Posted on 01/19/2006 1:33:32 PM PST by peyton randolph
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No, you need to learn formatting. It's an insult to send someone a post like that.
1) He said it was fact and couldn't prove it. Do you not see the disconnect? You are still in the 21st century frame of mind. The Church WAS NOT ALONE in the belief--scientists and Protestants all shared the same view.
2) He said they were wrong and had no PROOF. That is ludicrous! They said "Don't teach it as fact." He taught it as fact. While we now know it IS fact, HE DIDN'T because he couldn't PROVE it. We can, get it? So remove that frame of reference from your argument--HE COULD NOT PROVE HE WAS RIGHT, yet persisted in telling EVERYONE (not just the Church) that they were wrong. Defend that.
3) You are a few hundred years off. The Protestant Reformation ended the Church dominance in Europe,and that was 100 years before. Even before then, the Plague diminished the power of the Church. In the "Dark Ages," sure, the Church was the be-all-and-end-all. Secular authorities were well in power in the 1600s.
4) They didn't use force. Period. He wasn't tortured, he wasn't threatened. Cardinal Bellarmine, the "Hammer" of the Inquisition, spoke to Galileo--didn't threaten, didn't burn, SPOKE. Period.
5) Considering that the Church was a patron of the sciences, they had every right to say that those who were studying on their dime should not preach and teach something contrary to something they believe. It would be like President Bush hiring Al Franken to give a speech about how wonderful Liberalism is. And again, PROTESTANTS AND SCIENTISTS WERE ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE CHURCH! University professors were some of Galileo's fiercest critics. There are Protestants today who insist the world is 6,000 years old, so do you really think there weren't Protestants then who opposed Galileo's work?
6) "Protecting Truth by crushing free inquiry. Nice motto." More like protecting it by not taking the incomplete, and unproven, studies of one man as proven scientific fact. But attempt nice simplification.
Did it again...
Copy and paste #s 7& till the end then format it, double spacing between items, and submit it. See what happens to the formatting.
>ID fails to be testable and fails to make useful >predictions. Scientific explanations require both.
I'd like you to test "evolution" theory on first living cell & creation of man.. when you can test it - let us know..
Also I'd like you to predict what new animals will evolve in let's say next 100 years..
You might listen to the quotes you have on your bio:
I believe in free markets, both economic and intellectual. Reason is the greatest faculty people possess; any abandonment of the Mind is a moral treason;
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge;
You have abandoned your search for truth to anti-Catholicism (It's irrelevant that your family is Catholic--Luther's would've been too, had he one). Everything I have said is easily researched. You can verify it very simply. But you don't--you insist on this archaic view of the Church that holds that it has been oppressive of science, which is patently false. Give me another instance where the Church was wrong in this fashion with regards to science, where it was "oppressive" of free thought and inquiry. Galileo is the easiest and most misunderstood. Tell me another.
Am I incorrect in thinking your post was stating that evolution had stopped?
I did notice an error in my post which I have corrected below.
Unfortunately for your idea at least this particular point is that evolution is currently happening. For a population to not evolve seven conditions need to be met.
As I read the Bible, in any case, we should have common descent from Noah, who should be our last common paternal ancestor; and the major racial trifurcation should occur within one generation at the time of the sons of Noah. None of this is compatible with human genetics. The closest we get to recent common somatic chromosome ancestry is the bottleneck between 50 and 100 thousand years ago, and nobody thinks that bottleneck was two individuals, one male, one female.
Not if "mitochondrial Eve" had progenitors, which seems to be the case. Right?
From what I've read, "mitochondrial eve" and "chromosonal Adam" don't prove anything, one way or the other, regarding the ultimate origin of the human race.
As I read the Bible, in any case, we should have common descent from Noah, who should be our last common paternal ancestor;
If the story of Noah is literally true, which seems doubtful, as far as I know. It's an open question for Catholics.
Is heresy a crime?
Again: So the hell what? What right did they have to use force to make him changed his recant? And so what if Luther would have done the same thing? Two wrongs don't make a right.
"He said they were wrong and had no PROOF. That is ludicrous!"
Theories are never proven in science. He DID have evidence, such as the phases of Venus showing it moved around the Sun.
"HE COULD NOT PROVE HE WAS RIGHT, yet persisted in telling EVERYONE (not just the Church) that they were wrong. Defend that. "
He was entitled to his opinion. The Church was entitled to theirs. They were not entitled to force him to accept their position, or to force him to stop trying to persuade others. You are defending theocratic regulation of speech.
"You are a few hundred years off."
Not in the part of Italy where Galileo lived. There, the Church was the final law. If it wasn't the Law, then they could not have forced Galileo to recant.
"They didn't use force. Period."
So, if Galileo said he wasn't going to abide by the house arrest, they would have let him go? Oh, wait, they wouldn't have. They would have used force.
"He wasn't tortured, he wasn't threatened."
