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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.
Haleluja ...
There's actually a lot of potentional scientific correct stuff in the Bible. Yet, discussing them usually gets frowned upon by either team - it seems (for atheist scientists) a lot easier to discard the bible as 'rubbish' instead of an historical document - where the religious camp tends to take this same history book too literal, despite all translation issues.
Genesis conforming our current Big Bang theory is already a nice start. But, it also hints of more scientific knowledge already known back in the days we call 'stone age'.
A good example of this are Mozes' hygienic laws - about washing hands, seperating raw from cooked food, refraining from eating animals which carry nasty parasites (pigs) etc.
To stretch the imagination more, more stories possibly have some scientific origin. Let me mention a few (without claiming this is correct, but hopefully also without hilarious laugther):
* The arch of Noah - might well have been a spaceship from another planet or solar system, colonializing earth with humans and various animal species.
* Adam and Eve may tell us about genetic engineering - and hence being banned from paradise (animals have no worries apart the current moment) by the knowledge gained (our brains improved by genetic engineering).
* Jesus might have been a space traveller with a good first-aid kit - hence the miracle curings.
* Ascension tells us how he (Jesus) left with his spaceship.
* Even our fossile records supports theories of an alien origin of mankind - there is the famous 'missing link' between apes and humans, especially recent fossiles. Admittingly there are plenty other explanations for that.
* The reasonable recent human races (homo sapiens, neanderthalers, denisovan) might hint to a humanlike race already spreading accross the universe, and colonizing earth with astronauts from various planets.
* The bible distinguishes between 'The Lord' and 'God' - where the Lord is an actual impersonification of a man. Such Lord may well be some space traveller, or otherwise well-educated person, and is mistaken for God only by misinterpretation.
Etc etc. It's easy reply to this with a 'what the f* did you smoke'. However, keeping all options open is what a scientist ought to do. We may have well been interpreting the Bible the wrong way all along. The better reader already noticed that some of the theories mentioned above conflict eachother. However, seeking a scientific explanantion makes more sence than believing in miracles and an almighty God.
There is so much in history that we don't know, and can only guess. Thinking that we are the first intelligent species and culture that lives on this 4-billion year old earth may be very naive.
To put that in perspective: We will probably be able this, or next century latest, to colonize other planets. We will also be able to send robotic vehicles to other star systems. Chances are, that in the next 500-1000 years, we will be able to geo-engineer another planet (Mars). We may be able to send deepfrozen life and DNA in a robotic space ship to another star. We may be able to send bacterial life to other planets. We even may be able to send animal embryo's to other planets. This is all only limited to our imagination, technically this all seems possible in theory.
Now, if you accept this is possible, by us. Then it is reasonable to assume it happened before. It may be reasonable to speculate that earth is actively colonized, possible after being geo-engineered first for millions of years to make it suitable for human life forms.
Surely the Pope won't like this last speculative thoughts. Yet, it's just a scientific-plausible theory. And we may actually have a record of exactly such in our very own Bible.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
This has been mainline Christian thought, even among evangelicals, for decades. YEC's get the spot-light because they're zany, but this has already been accepted for a good while now.
At last! This pope looks like an atheist next to some of the Christians I know...
Catholicism has taught that the evolution and big bang theory are right in sunday school for ages now and that the genesis is symbolic. At least that's what I was taught when I was a kid.
As a theoretical physics doctoral candidate I've spent many a night staring into the ceiling hoping the pope would confirm the fundamental compoent of everything from my undergraduate education to my last twelve grant proposals. My boyfriend, a medical doctor, is equally relieved to understand his approach to antibiotics has been validated in the context of the theory of evolution and not as medical science once assumed to 'the aetherous ichor of daemons betwixt these foul realms.'
Good people go to bed earlier.
..to salvage anything they can. Science has been going forward in the last few thousand years, while chatolics (and basicly all religions) stood still. Magic is fading, so they have to make small tweaks to look at least a bit credible.
Scientific reasoning tells me there are reasons religious beliefs are common throughout human societal history. That same scientific reasoning tells me that, because of its place in our societal history, hatred of those based on their practice of religion is more irrational than the practice of religion itself.
The theory of evolution isn't Earth-origin theory. Why can't people understand that?
I have a feeling this only seems newsworthy because most folks here are more acquainted with American Catholicism, which tends be very very influenced by American protestentism (ie, evangelicals) and thus very very conservative in some areas (especially science).
The Catholic Church has not been opposed to these things for some time, regardless of the feelings of certain members of the Church who didn't bother to learn their Catechism very well. Granted, the Church does an end run around them by essentially saying "if it is so, then it is so because God made it so", which is fairly standard religious belief around and not really out of hte ordinary.
But the point is, the Church's actual teaching is that there is no conflict between the Church's spiritual beliefs and teachings and these sciences, and thus the Church does not reject these scientific theories.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Which in a way is to try to please everybody.
I think that what he tries to do is to defuse the debate entirely and take a pragmatic approach to it. We don't need more religious wars right now.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The Vatican has accepted Evolution doesn't conflict with theology for decades now, and the Big Bang theory was was proposed by a Catholic Priest.
The problem is, most of the biblical literalists don't consider Catholicism to be a valid branch of Christianity.
that's not what he said.
he said what the Church has said for some time now: if evolution does exist, it exists God created it.
