Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
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Posted on 11/07/2005 2:23:36 AM PST by Crackingham
In the mid-1980s I was a member of a Vatican body with the impressive title International Committee of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Each year we had a meeting with Pope John-Paul II; on one occasion he gave us lunch and served a light white wine from, I think, a papal vineyard. The other members of the committee included a splendid Ibo lady, the head of the Catholic Women’s Movement in Nigeria, an Indian nun, a Japanese Jesuit and a Francophone president of an African nation who believed that French culture and a sound classical education would be the best answer to Africa’s educational problems. I enjoyed our discussions, which were almost always held in French.
The idea, which came from the Pope himself, was far-sighted. We foresaw what has subsequently been called the “clash of civilisations”; we tried to relate that conflict to the widely differing cultures of the billion members of the Roman Catholic Church. We discussed the impact of particular developments in modern science but so far as I can remember we did not try to deal with the central problem of the relationship between science and religion; that seems to have come now. Our chairman was Cardinal Paul Poupard, an admirable example of the cultivated French intellectual in the Roman Curia; he is still the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Whether the council still has an international committee I do not know, since I left it nearly 20 years ago. Last week the cardinal was giving a press conference before a meeting in Rome of scientists, philosophers and theologians; this week they will be discussing the difficult subject of infinity. Cardinal Poupard had a beautifully trained French mind and inner loyalty to the Catholic faith. Nothing he says is said without careful thought. At the press conference he was discussing the issue of evolution, which is the critical dividing line between science and religion. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shook religious belief when it was first published in 1859 in a way that Isaac Newton’s equally important Principia had not shaken the faith of 1687. In The Times Martin Penner reported the cardinal’s argument. He had said that the description in Genesis of the Creation was “perfectly compatible” with Darwin’s theory of evolution, if the Bible were read properly. “Fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim.”
He argued that the real message of Genesis was that the Universe did not make itself, and had a creator. “Science and theology act in different fields, each in its own.” In Rome, the immediate reaction was that this was a Vatican rejection of the fundamentalist American doctrine of “intelligent design”. No doubt the Vatican does want to separate itself from American creationists, but the significance surely goes further than that. This is not another Galileo case; the teachings of the Church have never imposed a literal interpretation of the language of the Bible; that was a Protestant mistake. Nor did the Church condemn the theory of evolution, though it did and does reject neo-Darwinism when that is made specifically atheist.
Indeed, one can go back nearly 1,500 years before Darwin and find St Augustine of Hippo, the most commanding intellect of all the early doctors of the Church, teaching a doctrine of evolution in the early 5th century. In one of his greatest works, De Genesi ad Litteram, he stated that God did not create an organised Universe as we see it now, but in the beginning created all the elements of the world in a confused and “nebulous” mass. In this mass were the mysterious seeds of the creatures who were to come into existence. Augustine’s thought does therefore contain the elements of a theory of evolution, and even a genetic theory, but does not have natural selection. St Augustine has always been orthodox. He did not foresee modern science in AD410, but he did have an extraordinary grasp of the potential evolution of scientific thought. Cardinal Poupard’s address to the journalists should not be seen as a matter of the Roman Church changing its mind and accepting Darwin after 145 years.
It is a precautionary statement, distancing the Church from the American attack on Darwinism that Rome considers to be neither good science, nor good theology. It will also be taken as an indication of the priorities of the present Pope Benedict XVI.
Cut me a break, you are babbling total crap.
Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
How so?? The fundamentalist position IS that Creation took place over seven 24-hour days. They say so repeatedly. The "Creation Science Institute" exists for no other purpose than to come up with scenarios that justify that position.
“The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will.... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.”“Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.”
-Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, ed. J. E. Hutchingson (Orlando, Fl.: Harcourt and Brace, 1991)
So?? This is just another attempt to hijack "evolution" into applying in an area to which it has no relevancy.
Ex 20:11 -
" For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and 'apes' that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.
-Dawkins
The thing is, why would anyone want to hear what the Catholic church has to say about the Scriptures? The Word of the Almighty was entrusted to a people He chose, Israel. Therefore, for interpretations and true translations, people should search in the English translations from the Hebrew/Aramaic/Peshitta texts, not from Greek/Latin persuasions. The latter are laced with deceit (humanism) and can only serve the purpose of keeping those who read their versions and views in bondage. We will indeed know the Truth, and that Truth shall set us free.
Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.Religions continue both to render their special services and to exact their heavy costs. Can scientific humanism do as well or better, at a lower cost? Surely that ranks as one of the great unanswered questions of philosophy. It is the noble yet troubling legacy that Charles Darwin left us.
- Can biology do better than faith?
You can spout quotes all day. That doesn't change the fact that evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with ethics. The fact that some politically-minded scientists try to force-fit it into doing so says that they are more interested in the politics than the science.
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”
-William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)
The theory of evolution, like every other scientific theory, is amoral in the strictest sense. It tells us nothing as to how we should live our lives.
Too many have restricted Gods words to what is and isn't in the Bible. The Bible is a human compilation of works that met the canon of Constantine and Council of Nicene. Many valid works were rejected and questionable works included to achieve Constantine's requirements of a faith that would allow him to cement control of a fracturing empire. Constantine was a pagan after all.
Really? Hmmm…You might have a hard time seeing it for the same reason a thief cannot find a police officer. Look, Darwinism/evolution states we evolved from a single cell organism over time due to RM&NS; human consciousness, ethics, beauty, religion and our ecosystem came about void of intelligence. It creates a story that generally states ‘we were what we were because we are what we are’.
Were Boron salts at liberty to discard their identity, the claims of inorganic chemistry would seem considerably less pertinent then they do.How do you escape Sociobiology when applying evolution?
-Berlinski
Then would you consider evolutionary psychology to be an illegitimate branch of Darwinian evolution?
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