Scotsman.com – Fri 5 May 2006:
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.
He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.
I suppose now we’ll have to endure all the “evolution is just a theory” fools posting again.
Does this mean the Roman Cahtolic Church no longer belives in the Bible? That the Bible is just a collection of paganist mythology? God save the Church.
I saw this this morning on DIGG as well. It’s important to note that the friar is distancing himself from YOUNG EARTH versus ALL Creationism. IMHO, we can look at origins from the perspective of SPONTANEOUS SYNTHESIS (e.g. Darwin, et. al. – things come together by themselves without external assistance) and INSTIGATED SYNTHESIS (e.g. Creationism, I. D., et. al. – things require external assistance to come together) Our intiution would lead us to believe that certain things such as the Human Eye demonstrate sufficient complexity that it SEEMS unreasonable to believe that it could have come together without external assistance. Likewise, our intuition would lead us to believe that the vastness of the universe would imply an age exceeding 6000 years. Our intuition MAY be wrong since there are complex things that come together spontaneously without requiring external assistance. Both SS and IS have their religious adherents and it requires a measure of faith to abandon either side so ultimately the decision as to which one to adopt becomes a matter of personal faith; unfortunately few curricula see the wisdom of teaching both sides so our children are required to see only one side.
My $0.02 worth
No, it means that Catholicsm is not fundamentalist. We don’t take all parts of the Bible literally. It is an account by men of holy events, it is not written by God himself.
Does this mean the Roman Cahtolic Church no longer belives in the Bible? That the Bible is just a collection of paganist mythology?
As I understand it, the Catholic Church has never beleived the bible is “the inerrant word of God”, and was long opposed to The Bible being translated from Latin into “vulgar” [venacular] editions.
This was one of the causes of the Protestant Reformation – Protestants believed they only needed to study their bibles, while “The Church” taught that guidance from the clergy was necessary.
Natural Selection is a theory. A theory isn’t a bad thing, nothing can be proved absolutely. Embracing absolutes in Science is far worse than religious absolutes. It stifles discovery and invention. Faith and Science are water and oil, and just shouldn’t be mixed.
3 & 7 are quite nuanced…
The universe is being created in 7 days…. we are still in day 6… and on day 7 God will rest.
Look around… would God really create this mess and say the job is done?
God left the kids in charge while he took the Ms out to dinner, the kids decided to throw a party, and are they going to be in big trouble when he gets back! Sheesh.. he could have sprung for a babysitter instead of being so cheap!
*sigh* Once again, I have to explain this to people. The Church *can* read, guys. There are actually 3 competing creation stories in Genesis. It’s been quite a while since the Church stated that it doesn’t hold the Genesis creation stories to be factually correct. From what I was taught in a Catholic high school over 15 years ago, the Church considers the first historical part of the Bible to be the story of the life of Abraham. Anything before him, the creation myths, Flood myths, etc, are Truths, not Facts. It’s funny–people are so ready to think it’s the Cathlic church thinking these things, when it’s really more the things believed by highly conservative Protestant denominations. Of course, the Church only get a 1 out of 2 score from me, since this person labeled intelligent design as a “pagan” thing, whereas I don’t know a (neo)Pagan that would think ID is the way the the Universe was created. Every Pagan I know would go with evolutionary theory, every time….
>> Our intiution would lead us to believe that certain things such as the Human Eye demonstrate sufficient complexity that it SEEMS unreasonable to believe that it could have come together without external assistance.
My intuition says nothing of the sort. Basically every multi-cellular animal and insect has eyeballs, many of them better than our own. My intuition says that eyeballs are a natural evolution for any creature with a nervous system. We find eyes in the most primitive and most advanced organisms with a nervous system… heck, the ability to distinguish light from dark may have been one of the first uses of a nervous system.
Just because it is difficult it doesn’t mean that it is impossible. Evolution is just that… evolution. Natural selection over eons has an undeniable way of bending, changing and favoring creatures that are best suited to survive in their living environment. Evolve or become extinct.
Another perspective…
The time specified in Genisis was not Earth time, but a different measure. Days were as years and years were as centuries…
Yeah, let’s talk about what those Priests did again when this has nothing to do with that. I hate to say it, but they were only in the news because they were Priests. I’ve also heard of Baptist preachers that have done that too. Don’t single out the Catholics. Priests may be religious figures, but as Father Roderick from the Daily Breakfast podcast proves, they are human just like the rest of us.
Oh, and by the way, Evolution IS just a Theory. Bones of deformed people do not prove anything.
Consolmagno is right that we should shun paganism. He’s a Catholic, right? Isn’t that a contradiction? In his remark about submitting one’s faith and reason to an ultimate human authority, Consolmagno strikes me as teaching a very pagan idea.
