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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upon by either team - it seems (for atheist scientists) a lot easier to discard the bible as 'rubbish' instead of an historical document - where the religious camp tends to take this same history book too literal, despite all translation issues.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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Nah, the Pope just has his priorities in order. "Argue about shit that doesn't matter a whole lot to the church or God" is waaay down the Pope's list, but waaay up the list of many people who just like to argue because it gives them a sense of superiority.
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.
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It is also not abiogeneses theory.
Religious people tend to lump these together because most creation myths cover both Earth-origin (and Universe-origin mind you) as well as life-creation.
All of them assuming that life-creation basically got right to present-day creatures from the start (with a few rare stories where a particular new species is created in a myth in an almost evolution-life story).
In the case of the Christian creation myth in particular - no such exceptions exist, so for Christian creationists big-bang, solary-system formation and evolution are all intruding on something they explain with a single (unscientific) story.
Hence they tend to lump the science together as well.
Of course this is ironic and silly - abiogenesis at this stage has no firm answers or theories, it has a few ideas but none have any significant supporting evidence yet.
Evolution was hailed as a scientific breakthrough since first published and been validated with only minor corrections ever since.
The Big Bang (like black holes) on the other hand was despised by scientists when they first realized that Einstein's theories had it as a possibility, physicists do not like singularities and to them the Big Bang theory was little more than creationism ! The fact that popes had embraced it by the 1960's actually HARMED It's acceptance in science.
It wasn't until decades later as the evidence mounted that the big bang theory became mainstream science - something helped in no small part by the growing evidence for black holes (another hated singularity).
Indeed the hypotheses that black holes in one universe are the big bangs of another universe was first proposed because it would take a universe with two types of known singularities and at least reduce it to ONE singularity, and importantly - one we understand a lot more about !
If that hypotheses is true - then the "other side" of the big bang theory isn't a mystery - it's a black hole in another universe created by a supermassive star collapsing under it's own gravity.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
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 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.
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.
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 :-)