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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 8, 2011 at 6:57 pm
(This post was last modified: January 8, 2011 at 7:55 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote:Creationism being completely rejected (finally) by the Catholic Church is a great thing for my country
Well,yes and no.
The Catholic church has rejected the crude creationism of the lunar religious right during my lifetime and has never had a problem with evolution.Neither do Catholic priests I know have an issue with the Big Bang, they just say God caused it.
There is no bounds to Catholic sophistry; a Jesuit theologian would hand Void his head. 
I admire your optimism. However, I wouldn't hold my breath for any significant changes in La Belle France,arguably the most anti cleric and anti religious nation in Europe since the revolution of 1789.. (non soviet)
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 8, 2011 at 7:53 pm
orogenicman Wrote:Most creationists are of the evangelical protestant persuasion, and so I doubt that they give any weight to anything the Pope says.
You'd think that, but we do have a small minority of Catholic Creationists here who constitute the main Creationist movement in France and there are quite a few of them, so these will lost their credibility.
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 8, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Well in my country it kinda has importance from 70% to 95% are Catholic Christians(trough mostly just claim lip-service)
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 9, 2011 at 7:55 am
Rwandrall Wrote:orogenicman Wrote:Most creationists are of the evangelical protestant persuasion, and so I doubt that they give any weight to anything the Pope says.
You'd think that, but we do have a small minority of Catholic Creationists here who constitute the main Creationist movement in France and there are quite a few of them, so these will lost their credibility.
...Emphasis on "small minority".
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 9, 2011 at 8:06 am
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2011 at 8:11 am by Justtristo.)
I hope the Pope lives long enough (not likely although) to have egg on his face when a unified theory of physics is found and an naturalistic explanation for the big bang is discovered.
Shell B;113170 Wrote:Like that will stop creationists from spreading their bullshit.
Especially given a lot of them are the "hotter" sort of Protestants who regard the Catholic Church as Non-Christian. Indeed some of them see the Pope as an Antichrist.
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 10, 2011 at 10:29 am
orogenicman Wrote:...Emphasis on "small minority".
Nope. There are quite a few of them. Nothing like the US but just because there are less nuts doesnt mean that they are less crazy.
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 10, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Rwandrall Wrote:orogenicman Wrote:...Emphasis on "small minority".
Nope. There are quite a few of them. Nothing like the US but just because there are less nuts doesnt mean that they are less crazy.
My point is that I have many problems with Catholicism, being a former Catholic myself. But their very firm pro-science stance is not one of them.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 11, 2011 at 12:27 am
The catholic church can hardly be said to be pro-science. Rather it is employing all the cunning and devious craft it has mastered through its two thousand year history to continue to perpetuate its own superstition based moral dominance in the era of science.
It obstructed for as long as it could every major step in humanity's endeavor to expand our understanding of the world by science, and when it finally could do so no longer, it tries through sophistry co-opt the fruits of that step.
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 11, 2011 at 4:51 am
Chuck Wrote:The catholic church can hardly be said to be pro-science. Rather it is employing all the cunning and devious craft it has mastered through its two thousand year history to continue to perpetuate its own superstition based moral dominance in the era of science.
It obstructed for as long as it could every major step in humanity's endeavor to expand our understanding of the world by science, and when it finally could do so no longer, it tries through sophistry co-opt the fruits of that step.
Yes, we all know the history. What you may not be aware of is the fact that today many Catholics are intimately involved in scientific and medical research. These men and women are by and large not pushing YEC or any other pseudo-science. I was formerly a Catholic, and nothing in that faith prevented me from becoming a geologist who also has four years of anthropology study under his belt. And I think everyone here knows that I am an avid defender of science. I left the church for different, more personal reasons, and later became an atheist.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: God was behind Big Bang, pope says
January 11, 2011 at 5:43 am
(This post was last modified: January 11, 2011 at 6:05 am by Anomalocaris.)
I am aware of the Vatican Observatory and the excellent scientific work emanating from the Jesuit order. I also know many scientists who do excellent work while still beholden to many aspects of the Christian superstition. The noted evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris is one example. But none of these changes the purpose which the religious organizations to which they below really seek to advance, which is to reassert the dominion of superstition over science in the human mind.
As to the church not preventing its members from doing good science, nothing even in YEC prevents one becoming a good doctor or physicist so long as one keeps one's rational inquiries to a narrow field. The noted physicist Raymond Demadian, co-inventor of the Magnetic Resonance Imagine scanner, and was the odds on favorite for a Nobel prize in Physics around 2002, is a YEC of sorts. I know him personally. But that doesn't make a church that preaches YEC any less an obstructor of science. The same can be said for the Catholic Church. A church that preaches the hidden hand of god without evidence is preaching against the principle of science. The church may have learned through 5 centuries of defeats the unwisdom of waging pitched battle against the center and flanks of modern science. But while it may refrain from contesting the grounds on which science has set up main camp, it does not refrain from gleefully skirmishing with any forward guards of science; hoping at every juncture to prevent science from making any inroad into the parts of the domain of superstition it still commands. I have no doubt it is fundamentally biding its time awaiting better opportunities when it may yet make major gains for its own superstition at the expense of science.
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