.   So the redshifts can then be interpreted as a velocity of the expansion. It is not that the galaxies actually move through space, but that the space expands.  This idea is crucial to the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre (FL) models and is quantified by the Hubble Law.  …

Consequently, using reliable Hubble ‘constant’ data as a function of redshift, even though there are large measurement errors, the Carmeli-Hubble time constant has been evaluated at radius = 13.5 billion years. … When we use the expression ‘age of the universe’, to be correct we need to specify by which clocks.  … we are talking about a new dimension to the universe.  It is not a dimension in the sense of length, breadth and depth, but a real dimension nevertheless.  It is a velocity dimension where we see that, as the universe expands, the galaxies are not moving through space, but the fabric of space itself is expanding with velocity (v).  The analogy to special relativity is complete with the replacement of the time dimension with a velocity dimension and the universal constant c with a new universal constant τ. … After including matter, his cosmological general relativity (CGR) emerged.  The new theory is elegant in that it is simple.  It describes the motion of galaxies in the expanding observable universe.

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Carmeli’s model is a challenge to standard big bang theory, because it shows that a model other than the standard FL models can describe the largest-scale structure of the universe without two of the vitally needed add-ons, ‘dark’ matter and ‘dark’ energy.  CGR really is a description of the structure of the visible universe, taking into account what we can, rather than cannot, observe.  (bold emphasis added)

Hartnett also notes (p.76) that the cosmological principle assumes that the Universe is homogeneous, which means that any observer anywhere in the Universe would always see the same ‘big picture’ of the heavens.  Thus the Universe would be acentric and have no centre and no edge, or alternatively that the centre could be everywhere.  He goes on to describe how two recent large-scale mapping projects of two sections of the heavens (the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, a joint UK-Australian project, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) have revealed strong evidence that our galaxy is very close to the centre of the Universe (p.84,85):

This spatial galaxy density variation therefore result from the fact that galaxies are prefer-entially found at certain discrete distances.  This means we are located at the centre of concentric great spherical shells, on which the galaxies are located, that seem to be equally spaced with a separation of about one hundred million light-years.  This is not likely to be a coincidence―but rather, the result of deliberate design. … If these maps are correct, they indicate that the universe is isotropic but not homogeneous.  Therefore the evidence would seem to indicate that the cosmological principle is wrong.  That means that the universe has a unique centre.  And we are somewhere near that centre.

Here is what Hartnett believes occurred on Day 4 of the Creation events (p.103):

Based on my analysis of a galactocentric universe of finite size with a unique centre, I found that the physical radius of the universe must be at least the visible radius.  The visible radius is determined from cτ and is approx 13.5 billion light-years.  Therefore it follows from the expansion factor that the initial radius of the universe was about 8 million light-years (possibly less) before God stretched out the heavens on Day 4 of Creation Week.  This indicates that galaxies were initially created much closer to earth, and then God expanded out the space, dragging them apart. And as that occurred, new material―additional galaxies, quasars etc―was created [a natural consequence of the conservation of mass/energy in the universe p.108] like one of those fireworks displays where we see the exploding embers from the parent explosion in a chain sequence. (emphasis added)

Hartnett explains the detailed physics involved later in the technical section of his book, and he postulates that an immense time-dilation event occurred on Day 4 (in a 5 dimensional space time velocity scenario) which accounts for the otherwise baffling light-travel problem:

(p.108) The expansion of space caused an enormous time-dilation event on the earth, meaning that Earth-clocks slowed by a trillion times compared to cosmic clocks. Time flowed in the cosmos at the same rate it does on Earth now, but during the time-dilation period, Earth’s clocks ran slow. The actual factor can be estimated from the ratio of the Hubble-Carmeli time constant (τ) to the length of time that time dilation continued, as determined by Earth clocks. If the latter was over Day 4 only, then the time-dilation factor is at least a few trillion or more.  During Creation Day 4 God created the heavenly bodies (stars and galaxies), and if Earth clocks ran slower by at least few trillion times (an outcome that ‘falls out’ of the new physics, as will be seen), then there would have been sufficient time (in a universe created some six thousand years ago by Earth clocks) for light to travel the vast distances of the universe. Light-travel-time problem solved!  (bold emphasis added)

