I titled my talk today, to mystic objections to evolution returning to first principles. I should start by saying, they're not my objections, okay? So just to set you at ease, I'm trying to respond to objections that some tomists have lodged against biological evolution. And I've accepted the invitation to speak about to mystic philosophy and biological evolution

with a little bit of trepidation, mindful of Father William Wallace's injunction,

that those without formal training and experience in modern science shouldn't purport to do serious work in natural philosophy.

I should say that I'm one who focuses primarily on St. Thomas' metaphysics and his philosophical theology,

and so I fear that I might be something of a fish out of water speaking on these topics in a bad way.

But here comes a bad, spontaneous generation joke.

My hope is that by the assistance of a higher power, my presentation will manage to be something like a fish out of water in a good way.

We'll get to that. Okay.

All right, as Father Michael Chabarach, the author of the recent Aquinas and Evolution, has reminded those interested in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and the idea of evolution,

St. Thomas himself does hold to an interpretation of the literal meaning of first Genesis that includes the direct creation and formation by God of the first members of the wide variety of living species, including the direct

formation by divine power of the first human beings body from earth and slime.

Now some public debate between Father Nicanor Austriaco and Father Chaberek has since ensued,

raising the question of what it would mean to be a Thomist and a proponent of evolution.

So we can pose the question like this, to what extent can there be a robust to mystic

philosophical and theological account of the evolutionary emergence of biodiversity in general

and of the human species in particular. Can timistic philosophy be rendered compatible

with the common descent of all species through variation and selection? Now, St. Thomas himself

famously insists that, this is a joke on his part, as Boethius says, the argument from authority is the weakest of arguments.

And he tells us that our concern in any case must ultimately be with truth, rather than simply

with maintaining continuity with what fallible human authors of the past have said.

What concern any of us do have with maintaining some

continuity with the thought of St. Thomas is not for its own sake. It is rather insofar as we

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