Posted on 11/07/2005 12:05:04 PM PST by Mikey_1962
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. His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"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".
His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Lotta folks still know Latin. Italy? Well I might ask them about Italian. For Latin, I'd go to Catholic universities worldwide. (Italy isn't that strong of a Catholic country any more.)
Moral relativism at its finest. For instance, we have a man a woman and a baby living outside of society ion a mountain.Questions of morality do seem to break down when you look at smaller & smaller groups in isolation. If these were the last three people on Earth, then it'd be kind of moot to say that his actions were immoral. But here we are, looking at this family from afar, and discussing them. Which means we're here too. Which means there's still a society that exists.That's still a society, of a sort. By raping the baby, he is likely to create feelings of hatred in his wife. Plus he's hurting the baby. Both of these things are counter-productive for the continued survival of him and his society. So, in that society, his actions are harmful and, therefore, wrong.
The other problem with moral discussions like this is, the definition of what we're discussing is nebulous. Are we talking about which rarefied, abstract principle should apply in the hypothetical situation? OK. But aren't we also thinking (but not saying out loud) how we'd react to such a situation ourselves and not feel guilty about our reaction? IMO that's a valid question too - and is related to the first one.
So: If it's a question of how should I mark my Platonic Scorecard of Morality, it's easy to check the "evil" box. Hey, this morality business is easy, ain't it!
What if they're the last three people on Earth? Then there's no society to speak of. So it's more like every one for theirself. Morality, in the sense of an overriding set of principles that people should follow that may go completely against their immediate desires, doesn't quite apply. It's a category error.
But let's add a bit of reality to the scenario: If the news leaked out of a totally isolated family where the father raped his baby & threw his wife into the volcano, I'd be revulsed. But there'd be nothing I could do about it except verify to myself that that is a terrible code to live by, and vow to denounce the act to anyone else who brings up the news story.
If I was hiking up the volcano (but it was totally isolated, so somehow I'm an Xtreme long-distance hiker - um, OK (?)) then I'd feel justified in shooting the man. But if I didn't pack a gun, then would I feel justified in knifing him? Well, yes - morally justified, but then I'd have to actually grapple with him, and odds are he's bigger than me. So then the question really is, would I feel good about myself if I simply slinked away, or would I feel guilty then? Here it's a judgement call.
Now, if the family isn't so isolated - if the police find out about them & arrest the father, then they weren't so isolated, were they? They're part of our society whether they like it or not. In this case I would support his prosecution & support the death penalty, etc. Or if I came upon the family, I'd whip out my cellphone & bravely call 911...
Aside from the pristine, logical working out of the moral calculus to arrive at a rarefied judgement of this hypothetical, there is our natural empathy, which forces us (if we're not a sociopath) to feel the revulsion at hearing of the rape & murder. Why do we feel, indirectly, the baby's & mother's pain? It's because moral principles are so important to our thriving as human beings, that they have been bred into us thru natural selection. The process started even before humans were on the scene, since chimpanzees & even monkeys have some sense of fairness & empathy (though not nearly as much as we have).
Sorry for the disjointed thoughts... My parting question is: Are you really concerned about the hypothetical situation of an isolated family, or are you more concerned about what kind of moral principles you need to ensure a secure & resilient base for a life-affirming society?
Outside of my area of expertise. I do western US archaeology, and we usually have charcoal, bone, shell, wood, etc. to date. There are a variety of other techniques, depending on the material, expected age, etc., but I am not very familiar with them.
So, which of these chimp-like behaviors have you heard of children engaging in lately that you're worried about:
o Eating termites with a stick
o Hunting down small neighborhood animals in packs & eating them raw
o Going out in public naked
o Knuckle-walking
o Physically fighting with each other
o Having sex without first declaring an oath of monogamy
o Picking lice out of their friend's hair
Only if they're God's and only if you have a problem with Him it would seem.
It only proves that accepting evolution and being a Christian aren't incompatible, as some creationists pretend that they are.
At the very least, the Vatican is an authority on one thing - how to be a Catholic. And except for the nutjobs who think that Catholics aren't Christians, that alone is enough to disprove the contention.
