Vatican sanctions Evolution
2005-11-07 21:27:33.332635+00 by ebradway 12 comments
First they say the Earth revolves around the Sun and now they are saying Darwin was right?!?! Anybody have any other sources backing this?
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-07 22:04:16.350781+00 by: meuon
That was almost a voice of reason. Is Catholicism evolving?
What happens to all the derivitive religions of the Catholic Church? When the behemoth moves, do they move as well or will they use this as reason to distance themselves more?
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-07 23:32:17.154911+00 by: Dan Lyke
An AP story about the same incident:
"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-08 07:01:42.505142+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger
The Catholic church was an eager, early supporter of "Big Bang" theory, or haven't you heard? It was a catholic priest who first proposed the idea.
You guys need to understand that Cathoicism isn't protestant Christianity and isn't all wrapped up in knots about science the way that protestants are.
And, the earth as the center of the universe episode was probably different than what the popular myth would have you believe as well:
The most striking point about the whole affair is that until Galileo forced the issue into the realm of theology, the Church had been a willing ombudsman for the new astronomy. It had encouraged the work of Copernicus and sheltered Kepler against the persecutions of Calvinists. Problems only arose when the debate went beyond the mere question of celestial mechanics.
There are reasons to be frustrated with the Catholic church, but wholesale rejection of science (e.g. intelligent design) isn't one of them.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-08 16:28:34.65003+00 by: ebradway
Mark: I take it your a Dan Brown fan?
Honestly, I give the Catholic Church and the Holy See alot more creedance than any Protestant organization. But this is because the Church has a much deeper perspective on events. Your link hits the mark when it mentions that the Pope thinks in terms of centuries. Generally, we see the same level of attention from Chinese leadership.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-08 19:54:51.638552+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger
Da Vinci Code? No, not a fan. I've heard good things about Umbarto Eco from a friend who is a literate Orthodox. That he is the real deal and Brown is a relative poseur. But I have not (yet) read either.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-08 21:05:39.637318+00 by: ebradway [edit history]
I started Foucault's Pendulum once and had to use a dictionary to get through the first paragraph. I saw a copy in Italian on a friend's bookshelf and found out that that was her Master's thesis - writing about Eco's book in Italian. Yikes!
Brown is a bit of a hack. Ok. He's a major hack. His books are like bad action movies. I look forward to having the time to devote to Eco's tome because I think it will absolve myself from the sin of having read Brown's trash. I think the only saving grace of Da Vinci Code is that Brown managed to avoid the gross uses of "artistic license" applied in his other books (like the main character jumping out a helicopter at 10,000 feet, landing in a river, then fighting a trained assassin and then saving the Vatican (in Angels and Demons) or a computer with 1,000,000 CPUs all hand-soldered into a massive computer that explodes when someone introduces a virus hidden in an encrypted message (in Digital Fortress)).
Be sure to read the comments on Amazon about Eco. They're hillarious.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-08 21:26:48.279681+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger
said friend also said that Eco claimed to make the first bit of his books hard in order to weed out the weak readers. or something to that effect. So I imagine that Brown is 10x easier to read.
But then, this friend of mine also thought Eco made that up as an excuse afterward.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-09 03:32:25.628975+00 by: Larry Burton
a computer with 1,000,000 CPUs all hand-soldered into a massive computer that explodes when someone introduces a virus hidden in an encrypted message (in Deception Point)).
Actually that was Digital Fortress, Deception Point was about the meteor with the fossils in in found in a glacier extending out over the Arctic Ocean.
#Comment Re: Dover Pa made: 2005-11-09 14:29:43.462358+00 by: m
On a related note: the eight members of the school board that touted ID in Pa have all been voted out, and replaced with candidates who do not support teaching ID in science class.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-09 15:11:53.876205+00 by: ebradway
Larry: Thanks. Changed it...
- Evidently everyone is chiming in against ID.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-09 19:47:23.998455+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]
Robert Anton Wilson![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png){kind=small}
's books to draw from the same mythology as Umberto Eco's works, and I think they're a much better read.
And on the original topic: William Rees-Mogg: A pope for our times: why Darwin is back on the agenda at the Vatican:
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.
Now I'm still of the opinion that trying to fit the facts into a pre-existing mythological framework is a bad idea, something I came to at a fairly early age while observing anthroposophy.
#Comment Re: made: 2005-11-10 17:50:20.701702+00 by: Mark A. Hershberger
"St. Augustine has always been orthodox."
I feel the urge to add here that much of Augustine had much more influence in the West than in the East. So not all of what Augustine wrote would be considered Orthodox.
Specifically his ideas about humanity's inherent incapacity are unOrthodox.
But you guys probably don't care. ;)