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The Vatican Invites World's Leading Scientists To Discuss Cosmology (independent.co.uk)
In 2014, Pope Francis declared that God is not "a magician with a magic wand" and that evolution and the Big Bang theory are real. Now, the Vatican has sent an invitation to the world's leading scientists and cosmologists to try and understand the Big Bang. The Independent reports: Astrophysicists and other experts will attend the Vatican Observatory to discuss black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. The conference honoring Monsignor George Lemaitre is being held at the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help correct the notion that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to science. In 1927, Lemaitre was the first to explain that the receding of distant galaxies was the result of the expansion of the universe, a result he obtained by solving equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Lemaitre's theory was known as the "primeval atom," but it is more commonly known today as the big-bang theory. The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, says Lemaitre's research proves that you can believe in God and the big-bang theory.
If you're going to be Christian and don't want to be a retard, Catholicism is where it's at.
Because young earthers are generally not Catholic.
. .
They've been doing astronomy for over a century. They're hardly trying to look "hip" or "cool".
Biblical numerology was never intended to be taken literally. You're supposed read the number of years and think, "oh, right. That doesn't really mean X years. That means Y alternate meaning."
e.g. The number 7 means completeness and perfection, and the number 40 means a period of testing.
When numbers are added or multiplied in the bible, you're not supposed to try to use algebra.
X plus Y means "both the meaning of X and the meaning of Y",
X times Y means something similar to addition, but it adds extra emphasis.
Anyone who believes in a literal 6000 year old earth because of the Bible needs to go take a required freshman Bible Studies class at a religious university ASAP. It doesn't matter which one you pick. They'll all tell you you're wrong if you think the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old, and then they'll teach you the context/meaning of all of those numbers.
God put the fossils and other evidence for evolution on earth to test our faith.
The majority of young earth creationists do not believe that God put the fossils there to test our faith. The majority of young earth creationists believe at least some of the following:
1) That the majority of fossils exist because many animals were buried in the flood and that the torrential flood caused the different rock layers (rather than millions of years)
2) That fossilization can happen much quicker than previously thought...in a matter of years rather than hundreds of thousands of years.
3) Because fossilization is relatively recent, long-range radiometric dating meant to measure millions of years is not suitable and gives inaccurate results. Much the same way as doing long-range radiometric dating on recent volcanic rocks yields incorrect results.
4) That recently discovered dinosaur DNA either confirms the young earth creationist model or at the very least shows that secular scientists are wrong about how long DNA can really last.
Does a God need it?
You (and the creationist idiots for different reasons) are looking at things the wrong way IMHO. As I see it science and religion are orthogonal unless it's dumbed down Christianity-Lite that sees science as a direct threat to it's very financial business model.
Mendel was quite happy working out a few things about genetics as well as being a monk, they didn't conflict. In geology four out of the five that disproved the "Noah's flood" theory of fossils were ordained. They didn't have so narrow an idea of religion that reality could get in the way.
Giordano Bruno was also a Catholic monk, who advanced the "infinite universe" theory, and got burned at the stake by the Vatican for his trouble.
Correlation is not causation. He was heretical on quite a few issues and if his only heresy would have been his scientific work, my guess would be that he would have lived a lot longer. Case in point — how many did the Church burn because of scientific work? I am not aware of any such definite case.
I take your point, however. The Catholic Church has been pretty good on most science - up and down- but you've got to be careful, because if Science starts to suggest something that makes the Vatican too uncomfortable, they might get slapped down pretty hard. Though Benedict seems a decent sort in that regard.
Well, right now Catholic Church is very uncomfortable with embryonic research. I don't see the hammer falling.
The pope before him would have gladly started burning witches and homosexuals again if he could.
This is a good reason not to ever trust any group of people. If you think well of scientists, look up Tuskegee syphilis experiment. For a wide scale corruption of science, look up Nazi Germany.
As I wrote elsewhere it really came down to politics and calling the Pope an idiot in print. Others had been discussing the Copernican model before Galileo (and Galileo for two decades before his trial), but they did not depict a character that was obviously the Pope and obviously an idiot in their discussions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
The Vatican has maintained an astronomy office since 1774: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
In 1993 the Vatican Observatory saw first light on one of the world's premier large telescopes on Mt. Graham in Arizona (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Advanced_Technology_Telescope), a project which was almost killed off by the same Greens who are trying to prevent the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii from being built, on the same excuse of "sacred to my people" that is being used now in Hawaii.
...I would still advise that you read the Liturgy.
Liturgy is ritual rather than a bit of writing but I'll assume you are talking about the various catholic holy texts. I've read more of it than I care to admit. And it was largely preposterous crap meant to impress the credulous. The only value in reading it is so you can understand something about what the poor deluded followers of the church are rambling on about.
Some of the best writing ever came from the Catholic church. Even if they can't live by their own rules, it doesn't invalidate the rules.
It's impossible to actually exist by the rules of the church because they are illogical and self-contradictory and reflect values of people from a different time and place.
I also disagree you your assertion of the quality of the writing but that's not an objective critique on my part, more of an aesthetic judgement. The content of the liturgy on the other hand is objectively crap. Mostly made up fables that con men are trying with all their might to justify in order to gain power over the credulous.