Evolution: Fact or Fiction?

Kolbe Report 7/26/25

Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,

Pax Christi!

I have just returned from the UK where a second one of our daughters entered the Benedictines of Mary in their new foundation in Colwich, England. After our daughter’s entrance, my colleagues Greg Clovis, Dr. Marco Fasoli, and I took part in a whirlwind tour of England and Scotland, giving Kolbe seminars from Portsmouth in the south of England to Glasgow in Scotland. When we arrived in England we saw signs of drought everywhere, but after six days of giving praise to our Creator up and down the country, the Good Lord sent rain, proving, once again, that keeping the first Three Commandments of the Decalogue is the best way to ensure a harmonious relationship with creation.

Prior to my arrival, Greg Clovis finished a book on the fatal flaws in the molecules to man evolution hypothesis, in its theistic and atheistic forms. I had the honor of writing a foreword to the published book entitled Evolution: Fact or Fiction? What Is A Catholic to Believe? Since we are making the book available on the Kolbe website as an e-book and in a printed version, I would like to share the foreword with you, since it explains how Greg Clovis makes a powerful case for the impossibility of molecules to man evolution in terms that a layman can understand.

Foreword to Evolution: Fact or Fiction?

The first words of St. John’s Gospel tell us that “In the beginning was the Word.” With the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, these inspired words have taken on an even greater significance. Indeed, as Greg Clovis demonstrates in the book you are about to read, these opening words of the Holy Gospel actually sound the death knell for the hypothesis of the natural origin of life from non-life and of all the different kinds of living things from one or a few one-celled organisms.

One of the first Catholic academic centers to recognize the importance of biological information in the origin and development of life was Gustav Siewerth Akademie, a small Catholic university founded by the German philosopher Dr. Alma Von Stockhausen. With the assistance of then-Bishop Josef Ratzinger, a life-long friend, Dr. Alma founded the Akademie in her parents’ summer home in 1988. As a fledgling university in an academic world in which molecules-to-man evolution reigned supreme as scientific orthodoxy, Gustav Siewerth Akademie distinguished itself early on as an oasis of original and independent thought on the subject.

A remarkable scholar of extraordinary academic accomplishments played a big part in making the Akademie one of the few Catholic universities in the world where the fatal flaws in the evolutionary hypothesis—in its theistic and atheistic forms—could be openly discussed. A. E. Wilder-Smith was a British scholar and three-star NATO general with three Ph.D.’s in different areas of physical science. As a visiting lecturer at the Akademie, he left an unforgettable impression on the whole community, as a great natural scientist and a magnificent teacher, who unashamedly professed his faith in the Word of God and in the doctrines of traditional Christianity, including the doctrine of special creation derived from the sacred history of Genesis.

In the years after the discovery of DNA, A. E. Wilder-Smith blazed a trail for other defenders of the Faith by recognizing that organic life could no longer be reduced to matter and energy—as so many natural scientists and philosophers had been trying to do since the days of Rene’ Descartes. Instead, Wilder-Smith pointed out that the coded information in the cells of all living things from bacteria to human beings proved that organic life could only be understood in terms of a trinity of matter, energy, and information. This amazing insight completely transformed the debate between the advocates for molecules-to-man evolution and the defenders of special creation because it was easy for Wilders-Smith to demonstrate that information is an immaterial entity—something that can only be produced by an intelligent mind with a free will. Indeed, only a mind could decide that a particular sequence of nucleotides would code for a particular amino acid; but only a free will could decide that this particular sequence of nucleotides X would code for amino acid Y. And only a Supreme Intellect and Will could provide the vast amounts of highly-ordered biological information to guide the development and activity of everything from a one-celled organism to the body of a human being.

In the book that you are about to read, software engineer Greg Clovis demonstrates that new discoveries in the field of genetics have only strengthened the case for the special creation of all things. When I was an undergraduate at Princeton University in the early 70’s, the consensus view in biology held that 98% of human DNA was “junk” left over from the millions of years of human evolution. Richard Dawkins went all over the world winning converts to atheism with this bogus claim, while most Catholic intellectuals remained silent or concurred. Yet when Project Encode studied the so-called “non-coding” DNA, scientists discovered that it’s not junk. It operates at a higher level of functioning than the DNA that codes for protein, often switching on and off genetic programs that enable plants and animals to adapt to changing environments.

We now know that the DNA sequences in the cells of all living things can be:

• Read in one direction to give a meaningful set of instructions

• Read in the opposite direction to give a different meaningful set of instructions

• That there is a pattern whereby every so many letters can be read to give a third set of meaningful instructions

• And the sequence can be translated into another language to give a fourth set of meaningful instructions.

No human being can create information at this level of density and complexity—and, as Greg Clovis will demonstrate, information this dense and complex cannot be improved by mutations. It can only degenerate. Thus, we know for certain that we are not evolving into Superman. We are devolving from an original state of perfection, just as God revealed in the sacred history of Genesis.

God’s Revelation tells us that He created everything in the universe out of love for us—and that when we destroyed the harmony of the first created world with our sin, God came down into the misery that we made, took it upon Himself, suffered and died for us, rose again, and founded the Catholic Church so that we could become new creations in Him and cooperate with Him in restoring everything back to the beauty that it had in the beginning and to bring it to an even more wonderful perfection at the end of time. That understanding gives meaning to every human life—a meaning that the evolutionary account of origins destroys, thus clearing the way for the anti-culture of death. With this new book, Greg Clovis crowns a lifetime of prolife work as the head of Family Life International in the UK with a powerful defense of the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation, the foundation of our Faith and the only firm foundation for a culture of life.

Hugh Owen, Director, Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Feast of the Holy Uganda Martyrs, June 3, 2025

Uganda

In God’s wonderful providence, I had to take an Uber on three different occasions during my visit to the UK. My first two drivers were Muslims whom I gave our pamphlet on the Holy Shroud of the Turin as striking evidence for the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But the driver who took me to Heathrow Airport for my flight home was from Uganda, the very place where we have received the highest level of support from the Church leadership that we have received anywhere in the world.

I chose to complete the foreword to Evolution: Fact or Fiction? on the Feast of the Holy Uganda Martyrs because the French missionaries who taught them the Faith hailed from the last generation of European missionaries untainted by modernism. Consequently, St. Charles Lwanga and his companions learned to revere “the sacred history of Genesis” as God’s inerrant account of how He created the world and an inerrant history of the first period of human history. In a court atmosphere where polgyamy, adultery, and homosexuality were commonplace, St. Charles Lwanga and the new Catholics understood that God had directly instituted Holy Marriage between one man and one woman for life by the very way that He had created the first man body and soul and the first woman from his side. Thus, they were prepared to be burned alive rather than violate the law regarding Holy Marriage and sexual purity that had been taught to them by the Servant of God Pere Lourdel and his companions.

We are confident that Evolution: Fact or Fiction? will help to explode the scientistic myth of molecules to man evolution, so that our young people can embrace the traditional doctrine of creation and the traditional Catholic understanding of Holy Marriage that rests on that foundation, just as the Holy Uganda Martyrs did. Then they will be able to liberate their generation from slavery to the evolution-based pseudo-science that rationalizes every kind of perversion and deviation from the true Catholic doctrine of Holy Marriage.

Through the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Joseph, and of the Holy Uganda Martyrs, may the Holy Ghost guide us all into all the Truth!

In Domino,

Hugh Owen

P.S. Evolution: Fact or Fiction? is now available from the Kolbe web store in printed form or as an e-book. For a good introduction to the content of Evolution: Fact or Fiction? listen to this discussion which covers all of the main topics of the book.