Well, this thread is one way to cement a friendship!
And you call yourself a genius. 
I saw that earlier today and really expected the next headline to be Bear Shits in Woods.
Who would he have said it to?
Nope. He calls himself a SOOooooooper Genius.
's different.
The Sprog and The Ghost Thing.
Well, so was the Reformation…
When you get down to it, there’s very little difference between that and the Pope’s/Catholic stance. Both are equally anti-science.
Bull. Creationism says modern science is wrong. Theistic evolution accepts modern science. Heck, both natural selection and the Big Bang were thought up by theists. Heck, so was the beloved Occam’s Razor.
I believe people that try to create a war between science and religion are the ones that are actually anti-science. They just embolden the scientific denial of the religious.
Huh? Darwin was an atheist. (Lemaître was a priest, though)
As others have said, nothing new here. I went to Catholic school 30-some years ago, and this is what I was taught then.
What exactly is the practical difference between “God created the Universe” and “The Universe spontaneously came into being”? As I recall, science has no accepted explanation for “what caused the Big Bang in the first place?” The Pope is merely giving an answer: “God did it.” You may or may not believe him, but it’s no better or worse than any other explanation…
Theistic evolution accepts the conclusions of modern science, but not its reasoning. This is not a point in theistic evolution’s favour, if they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century by the threat of their own obsolescence.
It’s the difference between saying, “The fire destroyed all evidence that might indicate who started the fire,” and, “Superman started the fire! Therefore you should give money to my Protect Us From Superman fund.” Not only are they assuming facts not in evidence to come to an illogical conclusion, they are also trying to profit from these lies.
The big bang was one of God’s farts. It was not intentional, although being omniscient, she knew it was going to happen. Don’t worry, nobody else was around, so it was not unladylike.
Even thought creation as we mere human beings understand it was unintentional, God is still taking responsibility for it and decided to actively run it. She manifested as a male God and became a lassez-faire Republican so that the most responsible thing to do would be to do nothing.
The Roman Catholic Church didn’t acknowledge heliocentrism until the mid-1800’s.
They still tacitly support child molesters, and advocate covering up child molestation.
They’re far from acknowledging evolution as scientific fact (not sure where they stand on gravity and germ theory.)
Big Bang? I’m amazed the Pope even acknowledges that term. Maybe because it’s so coincidentally close to “Let There Be Light” – many Xtian fundies act all smug about that, as if they were right all along. Well, perhaps there’s a reason the Biblical Creation MYTH has persisted for so many 1000’s of years – it just happened to be coincidentally close to the truth, in a metaphorical sense. (Until day six…)
You are quite mistaken on the Catholic Church “supporting” evolution. They have for years and they have taught it in their parochial schools for quite a long time. Perhaps you have a specialized meaning of italicized “fact” that does not comport with modern biological theory (or does). But if you are going to criticize them for child mistreatment and molestation (of which I agree they are guilty) you might not want to mix it up with misinformation on evolution, gravity and germ theory.
I wonder what would happen if the Pope ever made an announcement saying “God talked to me last night, and told me that he doesn’t actually exist and I’ve just been following 5000 year old fairy tales. So lets get on with our lives?”
Being an atheist Jew, I’m not directly familiar with Catholic teachings, but my definite impression is that they use exactly the same methods as non-believing scientists to learn about the world, and accept the conclusions of science (though it used to take a while.) They may assign a motivation for what they find which I think is unjustified, and clearly have different opinions about whether some lines of inquiry should be pursued, but I hardly would call this anti-science.
I’ve known several people who were or who would be become both Catholic clergy and scientists, and I saw absolutely nothing anti-science about them.
The Catholic position on whether the Big Bang was intentional is unfalsifiable. The 6,000 year old Earth position is falsifiable and has been falsified. If you don’t understand the difference between these things, I suggest you try again.
Yeah, this strikes me as both unsurprising and unobjectionable. The Pope says that the universe started with a Big Bang, and Evolution happened. He say’s its because of God’s will. The first two statements are perfectly in harmony with scientific evidence, and the third is completely outside the realm of science altogether - neither provable or disprovable. Even if science eventually discovers something before Big Bang, the Catholic position will be that “Well then, God did that first.” I don’t see the problem.
The Vatican and some Catholic churches have offered up relics, including the Shroud of Turin (willingly) AND accepted the findings of scientists who have tested various things, including the Shroud. That’s pretty darn good, all things considered.
I am an atheist, although non-confrontational, but I would much rather have a progressive church that accepts evolution, science, theories about Big Bang, etc than some other options.
This last sentence is what is bull. The church is taking the undeniable facts of science and using them as a patina to cover up the faults with their faith. But you know what? You can put all the pretty baubles you want on a pile of shit, but it’s still just a pile of shit.
And here we have even more bull. It is those who equivocate and pretend that religion has any validity that emboldens the anti-science movement.