Regardless of certain American Catholics who have more in common with evangelicals in their rejection of the science, the Catholic Church itself has not had a conflict with scientific theory for some time now.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Behind the theory of classic evolution lies a metaphysical explanation for the universe: that life "progresses", from simple to complex, from the more fundamental to the more sublime, from problem to solution. The metaphysics of evolution is very much rooted in the philosophy of positivism and progressivism. It is anti-religious not in the sense that it is against the idea of a God, necessarily, but in the sense that the concept of a God is not needed to explain the natural world. God is irrelevant.
One does not hear debate on the metaphysics of evolution very often, and that is a shame. The philosophy of Progressivism, to me, seems more like wishful thinking, than a real explanation of why things are the they way they are. Is progress absolute? Certainly any objective evaluation of history, with its long record of extinctions, would seem to argue otherwise.
Regarding the Bible's metaphysics, however, there is absolutely nothing in common between progressivism and traditional Christian teaching. The very first chapter of the very first book lays it all on the line: God said, "Let there be light. And there was light..." and so on, for 65 more books. The doctrine of the Bible is that "in Him we live and move and have our being." This couldn't be more orthogonal to the doctrine of positivism.
So, while the Pope may rightly observe that a changing creation is still a creation, I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of the matter, which is a metaphysical argument about origins.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Why are people getting so excited?
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fact: what we now call the "big bang" was proposed by Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic preist, in 1927. the alternative "steady state" (basically, the universe always existed) was primarily supported by Anglicans and atheists. The big bang theory was a big fuck you to both of them. I'm glad Pope Frank is keeping it real and isn't afraid to bitch slapping the Anglicans and atheists.
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Evolution doesn't progress from simple to complex, but it just spreads in random directions. However, if you start really simple (by necessity) then it is very likely that you'll see increased complexity over time.
Will the pope declaring this really have an effect on people who are deeply entrenched in anti-scientific teachings? It seems more likely to me that these people will reject the pope. Or find a way to twist his words so as not to contradict them.
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.
I don't personally give a shit what the pope thinks. However, it's clear that millions of other people very much do give a shit. In this instance, the pope is obviously trying to discourage creationism and reduce the friction between science and religion. At least some creationists are likely to listen to the pope and accept what he's saying, in a way that they wouldn't listen to scientists. So I don't see this as the pope giving his seal if approval to the theories in question. Instead, he's giving his seal of approval for catholics to accept the theories. Given that the religion isn't going away any time soon, I consider this to be of value.
soylentnews.org
On "The Big Bang Theory". Mine is Penny. LOL
Bla bla bla......the fine tuned hypothesis which has been disproved over and over and over. He is basically saying that a creator is required because how else would you get the exact exact exact conditions required in the universe to support life. Never mind that basically 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%+ (the actual number would consume all the storage available on the Earth to write down and then some) of the universe is INSTANTLY lethal to life as we know it. But it's sooo perfectly fine tune for life looool
Nothing new since the 1950 Humani Generis by Pope Pius XII that defined the relationship between evolution, immortal souls and faith. And that was just final infallible confirmation of what the Vatican Biblical Commission determined in 1909 in its On The Historical Character of the First Three Chapters of Genesis.
It is strange that this is news since the Pope in the 1960s said the same thing.
A blanket hatred to somebody based on believes is irrational; such blanket hatred would itself be a believe.
That does not mean that a dislike, or perhaps even hatred, of any individual religion is irrational.
History tells us that eventually, all religions will end: None of the earlier religions are still being practiced.
Assuming there are common reasons earlier religions have ended, these reasons also apply to the world's current religions.
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Then how is Earth 6000 years old? Isn't it what Bible states?
http://creation.com/6000-years
The universe growing from a singularity, the fact that we don't know what happened before. I am an atheist but I think may be the scientific theory that is the most compatible with the idea of a creator.
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.
The Vatican is not committed to a literal interpretation of the Bible, nor is it committed to any truly allegorical interpretation. The Bible can say X and the Vatican can say Y and it's never going to be a problem as long as the pope and the cardinals and the priests are all reasonably in line. In fact, it probably works even if they aren't reasonably in line.
Don't waste your time trying to have logical arguments about a subject with people who aren't committed to logic and reason with regards to that subject.
It was a Catholic priest who first developed the idea that became known as the big bang theory, which Einstein did not accept until he saw Msgr Lemaître present his theory at a conference or something. It is unfortunate that some scientists are so anti religion that they ignore the contributions of the Catholic Church and clergy to many of the ideas that they so rabidly defend as "proof" that there is no God or that religion and science are incompatiable.
The philosophy of evolution gets boring when you realize that an organism capable of doing philosophy can only ever find itself on a planet where such an organism evolved.
The philosophy of evolution isn't going to get really interesting until we begin to find evidence of life on other planets, or better yet in other star systems.
you didnt even read what i wrote did you?
in fact, you are the perfect illustration of what i meant.
you are the one who doesnt know what he's talking about.
I was talking about -actual- Catholic doctrine.
You know, since I am one, albeit very poor one that rarely practices and goes to the cafeteria.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Well, there will be one change at least, a Darwin fish on the Popemobile.
We have not reached "fulfilment", or indeed any kind of end point to the journey.
And who is saying we have, except your burning straw man?
Free Martian Whores!
