Replies

It's more like there's no reason matter cannot create intelligence, there's no evidence of some kind of separate supernatural organ called a "soul" that somehow produces a mind apart from the brain,

You'are arguing with Descartes' dualism, not the Church's (Scholastic/Aristotelian) hylomorphism. The "soul" is the form (in the Aristotelian sense) of the body. [Aristotle on Substance, Matter and Form]

there's a ton of evidence that thoughts are always accompanied by electrochemical changes in the brain, and there's a lot of clinical evidence that damage to the material brain causes many (usually damaging) effects to the nonmaterial mind.

No one's arguing with that. The Church objects to reduction of the mind to matter alone, which is utterly incoherent.

The "soul" is the form (in the Aristotelian sense) of the body. [Aristotle on Substance, Matter and Form]

Interesting. Still, we're discussing the Cardinal's statement: "Can matter create intelligence? That is a question we can't answer scientifically, because the scientific method cannot grasp it."

Now, sure, anyone can claim that there's an extra-natural something that explains why we have thoughts. And they can keep on claiming that no matter how much evidence keeps piling up showing that the mind is indeed the work-product of the physical brain. But without any positive evidence for such a supernatural entity - "soul", "hylomorphic form", or whatever - that claim becomes vacuous.

there's a ton of evidence that thoughts are always accompanied by electrochemical changes in the brain, and there's a lot of clinical evidence that damage to the material brain causes many (usually damaging) effects to the nonmaterial mind.
No one's arguing with that. The Church objects to reduction of the mind to matter alone, which is utterly incoherent.

But if a rock falls to the ground & breaks up into 3 pieces, we now have four entities: Three smaller rocks and one triangle. Is the triangle material? If not, then where did it come from? It wouldn't exist if not for the 3 rocks sitting in a plane.

The triangle is a higher-order system than the rocks themselves, but there's nothing supernatural about it. It's perfectly material, in that it's made up of the three material rocks & nothing else. And yet it has exactly zero mass. It is indeed incoherent (or at least it's useless) to say that the triangle is "merely" the three rocks. Yet it is a form that's created by the three rocks & nothing else.