"intelligent Design" Not Science: Vatican Paper

[Sasun]

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Church has restated its support for evolution with an article praising a U.S. court decision that rejects the "intelligent design" theory as non-scientific.

 

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that teaching intelligent design -- which argues that life is so complex that it needed a supernatural creator -- alongside Darwin's theory of evolution would only cause confusion.

 

A court in the state of Pennsylvania last month barred a school from teaching intelligent design (ID), a blow to Christian conservatives who want it to be taught in biology classes along with the Darwinism they oppose.

 

The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the Church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism.

 

"Intelligent design does not belong to science and there is no justification for the demand it be taught as a scientific theory alongside the Darwinian explanation," said the article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper.

 

Evolution represents "the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth" and the debate in the United States was "polluted by political positions," wrote Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at Italy's Bologna University.

 

"So the decision by the Pennsylvania judge seems correct."

 

EVOLUTION CONFUSION

 

Confusion about the Catholic view of evolution arose last year when both the newly elected Pope Benedict and his former student, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, said humans were part of an intelligent project designed by God.

 

An article by Schoenborn in the New York Times in July seemed to signal a Church shift toward intelligent design because it played down a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul that evolution was "more than a hypothesis."

 

This triggered a wave of "Vatican rejects Darwin" headlines and attacks from scientists, Catholics among them, who argued that had been proved man evolved from lower beings.

 

Schoenborn later made it clear the Church accepted evolution as solid science but objected to the way some Darwinists concluded that it proved God did not exist and could "explain everything from the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

 

The Church, which has never rejected evolution, teaches that God created the world and the natural laws by which life developed. Even its best-known dissident, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, echoed this in a recent book in Germany.

 

Schoenborn said he spoke up because he shared Benedict's concern, stated just before his election last April, that a "dictatorship of relativism" was trying to deny God's existence.

 

TENET OF FAITH

 

Pennsylvania Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design was a version of creationism, the belief that God made the world in six days as told in the Bible, and thus could not be taught without violating a ban on teaching religion in public schools.

 

It was not science, despite claims by its backers, he said.

 

This literal reading of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is a tenet of faith for evangelical Protestants, a group that has become politically influential in the United States.

 

Many U.S. Catholics may agree with evangelicals politically, but the Church does not share their theology on this point. Intelligent design has few supporters outside the United States.

 

While not an official document, the article in L'Osservatore Romano had to be vetted in advance to reflect Vatican thinking.

 

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute -- the main think tank of the ID movement -- said on its website that reading the Osservatore article that way amounted to an attempt "to put words in the Vatican's mouth."

[Sasun]

The Church, which has never rejected evolution, teaches that God created the world and the natural laws by which life developed.

 

I can't understand why both extremes of the intelligent design debate can't comprehend this.

[Sip]

I think the confusion stems from the Bible. The church has to take a clear stance on this and not hand waive and try to paint a fuzzy picture. Either the Bible is the word of God and God created man in his own image, or the Bible is a nice story book to teach basic morals and they should stop treating it like some sort of holy entity.

[DominO123]

I think the confusion stems from the Bible. The church has to take a clear stance on this and not hand waive and try to paint a fuzzy picture. Either the Bible is the word of God and God created man in his own image, or the Bible is a nice story book to teach basic morals and they should stop treating it like some sort of holy entity.

 

Double talk.

 

The a singular Big Bang myth was a Church thing.

 

Also, while many were threatned from the inquisition because of the shape of Earth, the Church already knew Earth was spherical and was turning around the Sun, they even had devices calculating revolutions by observation.

 

While the Church found the theory of evolution blasphemous, it is a man of the church that brought the theory of heredity and one of the originators of the modern theory of evolution.

 

Many such examples are abound.

 

Also, there is no question that there is a contradiction between the theory of evolution and the world in 7 days and ponctual creationism that many within the church have used as hypotheses to explain what we observe. They even advanced the theory of dinausors being too big to enter in Noe Arch, and for this reason have all perished.

[gevo]

The confusion does not stem from the Bible, rather it stems from an organization whose ambitions to come to par with the advancing worlds view of religion and life superceed its strive for their whole purpose of existance in the first place. This organization, not alone in this quarrel, is led by people that are part of a greater, much less publicaly spoken, institution. This organization being the modern Catholic Church. If you want to know what the Church, trully defined by the Bible, has to say about this topic, or any for that matter, I suggest reading the fundamental beliefs of the Armenian Mother Church. Ofcourse our new 'catholicos' is no less of a joke than the pope has been for a while now, nonetheless, the readings I suggest are above all of these people.