Since it's basically proven that there are 9 dimensions and heavily theorized that the big bang was an intersection of other dimensions, the whole "7 days" creation thing actually is reasonable. There are more reasons to think time can speed up and slow down than there is to the contrary. If one dimension has an absolute, unchanging feature similar to time then the way matter experiences time in our universe could change without creation taking less than a "day" from the outside observer's point of view. Following that point, if the outside observer was God and he resided in an extra-dimensionary form past the first 4 we know then it makes perfect sense to state that all of creation too one day.
Even if that's not accurate, it's just stupid to say that time and physics have always behaved exactly like we observe them to right now because...well no logical reason at all actually. It's more likely that they didn't always behave the same way.
I don't agree with every stance of the Church, but this is one that has been held true from my earliest recollection (I'm middle-aged). Evolution and scientific origins of the cosmos are entirely legit, and that gives me hope that in time other reasonable and logical viewpoints might be adopted.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I might be surprised, but aside from being an atheist, I grew up catholic and went to catholic schools. It was a private Catholic school, run by one of the church's religious orders, where I had high school biology and learned about evolution....that was 20 years ago now.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
What conflict? I never saw any, except for strict literalists (blasphemers) who believe that G-d's "Days" necessarily are the same as ours with 1440 minutes. What if They average 3 billion of our years? Not necessarily linearly constant either. Space is not, why should time be?
There is no missing link.
Its just a line of fosills from A..B...C......H..I...N...V...X..YZ, and whenever there is a fossil discovered to be - say - put in between I and N you have 2 new "gaps".
Which in turn get popularized as "the (new) missing link".
Yes the fossil record is not complete (that would require a unbroken chain from FossilA to FossilZ - an by its nature fossilised stuff is rare (enough) to not be complealty avaliable).
# I'm no expert - and the missing link stuff via media is getting to me - so here is my layman clarification. Also the Letters A-Z have only illustrative purposes here. #
Members of the Society of Jesus (SJ) -- the Jesuits -- have long embraced science . . . in fact, they have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. Science and Christianity, and particularly science and Catholicism, are certainly not mutually exclusive.
I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of the matter, which is a metaphysical argument about origins.
But the question is "does it matter"?
This is obviously not news to Christians outside of the US. But this statement making the news in the US is a step in the right direction.
(you should NOT immediately kill all witches, homosexuals, and people who don't believe the same as us, even though the book says the Lord clearly instructed you to do this).
Sometimes god is delivering instructions. Sometimes someone is claiming that god delivered instructions. The bible is unclear as to which the author felt was the case in each situation, probably not least because of the centuries of translation, adaptation, and manipulation. Some of those apparent contradictions probably aren't supposed to be contradictions at all, but they are now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These comments seem to indicate that the Pope thinks that Evolution and Cosmology don't provide any support for atheism as proposed by Dawkins or Krauss (as reported in a new book by Amir Aczel). Aczel also criticizes their claims, saying they are unscientific. He manages to bring mathematicians Cantor and Gödel into his argument in "Why Science Does Not Disprove God." http://www.amazon.com/Why-Scie...
Hm, are you really sure about this? The tagline of evolution isn't, "survival of those who just happend to be here, in no particular order, and for no particular reason", but "survival of the fittest." "Fitness" is properly a design principle, I would argue; it is an optimization (selection) with a purpose (survival). Adding millions of years and hundreds of genetic mutations to the equation doesn't change any of that.
Even your statement that "very likely you'll see increased complexity over time" betrays (if that's not too strong a word) a hidden assumption of progress. Why very likely? If truly random, why not equally unlikely?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
... that asshole Galileo was still just so wrong and stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
In describing my church, you also describe Slashdot.
Wait a sec. Did the pope just say that God didn't create man fully formed because he *couldn't*?
It's good to know that the Church's beliefs are evolving.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
he said what the Church has said for some time now: if evolution does exist, it exists God created it.
Which is basically a riff on the god of the gaps argument.
...the Catholic Church itself has not had a conflict with scientific theory for some time now.
Really? That is not consistent with the evidence as far as I can tell. They've made concessions over time (see god of the gaps) but they still insist that their ethical stance should determine the course of scientific inquiry. The most prominent examples (though hardly the only ones) are in reproductive biology. The church officially opposes the use of embryonic stem cells. Church leaders advocate public health policies (like abstinence) that demonstrably do not work in spite of copious scientific evidence showing that they do not work. In 2009 the pope actually stated that condom use would make the AIDS crisis worse. The church rejects all use of contraception technology in spite of demonstrable benefits supported by scientific evidence.
Religion isn't the root. Human nature is the root of the worlds problems. People do evil stuff. People like oppressing other people. They find reasons for doing so.
Miracles aren't magic, they are occurrences with incredibly low probabilities
A miracle by definition is an event that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws. In other words an actual Act of God. It is used colloquially for unlikely events but that is not what a miracle actually is defined as.
The bible doesn't contradict science, although many religious people unfortunately do.
Really? People really did turn into pillars of salt? People can actually die for several days and then be reborn? Virgin's can actually give birth?
