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| 5/24 |
| 2005/11/10-13 [Science/Biology] UID:40538 Activity:low |
11/10 The Vatican taking a pro-evolution stance?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1860310,00.html
\_ The Vatican has a much more rational attitude toward science
than they had during the time of Galileo. --PM
\_ I think it's actually really cool that the Vatican has an
astronomical observatory in Arizona:
http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/VO.html
\_ Catholics and evolution:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp
\_ How many more times do we have to prove that the Church is wrong
before it stops changing its version of eternal truth?
\_ I wonder if you read the http://catholic.com link above. I found it
very interesting. |
| 5/24 |
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| www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1860310,00.html The Times and The Sunday Times electronic paper The Times and The Sunday Times electronic paper Search Search Opinion - William Rees-Mogg The Times November 07, 2005 A pope for our times: why Darwin is back on the agenda at the Vatican William Rees-Mogg IN THE mid-1980s I was a member of a Vatican body with the impressive tit le International Committee of the Pontifical Council for Culture. on one occasion he gave us lunch and served a light white wine from, I think, a papal vineyard. The other members of the committee included a splendid Ibo lady, the head of the Catholic Womens Movement in Nigeria, an Indian nun, a Japanese Jesuit and a Francophone president of an African nation who believed tha t French culture and a sound classical education would be the best answe r to Africas educational problems. I enjoyed our discussions, which wer e almost always held in French. The idea, which came from the Pope himself, was far-sighted. We foresaw w hat has subsequently been called the clash of civilisations; we tried to relate that conflict to the widely differing cultures of the billion members of the Roman Catholic Church. We discussed the impact of particu lar developments in modern science but so far as I can remember we did n ot try to deal with the central problem of the relationship between scie nce and religion; Our chairman was Cardinal Paul Poupard, an admirable example of the culti vated French intellectual in the Roman Curia; he is still the head of th e Pontifical Council for Culture. Whether the council still has an inter national committee I do not know, since I left it nearly 20 years ago. L ast week the cardinal was giving a press conference before a meeting in Rome of scientists, philosophers and theologians; this week they will be discussing the difficult subject of infinity. Cardinal Poupard had a be autifully trained French mind and inner loyalty to the Catholic faith. At the press conference he was discussing the issue of evolution, which is the critical dividing line between science and religion. Charles Darwins On the Origin of Sp ecies shook religious belief when it was first published in 1859 in a wa y that Isaac Newtons equally important Principia had not shaken the fai th of 1687. In The Times Martin Penner reported the cardinals argument. He had said that the description in Genesis of the Creation was perfectly compatibl e with Darwins theory of evolution, if the Bible were read properly. Fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no s cientific aim. He argued that the real message of Genesis was that the Universe did not make itself, and had a creator. Science and theology act in different f ields, each in its own. In Rome, the immediate reaction was that this w as a Vatican rejection of the fundamentalist American doctrine of intel ligent design. No doubt the Vatican does want to separate itself from A merican creationists, but the significance surely goes further than that . the teachings of the Church have nev er imposed a literal interpretation of the language of the Bible; Nor did the Church condemn the theory of evolut ion, though it did and does reject neo-Darwinism when that is made speci fically atheist. Indeed, one can go back nearly 1,500 years before Darwin and find St Augu stine of Hippo, the most commanding intellect of all the early doctors o f 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 begin ning 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 t o come into existence. Augustines thought does therefore contain the elements of a theory of ev olution, and even a genetic theory, but does not have natural selection. He did not foresee modern scienc e in AD410, but he did have an extraordinary grasp of the potential evol ution of scientific thought. Cardinal Poupards address to the journalis ts should not be seen as a matter of the Roman Church changing its mind and accepting Darwin after 145 years. It is a precautionary statement, distancing the Church from the American attack on Darwinism that Rome considers to be neither good science, nor good theology. It will also be taken as an indication of the priorities of the present Pope Benedict XVI. His critics had expected him to be more conservative than his predecessor . I tended to share this expectation myself, but refrained from expressi ng it because new leaders always surprise one; they move in directions n o one had previously foreseen. We should have been more conscious of dif ferences between the national traditions of the Catholic Church in Polan d and in Germany. The Polish Church, which trained John-Paul II, had alw ays combined conservative theology with support for the national claims to liberty. The German Church has always been challenged by the modernis m of German theology. In the 16th century Germany was the region where the Reformation happened . German theologians on the Roman Catholic side had to understand the ar guments of the Reformers if they were to reply to them. In the 18th cent ury Germans were fully exposed to the French Enlightenment. In the 19th century they were exposed to German philosophers such as Hegel, and to t he challenge of German biblical scholarship. Modernism itself in the lat e 19th century had a great influence on German Catholic opinion. All these arguments are well understood by Benedict XVI, because so many of them are German arguments. Cardinal Poupards statement clarified the acceptance of Darwinism and ri ghtly asserted that religious belief is compatible with the theory of ev olution. He also gave a further indication that the mindset of Benedict XVI may be a good deal more modern than had been expected. The German Church has a strong trad ition of theological inquiry in which Benedict XVI has been educated. |
| clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/VO.html one of the old est astronomical research institutions in the world, has its headquarter s at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, outside Rome. |