 

Quebecer, it is one thing for a true "church person" hereafter reffered to as a Christian, to be the originator of such heredity or evolution theories, which has not happened; but it is a different issue when a man claiming or coming from a Christian Church, not a Christian, comes out and speaks out about such theories. How does one tell the difference between the former and the later persons? Thats a different topic, lets speculate though, that we can.

 

Also, I am not familiar with your claim of 'a singular bing bang theory' steming from the church. What is the proof of this?

And, I had never heard that theory of the perishing of the dinasaurs, thats kind of comical, but maybe not too far fetched?

[DominO123]

The confusion does not stem from the Bible, rather it stems from an organization whose ambitions to come to par with the advancing worlds view of religion and life superceed its strive for their whole purpose of existance in the first place. This organization, not alone in this quarrel, is led by people that are part of a greater, much less publicaly spoken, institution. This organization being the modern Catholic Church. If you want to know what the Church, trully defined by the Bible, has to say about this topic, or any for that matter, I suggest reading the fundamental beliefs of the Armenian Mother Church. Ofcourse our new 'catholicos' is no less of a joke than the pope has been for a while now, nonetheless, the readings I suggest are above all of these people.

 

Quebecer, it is one thing for a true "church person" hereafter reffered to as a Christian, to be the originator of such heredity or evolution theories, which has not happened; but it is a different issue when a man claiming or coming from a Christian Church, not a Christian, comes out and speaks out about such theories. How does one tell the difference between the former and the later persons? Thats a different topic, lets speculate though, that we can.

 

Also, I am not familiar with your claim of 'a singular bing bang theory' steming from the church. What is the proof of this?

And, I had never heard that theory of the perishing of the dinasaurs, thats kind of comical, but maybe not too far fetched?

 

St. Augustine already wrote about the appearence of time with the creation of the universe, Pope Pius XII was one of the strongest supporters of the big bang before even science has accepted it.

 

The singular big bang BTW, refers to the myth that one and only universe appeared from an explosion, which is in clear contradiction with the inflationist theory and any current serious theories trying to explain a universe appearing from nothingless. Preachers have pushed to extinction other alternatives. One ought to not forget that it was the scientist Georges Lemaître who also happened to be a priest who first derived the equation from Albert Einstein equations of general relativity to bring the Big Bang as an alternative to the other accepted theories.

 

The singular big bang is simply a myth... of the one universe and its god who created it. The claim that everything has a beggining, and the universe is this everything minus its god.

[gevo]

I do not undersand why any affiliate of a church based off of the Bible would have anything to say about a big bang theory of sort. It is clearly written in the Bible how the world came about, and when time had started. The Bible says God always existed, which means time always existed. Ofcourse that can be a confusing conjecture since God is not affected by time, he sees past, present and future in one shot.. regardless.

 

The way I see it we all can come up with some theory, some idea and think its right. I believe only one of the many many claims made by people and various religions can be right, if any. So, St. Augustine, pope this and that.. its simply another person's opinion to me. Without some content to back your claim, one can not pheasably draw a theory from mere observation. George Lemaître's observations were based on content allready a theory itself, even loosely so at the time. So, I do not believe his words bare much weight, perhaps just another interesting idea presented, nothing more.

[Sip]

I do not undersand why any affiliate of a church based off of the Bible would have anything to say about a big bang theory of sort. It is clearly written in the Bible how the world came about, and when time had started. The Bible says God always existed, which means time always existed. Ofcourse that can be a confusing conjecture since God is not affected by time, he sees past, present and future in one shot.. regardless.

 

That's exactly the reason. Some of the "Christians" are starting to see that that doesn't make any sense if they want to conjure up a God that later on will judge us for our actions in time. A God that is beyond time won't have to wait and see how we live our lives

[gevo]

That's exactly the reason. Some of the "Christians" are starting to see that that doesn't make any sense if they want to conjure up a God that later on will judge us for our actions in time. A God that is beyond time won't have to wait and see how we live our lives

His knowledge of our future in no way shapes it.

[Harut]

you people sound like the characters from Dan Brown's Angels & Demons...

[gevo]

you people sound like the characters from Dan Brown's Angels & Demons...

While on the topic, how is that book? I have been meaning to read it, only because i found his "DaVinci Code" so entertaining. I just can not understand why people take that story as fact, especially when they pick the book from the "fiction section" of the bookstores..