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Pope Francis Declares Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Right
HughPickens.com writes: The Independent reports that Pope Francis, speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has declared that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real. "When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so," said Francis. "He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment." Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they "require it." "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve." Experts say the Pope's comments put an end to the "pseudo theories" of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI who spoke out against taking Darwin too far.
It's funny how this charlatan thinks he has the authority to declare evolution true.
And yet he probably believes that by saying a few magic words a cracker and grape juice become the literal body of a guy dead for two thousand years.
What a load of Mormon-like nonsense!!! They like to think of Jesus as a space traveller. You said nothing valuable here, just read your Mormon-like beliefs into the text where it suited you, and ignored everything else (like divine sea monsters in Genesis 1:21 that translators gloss over with "large sea creatures", "big fish" or "whales").
As an opinion that has been held by many a scientist, that's fine.
We don't know what went bang. We can't even begin to have the language to discuss multi-dimensional physics and what happened before time began. There's a dark area from a certain part in time backwards. Though people may argue where that area is, they can't argue that beyond it is the unknown.
Those people who choose to refer to the unknown as "God"... that makes sense. You can understand that. Whether you personally agree or not, it's a logical, consistent, unproveable but not unreasonable belief.
The problem comes when people draw the dark areas to be 6000 years ago, or the bounds of the Earth. The problem comes when people who believe in a "God" (of whatever name, concept or type) but not in the Bible and are attacked for that.
That's always been the problem. Unfortunately, those people will also ignore the Pope too. The Bible doesn't mention Popes, except through the same interpretation as it mentions just about anything else if you try hard enough to twist the words.
As an atheistic/agnostic person of a scientific bent, I have always accepted the "There's space for a God in the unknown" arguments. That's fine. No problem at all. Some pretty major scientists believe the same, not that that's an influence or accreditation in any way.
But the ideological problem you get is that, historically, the dark area has shifted further and further back in time and in space and still people hold onto it. At one time the skies were the raft of the gods because they were unreachable and unknowable to the peoples of the time. That slowly gets pushed back until the boundary of the unknown is so far away as to be ludicrous, from mere memory to recorded history to inference from dinosaur bones, to carbon dating, to universe expansion, and further back.
And, actually, we have a number of theories of why the Big Bang happened. Nobody studying it really believes that something in the middle of nothing clicked its ethereal fingers and in no time the universe came into being. The theory is that that are substrates and energy fields permeating outside the universe and that when those waves of energy collide, matter, space and time can occur as a result of the fallout. It's kind of what the Higgs Boson is all about - a particle that results from Higgs fields that permeate everything.
If and when we prove that, the dark area will shrink back again and I'm sure the religious will still continue to point at the square millimeter that is left and say "Ah ha! God could still be in there!", and so on, ad infinitum.
The recognition of this slowly grows over time. The papacy refused to believe Copernicus at one point. But he was right. So they accepted, and shifted God back two spaces again. It happens all the time, and has happened for thousands of years.
Nobody wants religious people to have no place in which to put their God, if they want to believe in him. But equally, we don't really want God sitting on the front porch where he's easily disproved by everything around him either.
Being logical is not incompatible with religion. Never has been. However being illogical is incompatible with science.
Of course, as soon as you introduce the concept of a deity guiding the universe in any way, you have an incompatibility. And without guiding, the whole point of the existence of a creator is pointless.