| www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp Click to learn more about this bestseller Adam, Eve, and Evolution The controversy surrounding evolution touches on our most central beliefs about ourselves and the world. Evolutionary theories have been used to answer questions about the origins of the universe, life, and man. These may be referred to as cosmological evolution, biological evolution, and human evolution. Ones opinion concerning one of these areas does not di ctate what one believes concerning others. People usually take three basic positions on the origins of the cosmos, l ife, and man: special or instantaneous creation, developmental c reation or theistic evolution, and atheistic evolution. The first ho lds that a given thing did not develop, but was instantaneously and dire ctly created by God. The second position holds that a given thing did de velop from a previous state or form, but that this process was under God s guidance. The third position claims that a thing developed due to rand om forces alone. Related to the question of how the universe, life, and man arose is the q uestion of when they arose. Those who attribute the origin of all three to special creation often hold that they arose at about the same time, p erhaps six thousand to ten thousand years ago. Those who attribute all t hree to atheistic evolution have a much longer time scale. They generall y hold the universe to be ten billion to twenty billion years old, life on earth to be about four billion years old, and modern man (the subspec ies homo sapiens) to be about thirty thousand years old. Those who belie ve in varieties of developmental creation hold dates used by either or b oth of the other two positions. The Catholic Position What is the Catholic position concerning belief or unbelief in evolution? The question may never be finally settled, but there are definite param eters to what is acceptable Catholic belief. Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly d efined that everyone must "confess the world and all things which are co ntained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole subst ance, have been produced by God from nothing" (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5). The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebul ae, and planets we see today were created at that time or whether they d eveloped over time (for example, in the aftermath of the Big Bang that m odern cosmologists discuss). Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official pos ition on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. H owever, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the im petus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him. Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It a llows for the possibility that mans body developed from previous biologi cal forms, under Gods guidance, but it insists on the special creation o f his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the C hurch does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of huma n sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediate ly created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human b ody was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a mat ter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did n ot evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are. While the Church permits belief in either special creation or development al creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution. The Time Question Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeare d The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite a gethat it has not existed from all eternitybut it has not infallibly def ined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whet her it was created several billion years ago. Catholics should weigh the evidence for the universes age by examining bi blical and scientific evidence. "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of re ason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever cont radict truth" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 159). The contribution made by the physical sciences to examining these questio ns is stressed by the Catechism, which states, "The question about the o rigins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific st udies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimens ions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the grea tness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researcher s" (CCC 283). It is outside the scope of this tract to look at the scientific evidence, but a few words need to be said about the interpretation of Genesis and its six days of creation. While there are many interpretations of these six days, they can be grouped into two basic methods of reading the acc ounta chronological reading and a topical reading. Chronological Reading According to the chronological reading, the six days of creation should b e understood to have followed each other in strict chronological order. This view is often coupled with the claim that the six days were standar d 24-hour days. Some have denied that they were standard days on the basis that the Hebre w word used in this passage for day (yom) can sometimes mean a longer-th an-24-hour period (as it does in Genesis 2:4). However, it seems clear t hat Genesis 1 presents the days to us as standard days. At the end of ea ch one is a formula like, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (Gen. Evening and morning are, of course, the transition points between day and night (this is the meaning of the Hebrew terms he re), but periods of time longer than 24 hours are not composed of a day and a night. Genesis is presenting these days to us as 24-hour, solar da ys. If we are not meant to understand them as 24-hour days, it would mos t likely be because Genesis 1 is not meant to be understood as a literal chronological account. Pope Pius XII warned us, "What is the literal sens e of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the a uthors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did us e For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today ; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What th ose exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the E ast" (Divino Afflante Spiritu 3536). The Topical Reading This leads us to the possiblity that Genesis 1 is to be given a non-chron ological, topical reading. Advocates of this view point out that, in anc ient literature, it was common to sequence historical material by topic, rather than in strict chronological order. The argument for a topical ordering notes that at the time the world was created, it had two problemsit was "formless and empty" (1:2). In the fi rst three days of creation, God solves the formlessness problem by struc turing different aspects of the environment. on day two he separates the water s below (oceans... |
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