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Vatican backs Darwin, criticizes Intelligent Design fundamentalists

curi0us

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THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.

Snip

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".

This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better".
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17162341-13762,00.html



I find it interesting that the Vatican is mocking fundamentalists for taking the bible literally. Is intelliegnt design a hot political issue in other countries too, or did we just get a bigger percentage of unreasonable christians in the U.S. somehow?
 
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This is interesting. All the Vatican is claiming as its own territory is the ground that science acknowledges can't be discerned by science - what caused the Big Bang.
 
curi0us said:
I find it interesting that the Vatican is mocking fundamentalists for taking the bible literally. Is intelliegnt design a hot political issue in other countries too, or did we just get a bigger percentage of unreasonable christians in the U.S. somehow?
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I think this is unique to the US. It was already unique in the days of the Scopes Trial. The rest of the Western World was astonished by that. The secularisation of European society over the last couple of centuries was not matched in the US. The US has not experienced the harm done by religion as Europe has. Even the Civil War was over secular issues. Separation of religion and state has spared religion much opprobrium. It has also excused most people from having to examine their inherited religion. Simple, comfortable, textbook-based.

Evolution challenges the textbook, and the religion is too simple to cope with that. It doesn't do allegory. Catholicism is far from simple, and took allegory on board long ago. It has built a very robust concept of faith. Fundie faith is fragile, which is why they get so exercised about any perceived challenge.
 
a_unique_person said:
Don't be surprised if there isn't a big battle going on internally about this. If another spokesman comes out saying the opposite sometime in the future, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
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It's still policy that the god does interfere in the world. Prayer and the intervention of saints still work. The Universe is not clockwork, wound up and left to run. Who'd want to be Pope in that kind of universe? Where's the money going to come from?
 
I thought there were some creationists pushing the agenda in some of the Eastern European countries recently?
 
a_unique_person said:
Don't be surprised if there isn't a big battle going on internally about this. If another spokesman comes out saying the opposite sometime in the future, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
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He did already, in the NYT shortly after the popes election.

Don't have time right now but it was a long op-ed piece reaffirming a traditional interpretation. The Cardnil might have been speaking out of school however. This rational response is good news.
 
BPSCG said:
This is interesting. All the Vatican is claiming as its own territory is the ground that science acknowledges can't be discerned by science - what caused the Big Bang.
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Science doesn't acknowledge that all! Cosmologist have speculated quite a lot on that, and there are a few theories on the subject... Maybe the Vatican wishes that Science would, though... I always have the impression that these kinds of pronouncements are done only grudgingly, the good cardinal just mumbling "why wasn't I born a 1000 years ago" after the declaration...
 
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Orwell said:
Science doesn't acknowledge that all! Cosmologist have speculated quite a lot on that, and there are a few theories on the subject... Maybe the Vatican wishes that Science would, though... I always have the impression that these kinds of pronouncements are done only grudgingly, the good cardinal just mumbling "why wasn't I born a 1000 years ago" after the declaration...
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Before you edited the foregoing post to remove the remark to the effect of "Imagine if priests started lecturing on Big Bang theory!", I was going to point out that it was a priest who first formulated the theory. I'm pretty sure that a not-inconsiderable number of priest-physicists have been lecturing on it ever since.
 
Yeah, I know about Georges Lemaitre. Which priest-physicists? Is there still such as thing?
 
Orwell said:
Yeah, I know about Georges Lemaitre. Which priest-physicists? Is there still such as thing?
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Well, there are several on the Vatican Observatory Staff.

Stanley L. Jaki is one famous living priest-physicist who comes to mind, although he is now better known as a historian of science.

Neither physics nor priests are within my field of expertise, so I'm not really in a position to give a better response to your query. I'd hazard a guess that Googling physics faculties and research institutions around the world would readily turn up some more names. There's such a strong historical physical science tradition in the clergy that it seems unlikely it would ever completely die out.
 
curi0us said:
I find it interesting that the Vatican is mocking fundamentalists for taking the bible literally. Is intelliegnt design a hot political issue in other countries too, or did we just get a bigger percentage of unreasonable christians in the U.S. somehow?
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ID reasently reared it's ugly head in DK as well. I think some church guy said something about teachin ID in schools it and the media spend a few days on the subject. It was mainly scientists explaining why it wasn't science though, and nobody who maters, sugested it should be included in the classroom.
 
Kerberos said:
ID reasently reared it's ugly head in DK as well. I think some church guy said something about teachin ID in schools it and the media spend a few days on the subject. It was mainly scientists explaining why it wasn't science though, and nobody who maters, sugested it should be included in the classroom.
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Must be nice. It seems every politician in the USA has said it should be taught.
 
merphie said:
Must be nice. It seems every politician in the USA has said it should be taught.
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Probably because it's a vote winner in the US. In DK there's one party that thinks that one might consider teaching Creationism in school. They don't talk loudly about it, but their leader has mentioned it. This party, The Christdemocrats, failed to get the 2% of the vote that is required for representation in parliament most likely because they're just to christian. So, not a vote-winner in Denmark, in fact, for any of the mainstream party's to advocate something like that, would mean instant relocation to the lunatic fringe.
 
Kerberos said:
Probably because it's a vote winner in the US.
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You're probably right. In the USA you don't have to be the majority. You only need to be the vocal majority. The ones who make the most noise seem to get their way.
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought it was pretty widely accepted that the Vatican and American fundies were are each other's throats more often than any other group.

At least here in the states, its clear that most fundies have declared the Catholic church as a tool of Satan, I'm sure ill will goes both ways on this kind o thing
 
Tormac said:
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought it was pretty widely accepted that the Vatican and American fundies were are each other's throats more often than any other group.

At least here in the states, its clear that most fundies have declared the Catholic church as a tool of Satan, I'm sure ill will goes both ways on this kind o thing
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Yeah. I've never heard that Roman Catholicism was a driving force behind the American ID movement.

I didn't even hear of ID til I heard about it on here. And when I first saw the words "Intelligent Design" I thought maybe it was the belief that God aimed evolution (and maybe even the creation of stars and planets) in the direction he wanted it to go. A sort of Plan. I did not know the term meant God created Earth a few years ago with everything already in its current form. I can see how my Plan idea,though, would be a Roman Catholic thing.
 
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