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Pope speaks out about Evolution

irishman

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From todays Irish Times:

The Vatican published yesterday - "Schöpfung und Evolution" (Creation and Evolution).

According to the IT, the pope describes evolution as "not a complete, scientifically verified theory". He explains that "Evolution theory is in large part not experimentally verifiable because we cannot bring 10,000 generations into a laboratory. That means there are considerable gaps in experimental verification . . . as a result of the incredible timeframe which the theory addresses,"

He said the evolution debate was about "reclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" and "the great fundamental questions of philosophy - where man and the world came from and where they are going."

The book is based on discussions at a symposium with doctoral students during 2006.

According to Fr Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. Fr Twomey said the discussion was lively, but that no one mentioned "intelligent design".

"Unlike the fundamentalist Protestant churches in America, the Catholic church does not have a serious problem with the scientific theory of evolution," he said. "These are American problems we don't even enter into."





Seems fairly reasonable position to take, although his point about not being able to verify evolution due to lack of laboratory evidence probably applies more to CHristianity than to evolution!!!!!
 
irishman said:
From todays Irish Times:

The Vatican published yesterday - "Schöpfung und Evolution" (Creation and Evolution).

According to the IT, the pope describes evolution as "not a complete, scientifically verified theory". He explains that "Evolution theory is in large part not experimentally verifiable because we cannot bring 10,000 generations into a laboratory. That means there are considerable gaps in experimental verification . . . as a result of the incredible timeframe which the theory addresses,"

He said the evolution debate was about "reclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" and "the great fundamental questions of philosophy - where man and the world came from and where they are going."

The book is based on discussions at a symposium with doctoral students during 2006.

According to Fr Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. Fr Twomey said the discussion was lively, but that no one mentioned "intelligent design".

"Unlike the fundamentalist Protestant churches in America, the Catholic church does not have a serious problem with the scientific theory of evolution," he said. "These are American problems we don't even enter into."





Seems fairly reasonable position to take, although his point about not being able to verify evolution due to lack of laboratory evidence probably applies more to CHristianity than to evolution!!!!!
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Fairly reasonable, except that evolution certainly is a "complete, scientifically verified theory". The vague, woolly red herrings about gaps in the record are inserted by His Popiness purely to give the faithful a bit more fantasy leeway than John Paul II was apparently willing to when he said evolution was "more than a hypothesis".

By saying this, he's actually negating JPIIs stance; what's "more than a hypothesis" but also "not a complete, scientifically verified theory"? Manna from heaven for the creationists, that's what.

See the (British) Times also.
 
I'm really curious to see how this turns out. Seems like just a few months ago the Vatican's astronomer was saying that Creationism was little more than Paganism. Then I hear he got the sack since Benidict took notice of what he said. I know that some Catholics are creationists, most are not, and I've met very few priests who were.

The whole time I went to Parochial school, I was taught evoloution as fact (this was back in the '70s). Many of my teachers were nuns and brothers, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that the Church might start beating the ID drum.
 
It seems more than a bit of a surprise to me. It seems out of character for the Catholic Church, and I suspect inaccurate reporting, or distorted discussion. However, I haven't read the links yet.

I've never read anything by JPII or Benedict yet that questioned the correctness of the theory of evolution, and I don't expect to do so this time either, but I have been wrong before. Perhaps Benny is a bit less scientifically inclined than his predecessor.
 
I'm sure Dawkins explained this somewhere. Since these god deluded people can't comprehend the time scales that is required for evolution, there is no way they will ever accept it.

As for evidence, Michael Shermer said (paraphrasing), "when we find fossil evidence to close a gap, the creationists declare 2 new gaps".

Charlie (this pope is full of poop) Monoxide
 
I'm not the least surprised. I really expected any successor to JPII to back track a little on evolution, given how hard he worked to make sure the cardinals would be close to universally very conservative, and when they picked Ratzinger I pretty well assumed this would happen.
 
Meadmaker said:
It seems more than a bit of a surprise to me. It seems out of character for the Catholic Church, and I suspect inaccurate reporting, or distorted discussion. However, I haven't read the links yet.

I've never read anything by JPII or Benedict yet that questioned the correctness of the theory of evolution, and I don't expect to do so this time either, but I have been wrong before. Perhaps Benny is a bit less scientifically inclined than his predecessor.
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You must be from an alternate dimension. This is the Catholic Church, the institution that tries to convince people that there is a place of ceaseless torment they will be cast down into if they don't conform and obey and the institution that refuses to teach the use of contraceptives, and so has contributed to millions of HIV cases. The Catholic Church wallows in superstition.
 
Cosmo said:
Clearly he's never heard of bacteria. :rolleyes:
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My cousin who at least used to be at least a heavy agnostic/perhaps atheist, said that all you need to do is look at a catapillar turn into a butterfly to realize evolution can occur. No need to even wait ONE generation. He also cited the tadpole/frog thing.
 
Your cousin overstates the case.

I suppose the development of tadpoles to frogs does show a series of viable intermediates.
 
irishman said:
He said the evolution debate was about "reclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" and "the great fundamental questions of philosophy - where man and the world came from and where they are going."
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That is not what the evolution debate is about. Benny "Da Pope" XVI is trying an old philosophy trick there, commonly known as "intellectual capture". Benny is a theologian to the bone, which is just another word for philosopher.

Benny is trying to reclaim a role for philosophy in what is a scientific matter. The evolution debate is not about where anything is going or came from.

"[R]eclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" - how vapid is that?
 
That means there are considerable gaps in experimental verification. . . as a result of the incredible timeframe which the theory addresses
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Those are much like the gaps in experimental verification of gravitational theory. Rather than an incredible timeframe, gravitational theory has a serious problem with the incredible number of objects that have never been picked up and dropped to see if they all fall down.
 
Big Les said:
The vague, woolly red herrings about gaps in the record are inserted by His Popiness purely to give the faithful a bit more fantasy leeway than John Paul II was apparently willing to when he said evolution was "more than a hypothesis".

By saying this, he's actually negating JPIIs stance; what's "more than a hypothesis" but also "not a complete, scientifically verified theory"? Manna from heaven for the creationists, that's what.
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Yes, I've noticed that Pope Ratzi is a bit more hard-core than JP 2.
 
CapelDodger said:
That is not what the evolution debate is about. Benny "Da Pope" XVI is trying an old philosophy trick there, commonly known as "intellectual capture". Benny is a theologian to the bone, which is just another word for philosopher.

Benny is trying to reclaim a role for philosophy in what is a scientific matter. The evolution debate is not about where anything is going or came from.

"[R]eclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost" - how vapid is that?
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Very. Nice JRT by the way.
 
Since when was the last time Catholics had to take bible stories as literally true?
 
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