I have previously discussed my admiration for Pope Francis, who strikes me as a truly holy man in every true sense of that term. Francis has pulled the Church into the Twenty-First Century with massive reforms and new approaches. This week saw one of the most remarkable such changes: Pope Francis announced that it is perfectly consistent to be a Catholic and an evolutionist. For many Catholics who cannot deny the evidence that the Earth is billions rather than thousands of years old, the announcement shows that it is possible to believe in both God and evolution.
Pope Francis declared that the Big Bang theory “doesn’t contradict the intervention of a divine Creator, but demands it.” The comment came at the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, gathered in the Vatican to discuss “Evolving Concepts of Nature.” Francis said that the creator “brought all things into being . . . from a supreme Principle of creative love.” He added that “[e]volution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
On my recent visit to the Vatican, I was told by multiple people that there has been a massive increase in visitors due to the unprecedented popularity of this Pope. Indeed, churches are reporting rising congregations after years of decline due to the draw of Pope Francis. Ironically, he is the greatest evidence that institutions like humans can evolve into better and higher forms.
Paul C. Schulte
… Christianity incorporated the Torah …
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Holy corporatism … more of the enlightenment.
What next fake software sockpuppet enlightenment preachers?
I always watch Lewis Black to see if he is going to have a stroke on stage.
“You never see a Rabbi on television interpreting the New Testament … doooo youuuu?” – Saint Lewis
Paul C. Schulte
I am not ashamed to admit that I forgot. Happens. I probably know more about the theology of Christianity than you and Lewis Black put together.
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Saint Ronnie Raygun … “forgetting is the way to enlightenment.”
Could we get a cite on that quote?
We fight them Arabs on behalf of the Jews but as a trade off we gotta interpret their book for them.
Saint Lewis Black:
“Because you read it in the old testament, which is the book of my people … the Jewish people.
And that book wasn’t good enough for you Christians … was it?
… NO! we have a better book with a better character … YOU’RE GONNA LOVE HIM!
…
And YOU CALLED YOUR BOOK NEW, and said ours was OLD!
Yet …
every Sunday I turn on the tele and there is a pastor or priest reading from my book.”
Lewis Black – a former educator, if I remember correctly, should know that Christianity incorporated the Torah into Christianity, so yes, they get to interpret it. Partly because the Jews did not realize who the Messiah was. When you get something major wrong, you lose your street cred.
Jill,
I have to take exception to your broad brush allegation that Democrats are now the most devoted to torture, surveillance and wars. The facts do not support that claim.
Paul C. Schulte
Max-1 – unless the Pope is speaking ex cathdra I still believe in the magician with the magic wand theory. Screw the Pope!
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Paul C. Schulte
david – this conversation has gone on so long, I forgot.
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Paul C. Schulte
Lewis Black – theologian.
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Only better than david and Saint Agnostic the Schulte, disciple of Saint Ronnie Raygun, the forgetter.
Bush II, like Saint Ronnie Raygun, know that the Earth was created in seven days, like you and david?
Stop interpreting their book for them … after so many thousands of years of their interpretation by orders from headquarters.
I am not ashamed to admit that I forgot. Happens. I probably know more about the theology of Christianity than you and Lewis Black put together.
Yet!
Karen, Haz is a white/male Catholic Republican so a weekend blogger here would call him “reptilian.” Thankfully, he has not graced this thread w/ his venom.
davidm:
In my opinion, the Pope sees God’s hand in evolution, as in any other mechanism that governs the universe. There are a lot of new labels that have been created: Creationist, Intelligent Design, etc. Basically those who believe in God and also believe in Evolution view evolution as similar to physics, chemistry, etc – as just another mechanism that God created when he made the world. God made life adaptable to a changing environment.
Everyone who believes in evolution, or life’s adaptability, conceptualizes it in a way that makes sense to them.
But there are many who ridicule those who believe in God at all, let alone see evolution as another of His creations.
And although some scientists are atheists, you might be surprised by how many consider themselves religious. I’ve known physicists and astronomers who described feeling like they glimpse God sometimes in their work.
Karen S wrote: “In my opinion, the Pope sees God’s hand in evolution, as in any other mechanism that governs the universe.”
If this is the Pope’s message, it is nothing more than lazy thinking that comes close to intellectual dishonesty. You are describing theistic evolution, but the direction of the Pope is actually to think that evolutionary theory explains the origin of the physical body while God creates the soul. The problem is that whether it is theistic evolution or the idea that God creates the soul, science rejects both concepts. This rhetoric only works on those ignorant of science.