Isaac Newton was a brilliant scientist. Newton is upheld by the Intelligent Design community as a great example of how Christians should engage science because he mentioned God in his book, the Principia Mathematica. But he is also an example of the very problems that become apparent when we use God as a pseudoscientific tool to close a gap caused by our own ignorance. It’s a good lesson for us today. For all his brilliance, Newton made a critical error in reasoning, and that was to apply an “Intelligent Design” answer to a problem he had with gravity. Newton’s laws of motion predicted the orbits of the planets around the Sun. Because he used approximations when calculating the forces of the planets upon each other, he came to the conclusion that the orbits are unstable and would decay after thousands of years. Newton suggested that God occasionally intervened with a miracle, by sending a comet or other object with just the right direction, size, and velocity, to gravitationally nudge the planets back into their correct orbits.
Years after Newton, Pierre Laplace found better methods to solve Newton’s equations, showing that the planetary orbits are indeed stable. When asked by Napoleon, “Monsieur Laplace, why wasn’t the Creator mentioned in your book on celestial mechanics?”, Laplace replied, “Sir, I have no need for that hypothesis.” Laplace was likely an atheist, but we now know that his findings about planetary motion were true. If he were a believer, he could have just as well said, “We don’t need to explicitly invoke God’s miraculous intervention when describing planetary motion.”
In the one area where Newton inserted God’s supernatural action as part of a scientific explanation, he was later shown to be wrong, and to add insult to injury, he was shown up by an atheist. Intelligent Design proponents leave out this detail when they talk about Newton.
Source: http://truecreation.info/
If the Pope says (confirming what mainstream Christians have believed for a long time) that homosexuals aren't bad, and now Evolution and Big Bang are consistent with orthodox Catholic thought, what the heck else are we going to build our strawmen attacks out of? ...because you don't really think this will change anyone's mind about how they feel about religion, do you?
-Styopa
Evolution and the Big Bang Theory have been accepted theories in the Catholicism for just about as long as they were around (last century or so). In fact the Big Bang Theory was proposed by a Catholic priest! Pope John Paul II said that evolution was the most probable theory and referenced a predecessor Pope's words as agreeing with him.
The article itself thankfully references this fact:
But Pope Francis’s comments were more in keeping with the progressive work of Pope Pius XII, who opened the door to the idea of evolution and actively welcomed the Big Bang theory. In 1996, John Paul II went further and suggested evolution was “more than a hypothesis” and “effectively proven fact”.
Though they did seem to want to keep perpetuating the myth that the Church was ever anti-science. When it's just not true.
Considering there are more than a billion Roman Catholics in the world, what the Pope says is relevant to them.
same thing said in 1950 by Pius XII with its Humani Generis encyclic, not a new thing. Catholic church isn't a fundamentalist one. Benedict XVI didn't went against Darwin, just claimed for not taking him too long so to forget the Creator. Maybe you do not agree with it, but it's a claim of faith, born from t he believes of that man. B. XVI said that there's no oppositon between science and faith (27 september 2009), so he is not a retrograde, the same thing Pius XII said is the same thing catholic church believes.
"Intelligent Design" is the conjecture that certain biological structures could not have emerged through the process of evolution and therefore (a non-sequitur reasoning method) an unspecified "designer" employed unspecified methods to implement the "design" of these structures. Not only is the conjecture completely untestable (as undefined mechanisms cannot be tested), but many of the supposed "irreducibly complex" structures are not actually irreducibly complex. A common failing of "design" advocates is an assumption that biological structures always emerge through purely additive processes, when in fact a process that removes redundant structures could leave behind structures that could not have existed in partial form on their own (but that could have existed in partial form along with the no-longer-present redundant structures).
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"Fitness", within the context of evolution, relates only to reproductive success rates within a population. If a "simple" structure is sufficient for reproductive success, then the "simple" structure will remain present over time.
Evolution is not driven by "purpose". Evolution is a consequence of imperfect replication; is not a movement toward a goal.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
he said what the Church has said for some time now: if evolution does exist, it exists God created it.
Which is basically a riff on the god of the gaps argument.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what the GP said, I don't think it's the God of the gaps, I think it's more along the lines of the "watchmaker God," who set up all the mechanisms to produce the results he wanted, then set them in motion and sat back and watched.
Can you explain why God creating the mechanism of evolution (as opposed to the development of certain features and/or species) is a riff on the God of the gaps, in which it is posited that the cause for anything we can't yet explain is God's will?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Back in 7th grade I was attending Catholic school. We had a teacher who was very, very religious but at the same time a good science teacher. How was this possible? She taught us a few memorable things: first off the creation in genesis took 7 days for god (7 th day was rest, chillin and having a beer hopefully). But who said a day for god is the same for us? In her words she said a day for god could be millions or billions of years to us. That made sense. Another thing that stuck out was that all of the physical processes we see are rules laid out by god. So basically, the laws of physics were created by god. Evolution? A natural process that god created. So here was a very godly woman who also was a firm believer in science because science is a gift from god. So the two can certainly coexist.
A while back I was talking to a religious guy I know from the local dive bar I used to frequent (religious guy at the bar, go figure. a regular hypocrite was more like it). We got in talking about science and during the course, he bought up the opinion that science is against god. But I bought up the counter of, why would god bestow such an awe inspiring field of study only to restrict us from pursuing it? He gave us a giant sandbox to play in and we refuse it? To me it would be rude to declining a gift from god. He started to see my point and said: "you know that makes sense. don't know if I like it but it makes sense". You could see he sorta understood the point.