I said, repeatedly now, he wasn't tortured. Throw that straw-man away. His arrest WAS predicated on the threat of force/death if he resisted. Unless you think that we don't force criminals to stay in prison, but instead *invite* them to stay at their own leisure?
"Considering that the Church was a patron of the sciences, they had every right to say that those who were studying on their dime should not preach and teach something contrary to something they believe."
Their dime? You can't be seriously saying that this is about funding? Wow, you're way out there.
" Considering that the Church was a patron of the sciences,"
They were the only patrons?
"There are Protestants today who insist the world is 6,000 years old, so do you really think there weren't Protestants then who opposed Galileo's work?"
Irrelevant. They didn't have him under house arrest (they would have if he had been in a Protestant area, perhaps). The Muslims would have done the same too; who cares? We aren;t talking about them either.
"More like protecting it by not taking the incomplete, and unproven, studies of one man as proven scientific fact. But attempt nice simplification."
They didn;t have to agree with Galileo. They just needed to let him be. Theocrats like you don;t care about free inquiry though.
"Now, had he left the Church and done this entirely on his own, there would've been no problem. Luther lived to see his Reformation completed, didn't he?"
He was Italian; he would have had to fled someone else, and there was no guarantee things would have been better under Luther.
"Hard for the Church to put on trial someone who isn't a member of that Church. He didn't have to recant--he could've left."
If he said he converted, and wasn't a Catholic anymore, do you honestly believe all of his troubles would have gone away? Are you that naive? Wars were fought because people weren't following the *correct* religion. The Church DID put people on trial who were no longer members. They went further than that, they went to war with them (and vise versa or course).
""Infringement" my arse--those are two concepts that largely didn't even enjoy recognition until Locke. Again, you are speaking from a 21st century perspective. We are talking about the 17th."
Rights existed before they were recognized by governments. Are you saying that we created rights?
"Copernicus worked on it for decades and suffered NO "oppression" by the Church. Everyone knew his ideas. No oppression. End of story."
No, they didn't know he meant it as physical reality. If it wasn't for Osiander, the book would have been banned.
" It wasn't condemned, and you cannot say that it would have been."
Yes I can. Everybody after him who claimed that it represented physical reality got into big trouble with the Church. The only thing that saved the book was the intro.
"It only came into controversy because Galileo was teaching it as fact, "fact" he couldn't prove."
That was also Copernicus' position. Before the intro was inserted.
"you see my WRITTEN RESPONSES, responses obviously formulated after READING, and take it as my "illiteracy."
Ok, you are dense then, not completely illiterate. Or just dishonest. I told you Galileo wasn't tortured, you kept saying I said he was. I said that Osiander wrote the intro without Copernicus' approval, and you say I thought Copernicus wrote it. Illiterate was being kind.
" Galileo was wrong to assert AS FACT that the Earth revolved around the Sun, as he couldn't PROVE it."
No, he was right, because he had EVIDENCE. The reason we have the methods and ways of science we do today is because of people like Galileo. He didn't NEED proof. He had evidence.
"He was tossing nearly 1500 years of ACCEPTED, "proven," SCIENTIFIC and religious thought out the window, without sufficient proof."
Horse manure. Who gives a rats ass if it was *accepted* thought that the earth didn't move? Galileo had evidence it did. The Church was wrong to force him to recant.
" You keep forgetting that Galileo's COLLEAGUES, secular scientists and professors, said he was wrong!"
So what? He had evidence he was right. They didn't have to agree with him; just not initiate force to stop him like the Church did.
"Your myopic view of the issue is ridiculous--he was Catholic and was tried in a Catholic court. He could have left the Church "in the interests of science" and suffered nothing at the hands of the Church."
He would have had to sneak out of Italy like a criminal and forfeit his property. Suffered nothing. lol Riiggght. The Church had both both religious AND civil power; that's the crux of the problem.
" You must be blind if you take everything I have said and read as "illiteracy." il·lit·er·ate (Ä-lÄt'É™r-Ät) pronunciation adj. 1. Unable to read and write. 2. Having little or no formal education."
Again, that was the kindest of my available options.
"I am college-educated, and have personally researched everything I have said here--I haven't relied on false assumptions and lies."
You need take off your blinders and do what the Church has done, admit what happened to Galileo was wrong and should never have happened. They are far more enlightened then you on this subject.
"What've you got (other than the Protestant Handbook for Attacking the Catholic Church)?"
My position is the current Church position. Yours is the position of the Church in the 1600's. I am defending freedom of inquiry, you are defending theocratic incursions into free inquiry.
I am defending the current position of the Church. You are defending the discarded position of the Church.
You two have frightened everyone else away from this thread.
I'm just not sure if it because you are too nice to each other or not nice enough.
It means your biblical 'Eve' has to be older than mitochondrial Eve - much older. That pushes the genetic bottleneck back to maybe half a million years. At that stage, were we human? Could Homo erectus have had a chat with a snake, or with Adam? And is it likely a viable species could be derived from two individuals?
