What is your response to the Pope's recent comments concerning evolution?

Question

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1995696...

Pope: Creation vs. evolution clas an 'absurdity'
Benedict XVI also says humans must listen to ‘the voice of the Earth’
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 1:55 p.m. CT July 25, 2007

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”


He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

Answer 1

Perfectly reasonable. Genesis as the unerring story of creation and literally true is only insisted on by a minority of religious groups in the Christian tradition. Their leaders have no, or next to no evidence and often promote their ideas by repeated misquotation, garbled science and straight out fraud. In several cases their theology degrees are non-existent or come from non-accredited institutions, like a private house beside a Baptist Church in the south eastern USA. Where they do hold scientific qualifications, it is often at the lower end of the scale and in some cases have represented themselves as "Dr." when their degrees are no more than graduate.

The Roman Catholic Church is guilty of many things but sooner or later it accepts facts. This is because there is a tradition of real (as opposed to fake) scholarship within the Church. I'm not Catholic, by the way.

Answer 2

The Catholic Church does not take the stories of creation in the Bible literally. Catholics believe the book of Genesis tells religious truth and not necessarily historical fact.

One of the religious truths is that God created everything and declared all was good.

Catholics can believe in the theory of evolution. Or not. The Church does not require belief in evolution.

On August 12, 1950 Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical Humani generis:

The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

Here is the complete encyclical: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html

The Church supports science in the discovery of God's creation. At this time, the theory of evolution is the most logical scientific explanation. However tomorrow someone may come up with a better idea.

As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and modern science can live in harmony.

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

My response is that the Pope has every right to express his opinions as any other person. But he is just a person. The same as you and I.

The problem with persons in authority or power expressing their opinions is that other people will blindly accept those opinions as their own without doing their own thinking on the subject.

Apparently, you are Catholic. Otherwise this person's views would have come and gone like anyone else's. But now you feel compelled to have them as YOUR opinions because your pope said so. The pope is against abortion so you must be also. The pope says that the Sun goes around the Earth so that's what you must believe.

Try thinking for yourself. See what it feels like. Sometimes YOUR opinions will be the same as the Pope's. Sometimes they won't. MY opinion is that you won't burn in Hell for it.

Answer 4

I'm gobsmacked that the pope has at last made a sensible statement! Let's hope all the catholics take on board the fact that it's not all cut and dried.