So you can argue that all of science is merely a creation and gift from god. To deny it is to deny gods gift and possibly, god itself. Though there are some who will refuse any of those beliefs, if they are in a position of power be it a school board, politician or preacher, they have a self interest in that denial (control).
Disclaimer: I am agnostic. I doubt there is a god. Or perhaps there is a god but not in the way we traditionally think, a person. Perhaps the laws behind our universe are god. Or we are a 3d projection of a 2d hologram or inside a giant computer simulation. We don't know and perhaps, we never will know. And if there is a god as we picture, I am sure he/she is not the dick they are made out to be in various man made books. And to be honest, I really don't care either way. I just live my life and enjoy it :-)
The pope says we have. "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."
His problem is that he wants his proclamation to mean something to each individual, a sentiment safely within religions' comfort-zone. Yet evolution means very little for individuals, only to species. So he's come out with a fudge that tries to gloss over the distinction and invents these "internal laws" that pre-defines the direction of evolution towards an end goal of fulfilment. That's not what evolution is.
So according to the infallible one, either I have reached my fulfilment, or human beings have. Which one is it? And how is this distinguished from a god with a magic wand?
The Jesuits are pretty awesome.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Ah, it's so nice of him. The problem is though that there is an explicit and direct contradiction between an evolutionary worldview (supported by vast body of evidence) and a creator-based (2000 year old) worldview. His quote "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." is one of the most ridiculous mix-ups I have ever encountered.
evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve."
By "beings", I hope he mains simple self replicating single celled organisms, or he's got it wrong.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Even though only the fittest (or 'fit enough') survive, the mutations are random. So, there's no goal or progress. Different individuals have different complexity. Imagine that you introduce a complexity scale, where 0 means the simplest possible, and higher numbers mean increasingly complex individuals/species. Now, when evolution first started, complexity was very near 0, because the first life forms had to have happened by chance, and only simple things can happen by chance. As these organisms start to multiply, and populate the earth, it's very likely that some of the more complex ones produce even more complex offspring, so the upper bound on complexity keeps growing. The lower bound is fixed at zero.
You mean The Slash Church of the Dotterday Saints?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I think it's more along the lines of the "watchmaker God," who set up all the mechanisms to produce the results he wanted, then set them in motion and sat back and watched.
A distinction without any real difference. Such an argument presumes the existence of a deity when in fact there is no actual reason to presume such an entity actually is responsible. They are exploiting a gap in our scientific knowledge to claim that a god is responsible for the universe. Over time science has pushed back the boundaries of our knowledge but the churches continue to insist that a supernatural being must be involved somehow in spite of there being no actual evidence to support their position. The church has to varying degrees and at various times actively fought a losing battle against scientific progress when it demonstrated church doctrine/dogma to be false. Periodically they acquiesce to logic and facts and declare that their god must be responsible for the bits we don't understand just yet or that god must have set things up. You don't need to get into a semantic argument to realize the logic is identical to god of the gaps.
Can you explain why God creating the mechanism of evolution (as opposed to the development of certain features and/or species) is a riff on the God of the gaps, in which it is posited that the cause for anything we can't yet explain is God's will?
It's just the most fundamental god of the gaps argument. Basically any time we don't understand something and then invoke a deity to explain it we are involving the same logic as a god of the gaps argument. It is an attempt to posit that god (in whatever form) exists and/or is responsible for something based on current gaps in our knowledge. No, we don't know how the universe was created but it doesn't automatically follow that a deity is responsible.
In describing my church, you also describe Slashdot.
Really? I've been reading and posting to slashdot a long time and there is almost nothing that readers here agree on much less consider dogma. Some are libertarian and others aren't and they have a healthy active debate about which is right. Some like Apple and other do not. Some like bitcoin and others think it is nonsense. When people on slashdot see a "Crazy Ms Doddard" they point it out with enthusiasm. Honestly I cannot think of many places that are less like a congregation that sits quietly trying to avoid conflict. The ENTIRE point and value of slashdot is that people here question virtually everything and argue loudly about it.
Find me a mainstream church where there are ongoing debates like the ones here about the correctness of virtually every topic and I'll concede the point.
Excuse me while I pass the link to this story to every Catholic that has ever told me "You're wrong" when I started explaining the exact same thing over 15 years ago.
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
I would probably have been better to say that intolerance of those that are religious is irrational for someone that takes a scientific view of the evolution of socital beliefs. That they are decreasing in practice is irrelevant to that point.
Not because anyone disagrees with him, but because they all are thinking the same thing: "Oh, deal Lord, he's going to get crazy old Mrs. Doddard stated again on fossils again. How can I get out of here politely?"
Which means you are de-facto agreeing with "crazy old Mrs. Doddard" because you are remaining silent and accepting her viewpoint. I understand not wanting to get involved with an argument with a crazy person but quietly allowing her viewpoint to remain dogma because confrontation makes you uncomfortable is rather pathetic. Crazy Mrs. Doddard is permitted to inflict her nonsense on everyone else because it is allowed.
Hardly. It's more like " I won't bring this up here because old Mrs. Doddard will then start on her rant. So, by keeping quiet the rest of us can continue our discussion and not get sidetracked by a nutcase. Nowhere did the OP say they wouldn't bring it up if someone else started the conversation or if OMD did, just that there is no reason to start a discussion you know will only end in one person ranting and everyone else looking for an exit.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
unless you see separation of the in group from the out group as the sole purpose of religion.
