Pope takes another baseless swipe at science
wolfamongwolves
Posts: 2,414
Personally, I find it a bit rich that the Pope should at one and the same time call science "mind-limiting", while at the same time telling people to unquestioningly reject a well-supported theory in favour of a purely speculative one.
It's shameful that those who are trying to learn and discover and find objective facts and truth about the universe we live in should be vilified by those who are just desperately trying to justify their increasingly implausible myths and legends.
Pope says God was behind Big Bang
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 today.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the Feast of 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.
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 centre 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.
"In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided towards God, creator of heaven and earth," he said.
Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been trying to shed the Church's image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the words of the Bible.
Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.
The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism - the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible - and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.
But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.
Reuters
It's shameful that those who are trying to learn and discover and find objective facts and truth about the universe we live in should be vilified by those who are just desperately trying to justify their increasingly implausible myths and legends.
Pope says God was behind Big Bang
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 today.
"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the Feast of 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.
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 centre 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.
"In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided towards God, creator of heaven and earth," he said.
Benedict and his predecessor John Paul have been trying to shed the Church's image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging the words of the Bible.
Galileo was rehabilitated and the Church now also accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.
The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism - the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible - and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.
But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.
Reuters
93: Slane
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
creation took 13.7 billion years
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
It still strikes me that someone can hold on so much on his narrow view. Sure, BELIEF... Before the Christian god was 'invented' (or just taken from other religions and changed into what he is now) older religions had much more intelligent views on our planet and acknowledged the influence of the stars and planets much more than Mr. Pope does now. God is just another word for the sun and the sun was the one people worshiped for crops, etc. Christianity turned it all into a funny story about the old man in the sky, stroking his beard and thinking that he should make a good dead today and create Earth, etc.
Sorry if people believe in this. I don't want to belittle religion and believes but it makes me mad how the pope, with no scientific background, belittles the work of scientists and calls them limited.
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who can't forgive yourself
Maybe there is a god, but why do we have to brainwash ourselves into making the belief a fact?
Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess..
Another habit says its long overdue
Another habit like an unwanted friend
I'm so happy with my righteous self
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
Oh, that God caused the Big Bang! Gotcha! Well, maybe he did. I don't believe so, because I don't believe in God, but who am I to say? My point, though, is this: who is the pope to say, either?
If he believes that God caused the Big Bang, then that's fine, that's his prerogative. My issue with him is that he - with no possible justification - denounces people who don't believe what he does, even if they have vastly more to support their beliefs than he does. My problem is that he attempts to discourage people from thinking for themselves.
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2