Re: 150 years ago today

by Guest on Wed 25 Nov 2009, 05:41

Hass wrote:

The thing is the Catholic Church has never come out against evolution, allowing the laity and the clergy to make up their own minds.

The Catholic interpretation of the Bible owes a lot to St Augustine, probably the most influential Christian theologian of them all. Back in the fifth century he sagely advised that the Bible shouldn't be interpreted literally if it contradicts what is known from science and reason. St Augustine considered Genesis to be an allegory way back then.

Some popes ignored this sage advice, leading to woeful outcomes (eg. Galileo). As for the church's position since Darwin - in the 1890s Leo XIII published an encyclical strongly reaffirming St Augustine's position.

In 1950, Pius XII went with the line that evolution was a valid theory and that it didn't contradict Catholic doctrine.

In the 1990s John Paul II went one better and said that evolution was "more than a hypothesis". Benedict's views line up pretty well with JPII's.

The Catholic Church has been happy to avoid meddling when it comes to evolution. As a result, the science has triumphed within the Catholic community on the value of its considerable merits.

Interesting, Hass. I've long considered the left-footers to be the most scholarly and thoughtful of all the churches. Compare their position on Evolution to that held by the American Protestant Fundies.

by Shoeshine on Wed 25 Nov 2009, 06:14

Oh the Creationists are wonderfully funny. In their museum they've got dinosaurs and men co-existing, which is remarkable since over the last 6,000 years no scripture ever mentioned dinosaurs at all, and you'd have thought a predator the size of a house might be noticed be people.

Their objections are even more hilarious, especially the demand for evidence, given that it's all there, all over the world in every museum and scientific location on the planet. The missing link argument is pure bollocks too, there is no missing link. As various people have pointed out, every time a human ancestor is found in a so called gap in the fossil record, they tend to point out there are now twice as many gaps....

Humans struggle with the concept of gradual change. There is no point where ape became man, because both parents and offspring would have been to all intents and purposes identical. In a million years time, we too will be just one iteration of the ever changing development in this species, and we don't think of ourselves as any kind of staging point.