It is obvious to me that the Pope is trying to curry favor with people who trust science by making meaningless statements like this one. He was speaking to a scientific convention, so obviously he was trying to find common ground there. What the Catholic Church needs to do is actually think about the question of origins more specifically. Tell us exactly how evolutionary theory works with the empirical evidence. Tell us exactly how this works hand in hand with the Bible they believe was inspired by the Creator.
The Catholic Church has for years taught that man was created in a perfect state, that animals were created for man in a perfect state also where they did no harm to one another. They taught that man would have lived forever, except that man sinned. That brought death, not only to man, but to all the animals of the earth as well. So a Savior was needed to restore what man had lost through sin. Evolutionary theory of origins is completely opposite of this Biblical story. Death has always existed for evolution. There was no fall into sin that brought death. Evolution can only happen if there has been death since the beginning before there ever was man. Now if the church is going to change in their teaching about life coming from God and death coming from the sin of Adam and Eve, which they would have to do in order to line up with evolutionary theory, then come out and say that. These nebulous statements are irritating to real thinkers.
Lewis Black: “their interpretations of our book are usually wrong because it is not their book”
Lewis Black – theologian.
Haz – great posts, thanks!
davidm2575
…
The epistle of Barnabas (AD 130), which was part of the oldest Bible we have, interprets the Torah …
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Here is the epistle of Black on non-people-of-the-book messing with their book:
Jill, they most certianly did evolve from the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial. What they did in the last several years is perplexing and upsetting to many Democrats and liberals.
Pretty weak, Dave.
Let me try.
So, what set off the Big bang, anyway?
In the general relativity picture, the moment of creation produced not only space but time.
But it’s nonsensical to talk about before the Big bang, because there was no time and hence, no before either.
And supposedly, a body at rest remains at rest, or “if it is in motion, it moves with uniform velocity until it is acted on by a resultant force
So, if there is nothing, or perhaps a ballof supercondensed matter (and how did that get there??), and then it explodes and becomes matter, well, what set off the explosion?
Why did ‘nothing,’ doing nothing, change?
And since the The Second Law of Thermodynamics favors entropy, one would rightly expect an explosion of supercondensed matter would become more and more disordered and spread about, not form planets and suns and animals and plants.
What gives?
Dave,
Do you suppose The Pope agrees with the Dalai Lama regarding his religion: “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
(I wonder if they talk…)
The entire idea of a spiritual master that one should listen to above other human beings, Including one’s own conscience is suspect to me. Pope Francis has some good things to say and some really stupid things to say.
There is a totalitarian streak in the church and this shows itself many times in history as the church allies itself with brutal dictatorships or itself engages in brutality which rivals USGinc. today.
To me, it should be long past the time that humans are willing to give over their own minds and thoughts to any leader. That has proven a disaster every time it occurs.
When Pope Francis makes a convincing argument, that is great. When he says BS, then his ideas should be rejected. We would be much healthier as a people if we treated religion, politics, leaders of any kind in this manner. There would be a lot less blood shed over truly inane ideology.
Annie, I would say Democrats have devolved. Your party used to speak against torture, surveillance and wars-now your group is the most devoted to these horrific programs.
The height of intellectual laziness. Science contradicts religious claims, or discovers objective truth by way of observation (not revelation), and the 21st-century response is that God made the facts that science reveals, and He made science itself. *Weak.*
Here, I can do it too:
XV6 — the real God — created Christianity, the Pope, science, and all religions. Therefore, bow down to XV6. Oh, and tithe. I’ll accept payments on His behalf.
Paul it cemented the opposing camps that still exist to this day, the Fundamentalist believers, who take the Bible literally and the skeptics who trust science and reject literal interpretation of the Bible. Why would intelligent people cling to such regressive ideas? This divide seems to be getting more pronounced as time goes on. Kudos to Catholics who reject such backwards thinking.
So what happened to Fundamentalists? How did they get to be so regressive, while Catholics surged ahead? The Scopes Monkey Trial and good old Southern down home religion maybe had something to do with it? Good thing Democrats ‘evolved’.
Annie – read the real history behind the Scopes trial. It was a set-up. It was a slow summer and the Chamber of Commerce thought it would drive business. BTW, Scopes was convicted.