Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer
Sometimes the Catholic Church gets it horribly wrong. (Think the Inquisition and in the modern era, no condoms to control the spread of aids.) Sometimes they almost get it right. This is one of the times they have got some of it right.
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods.
"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."
Any criticism of creationism is fine in my "secular humanist book". Personally, I think religions are all "superstitious mumbo jumbo" including the tenets of catholicism. But, at least the catholic church recognises that creationism as a fundamental christian belief, is a dangerously ignorant position in a modern scientific world.
LINKS: ~
- Creationism
- The position of the Catholic Church towards evolutionary biology ~
- Since 1950, the Roman Catholic Church has asserted that a belief in the natural evolution of biological diversity (including the human body) through material processes is not inconsistent with Church teaching. The Church explicitly endorses neither an evolutionary nor a special creation view of the origin of biological diversity.
- In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome ~
- The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as ''correct'' the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.
- Brother Guy J. Consolmagno
posted by beepbeepitsme | 10:09 pm
8 Comments:
Consider yourself blogrolled :)
Re aaron:
ty :)
PS. I don't mind being a "bleep bleep"..lol
As far as science goes, the Vatican is on fire. The Christian Fundies are still in caves, and I know some Ortho Jews who are just as deluded as the Fundies.
Re atheist jew: Yes, the catholic church decided a long time ago that science, evolution, biology etc were not an impediment to faith. They just see scientific knowledge as god's universe being revealed by god. In this way scientific knowledge is not in competition with god belief. Evolution neither denies the existence of god, nor does it propose the existence of god.
I posted on this as well and am adding your article as link to mine.
OK, that was great. The Sapiens guy with a cross made me laugh. He made me blogroll you. ;-)
This is incredibly refreshing! Hurray for the Vatican!
beepbeepitsme wrote:
"Evolution neither denies the existence of god, nor does it propose the existence of god"
I agree with this statement. The more I read about evolution, the more I wonder what all the fuss is about. Why do fundies find evolution so threatening?
This is a great blog.
All the best
Kevin
Memoirs of an ex-Christian
Someone once said to me that the reason that the Catholic church was reasonably accomodating of science - these days, anyway - was because they treated scientists like Copernicus and Galileo so badly.
I think that's why the Vatican hasn't jumped upon the ID bandwagon.
Of course I could be wrong.
As always, great post.
Cheers,
Dikkii
Dikkii's Diatribe
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