Are there *really* lightning rods on the Vatican??

Factual Questions
21

Gosh, if the presence of a lightning rod on the Vatican strikes you as ironic, I have a BUNCH of ironic facts for you:

  1. The Vatican has a roof! What’s the matter? Doesn’t the Pope have faith that God will keep him dry when it rains?

  2. The Pope has lunch every day. DOesn’t he have faith God will keep him alive even if he doesn’t eat??

  3. The Pope wears a coat when it’s cold outside- what’s wrong? Doesn’t he have faith God will keep him warm?

  4. The Pope looks both ways before crossing the street- heresy! He lacks faith that God will protect him from speeding cars!

    For crying out loud, even the most devoutly religious people on Earth have a modicum of common sense! Lightning, rain, cold and every other natural force affect the just and the unjust alike. Taking reasonable precautions is not an insult to the Lord.

22

I have heard nothing about any christian sect recognizing Natural Selection (and therefor throwing out creationism). Please show me a web page where it says that the pope has done this. If you can, then you have humbled me.

Meanwhile the pope still preaches against birth control. Didn’t they just FINALLY a few years ago admit that the earth goes around the sun?

bruce

23

bruce:

http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/nc-true.html

http://www.catholic-church.org/phoenix/archives/Pope_and_Evolution.html

and for the text of the original encyclical from 1950:
http://www.sni.net/advent/docs/pi12hg.htm

You’re welcome.

24

astorian:

i get your points, but i think you are missing mine. Being “Struck by Lightning” is the universal ‘thing god will do to you if yer bad’ - not make you cold, wet, hungry, etc. Lightning has always been the most common, almost default, way that we talk about god punishing us - this stems from mythic legends as well - Thor and his thunderbold, etc. Lightning is very symbolic of god’s wrath.

But all the other things you said just prove that praying and being religious is a waste of everyone’s time. Hell, why should the pope have to look both ways before crossing the street?

bruce

25

DrF:

Those are very interesting, but the pope is basically saying “evolution deserves some consideration” … he is saying that maybe the theocrats can twist evolutionary theory around to make it work with the bible. Maybe our bodies came from pre-existing material, but our souls were created by god blah blah blah etc etc etc… Meanwhile they have not “Accepted” natural selection, but the pope has taken a good, but long overdue, step by admitting that it’s “more than just a hypothesis”

Meanwhile, I live in texas and there are a whole lotta southern baptists here (yeah, i know sb <> catholic, but they’re all christians and they’re all very religious) who still scoff at the idea that evolution is taught in schools.

bruce

26

“Oh, and don’t give up on goatfucking that easily. When they go “baa” you can imagine that it is really moaning. And if you take them to the edge of a cliff, they push back harder.”
—jayron 32

Nice.

Peace,
mangeorge

27

Oh bruce, you really can’t judge all theists by the inbred snake-grabbers in your neck of the boondocks.

28

DrF: my personal philosophy is this:

The MOST religious and MOST outspoken theists represent the beliefs, inclinations, desires, and trends of their respective religion, or religious sect.

In other words, The pope represents catholics, the crazy southern baptists here who spend their days stoning gays and lynching ‘the coloreds’ represent all southern baptists.

Before you say this is “narrow minded” look at it this way: they all use the same bible, koran, torah, etc - some are just more vocal about their beliefs - and THESE are the people who, in my eyes, represent the beliefs of their respective religion. So, while there might be some christians out there who feel not all gays are going to hell (no i’m not gay), it is the christians who DO believe this (and go around killing gay people) who represent christian beliefs to me.

I hate to pick on just christians - i feel the same way about all religion.

Or, to put it another way, the group highest up on the “everyone else is going to hell” echelon represents their religion best.

29

kalt, you’re ignorance of Catholicism has been completely demonstrated in the urls that were cited. The Pope has held international scientific symposiums on the topic of evolution – not to question whether it happened, but how it happened.
(Arguing about whether the Vatican buys into the mechanics of Darwinian selection as proof that the Vatican doesn’t really accept evolution is disingenuous on your part, or perhaps shows up your scientific ignorance – scientists still argue over the mechanics of selection, the gradualness or discontinuity of change, the ‘first man/woman’ scenario, branches of the tree, etc…)

The Roman Catholic Church has as part of its heritage that Faith and Reason can not contradict each other (the hallmark of St. Thomas Aquinas’ medieval restoration of Aristotelian philosophy into the West). The RCC founded the first universities in Europe.