Nullius in verba
I wouldn't consider that a scientific analysis of religion and its place in societal development.
Fine, call it god for all I care. But to go from there to explaining why this thing would have an opinion on world politics is just jumping the shark.
Nullius in verba
Evolution and the Big Bang Theory have been accepted theories in the Catholicism for just about as long as they were around (last century or so). In fact the Big Bang Theory was proposed by a Catholic priest! Pope John Paul II said that evolution was the most probable theory and referenced a predecessor Pope's words as agreeing with him.
The article itself thankfully references this fact:
But Pope Francis’s comments were more in keeping with the progressive work of Pope Pius XII, who opened the door to the idea of evolution and actively welcomed the Big Bang theory. In 1996, John Paul II went further and suggested evolution was “more than a hypothesis” and “effectively proven fact”.
Though they did seem to want to keep perpetuating the myth that the Church was ever anti-science. When it's just not true.
It only took them until 1993 to admit they were wrong to try Galielo for heresy (for such modern concepts as the idea that celestial bodies are not perfect spheres attached to the vault of heaven), so people who say the Catholic church has a long tradition of being anti-science definitely have a leg to stand on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
While you are correct that it was a Catholic Priest who came up with the idea of the Big Bang I'm more concerned about the bigger picture.
The Pope declaring something "true" doesn't change the facts.
This is a non story.
In fact, the name of the chief Roman god (Jove or Jupiter) may very well have been influenced by Jehovah, the one Israelite god. Look at "Jupiter" and tell me it doesn't look like a contraction of YHWH and "pater", the Latin word for father.
So why don't more translations of the Hebrew Scriptures render the nearly 7,000 appearances of the tetragrammaton as "Jehovah"? True, the pronunciation of "YHWH" as "Jehovah" is about as historically inaccurate as the pronunciation of his only begotten son's name as "dzhii-zoss", but it is the most familiar in English.
The TRUTH NEVER PLEASES EVERYONE.....
Consensus produces palatable lies for general consumption, not truth.
End of Line.
Hatred is a strong Word but Religion has held us back long enough no ?
End of Line.
He's (big) bang on! No more aping the creationists; Francis is a dinosaur no more.
Is that your scientific analysis?
That "something" might have been Nothing.
Attributing that event or non event to God or any God is just nonsensical and part of your upbringing only.
The "Magic Man done it" approach is not an answer, it's a cop out.
It has no basis in reality. Everything could just have been here all along....
The Big Bang and the instant inflation could be a cycle of events that we cannot understand via our short lifespans...
There are more interesting creation myths on the shelves anyways.. http://www.desy.de/gna/interpedia/greek_myth/creation.html
"In the beginning there was only chaos. Then out of the void appeared Erebus, the unknowable place where death dwells, and Night. All else was empty, silent, endless, darkness. Then somehow Love was born bringing a start of order. From Love came Light and Day. Once there was Light and Day, Gaea, the earth appeared."
The Greeks were awesome.
End of Line.
The "big bang" theory and the "steady state" theory aren't mutually exclusive. In fact a universe always existing would explain where the mass for a big bang would come from.
If the Pope says (confirming what mainstream Christians have believed for a long time)
what mainstream christians?
i read the pope's quote yesterday, it later came to mind when i stumbled on yet-another-creationism-thread here on slashdot, about michigan state university hosting a conference and such. do us citizens realize that this is a problem with us christians *only*? they are not mainstream at all! that this ongoing charade is possible in a developed country is startling. you won't find such widespread intellectual insult among western christians elsewhere. not even in spain, with an extreme national-catholic background still deeply entrenched in power and pretty low scores in education, does this find a minimum audience. not even on junk tv. in us it spread from the university!? dudes, ...
that homosexuals aren't bad, and now Evolution and Big Bang are consistent with orthodox Catholic thought, what the heck else are we going to build our strawmen attacks out of? ...because you don't really think this will change anyone's mind about how they feel about religion, do you?
francisco is cool, exactly the worst pope to have. ratzinger's rancid fundamentalism was just fine, it drove many lost souls away. too bad, the roman catholic church must have had an epiphany, because they realized this too. now they have a celebrity!
"evolution states that we are continually improving "- No it certainly doesn't. There is no direction or purpose implied by evolution.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
99.9% of the sciencey types don't get what ID is really about. It is too easy and too tempting to dismiss out of hand (and to disrespect) in the Dawkins Fan Club echo chamber, in efforts to garner lay-atheist / GNU Atheist attaboys.
So, how to distill the fundamental essence underpinning the multiple facets of ID into a brief enough sentence or two that a GNU can get through before even having a chance to give in to the desire to impress his peers and make himself feel important by buttressing his woo-flagging credentials?
