Posted on 09/04/2006 8:42:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Pope Benedict and his former doctoral students spent a weekend pondering evolution without discussing controversies over intelligent design and creationism raging in the United States.
The three-day closed-door meeting at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo outside Rome ended as planned without drawing any conclusions but the group plans to publish its discussion papers, said participant Father Joseph Fessio S.J.
Media speculation had said the debate might shift Vatican policy to embrace "intelligent design," which claims to prove scientifically that life could not have simply evolved, or even the "creationist" view that God created the world in six days.
"It wasn't that at all," Fessio, who is provost of Ave Maria University in Florida, said from Rome. The Pope's session with 39 former students was "a meeting of friends with some scholars to discuss an interesting theme".
"We did not really speak much about intelligent design," said Fessio, whose Ignatius Press publishes the Pope's books in English. "In fact, that particular controversy did not arise."
Creationism -- the view that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible -- was "almost off the radar screen of the people in this group," he added. The Catholic Church does not read the Genesis account of creation literally.
Fessio said Benedict took part in the discussions but said nothing different from previous public statements, in which he has recognised evolution as a scientific fact but argued that God ultimately created the world and all life in it.
As the Pope put it at his inaugural Mass after being elected in April 2005, "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."
Annual get-togethers
Benedict, who taught theology at four German universities before becoming archbishop of Munich and then the Vatican's top doctrinal official, has held these annual get-togethers since the late 1970s. The international group debates in German.
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has long been rejected in the United States by conservative Christians who want to have a Bible-based view of creation taught in public schools, where the church-state separation bars the teaching of religion.
More recently, Darwin's critics have campaigned to have "intelligent design" taught as a scientific alternative to evolution. President George W. Bush and other conservative politicians support this drive to "teach the controversy".
The "ID movement" does not name the designer as God, but its opponents say that is the logical conclusion and call this an unacceptable bid to sneak religion into the teaching of science.
Schools in some parts of the United States teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution but a Pennsylvania court banned it there last year, saying it was religion in disguise.
Catholic teaching accepts evolution as a scientific theory but disagrees with what it calls "evolutionism," the view that the story of life has no role for God as its prime author.
Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a close associate of the Pope, was one of four speakers who addressed the meeting. He raised eyebrows last year with a New York Times article that suggested the Catholic Church supported the "ID movement".
Schoenborn and Benedict have said several times over the past year that intelligence in the form of God's will played a part in creation and that neo-Darwinists who deny God any role are drawing an ideological conclusion not proven by the theory.
They say they use philosophical reasoning to conclude that God created the world, not arguments which intelligent design supporters claim can be proven scientifically.
Thanks, I appreciate it, but I gathered that from SJ using terms within my more secular vocabularly. Of course, one answer, just leads to the next question, for this lawyer's mind. :)
Wonderful Patrick Henry...we, as humans, cannot fully comprehend or understand God...
We are all accidents. Most people's parents met as a result of chance events. This poses no problem for Catholic theology, for we hold that nothing is random for God. He sees all and knows all. Thus what appears to be an accident to us is not an accident to God.
it was not an accident, and it was part of God's plan, his planned end game, than you are positing mechanisms that inevitably lead to the emergence of homo sapiens, and that gets rather near to ID, does it not?
No. ID posits that natural processes are insufficient to explain the diversity of life on Earth. The Catholic view of evolution does not make any such assertion. It merely asserts that everything that happens on Earth, even random events and accidents, are part of God's plan, for He is outside time and knows all.
Is the mechanism by which it is driven to a final point, simply an eternal mystery, not for science to address? That seems a bit fuzzy to me.
No, I doubt that happened personally, but that is just my Baysian take on matters.
Lovely in its eqloquence, SJ!
I am bookmarking for posting to the CreoTrolls (assuming they have the wit to understand your post).
Read Post 29.
No matter one's stance on the debate, we can all be happy the LameStream Media BLEW IT AGAIN!! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
You'll have to take my word on it that I will be quoting it in part or in whole and giving you credit.
I won't drag you down by pinging you each time, but I'll credit you and link the post.
:)
Your word is worth gold in my book freedumb. Feel free to use it as you wish, and if for any reason you fail to mention me, you may count upon knowing that I will still be pleased to have made a contribution.
So much for being nice.
Amen. Science is no magical legitimizer of spiritual things, despite what the CR/IDers think.
Science is limited.
Besides, "random" really means "random to our puny minds."
Good post. Thanks for writing it.
Wow, 42 posts and only one ad hominem. It's a record!
That was one grand post...thanks for sharing...
You may be right...
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