I'm still following it, but I've pretty much given up making contributions. Not that I've been defeated on the merits, but I've said what I had to say. If someone wants to insist that Galileo got what he deserved, that's fine. I've seen that attitude before.
-Perhaps I should clarify--you keep saying "used force." I see force as being torture, death, etc. He was not forced in that sense. You must see that the Protestant Reformation drastically changed things, and that he COULD have left the Church, and the Church WOULDN'T have been able to try him. I brought up Luther because he managed to dissent from the Church (he and countless others) and the Church did what? Sure there were religious wars from both sides. How can the Church arrest and jail someone for heresy if that person is not Catholic? They can call them heretics all they want--where is the force? What happened to Luther--shouts of heresy and...? He could easily have gone to a symapthetic Protestant country, but he still would have had the academics and scientists to contend with.
-He had EVIDENCE but not PROOF. He couldn't PROVE that the evidence showed he was right. And don't get into the "theory isn't fact" argument (particularly on this thread). that is a whole other can of worms. The FACT is he couldn't PROVE he was right--there's lots of evidence for evolution, that doesn't make it a FACT. There's lots of evidence against evolution, doesn't make it fact (or not a fact, as it were)...
-Ah, so the Church had supreme temporal power in the AREA, not on the Continent as you first asserted (I'm reading into what you said--you never said continent, you just said "law of the land" or somesuch). Fact remains it was in power. Was it right? Nope--the Sun is the center of our solar system. Was it within its rights at that time? Yep. Was it a mistake--depends on how you look at it. It was right to not want to take 1500 years of scientific and religious teachings and toss them out because of the (unproven) writings of one man. You also keep forgetting that professors, scientists, and religious alike opposed Galileo. Professors and scientists had professional power over him, the Church had temporal. And, tying in with another point, the Church was a patron (no, not THE patron, A patron) of science and as such had every right to say what its money paid for--Galileo was teaching AS FACT something he could not PROVE and which was contrary to the Church's teaching. It's not only about money, but you are questioning their "right" to put him on trial. And what you seem to miss is that he was put ON TRIAL. If it was half as oppressive and angry as you make it out to be, he'd have been locked away and burned at the stake...
-Given the history, it's fair to assume that Protestants would've reacted the same way, as would've Muslims (well, maybe not Muslims...) If he was Protestant and in England, he likely would've felt the same fury as he felt in Italy. The Church was not alone in its opposition to his assertions!!! He was teaching as fact that which was not clearly proven as such--NO ONE accepted it. Copernicus' work was well know, and the Church had not problem with it being taught or written about as long as it was presented as hypothesis, that which needs to be proven, not FACT.
The rest of your post is hardly worth response--I am not a theocrat. I am just able to recognize circumstances as they applied at that time. You apply our conception of the world, of mankind, to a world vastly different and hundreds of years old. The biggest problem I have with the "Galileo Affair" is people who use it as PROOF that the Church is hostile to science (who, when pressed, can only come up with Galileo as the PROOF that the Church is hostile to science...) We can apply whatever norms or beliefs we want to their action, but they will be inaccurate if they are not compatible with the age. We can speak with moral indignation about all sorts of things but have to look at how people of the day viewed them as well. Was the Church wrong? Of course. Should it have more speedily accepted Copernicus' theory and Galileo's work? Yep. Did it have the right to defend its teachings? Yep. Was it alone in its criticism of Galileo? Nope.
PleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE go to this site:
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/galileo.html
It mentions that "The Hammer" Bellarmine said himself that if Galileo was right then interpretation of Scripture was wrong. But it had to be PROVEN that Galileo was right, something Galileo was unable to do.
I am of the same mine--the Bible is a blueprint for morality, not science. They misinterpreted it and acted on the faulty interpretation. The Church was not alone in that, but is also not innocent. But, again, if we take the worldview of the day, the Church was suffering from the schism of Protestantism, the 30 Years' War, and the various challenges to its authority, so it is understandable that they were...hyper...in their defense of their teachings. Does that make the Galileo trial right? Nope. But it is understandable. THAT is all I am after--recognition that it was a different age in every way conceivable.
Singling out the Church is anti-Catholic--who cares if your family's Catholic. EVERYONE, religious and secular alike, who dealt with this issue opposed Galileo. The Church was not alone, so cannot, therefore, be singled out. They merely acted on the matter within their realm of power.
It is pretty much a dead thread anyway--Guitarman and I are debating Galileo, the article is about the Church "accepting" evolution, something anyone with a brain can see is misleading. The Church has no official position on the matter, and the article doesn't state that, in typical MSM fashion. I HOPE we haven't killed it...
As for being nice, my only problem with Guitarman is that he is holding outdated and false. The Galileo affair is far too complex (and misunderstood) to be summed up "The Church was wrong, they are oppressive towards science."
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