Posted on 01/06/2011 12:57:47 PM PST by SeekAndFind
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.
"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St Peter's Basilica on the feast day.
While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth -- and perhaps elsewhere -- eventually emerged.
Some atheists say science can prove that God does not exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were "mind limiting" because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality ..."
He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Cronos, ZC's tone troubles me at times as well.
But he is also very angry with the generic response of many urban Catholics to look down on Bible Christians from the rural US and mock them - just as the mainstream media mocks them - for their insistence on the literal truth of the Scriptures.
That being said, many of these same rural Bible Christians are also bitterly anti-Catholic and like to start arguments as well.
As a result, Catholics, Orthodox, Reformed and Jews spend a lot of time playing into the adversary's hands.
“Juan Diago’s Tilma”...sounds like a great name for a mariachi band...keep up the good fight ZC ! ...magritte
Widey, I am sorry if my tone offends you, but look at this guy--beating his chest and screaming that the chronology of Genesis cannot possibly be literal history because "science" has pontificated that there are cities older than that. Is he not a perfect illustration of the phenomenon you have described? On what grounds does this hypocrite, who refuses to allow science to tell him that virgins can't give birth, hit me or anyone else over the head with that same "science" because he is afraid of Genesis? And why is he boasting about how "Catholic" the "big bang" theory is when the "big bang" does not deal with cosmogonic ex-nihilation at all but is a mere theoretical theory of how the universe would have taken its current shape given the uniformitarian assumption???
We both know there is one and only one reason. Genesis is for "trailer trash," and G-d doesn't love "trailer trash." He loves Aztecs and Maya and Poles and illiterate Italians who wrap snakes around statues and American Indians with their totem poles, but Genesis has got to go and anyone who believes in its historicity is inherently un-Catholic and to be scorned. In other words, "trailer trash" must either cease being "trailer trash" and change their ethnicity to something else or else be forever excluded as the enemies of G-d--Catholicism's version of `Amaleq.
I hope I don't have to justify my anger to you when I myself was told to vacate the Catholic Church simply because I would not relinquish Genesis. All the talk about "universality" in the Catholic Church is nothing but hooey, and I know that from personal experience.
How you manage to stay loyal to a religion that takes every single opportunity it finds to exclude what you yourself believe is beyond me. It isn't worthy of you.
Thank you. I'm glad somebody appreciates it.
Unfortunately, board rules forbid my stating just what I think of these miserable hypocrites who eviscerate Genesis with "science" but won't even let "science" tell them that all babies require a physical human father.
It's nothing but "the Catholic Church rejects white trash miracles and the white trash that believes them." There is nothing more to it.
"Universal!"
>For example, in John 5:18 we are told that Jesus’ opponents sought to kill him because he "called God his Father, making himself equal with God."So why do you, Zionist Conspirator, deny that Christ is God?
In John 8:58, when quizzed about how he has special knowledge of Abraham, Jesus replies, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am"—invoking and applying to himself the personal name of God—"I Am" (Ex. 3:14). His audience understood exactly what he was claiming about himself. "So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple" (John 8:59).
In John 20:28, Thomas falls at Jesus’ feet, exclaiming, "My Lord and my God!" (Greek: Ho Kurios mou kai ho Theos mou—literally, "The Lord of me and the God of me!")
In Philippians 2:6, Paul tells us that Christ Jesus "[w]ho, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be g.asped" (New International Version). So Jesus chose to be born in humble, human form though he could have simply remained in equal glory with the Father for he was "in very nature God."
Also significant are passages that apply the title "the First and the Last" to Jesus. This is one of the Old Testament titles of Yahweh: "Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of armies: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; besides me there is no god’" (Is. 44:6; cf. 41:4, 48:12).
This title is directly applied to Jesus three times in the book of Revelation: "When I saw him [Christ], I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the First and the Last’" (Rev. 1:17). "And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the First and the Last, who died and came to life’" (Rev. 2:8). "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 22:12–13).
This last quote is especially significant since it applies to Jesus the parallel title "the Alpha and the Omega," which Revelation earlier applied to the Lord God: "‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev. 1:8).
Says who? You? The Bible does not say 24 hour (as we define it now) days. And we know that the Earth's spin changes (which changes the days). If the Earth was formed from rocky debris, then its initial rotation was very slow; like a figure skater who starts with arms wide and then pulls them in, the rotation increases. What was the Earth's rotation over the course of its formation? The Bible does not say. It only says that God formed it and gave the time period for each stage of one day. The Jews count day from sundown to sundown. If the rotation equalled the revolution about the sun exactly, the day would be infinitely long.
Or do you have a direct line to God who told you exactly what He did?
I have had the good fortune to own a bookstore for a lot of my adult life ... we got in a copy of “Jeeves Takes Charge” some years back and fell in love with his use of language...the slang mixed with the more proper language of London...you are correct though...haven’t found another person in Southeast Missouri that’s read a word of “Plum’s” work...magritte
RE: Man with their human senses cannot understand the Supernatural
Except for you, who have it all figured out through your God-given superior intellect.
Should I be on my knees?
< /sarcasm>
Miss Pyke's criticisms will have been instrumental in moving the hitherto unformulated dissatisfaction from the subconscious to the conscious mind:)
So where are the pillars that hold up the heavens?
I have explained to you numerous times (and you have not listened or didn't understand) that my Bible doesn't have a "new testament" in it at all. When you send me to the "new testament" to "prove" something you are behaving no differently than a mormon or a moslem sending me to their own scriptures. I could invent a new religion and write "scripture" for it and those "scriptures" would prove my religion as well!
You on the other hand have Genesis in your Bible, yet you deny its historicity. Why do you acknowledge as scripture something you think is false?
As to G-d not loving trailer trash, the True G-d does indeed love them. The Catholic "gxd," however, does not. The Catholic "gxd" loves only scientists and intellectuals, though, like the Democrat party, it seems to find space in its heart for illiterates of every other ethno-culture under the sun. Only "white trash" are excluded. I know, because I am white trash, and I was run out of the Catholic Church.
Talk to the hand.
I have explained to you numerous times (and you have not listened or didn't understand) that my Bible doesn't have a "new testament" in it at all. When you send me to the "new testament" to "prove" something you are behaving no differently than a mormon or a moslem sending me to their own scriptures. I could invent a new religion and write "scripture" for it and those "scriptures" would prove my religion as well!
You on the other hand have Genesis in your Bible, yet you deny its historicity. Why do you acknowledge as scripture something you think is false?
As to G-d not loving trailer trash, the True G-d does indeed love them. The Catholic "gxd," however, does not. The Catholic "gxd" loves only scientists and intellectuals, though, like the Democrat party, it seems to find space in its heart for illiterates of every other ethno-culture under the sun. Only "white trash" are excluded. I know, because I am white trash, and I was run out of the Catholic Church.
Talk to the hand.
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