Not really – an interview with physicist Dr. Stephen Barr

The interview touches on many matters of interest, including, naturally, the origin of life. Here’s a pertinent passage that deals with a subject oft discussed around these parts:

IgnatiusInsight.com: Critics of evolution point to statements made by some evolutionists to the effect that life emerged by chance occurrences or "random mutations" and natural selection. The "randomness" thought to be involved critics take as undercutting a claim that life on earth is the result of the creative act of God. What is your view of the matter?

Dr. Barr: The idea that chance plays a role in events is in no way contrary to Catholic doctrine. St. Augustine in The City of God says that no one in this life "can escape being tossed about by chance and accident". St. Thomas Aquinas devoted a whole chapter of his Summa Contra Gentiles (Book 3 chapter 74) to defending the proposition that "Divine Providence does not exclude chance and accident." The Bible itself talks about chance: "Time and chance happeneth to them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

Things are matters of chance from a certain point of view. From God’s point of view everything is known from all eternity. As Proverbs 16:33 says, "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord."

In everyday life we talk about the probabilities of things happening, and we talk about chance events, and such talk in no way implies a denial that God is in charge of everything and foreknows everything.

Scientists use the concepts of chance, probability, and randomness in much the same way. In a reasonably well-defined mathematical sense, the motions of the air molecules in a room are "random". There is nothing necessarily atheistic in saying this.