Junior and other friends of mine are sufficient and not all are Catholic. It doesn't matter if they are Catholic or who they are, whether Junior, the Pope, gore3000 or whoever, I look at what the Bible says is the main issue: Christ. Sorry, the Great Commission commands me to put a plug in for Him. If one has received Christ a belief in evolution is okay from my detailed studies of the Bible. I just wish they'd take the red pill. :-)
In reference to the link you posted, what do you think the Pope means with this statement in context with the entire article?
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.
What is "the truth about man"?
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.What is "the truth about man"?
Wonderful question. First, let us note that the Pope starts out by saying this:
I had the opportunity, with regard to Galileo, to draw attention to the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. 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 ...Here, I understand the Pope to have adopted Galileo's own method of resolving conflicts between scripture and science, as expressed by Galileo here:
Galileo said: "...I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense experiences and necessary demonstration ..." In the same paragraph, Galileo said: "For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words."
The Pope is apparently adopting this method of dealing with scripture -- that physical reality prevails over the simplistic reading of scripture. The Pope goes on to say:
... 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.After seeming to accept physical evolution, the Pope goes on to discuss man's "spiritual soul" and he says what you quoted above, and which I repeat here (now that it's in context):
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.The Pope continues:
The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. [That's physical evolution. No problem. Now the Pope carves out the special spiritual exeption to evolution:] The moment of transition into the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again, of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans.So what I read here is that physical evolution isn't a problem for the Church; and man's spiritual nature is a whole separate issue, which theology claims for itself. Personally, I have no problem with this at all.