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Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design?
typobox43 writes "A Vatican representative has expressed a defense of the theory of evolution, stating that it is "perfectly compatible" with the Genesis story of creation. "The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator"." Of course, it'd probably be best if fundmentalists actually talked to, say, the rabbis who wrote the whole thing down. The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.
Overall, I'd wager that the scientific evidence would provide more "scientific" support for a polytheistic religion with humanistic/flawed dieties (such as the ancient Roman/Greek religions) than for an omnipotent monotheistic religion such as Christianity.
The bigger issues is that the allegedly religious ID people probably don't want to entertain hypotheses about designer(s) and would be especially uncomfortable letting school children even discuss these questions. Yet the entire purpose of science is to ask these questions and that is why it doesn't mix well with religion which is entirely based on faith. From a theological standpoint, I would suspect that Christians would prefer a separation between church and science.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
On the flip side, I had an English teacher in high school that went to Catholic schools and had never heard of evolution until she went to college. She said that she was completely caught off guard.
Yeah right.
This would have been over long ago if in every report about this "debate", the media would point this fact (that the Vadican supports evolution) do dispell this fact. I have to wonder how many Catholics even know this, and how many support evolution and think they disagree with their religion on that point.
This whole thing is rediculous. Atheists support evolution. The roman catholoic church supports evolution. Just about ever major religon supports it. A few nuts start a fuss though and all of a sudden there is a "religious war" between the "religous" (radial fundamentalists) and the "sane people" (everyone else).
This whole thing just confirms that old quote (paraphrased): "Evil triumphs when good men stand idly by."
Note that I don't think that the fundamentalists are evil. But you can't let that little group remove evolution from schools. The "good men" need to stop standing idly by. If even 10% of the "good men" were to stand up and say "No way," then this debate would end FAST. Pure supiriority of numbers.
-- A fed up Kansan Catholic.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Evolution isn't a theory about the start of life.
I suppose it depends what you mean by "start" and "life" :)
If you read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, he argues that chemical compounds which replicate begin evolution, even if they aren't something that one would consider to be "alive". If the chemical can make a copy of itself, that chemical will quickly become quite common. A few of the copies won't be perfect, and a few of these imperfect copies will be better (faster, more stable, etc.), and will thus make more copies than the original.
The "start of life" need be only the random coincidence of an amino acid, perhaps one which attracts matching atoms until it is full, at which point it splits into two copies of the original. If you allow that, (and I seem to recall it's been done in a lab, but I can't find a reference right now), evolution will proceed from there.
It's worth noting that Gregor Mendel was a monk, obviously religious, and now is someone so important to our knowledge of basic genetics that we all learn about him in high school. Scholars of all kinds have come out of Churches and religions, so it's depressing how big a step back we're starting to take. If Mendel had been an IDer, he would have given up the moment he saw two different breeds of peas and declared the whole situation unknowable.
I've started to notice a different breed of religious person that I like to call the rational religious. I'm sure they've existed throughout the ages, but they seem to be scarce. Thankfully, they're becoming more populous. Of course, these are the people that understand not only science, but their faith and themselves. More and more, I've seen that people that don't understand science don't understand their church or themselves either.
Funny though the FSM thing is, it's tactics could work, though not the FSM theory itself. If the ID thing ever comes to the school district here, I'll be making a trip over to all the reservations and talking to any tribal leaders that will listen. I suspect I'll be able to get them to come and argue that fine, if Christian creation is taught, their creation has to be taught as well (and it varys per tribe). They can also play the all-powerful race card if people try to shut them down.
My personal take on ID supporters is that in their arrogance they believe that they should be able to understand everything that is not supernatural. As a result if they don't get it it must be God's work.
So they build up this God of the Gaps that is responsible for everything man cannot expain. Then once we get close to understanding something they get all upset, because we are removing some of God's power.
My blanket dismissal for all IDers is that they are limiting the power of their god to that which they don't understand. My God is more powerful than that and not subject to my arrogent limitations - If He wants to violate non-contradiction He can. I don't know what that means, but just because I can't imagine a world where something can both be and not be simultaneously dosen't mean that God can't do it.
No, they were never in that camp. They were, for a goodly long time, along with everyone else, in the geocentric camp, and that's where the embarassment that makes them far less willing to make grand pronouncements on science than certain religious groups in the US.
The problem lies in the fact that the Bible, when read by someone who has taken the theological blinders off, doesn't exactly read like any accurate historical document, and makes a number of rather extraordinary claims that should require something other than "It says so in the Bible" to be taken as evidence. Do you also think that Greek or Hindu mythology ought to be given similar weight?
Omphalism creates some pretty severe problems for the faithful, because it essentially makes God into a liar. On the emperical end of things, it's a meaningless statement. If the Universe was created last Thursday with the appearance of great age, then science could still function simply by accepting that age and leaving the theological Last Thursdayism claim out of the picture entirely.
Where you stumble, I'm afraid, is on the idea that somehow science is a quest for TRUTH(tm). It is a search for the best explanation for the evidence. If some uber-powerful being has made the Universe appear as it is by the proverbial snap of a finger, then yes, science cannot find that truth, because that truth could never be arrived at by any rational, emperical means.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Guys (and the occasional girl),
Picture this: your friend Tom comes to tell you about his friend "Bob". Now, you've never met Bob. For some reason Bob is never around, and Tom has never introduced him to you. But Tom tells you that Bob exists, and they hang out, and talk, and things like that. Frequently, Bob will have these amazing things that Tom doesn't, and Tom will excitedly tell you about them. Sometimes Tom relates things that Bob has told him, or opinions he has based on something Bob says.
