Posted on 10/29/2014 2:22:07 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
.... Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, said that Darwinian evolution is real, and so is the Big Bang....
...the new Pope's quasi-heretical claim isn't anywhere near the first of its kind. The church first brought evolution into the fold in 1950 with the work of Pope Pius XII, writes io9. “At the same time, Catholics take no issue with the Big Bang theory, along with cosmological, geological, and biological axioms touted by science.”
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
He’s a well meaning man whose views are liberal and off base and he is totally clueless about the importance of carefully parsing his statements so the mainstream media can’t “re-interpret” what he is stating.
“...the new Pope’s quasi-heretical claim “
Bump for later read...but this claim is the result of ignorance. The Church has never had a problem with evolution or the Big Bang or any specifically scientific claim. Calling for belief in standard science is the orthodox Catholic position. At least Francis is orthodox about something.
An interesting read.
Not long before Benedict XVI resigned, he did make a statement along the lines that Genesis is not a scientific explanation of Creation. He set forth the reasoning that as an Ancient story, Genesis makes the point that God did create the world and man and that man became aware of both God and right and wrong. The six days of Genesis could just as as easily have been 6 trillion years. A literal interpretation of Genesis leaves way too many questions that go unanswered (who did Cain have children with?) and set up a false logical conflicts between science and religion (6000 years verses the age of the Earth/fossils that are millions of years old, etc.)
It seems that in approaching the work of Darwin, far too many Darwinists and Christians lump all of his work together and see no distinction between his scientific observations of evolutionary processes and his theory that evolution is somehow the explanation of the Origin of Species. Where the evolutionary observations provide a sound scientific theory for explaining changes within species, they do not explain the origins of any species. Darwin’s theory that random evolutionary processes somehow explain the origins of life itself remains an unproven theory with strong evidence that it is scientific error.
(I wrote a little bit about this idea in God’s Sudoku http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2964965/posts.)
Bottom line; science does point toward the need for a Creator to put life here. All the Darwinists molecular biologists nor all the Big Bang theorists have still not come up with scientific proof of the origin of species nor of man evolving from lower species.
The stories in Genesis were written for ancient societies who had no knowledge of science, but made the eternal point that it was God who created the Heavens and Earth and put us here. I believe we will soon get back to the point where many scientists will arrive at the conclusions of Louis Pasteur, the father of modern Micro Biology, that all the scientific knowledge we gain points to the need for God to create it all.
All the Best!
Bill
He’s had a lot of problems with his communications. He should be an expert communicator so it looks intentional to me.
“’Totally agree with you but evolutionists real, it doesn’t contradict scripture and Christians should stop making this a theological issue!”
Christians haven’t made it a theological issue. They are responding to those who insist evolution proves religion is wrong and God doesn’t exist.
Creation ex nihilo = big bang
If Adam was a product of evolution rather than a special creation, then Christ was a liar and and Christianity is a fraud. It’s as simple as that.
Try St Augustine, 1600 years ago, who said that Genesis is written the way it is as a condescension to our limited understanding.
That's the same St Augustine called "the doctor of grace" and "the first Protestant," BTW.
I don’t understand why this is big news.
1. A priest first posited the idea of the Big Bang.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
2. It is my understanding that Catholics have a less literal understanding of the early books of the Bible. I, myself, view the first chapter of the bible as an explanation of the “rat race” of technology vs. simpler, pre-technological times - that for the last 16,000 years or so, technology and complexity, “the tree of knowledge” (starting with the division of labor) has brought us more problems, which required more technology to solve them, which brought us more problems...
Yes, it’s dumbed down.
“Christians haven’t made it a theological issue. They are responding to those who insist evolution proves religion is wrong and God doesn’t exist.”
Exactly! NEITHER evolution or the Big Bang are theories/discoveries incompatible with the existence of God - no matter how hard some try to misrepresent them.
Sorry, I don’t see your “simple” conclusion. But if Genesis is to be taken completely literally, the universe is about 6,500 years old, meaning either (a) huge chunks of science are completely wrong; or (b) God is an elaborate hoaxer who built a universe that lies to us. Neither conclusion is very compatible with faith.
Evolution and "special creation" are not mutually exclusive.
And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read in the Scriptures that God created them from the beginning and made them male and female.” (Matthew 19:4, Mark 10:6)
Jesus didn’t believe in evolution or the Big Bang and neither do Christians.
Benedict was a great intellect....Francis is a good but simple man.
Both were Holy and have their role in God's plan.
Yes, the “finite cannot grasp the infinite” was a notion Calvin taught, perhaps as an echo of Augustine.
Macro-evolutionary biology is not a necessary inference from this idea.
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