As an electrical engineer, I have been steeped in the Discipline of precise, repeatable measurements. I will admit that I am not comfortable with radiometric dating and it's many discrepancies.
Until we meet again.
Yeah, it's looking so shabby that the State of Indiana is crafting legislation to require it taught in the public school systems here. That was in the Indianapolis Star over the weekend as it happens. Indiana is not alone in this nor will it be the last to do so.
I always find it amusing when people misunderstand atheists this badly.
proclaim that the Null Initial Condition cosmology 'removes the need for a first cause'. They are then left with no answer to Hawkings' own question, "What is it breaths fire into the equations to make there be something for them to describe?"
I don't see that this "leaves them with no answer". Quite the contrary. And as even Hawking himself speculates in the very next sentence after the passage you quote above: "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?" Hawking himself realizes that such a scenario is a possible answer to his question, because an acausal condition allows many "creation" scenarios which may not be possible under *our* Universe's laws of causality.
Theists, of course, have a simple and satisfying answer to that question.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem —-neat, plausible, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken
That answer may be "simple", but it's hardly "satsifying", nor is it really an "answer". It simply kicks the problem down the road. It replaces the question about "What is it breaths fire into the equations" with "What is it breaths fire into the alleged creator of the equations". Same question, once removed, and again no real answer. At the same time, it adds yet another layer to be explained. Hardly an improvement.
Again, Hawking himself realizes this -- in the very same paragraph as the quote you included, he asks:
"Or does it [the universe] need a creator, and if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?"Hawking raises the clear problem with a "creator answer" -- it just creates another question -- who created the creator? Or if you cede that the creator wouldn't *need* a creator after all, you've just admitted that things can exist without a "creator" after all, and if so, why not the Universe itself? The admission undermines the original premise which was used to argue a "need" for a creator in the first place.
-- Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time", p. 190
Don't let him horn-swoggle you. The moon receives nearly the same energy concentration. Where is the evolved life on the moon? Venus receives even more concentrated energy. Where is the evolved life on Venus. It is evident that "order" involves more than just sunlight heating things. And although the earth is closed, heat flows from hot to cold spontaneously and not vice versa.
Please don't tell them about the termites and the raw fresh cat and dog. That might become the next craze.
So you're also fundamentally ignorant of evolution, yet feel qualified to draw conclusions from false premises?
What is a believing Christain?
And are not the Clovis and Sandia finds dated to about 10,000 to 13,000 years ago or so? (Maybe Sandia was higher than any flood in the area.)
Oh bunk. It proves no such thing. All it shows is that people claiming to be Christian may do so unaware of the implications. Whether the two are compatible or not is a matter of the scriptures, not popular opinion. What you've stated is so blatent a logical fallacy as to be moronic.
This is like saying a TV remote can be used as a language translator because a bunch of people believe it to be so. When reading its schema and instructions, one learns the truth of the matter to be contrary to the claim.
The Vatican is anything but an authority. I will grant they know how to be Catholic. That doesn't grant that they know ought about being Christian. There is no blood sacrifice system in Christianity - point one. Christ died and sealed the Church into existance with a single sacrifice that ended and needed no repetition. The Church was thusly born at Pentecost. Catholicism has an ongoing system of blood sacrifice that Christianity does not have. Christ's sacrifice covered the Church before it's birth, leaving faith as the measure of salvation. The systems are incompatible. So, it's not as though it takes some "nutjob" to note this. It's obvious that the two are markedly different. Not just different, it puts them on a more even keil with paganism than with Christianity.
So, no, it isn't enough to disprove the contention. I can add endlessly to the above point. Binding and loosing as defined in Judaism, and the which Christ knew btw as a rabbi, only extended to interpretational licence in clarifying existing doctrine as written in scripture. It gave no licence to create doctrine. So where do you imagine Rome got its version of the term? Not from scripture. Not from Judaism. Not from Christ. Must have just fallen from the sky one day - perhaps from the principality of the air..
Rome is a fraud. Not even a clever one. So many of it's errors are blatent that how one misses them and keeps a straight face and any sense of intellectual honesty boggles the mind.
Odd that there is no evening to the seventh day...
It's in the Vatican, although he also has a small cubicle in Castel Gandolfo.
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