According to historians, Ethbaal, the king-priest of Tyre, was thought to represent Baal on earth. The name Ethbaal means “with, near, or together with Baal.” It was just like having a supreme pope and king in Catholic theology. Ethbaal was the Vicar of Baal on Earth.
Many Protestants teach that Christianity was seduced to compromise its integrity in the 4th century through the “miraculous” conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine and the enticing hope of a Christian controlled Church State. Not every pagan practice could be defeated politically. Pagan fundamentals that couldn’t be crushed, like adoring the statues of gods and goddesses and the joyous celebrations of the birthday of Mithras (Dec 25), were quickly assimilated and reinterpreted to have a Christian meaning. The Roman Empire under its unified Christian-pagan religion quickly became the Holy Roman Empire.
For the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Main Line Protistant… Scriptures are typically seen as coming from the people and their encounters with the Holy One, and with the rest of creation. These tradtions know how the scriptures came to be, and they embrace scholarly critisim.
In More recent times movements have started that are refered to as fundamentalist” that typicaly view it be the litteral word of God. They often also state their interpetation is the only correct one. Scolars in these tradtions must strugle with the evidences that go against these claims, but they try to explain the difuclties in ways that allow it to be mostly litteral
In my semminary studies I have had instructors from both sides. I learned much more my neo-orthodox main-line Christian and my Catholic Priest, and former Catholic Nun Biblical instructors than I did from my fundamentalist instructer. In part because of how they taught, but in part becuase the former three were more able to get into the text, see the beutuy of the text, the context in which it was written, and did not have to struggle with trying to uphold a connotation of the scriptures as litteral word of God.
Plus, when it comes to the Bible, which book of books does one refer to? There are many different bibles used in Christianity today with different numbers of books. and/or lengths of books.
Peace to all
This reminds me of when my kids asked who God’s wife was.
I told them God could not have been married.
When they asked why, I said “If God was married do you think he could have created the univers in 6 Days, with his wife telling him to change everything”. 😉
Gee Giant,
Glad to see you are so knowledgable. Why are you so afraid of findings that support evolution? Is your faith so weak that you have to deny the existence of physical evidence?
That smacks of your God putting one thing in a book and another thing in the ground.
Here’s a video that demonstrates how an eye could have evolved from a simple light sensitive patch of cells. It goes step by step, with each phase providing a benefit over the last so as to be plausible under natural selection.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for all their other failings, I’m proud of the Catholic church for being on the right side of this nonsense. I have 12 years of Catholic education behind me and this has always been the case, not just on Genesis but on science versus religion in general.
The title of your post is misleading. Intelligent Design proponents by and large make no such claim that the universe was created in six days. Intelligent Design is a different movement from the creationist movement. The original news article referred to creationism, not intelligent design. They are NOT the same thing.
wait a minute – the Vatican has a meteorite collection????
my god, Lyndon LaRouche was right!
[with apologies to The Simpsons]
19, Rick. The difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design (a true oxymoron if there was one) is the same as the difference between a Jesuit’s God and a Benedictine’s God.
19. Yes, creationism and ID are two different things. six-day, six-thousand-years-ago, dinosaur-bones-are-the-bones-of-Genesis -giants is actually more honest.
it acknowledges that it is a religious doctrine and does not make any serious pretense to being a science.
[not serious, anyway]
And then there’s 13 and 19, more typical.
I like the intuition mentioned in post 3. I’d just like to point that most people’s intuiton still tells them that a feather would fall slower in vacuum than a rock. How can we talk about advanced things like these if human intuition cannot graps the simplest laws of physics?
#9 Awake….sure he would if he worked for Homeland Security.
Just about 3 weeks ago(I think) an Archbishop in the Vactican said ID was not science and shouldn’t be taught as such. This seems to be a rather consistant view by the Catholic Church on this matter. This concept of taking the Bible as the literal word of God is, in the context of the age of Christianity, a fairly recent thing.
Actually, post 24….a feather will fall slower than a rock.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
I wonder how Pope Sidious will react to this one.
# 26 is another nuanced fool.
#27 – In air (or most other fluids), a feather will fall slower than a rock – in a vaccum, as stated in #24, they will fall at the same speed, when subected to the same gravitational force.
Sorry, missed the “in a vaccum” part. Just got done watching R&GAD and the feather comment tickled me.
stupid stupid
“BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.”
Jesus Christ endorses Moses’ writings about creation:
Jn 5:46 For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.
why? Because the active agent of creation is Jesus Christ:
Eph 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
So when Moses says that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day God rested, he was actually talking about Christ’s prerogative as Creator.
John 1:
1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2: The same was in the beginning with God.
3: All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4: In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5: And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7: The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8: He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9: That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10: He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11: He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15: John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16: And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17: For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.