ID is basically an effort to rigorously model various aspects / subsystems of living systems and / or their environments, in rigorously defined contexts, so as to provide an unambiguous analysis of how the given system under consideration changes over time, and what other sorts of systems-with-changes (of more well-understood systems that change, evolve, etc.) the given phenomenon is precisely analogous to- that we can more readily appreciate and wrap our minds around- so as to be able to confidently assess whether or not the systems under consideration evolve / change in ways that fall outside of what would otherwise be considered normal probability bounds. That is to say, ID generally wants to be able to demonstrate that phenomenon X had to have taken place in life's history in precise conditions modeled Y, and that this is inescapable, this is conservative, this is bare minimum, this is indisputable. So now one and all can clearly see that phenomenon X is entirely analogous to rolling 1,000 die 1,000 times and getting all sixes each time. Or entirely analogous to finding an electron outside its orbital 10,000 out of 10,000 times. Or whatever.
This approach does not invoke potential "miracles" as they are popularly understood. Everything in such investigations has nothing to do with logically impossible events. Such events are possible in principle, which means they should be investigated.
Of course most ID proponents think the writing is on the wall and that with information (evidence) already available, it is possible (necessary) to intuit that many such known phenomena / events in life's history qualify as being extraordinarily unlikely, as per the way things normally work. But obviously until the formalizations are rigorous enough and the evidence and data are plentiful enough such that no one can disagree without being an evident fool, there is more work to be done. All the while being open to some theories about some phenomena being entirely explicable given the "normal" or "usual" behavior / probability bounds of the systems / contexts in which they are defined / modeled. This is open mindedness. This is the true pursuit of empirical knowledge.
The popular-atheists and Dawkins-cult movements however will rule out such considerations and investigations from the outset, due to philosophical convictions of which they themselves are blissfully and fervently unaware.
It's always amusing to watch religious people tying themselves into knots trying to fit reality into their various belief systems. The problem with that (and why it's sorta fun to watch, for a while) is that the ONE thing that cannot be allowed to change is the belief system. Those who would argue that science is just another belief system need to understand that if true, then it's at least the only belief system that is flexible and willing to change in response to reality, rather than vice versa.
Anyway, it's pretty easy to logically disprove the concept of god as most religions seem to define him/her/it. Most religions, especially the abrahamic ones, state that god is all-loving, omnipotent and omniscient: he knows all, sees all and is all-powerful (and he loves us all too!) Wow, pretty cool god there. But, says a five-year-old child, if god's so great, why does he allow bad things to happen? Either he is omnipotent, and chooses not to do anything about "bad stuff", like preventing a flood that kills thousands, showing he's not all-loving, or he would do, but didn't know it was happening, showing he's not all-knowing, or did know about it, and looked on helplessly, showing he's not omnipotent. Or maybe god's just an asshole. Or maybe he doesn't exist. I know which conclusion I tend towards.
"Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they "require it.""
No, they don't require an intelligence at all. They require appropriate conditions are met. Those conditions do not necessarily imply an intelligence.
It's like one form of stupid is solved just to make way for another.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
While it's a big step forward, it's also a step in the wrong direction.
Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator â" arguing instead that they "require it."
Nothing could be further from the truth. In this point, even the most foaming-at-the-mouth, ridiculous pathetic idiot fanatic bible-thumping young-earth creationist is intellectually ahead of the pope. The fanatics fully understand how destructive evolution is to their core ideas and that it is the ultimate destroyer of religion because it explains exactly how life including sentient life like us humans can evolve from simple chemistry, with no other influence, guidance or creation required.
His withdrawl to "initial creation" is a parlor trick at best, because it requires at least one of two things to be true, both of which we already have strong evidence of being false.
The first option would be continued "guidance" like intelligent design postulates, but on a more indirect path. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever to any of that, but at the required level of indirection, complexity theory tells us that either god can supersede quantum fluctuations and entropy, or the guidance was basically on the scale "some galaxies would be nice, and organic molecules so life can begin" - nothing even remotely resembling the god personally interested in humanity (or rather: a random small desert tribe somewhere in the middle of nowhere) that the bible paints.
The second option is determinism - that setting the proper initial conditions has to lead to the current state of affairs and that's what the dude did. There's an excellent argument made by Darwin that tears this idea apart based on complexity - basically it would require the initial state to be many orders of magnitude more complex than the current one, an inversion of entropy.
But all those are scientific arguments. The stronger argument in this case is from philosophy: Taken the church's past history of arguments and official positions, it is clear that it has never won a single argument against science. All arguments that are resolved (and not still in dispute) have always been resolved in favor of science. Throughout history, the church had to admit more and more that its previous positions were wrong and accept the scientific position. Galileo (Feyerabends argument notwithstanding) was just the most popular example. From this history, there is little reason to put any trust into the arguments where the church maintains its position. If someone had to admit being wrong again and again in the past and has never been demonstrably right, it is safe to assume the trend will continue.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
>The theory of evolution, as a scientific theory, mandates that living organisms develop through a process of natural selection
No it doesn't. It only says that natural selection is one possible mechanism by which an evolutionary path is decided. We engage in artificial selection all the time and there's nothing natural about it.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Being logical is foundational to religion. Axiomatically, logic governs our existence, if the same logic did not also govern the existence of any fantastic god-like being then there would be no basis for that being to relate to us. For example, if there were separate god logic and human logic and god says "I promise you XXX" then the promise means nothing if there is some hidden mechanism by which a promise might not be binding on god.