The story of creation in Genesis (recognized by the RCC to be of the genre of myth) is one of the first portrayals of a natural world in human history (as opposed to a magical, animistic world). The RCC carried that idea of a natural world in the late Middle Ages to bring about the establishment of modern science (as jayron pointed out).

Except for modern pop culture (in which you are so obviously steeped, since you demonstrate no knowledge beyond modern pop), I know of no historical or religious reference to God striking people dead with lightning (Zeus is another story), not even in the bible (and yes, I did a word search).

Every single RCC church building in the U.S. that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot) all have lightning rods. To wonder if the Vatican or St. Peter’s Cathedral does not have a rod out of religious belief is ridiculous. And I agree with the others who claim your question begs this assumption: Catholics are anti-intelluctual, anti-scientific nut cases who are so blinded by irrational beliefs that they don’t have enough sense to put lighting rods on their buildings.

And your self-defense continues to show your overwhelming ignorance of RCC and Christian beliefs.

Before you continue to embarrass yourself, how about learning a bit about the RCC, and not just take for granted that the ‘common knowledge’ you hold is correct. It ain’t.

30

bruce:

Amazing. I feel that the most intolerant and hate-mongering are the ones who do the greatest disservice to their faith and their god. In regards to a person who professes a Christian faith, the major instruction given by Yeshua himself was to “love your neighbors.” Not to hate and attack any of your neighbors with whom you disagree, so the folks you feel exemplify any given faith are the worst variety of hypocrite. I think that says something about your mindset, and makes you dangerously similar to those you loathe.
Could I hazard a wild-assed guess? You are about twenty years old, at most. Am I right?

31

Oh, for Ghod’s sake.
Yes, there are 2 lightning rods on the Vatican proper, and a total of 12 in the whole area.
The Vatican DOES have a website, you know!

32

Thank you slythe. Now our friend Kalt can go back to formulating questions designed to reinforce his ill-informed opinions of what religion is. Or back to fucking goats.

Jason R Remy

“And it could be safely said that at that moment, in the whole of India, no one, absolutely no one, was f^(king a goat.”
– John Irving A Son of the Circus (1994)

33

Kalt:

Along with refusing to accept that the RC church has no problem with the technical aspects of Natural Selection, you have, unfortunately, chosen to quote ancient anti-Catholic propaganda regarding Galileo, as well. The RC church has never issued a statement that the sun circled the earth. The RC church never condemned Galileo for claiming that the earth moved around the sun.

When Galileo first put forth his astonomical observations, he was supported by the pope and many of the leaders of the curia. When he went beyond the astronomical observations and began to attempt to draw theological conclusions, he was hauled up before the Inquisition and questioned. That first inquisition resulted in Galileo being turned loose with no action taken against him. A few years later, under a different pope, Galileo pushed that pope to issue a proclamation that Galileo’s theological speculations were valid. When the pope chose not to humor him in that way, Galileo wrote a satire blasting the pope and several other members of the hierarchy for not going along with him. At that point, he was hauled up before the Inquisition again. When the original file was re-opened, a letter was found abjuring him not to raise the issue again. There was no reference to that letter in the first trial and it is quite probable that the letter was a forgery placed in the file by one of the many enemies Galileo had made. His conviction in his second trial was based on his “disobedience” to this (probably forged) letter. In the written judgement, some idiot added a statement that Galileo had published heresy–but that (like the forged letter) was a lie since the RC church had never held that the heliocentric theory was false–only that the theological issues that Galileo raised based on a heliocentric theory were not valid.

The RC church has always recognized the accuracy of the heliocentric theory since the time of Galileo. It may have screwed up in letting personality feuds and politics interfere with its version of justice, but it has never opposed the heliocentric theory.

If you choose to dismiss the Catholic Church, or religion in general, for any number of reasons, you will find many people on this board who share your views. However, the Straight Dope is dedicated to factual correctness and it is simply not correct to claim that the Catholic Church has opposed the heliocentric theory or (more recently) Darwin’s theories of Natural Selection.

Tom~

34

Out of curiousity, what were the theological conclusions that Galileo drew for the the heliocentric theory that upset the church?

35

tom - i’ve never heard this and i’m extremely interested in this story … i intend to do some reasearch on it.

Slythe - thank you. I didnt see this info on their website. That’s where you found it?

Jayron - you seem to be the goatfucking expert here, not I.

