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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 ...
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.
Keeping an open mind is good but make sure your brain doesn't fall out.
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might well have been a spaceship from another planet or solar system, colonializing earth with humans and various animal species.
Unless they populated Earth with every single lifeform, that wouldn't be possible, since all lifeforms have a single family tree.
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.
Thank you, I was just thinking: "You know, if there were space aliens in here, this whole book would be even more believable."
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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.
This is not how Science works. Science makes and observation and attempts to explain it. The Bible explains nothing in nature and no amount of re-interpreting changes that fact.
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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That's how we know Scientology is real. I'm not saying it's because of aliens, but.... aliens.
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.
There's actually a lot of potentional scientific correct stuff in the Bible
As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
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.
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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.
(Full disclosure, I'm an atheist) Actually, god was afraid we would steal his power. That's why he kicks us out.
And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
- Genesis 3:22
HA! That reminds me of what Terry Carr, a science fiction writer, once said, that if the Bible was released as an Ace Double, it would have been titled "War God of Israel", with the flip side called "The Thing with Three Souls".
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
It's easy reply to this with a 'what the f* did you smoke'
Saying "I'm not insane" is not, in itself, a proof of sanity.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The reason for this is much more mundane. In the original Hebrew, God has many names depending on whether God is being referred to as someone who judges sins, as merciful, etc. These don't all translate perfectly from Hebrew to English so sometimes "Lord" is used and sometimes "God" is used - depending on the translation. No need to bring in space aliens and further complicate matters when a simple translation explanation will do.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The main problem with using the bible here is that it has no predictive power at all. It's all the classical case of "hindsight is 20-20". We can't read into the bible as to what to look for in future scientific endeavors. All we can do is do science the right way, and then try to use it and claim "hurr durr see bible was right - here here and there". The revisionist approach many religious people seem so fond of can be reduced to: the religious text X must be right, let's see if we can fit it to our current understanding of reality. I shouldn't need to state the obvious problem here: any time spent on such revisionism is a big waste and has nothing but faint entertainment value. If you're easily amused, that is.
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There's actually a lot of potentional scientific correct stuff in the Bible.
The point about science is the process, not the result. There may be correct content in the bible, but that does not make it scientific.
Which version of Genesis would you like to go with? You do know the bible contains multiple conflicting versions...
I do like how you've taken the Ark story and turn it into a bastardized panspermia myth. The idea that earth was colonized by super beings from outer space sounds awesome! I'll put on the shelf next to my book of native american creation myths.
As for the bible, it's a train wreck. You can take the bible and make ANYTHING out of it. It's theological mess, it's a moral mess, it's self contradictory mess. This is why we've got X denominations of Christians who can't decide on any single part of the bible. For every part that you like, you'll find some other group who has issue with it.
However, our fossil record does not contain any evidence of alien origin. We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to transitional fossils and genetic evidence and radiometric dating that shows that genetically and chemically we're all related. You have lots of DNA in common with an oak tree, and a bunny, and a fish, and a chimpanzee, etc. I'll grant you that maybe some comet crashed to earth 4.5 billion years ago that had a strand of DNA in it and whole process got kicked off. However, until we start catching comets and examining them for evidence of genetic materials or the precursors therein, it's just a hypothesis without any evidence.
Making the argument that the Earth as been geo-engineered for humans is preposterous. 2/3's of it is covered with water we can't drink! Large swaths are covered with desserts and mountain ranges. There are earthquakes and volcanoes, etc.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
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 :-)