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(p.111) It logically follows that this means the universe is very young as measured by Earth clocks. It only has the appearance of great age because we are biased by the vast size of the universe.  (p.117)  And there are no anomalous results on the aberration of starlight or any other well-proven relativistic effects, because the speed of light measured locally with atomic clocks is always the constant c.  Light arriving at the earth is stretched by expansion (hence redshifts are observed), but because Earth-based clocks at the present epoch run at nearly the same rate as cosmic clocks, no other effects are observed.  (p.118) The time it took light to travel from the most distant sources to Earth was a matter of only days, in local atomic time units. (emphasis in original)

      This is not to say that Dr. Hartnett’s explanation of what occurred during the six Creation days is immune to either criticism or improvement.  From Sir Herbert Dingle to Herbert Ives and Robert Bennett, a distinguished line of physicists has criticized relativity as a theory based on untenable and illogical premises. However, the above summarizing of the work of Dr. Hartnett and Dr. Humphries shows that, irrespective of whether one favors a relativistic framework or a non-relativistic framework, it is possible to reconcile the traditional Catholic interpretation of Genesis with present-day astronomical observations.

      From the perspective of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, it was not considered possible to extrapolate with any degree of confidence from the period of providence in which we live back into the period of Creation.  Yet modern scientists such as geneticists and molecular researchers have at last deduced to a high degree of near-certainty what God chose to do in His creation of life forms, and their discoveries harmonise beautifully with the Genesis creation account of life forms being created in separate “kinds” in the period of Creation.  In similar fashion, perhaps the work of Harnett and his colleagues—or of other physicists operating within a non-relativistic theoretical framework—will shed greater light on what God chose to do in His creation and rapid stretching out of the Universe, thus making it possible to show even more clearly that the scientific data fully agree with the “literal and obvious sense” of the Genesis creation days.

Conclusion (back to top)

Mary Daly has not demolished the arguments contained in Creation Rediscovered.   On the contrary, she displays an inadequate understanding of Origins.  Anyone can make sweeping generalizations and misrepresent the views of others; it’s much more difficult to rigorously address details and discuss the pros and cons of an author’s arguments. Until she can spell out detailed convincing arguments fully consistent with both Natural Science and Sacred Tradition, she cannot expect to be taken seriously by Catholics who are well-informed about Origins.

It seems that Mary Daly is not familiar with the Catholic Church’s constant teachings down the centuries since the time of Christ because she does not cite Sacred Tradition in any depth in her review.  Time and again in times of heretical turmoil during the 2,000 years history of the Catholic Church, the successors of St. Peter, as well as clergy and laity, have often referred to the Church’s constant magisterial teachings and the teachings of the Church Fathers. In the present Modernist crisis of faith, we need to be mindful of these constant teachings, including those which concern Origins and have largely been overlooked. The objective truth of Origins impacts strongly on a person’s beliefs in areas of  the faith which must be held by all Catholics.  As I mentioned earlier in this response, the creation/evolution/origins controversy should feature prominently in the category of Religion, and not be assumed to be only applicable in the category of Natural Science, because it truly belongs in both categories.  As a supernatural divine action, Creation belongs in the realm of religion and metaphysics.  As the totality of all that God has created in the past and which now operates according to natural laws created by God “in the beginning”, CREATION can be studied profitably by natural scientists.

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 In conclusion, Mary Daly’s review of Creation Rediscovered failed because she did not properly read the book and thus she did not adequately address its contents.

May the Holy Spirit lead us into all the Truth!

Gerard J. Keane
Melbourne, Australia
February, 2008