Good for the Catholics!

[Mizmoon]

The Vatican should be applauded for its stand against Intelligent Design, don't you think? :applause:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Did I miss something? nt

[acmavm]

2. Why applaud the obvious. For years and years it was the church that

kept learning alive. Especially during what we call the Dark Ages, as well as the Middle Ages. There is absolutely nothing in Darwin's Theory that can be construed as being anti-Diety. In fact, this is how I would expect a supreme being to act, with intelligence, logic, and a power so strong that it just seems like magic.

[JNelson6563]

11. Two views on that

"Kept learning alive" or had a monopoly on literacy for centuries? It's open to debate friend. The Church was also quick to snuff out "new" knowledge whenever possible too.

Julie

[HockeyMom]

3. Again, nothing new

Going back 40 years when I was in Catholic School. They did teach evolution, although they did say God created Evolution. But with that, you can just teach the evolution part in Public Schools, and leave the God aspect for Sunday School.

What the Fundies are doing is trying to cloak CREATIONISM, according to the LITERAL BIBLE lines of Genesis (world creating in 7 days, bla, bla.) with a generic ID.

Who do they think they are fooling?

[StellaBlue]

4. 'The Church' is progressive on a lot of issues

especially re: the poor, social justice, etc.

IMHO, they are a lot better than many other denominations, poltiically. And hence there are many liberal Democrats whose politics are informed by their Catholicism.

[MichiganVote]

5. The church has never liked the fundies...that's all this means

[Ediacara]

6. I think what we're seeing is actually a Catholic Church civil war

I mean they'll never call it that, and the media probably won't, but the Church is not anti-ID. The Pope and some of his closest right-hand men have suggested that ID is a good idea, and that they personally reject natural selection. On the other hand, the Church's top scientists reject ID vociferously, dancing around the fact that they're directly opposing the (current) Pope's decrees.

You're right, they should be applauded for rejecting young-Earth creationism, but sooner or later this war of words will boil over and I suspect this Pope will order the anti-IDers silenced because the Pope himself, is an IDer.

[xchrom]

7. officially, the church doesn't think much of the bible is literal truth or

historical fact.

i.e. the creation story is just that a story.
adam and eve are representations for Mankind.

revelations is an allegory, etc.

but they are just as backwards as fundies regarding other things like gay people -- which when you consider the whole shell fish thing doesn't make a lot of sense.

however i do think they are using the gay priests, gay people thing as a screen for apower struggle going on behind the scenes.

i do think they are trying to purge more than gay people from the church.

[Ediacara]

8. You're right

they tend to be more progressive than many other denominations. Pope BXVI and his cronies however seem to be huge dolts. They insist that evolution by means of natural selection is itself random, and they reject a random universe, and embrace ID because it is non-random.

Unfortunately, they are conflating mutation (which is random), with natural selection (which is by it's very nature, nonrandom).

The Pope and his buddies are being corrected by scholars within the church, but every time the Pope talks about this, he's a huge IDer. Unfortunately, as the former head of the Inquisition, Pope BXVI may not take too kindly to dissent in the ranks.

[xchrom]

10. dissent in the ranks may be the point.

it seems to me that there is a purge under way within the church.

indentifying who is suspicious may very well be the idea.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. Evangelicals think only their version of the Bible is valid. nt