Patrick Henry: "Ah, yes ... yet another out-of-context quote, a splendid example of creationoid "research."
The Darwin quote I posted has everything to do with the subject I was addressing. Your red herring won't work.
And you embarrass yourself. The most outrageous "out-of-context" quote can be found on YOUR profile page where you attempt to prove that even "the pope" agrees with you and Darwin.
This is what you posted "out of context":
"The Pope's 1996 statement on evolution: Physical evolution is not in conflict with Christianity. Excerpts:"
"It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences."
"Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory."
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Below are the quotes you left out that show the pope doesn't agree with yours and Darwin's atheistic ideas of natural selection and random chance.
Quoting the Pope: "....to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.
5. ...man... was created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:27-29). ...
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ..."
HERE: http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/8712_message_from_the_pope_1996_1_3_2001.asp
And here's even more you won't like from 1986:
"....... Pope John Paul II, in a General Audience on 24 January 1986, addressed the issue and said that "The theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the visible world, as presented in the Book of Genesis."
Conflicts between the truths of science and the truths of faith, in other words, are only apparent, never real, for both science and faith, the natural world accessible to reason, and the "world" of revelation accessible to faith, have the same author: God.
It makes no difference to faith what precise mechanisms the Creator chose to carry out his divine plan of creation. Being all powerful, and having created everything out of nothing, God could have literally and directly created man out of the slime of the earth, as Genesis describes, or he could have used evolutionary mechanisms which he himself had set in motion.
It makes no difference to faith whether or not man is descended from some apelike creature, so long as we understand that there had to be what Pope John Paul II calls an "ontological leap" between that creature and the first human person.
In other words, God, in the Pope's and the Church's teaching, would have to have intervened directly in the creation of man because each rational soul is created out of nothing. The soul of man could not have arisen from nature as an accident of evolutionary processes." February 23, 2003 Science and Faith
196 posted on 12/29/2004 4:16:56 PM EST by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1310267/posts?page=196#196
I make no claim that the Pope agrees with me, and not even with Darwin, except to say that: "Physical evolution is not in conflict with Christianity." (Those are my words on my homepage.)
Unlike your out-of-context quote, which was indeed out of context until I supplied it, in my freeper homepage I give a link to the material which I excerpted, so that the rational reader can see the whole thing and arrive at his own conclusion -- which in most cases won't be the same as yours.