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Moderate hit for creationism.

tsig said:
If god exists in an eternal Now then he is fixed in a system he cannot change and must observe things he cannot do anything about, it would seem he is in a private hell of his own making.

His screams last all eternity.
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Now I feel sorry for God.
 
I picture God just snapping his fingers and causing big bangs in more than one universe one after another and letting them evolve how they will as he goes on to the next one. Maybe it's the big bangs that are His forte; He has no interest on how they progress after that.
 
I just noticed that the translation in the article from the OP has been changed from "divine being" to "demiurge", which should help a bit in getting the Pope out of the dog house with some Christian English speakers. Whew!:rolleyes: I found "God is not a divine being or a magician..." just a little odd for a Pope to be claiming.

“God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,” the pope said. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

Updated: “Demiurge,” the manual laborer who created the physical world in Plato’s origin myth, was translated in some accounts as “divine being.”
God is not a magician’: Pope says Christians should believe in evolution and Big Bang
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I think the Pope is still on the hook, though, concerning the creation of human beings in the image of God when he says, "...because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve." I don't really see how he can honestly try to promote accepting the two beliefs at the same time.
 
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The only catholic which I knew as creationist are coming from the US.

I do not know of any creationist catholic from western europe. They may exists but they are a crushing minority.

Also note that in many western europe country i lived, there is often a government or state curriculum which only take into account science, that is evolution.

Heck the first time we were taught evolution and earth age in school was CM1/CM2 part of the "science" classes (9 to 10 years old) with a week or two about dynosaurus(*) and various period of old earth.

Also there are very few "evangelist" in france.

All combined , I would be personally shocked and astonished if that better than 0.1% of the French christian population is YEC. Germany from what I can se eis pretty much the same.

Other religion in France, that is another story.

(*) before they were renamed
 
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A lot of the catholics in polynesia are hardcore YEC's, with a substantial chunk believing that all polynesians are from israel, arriving within the last 400 years
 
Olowkow said:
I think the Pope is still on the hook, though, concerning the creation of human beings in the image of God when he says, "...because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve." I don't really see how he can honestly try to promote accepting the two beliefs at the same time.
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Not really - the statement is really pretty ambiguous. In God's likeness could easily be applied to physical, mental or spiritual.
 
MG1962 said:
Not really - the statement is really pretty ambiguous. In God's likeness could easily be applied to physical, mental or spiritual.
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It could be applied to Homo Neanderthalensis too. All religion has to be ambiguous in its claims, which just wind up being meaningless, in order to appeal to the widest audience. Just-so feel-good bed time stories that have wound up costing evolved man a lot of precious time.
 
tsig said:
One of the most unsettling stories I have read.
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The machine in that science fiction stories has a god-like nature. It has ever lasting life. However, it sees nothing else worthwhile to do than tempt and torment human beings for all eternity.
 
The theistic evolution idea like the catholic church espouses just strikes me as desperate. They know that to go against modern science will just show them as the Looney tunes they are o they pay lip service to reality.
Always bare in mind that when religions concede something to reality they do so solely because they have no choice not because they want to. The catholic church has been dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge modern science,but only when they have to. Look at there stance on aids in Africa,they still won't advise condoms.
I for one don't care if its young earth,theistic,old earth,Hindu or I.D ,its all religious creationism and is all insane.
 
Puppycow said:
I hate to say it, but I'm kind of with the creationists on this one: I don't understand the people who think both things can be true at the same time. That is, the Bible is true and the scientific theories about the origin and evolution of life on earth are also true. I only differ with the creationists on which one of those mutually exclusive possibilities is more likely to be true.
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The Catholic Church is actually not very adherent to the principle of Biblical Literalism. This is a core dispute with much of Protestantism.

The Catholic Church has a principle called The Living Church, which is the belief that the church is the centerpiece of the faith, rather than the text in a book. They hold as true that even if the Bible was originally divinely authored, the Bible we have today is the product of human judgement, not crystal clear, and appears to need interpretation. The Pope is final authority for interpretation. If the Pope is wrong, a Catholic obeying his interpretation in good faith will be OK. This is what's meant by Papal Infallibility. Catholics are supposed to defer to the Pope's interpretation even if they personally think it's incorrect.

So, in terms of the Bible versus Evolution, the Catholics are not seeing these critical Biblical accounts as literally true, but often simply metaphorical. They don't all see these as mutually exclusive beliefs.

But some do, of course. Individual Catholics can think the Pope is wrong, and I think it's even an issue among orders. From what I can tell Jesuits and Franciscans are very evolution-friendly, while the entire Eastern Rites and German Order and some others are quite hostile to evolution.
 
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