Read the article carefully. He considers and then rejects De Chardrin's theology.
I think his reflections on Original Sin and Death are very faulty. Sin gave a new and terrible meaning to Death? Well, I hate to break it to this guy, but death is damn terrible in itself.
Physical death is not terrible unless it is accompanied with spiritual death. His point is that the Fall brings spiritual death, not physical death. He provides ample biblical and patristic support. I'll also add my own piece of evidence for this: the tree of life. Why was there a need for a tree of life before the Fall if there was no physical death before?
Darwinism does not understand this randomness as the kind one would find in a personal being's choices, as God is arbitrary because He has will(arbitrio in Latin). Instead, by "randomness" they mean "chaos."
You're reading way too much into the modern concept of randomness. An event is random when you can't predict the outcome with certainty before it occurs. Since God knows everything, it follows nothing is random for God. Mutations, therefore, are random for man but not for God.
The Darwinian universe is a Heraclitean Flux in which everything flows and nothing abides.
True, but the flow is very, very slow. So what?
The effects on the Incarnation, of course, are obvious, for there is no human "nature" for Christ to assume.
I don't follow. Humans are a distinct speices, and we have certain characteristics that are common to our spicies. That is our nature, along with our immortal souls. How exactly does evolution contradict the existence of human nature?
Perhaps you could argue that because we are evolving. However, I don't think it is true. Our intelligence has allowed us to transcend evolution. Or at least has slowed it down to such a pace that we are never going to change into beings that have a fundamentally differet nature.
Likewise, there are no inherent human rights, because humanity is simply the label for a thing-in-flux, namely the genetic code among the human species.
What about our souls? Don't they form the basis for human rights? You may object that Darwinism does not claim anything about souls, but it is equally true that Darwinism does not rule out a soul.
I'm curious about the mention of how Darwinism undermines Soviet biology.
Soviet biology officially adopted Lamarkian evolution and rejected Darwinism.
Physical death is not terrible unless it is accompanied with spiritual death.
Then why weep at funerals, or upon hearing of the death of friends like Lazarus?
Why was there a need for a tree of life before the Fall if there was no physical death before?
I haven't read much exegesis on Genesis in some time, but the Tree of Life could more easily be interpreted to be a sacramental conduit for the supernatural grace of God, and indeed a foreshadowing of the Cross. Incorporating Darwinian cosmology into it seems like an ad hoc interpretation to me.
Regarding randomness and chaos, I think the big question here is the relationship between chance and Providence. Providential actions aren't always obvious. When I hear somebody saying how God has worked in their life, I'm usually pretty unconvinced. I suspect many others, even devout Christians, would find my own description of God's providential work in my life a bit hard to swallow. In Darwinian thought evolutionary change occurs entirely by chance. The fittest animal gets its great genes from its parents by chance, and any beneficial mutations are by chance, and even then this Great Specimen could trip and break its neck as a youth rather than pass on its genes.
Perhaps you could argue that because we are evolving. However, I don't think it is true. Our intelligence has allowed us to transcend evolution. Or at least has slowed it down to such a pace that we are never going to change into beings that have a fundamentally differet nature.
For one thing, in Darwinian theory the human species is itself a transitional species, as were all its predecessors. For another, Darwin himself held that our intelligence is not a qualitative but a quantitative difference.
But every one who admits the principle of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement.Haven't you heard of the Transhumanist movement? They're all about redesigning human nature. And wouldn't it also be imaginable, biologically speaking, for reason to become a superfluous and even hindering faculty given the right environment, as legs became redundant and detrimental for the ancestors of snakes?
-Descent of Man, Chapter 21
What about our souls? Don't they form the basis for human rights? You may object that Darwinism does not claim anything about souls, but it is equally true that Darwinism does not rule out a soul.
I don't think human rights are properly attached to human souls specifically, firstly because the human body is also a good thing to which we have duties, even after that body has died. Granting for the moment that rights are derived from duties, even a corpse has certain rights, though not as absolute as the complete human person does.
Also, certain human rights are supposed to be either "self-evident," as the Declaration of Independence holds, or a fact capable of universal recognition, a "science" capable of being worked out by every intelligent person. Unless we grant that the soul is also similarly philosophically provable, it might not be possible to come up with a coherent rights-theory based on the soul.
By the way, I think Darwin has sprinkled his own ideas of natural rights throughout his works. There are some passages justifying a "Manifest Destiny" for the "higher" civilized European races over the lower races of the rest of the world. And in that same Chapter 21 of the Descent of Man, he states: "There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring." That's a justification for the natural right to adultery, polygamy, Free Love, and so much other wackiness. Contemporary Darwinism has been domesticated because our World War II enemies' ideologies based much of their thought upon Darwin's epigones. Neo-Darwinism now scrupulosly makes a distinction between biology and ethics, between the descriptive and the prescriptive, and it completely shuns Darwin's talk of "higher" and "lower" organisms. But I think this school of thought will completely revert to its wild state shortly, especially with all the money pouring into the biotech industry.