Morian - yes, i’ll admit that my question begs the assumtion that you stated. No way around that i suppose. Didn’t mean to offend any catholics.

DrF - why is it that when people dont like someone else’s arguement, they always insult their age? It’s my FIRM belief not to believe in that which is simply the most convenient thing to believe in. So, while you might not like my philosophy in determining WHO represents said religion, i look at it this way:

If x theologian says y theologian is going to hell because they don’t believe in z, and y theologian says “it is not practical to believe in z so therefore I don’t” then i can only assume that x theologian is more schooled in his own religion than y theologian is. After all, why would x believe in something if it was not in the bible? X has more faith than Y, X understand his/her religious text (bible, torah, koran, etc) moreso than Y does, therefore X represents their own religion best.

The most violent, hateful, outspoken southern baptists are the most “religous, devout” southern baptists. You can call this narrowmindedness on my part as much as you want, but as far as I’m concerned, it is the way religion/belief systems work. Without this mentality, religions would fall apart. Jerry Falwell is more “christian” than ANY of you guys. Unless one of you is Pat Robertson :slight_smile: even then - it’s pretty close.

And while “love thy neighbor” is a commonly quoted religious principle, you are forgetting the ‘understood’ second half of that -

“love thy neighbor - unless he is of a different faith”

Anyway, I dont wanna keep arguing with you guys on here. That’s really not what I had originally intended. If anyone feels like continuing this conversation, my email is kalt@austin.rr.com… feel free.

bruce

36

I used to have a link to a site that provided the very specific point that Galileo was snagged on, but that link was blown and I can’t find it now. The following site gives a pretty good overview of the actual events. It agrees with the the site I’ve lost, but in slightly less detail. According to this site, the primary complaint was that Galileo insisted that the Copernican heliocentic theory be accepted as a replacement for any Scriptural references to the relative positions of the sun and earth. (This sounds as though the Church was, indeed, backing the terracentric theory against science, but that is not what was going on. Galileo insisted that all the planets circled the sun in perfect circles when a group of Jesuits–using information that Galileo had provided–had already realized that the planetary orbits were not perfect circles. Galileo was also told that he could not expect the Church to put forth the heliocentric theory as True in the way that Scripture was True unless he could absolutely prove the theory. It was pointed out that the only way to do this was to provide evidence of a stellar parallax (where a star could be seen to have a different position in the sky because it would be viewed from different positions in the orbit of the earth). The first such parallax was not discovered until 1839, but Galileo insisted that his theory be put on a level with the authority of Scripture without his having to provide this proof, despite several people having found errors in his pronouncements.)
http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/GalileoAffair.html
If you bother going to this site, please note that the forces of ignorance were rebuffed by the Church in their attempts to get Galileo condemned on four separate occasions before his first trial and on a couple of more occasions before his second trial.

From the site:

Tom~

37

Sorry, I was responding to UndeadDude and thought I’d get it in right behind his, this late in the evening.

Kalt, you may call Falwell the “most Christian,” but that doesn’t follow any definition I would use. If you called him the “most rabidly self-professed Christian” we could come closer to agreement. Is Pat Buchanan “more Republican” than anyone else? I usually consider someone the “most” something when they are nearest the middle, not nearest the fringe.

Tom~

38

Gentle Readers - please refrain from personal attacks and needlessly profane language in GQ. Take it to the pit if you must.

Nickrz
GQ Mod for The Straight Dope

39

Wow, so Kalt claims to revere reason and science, yet doesn’t know what “more than just a hypothesis” means in scientific parlance, and doesn’t know what happened between Galileo and the Church.

Interesting.

40

Regarding Galileo and the Catholic Church - There’s a good web site about this matter at:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/galileo.html

It discusses what happened between BB and the RCC. This is a christian site, and my disclaimer: I’m an atheist, and don’t condone christianity in any way whatsoever, but the above site seems fairly well researched, if a bit sympathetic to the Catholic Church, and is also fairly candid about the mistakes made by the Catholic Church, including clinging to outdated ideas in the face of new evidence. It urges that these mistakes not be repeated.

I’ve seen other, also well researhed accounts of this matter which were not published by christian sources and were somewhat less sympathetic to the Catholic Church on the whole issue.

As for lightning strikes, I figure the best way to avoid them is to stay on Thor’s good side. :slight_smile: (Or is Thor just for thunder? I’m not sure now… seems like the two would go hand in hand though).

–
peas on earth