Vatican I Condems Evolution?

[Aloysius]

it's different to say God upholds gravity than it is to say that God holds us down to the earth. if God upholds gravity, then gravity still follows observable laws; if the only reason we stay on earth is because God wants us to, then whether or not any of us will suddenly fly away depends on God's wishes that day... which is a pagan way of thinking about the world, not a Christian way. the transcendence of God from the world allows us to see the world as following the laws of nature and the laws of physics that God established for them, as opposed to the old pagan notion that it was the will of gods that caused everything and thus you could not understand, just try to placate them. this is why it was first under the decline of old pagan thinking that philosophy grew strong, and then in the Christian era that science came to its heights--because we recognized God as transcendent, leaving the world to be studied on its own terms.