Nullius in verba
Ironically, the atheist bloc tend to propagate myths like this without any evidence to support their claims or being open to rational discourse
There are faults on all sides
No matter if it's the Church or the atheist bloc, when one goes to the extreme, reason is no longer a valid commodity for them
Some of those so-called "atheists" are so anti-Christianity that they actually siding themselves with Islamic extremists in opposing anything that has to do with Christ
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The Bible teaches that sin is the reason for death and that Jesus offers eternal life through the redemption by the Holy Spirit. The theory of evolution teaches that there was billions of years of death before human beings came on the scene. So if evolution is true, then Jesus can't save us from death because death exists as a natural event separate from sin, making Jesus' sacrifice meaningless.
So Pope Francis is either delusional or a liar, because one of the basic tenets of Christianity REQUIRES death to be something caused by sin in order to have any meaning at all.
Either Christianity is true, or evolutionary theory is true, or maybe neither is true. But Christianity and evolutionary theory are most certainly NOT compatible.
I suggest Catholics renounce Catholicism and start looking for a new church to attend, because this Pope is obviously unreliable.
He's at least the third Pope to come out in support of evolution, I think the dust has long since settled, except around the fundamentalists and those who like to ignorantly poke fun at the religious.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
... Has one of the largest observatories in the world. How is this news?
Well, it's been repeatedly confirmed that yes, virgins *can* give birth - it's extremely rare, but it does happen
Find me a single confirmed instance of a human virgin giving birth. (and no the one in the bible does not count as confirmed) Or are you really so dense as to not realize we're talking about human birth here? The claim was that "The bible doesn't contradict science" which is easily and demonstrably false. People try to equivocate and claim this bit or that bit is really just literary license but they always do so at a moment that turns out to be oddly convenient to whatever argument they are making at the time.
Oh, and it has been documented that many Yogi masters can slow their metabolism to the point that they would appear dead even to most modern medical practitioners without sophisticated tools, much less Roman soldiers.
Citation needed. I don't believe that for a moment unless you can provide a evidence that such an act was performed in front of credible medical practitioners and the results were repeatable and tested. I don't know if you've ever actually seen a dead person but I have and it's not something that could be easily faked.
I've seen plenty of claims of similarly astonishing claims by martial arts "masters" and other charlatans over the years and virtually none of them stand up to proper scientific scrutiny. Most such claims are either puffery or what amounts to stage magic.
Can't think of any explanations for the pillars of salt though.
Because there is no point. The point is that there are plenty of things in the bible that contradict scientific evidence, often quite clearly. You don't even have to look very hard.
No human is infallible.
Free Martian Whores!
Pro and con. Albeit, the majority con. 90% of you are functionally illiterate. Yet your sabre-rattling goes on, your pyrrhic victory must be won!
I knew the Church was going to start spinning out of control with the science thing the SECOND they let Galileo off the hook.
As soon as they acknowledged the earth went around the sun---they were on a greased slide straight to hell. :-)
you're wrong Francis - it's called meiosis!. nice effort though...
(you should NOT immediately kill all witches, homosexuals, and people who don't believe the same as us, even though the book says the Lord clearly instructed you to do this).
Sometimes god is delivering instructions. Sometimes someone is claiming that god delivered instructions. The bible is unclear as to which the author felt was the case in each situation, probably not least because of the centuries of translation, adaptation, and manipulation. Some of those apparent contradictions probably aren't supposed to be contradictions at all, but they are now.
This is going to come as a shock to those who believe that "God said it. It's in the Boble. I believe it. End of discussion."
The Westboro Baptist bus is on it's way!
When you're hammered everything looks like it needs nailed....
God and his room-mate Chugs were arm wrestling. When...
Chugs: You're going down, man.
God: Pprrrrrrrrrrrrr (farts)
Chugs: Oh, dude, that is sick.(God wins, thanks to the stink)
God: Yeah! Undefeated! Oh, wait, wait, wait. Here comes another one. Quick, give me your lighter.
God: Pprrrrrrrrrrrrr (farts outreal loud. A big bang is heard)
God: You smell that?
Then, over millions of years, evolution took its course.
"GOD" EXISTS, BUT HE'S SIMPLY NOT WHAT PEOPLE THINK "HE" IS. GOD isn't some guy that sits on a throne somewhere up above. God is the word for "everything", and "everything" is what we call "God". All of reality is constructed of him. It was once said "Split a piece of wood, and i am there. Look under a stone, and i am there." That's why i'm sure The Creation Theory and The Evolution Theory are both correct (Both, that's why no one can figure out which is true). God uses evolution as a tool to create with. He creates within all of existence (the Universe, once basically empty). Within this reality, God created us... just as we, in turn, create (computers, for example). "Life" is sort of like "God's Saved Memory"... in the hard disk. An awesome notion is, it is probably going on elsewhere as well, (humanoid-like life, due to convergent evolution). By that i mean other planets. As for The Bible... the above justifies why man can say it's God's word, yet it's written by men. It is and it isn't. As for Jesus? He was a man that was an Indigo or something like that... closest to the core of God/Universe. In other words, God's consciousness resided particularly strongly in him, at least partly, making him "The son of God"... being aware of God's existence as a fact (his soul held a large portion of the "memory"). Others before Jesus, and since, have had the "higher knowledge" as well... maybe just not AS high. God's consciousness exists in all of us, that's what GOD is. Am i nuts? No. i'm just a scientist who knows what he knows. God is just the "essence" of what the universe is. Naturally, like everyone and everything else, i could be wrong. But i maintain we're all tiny pieces of God...