Now, what kind of behavior is that? If Tom is 8, we call that "having an imaginary friend". If Tom is 30, he's probably hallucinating, or schizophrenic (or experiencing some psychosis). But....if Tom is 30, and we replace "Bob" with "God", and this is said in the context of "faith and community" then Tom is a fundamentalist christian who has a "personal relationship with God".
So, what's the difference? What's the difference between a serial killer who "hears voices in his head" telling him to go into McDonalds and let loose with an Uzi, and a drunk frat boy hearing the voice of God saying "You will be president", and staging a couple of wars? It's only a question of degree, yet the first is clearly a candidate for a white jacket and a padded cell, while the latter is the "Leader of the Free World (tm)".
Ladies and Gentlemen: There Is No God. None. Nada. He ain't there. Nobody home. Get it? Stop using your insecurity and inadequacy, and face the world for what it is - a harsh, brutal, and sometimes beautiful place. It's harder this way, but at least you are an adult human being, not a kid hiding behind an "imaginary friend". Any form of belief that starts out with "there's an invisible man who did X" is utter madness and self-dulsion. This is the 21st century! How did 300 years of progress and science and rational thinking pass you by? ID is crap not because it's not consistent, or because it's not a theory, but because it presupposes the existence of a god. Stop whining, get off your knees, and quit talking to yourself - no one's listening. Whipe your own butt and face reality like Monday morning - it's tough, and you're tired, but when you get up you are a Man.
Still, a heck of a way to end a five book trilogy. "Perhaps he was dictating."
You were being funny, but that's not far off from the traditional Fundamentalist view (both among Evangelical Christans and some Orthodox Jewish sects.) The idea is that Moses was simply writing down exactly what God told him to write down.
There are at least a few lines in there which can be used to argue that this is how the Torah is meant to be read.
To me, it's not terribly important. I come at Old Testament validity from the opposite angle: Since I happen to believe in the divinity of Christ, and consider Him to also be the greatest Rabbi in history, the fact that He taught from those same scriptures instructs me that they are worth reading and trying to understand.
As a non-Jew, the issue of whether Moses wrote them or not matters about as much to me as the instructions to never eat shellfish, never cut my earlocks, and always wear tassles on the corners of my cloak.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have two thoughts on ID and Genesis, but since I'm posting on the thread late, they'll probably get buried.
1) The label "Inteligent Design" was hijacked by the Young Earth Creations (those who believe that the years is no more than 10k years old and was created in a six literal 24 hour days. Inteligent design has its roots in Michael Behe's book, "Darwin's Black Box". Behe's purpose in this book is to provide counter examples to current evolutionary theory at the biochemical level. I think it's a great book and asks the right questions, scientifically, about evolutionary theory. Though I think his answers are weak. Basically his answer is: if current evolutionary theory can't explain a biochemical system, then God did it. Luckly, the book is mostly questions and counter-examples to evolution and a little of his answers. It is a very good read.
2) On the book of Genesis. Christian fundamentalists try to view Genesis from a western, scientific perspective. Which is why they try to see it as a scientific text. This view and culture is so different from the original intended audience that their interpretations are laughable. 15th century BC nomadic herbrew tribes were certainly not a scientific, post-enlightenment culture. The stories recorded in Genesis were intended, in my opinion, to give the hebrew tribes a perspective on who they were, who thier God was, and how they were different from the people around them. Whether the creation story in Gensis is literal or mythical isn't really knowable, and doesn't really matter. What mattered was what it meant spiritually to the ancient hebrew tribes. Anything more than that is speculation.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Intelligent Design contradicts evolution on the variability between and among species. ID says that at least some of the variability between species arises from the intervention of a designer; evolution says there's no. So the argument isn't really about the origin of life, but the origin of species.
Actually, one of the reasons why ID does not qualify as a theory is that it is vague about what did happen. Basically, ID boils down to "Evolution can't explain everything."
Behe--who's virtually the only real biologist in the ID camp--clearly believes that something like a microorganism was created and everything evolved from there, possibly with some supernatural tweaks along the line. But the ID guys keep this pretty quiet, because if they actually advocated this view as part of their "theory," they'd lose the bulk of their support, which comes from fundamentalist Christians who aren't concerned with how the flagella evolved; they want to be reassured that there isn't an ape in their family tree. Behe was very amusing in the recent trial; the opposition kept quoting him passages from the ID tract "Pandas and People," which he supposedly co-edited, and which makes claims such as "various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact," and Behe would have to admit that he didn't agree.
Having read "Bresheet" (Most English speakers call it the Book of Genesis) for many years in the original Hebrew, and having been through the experience of a technical education, these are my opinions:
1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.
2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.
3) Many people are happy with a very childish God-in-Sky view of things. But for those who seek it, there is plenty more to study in most religions. I am quite content and clear minded about my beliefs. I also don't think those beliefs have anything to do with Science except in an extremely abstract way.
4) Fundamentalists and cults of all faiths attempt to install a denial of surrounding community in their followers so that they can wrench their flock from the communities and build one of their very own. It's a power trip. There are plenty of wide eyed people who are willing to follow because they do not understand the nature of religion. I fault the leaders of these movements, but I also fault the followers just as well. We all have a responsibility to understand the world around us better. You can't get that veiwpoint from inside a cult, a fundamentalist movement, or even from a nebulous bit of philosophical quackery called Intelligent Design.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!