(October 7, 2014 at 9:52 pm)Drich Wrote: The bigger picture being the pope is supposedly the leader among leaders of christianity. Shouldn't the leader among leaders know the rule book backwards and forwards whether or not you specifically want to play this game?I was under the impression that Catholics see the Pope as having some kind of direct line to god, so that when he speaks, it is god speaking through him. In which case, his pronouncements are divine.
The JWs practice something similar (while mocking the Pope for pretending to be essentially the same thing), where their Governing Body is supposed to be influenced by the Holy Spirit in order to provide divine guidance to the flock. It's embarrassing when they say something incorrect or just dumb, but they can always hide behind "well, we're just infallible men" or "god will reveal his plan in due time." The Pope may not have that amount of leeway, but he's way richer so maybe he's not bothered as much by it.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
