He’s the Pope; you know he’s not going to defy his dogma to be honest with you. He doesn’t support gay marriage, either, but is good at giving the impression of tolerance, which will then be ‘clarified’ by Vatican spokesmen. Same here. Lots of people are telling me that the Pope says Christians should believe in evolution and Big Bang, but no, he actually isn’t. He’s telling you to believe in the Catholic Church’s weird-ass wink-wink-nudge-nudge version of evolution.
The “Big Bang” and evolution are not only consistent with biblical teachings, Pope Francis told a Vatican gathering – they are essential to understanding God.
When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything — but that is not so,the pope told a plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment,Pope Francis said.
He didn’t create human beings with a magic wand, but he created human beings. We’re just not going to tell you how, whether a wand was involved or not, or any details at all about exactly how people were created. But they were created! In Catholicism, we just leave out the “POOF!”. That makes us sciencier.
Human beings were not created. They evolved out of other apes. There was no Adam and Eve, but only broadly differentiated populations that gradually drifted apart, with waning patterns of interbreeding. There’s also no goal in evolution other than survival and reproduction, so the whole phrase “reach their fulfillment” makes no sense in the light of evolution, unless you’re willing to allow that monkeys fucking is a sufficient goal for Catholicism.
Basically, the Pope’s statement is an incoherent pudding of inconsistencies in which he tries to claim compatibility by ignoring every conclusion of the science.
The earth’s origins were not chaotic, the pontiff said, but were created from a principle of love, reported Religion News Service.
He gave autonomy to the beings of the universe at the same time at which he assured them of his continuous presence, giving being to every reality, and so creation continued for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, until it became which we know today, precisely because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the creator who gives being to all things,the pope said.
I’m no mathematician, but when I look at the Friedmann equations, I don’t see “love” as a parameter. But then, maybe I was fooled and one of those cryptic Greek letters actually stands for “love”…but I don’t think so.
At least the Young Earth Creationists won’t find his ramblings too annoying — apparently the Spokesman for the Creator of the Universe only thinks in terms of hundreds or thousands of years, rather than millions and billions. The rest is a mish-mash of nonsense. He created everything, but he’s not a demiurge or a magician, he’s the creator. But “demiurge” is just a general term for the being responsible for the creation of the universe! So he’s really just telling us all that he’s the creator of the universe, but he’s not the creator of the universe, and also that he didn’t do it by magic, but by supernatural (by definition!) means, which is just like telling us he did it by magic, but not by magic.
I’m already getting Catholics crowing in my mailbox that the Catholic church supports evolution. No, it doesn’t. It tolerates the necessary teaching of science, but then slimes it all over with the disgusting layerings of bogus apologetics, in a kind of Catholic spiritual bukkake carried out by blithering old men with an inherent contempt for the science they’re spooging over.
I’ll take my science without the extra slimy goo, thank you very much.
My takeaway from the above-
1. The Pope believes in extraterrestrial life (“beings of the universe” rather than “humanity”)
2. The Pope doesn’t understand that, in the history of humanity, his god is a relatively recent creation. So all the humans that came before the invention of Yahweh lacked this ‘assurance of his continued existence’.
I saw your appearance on Mr. Deity (before his more recent disgraceful performance re. Shermer), where, ironically, I think you encapsulated the theistic-evolutionary position quite well. “You can be hands-off the whole time.” I.e., natural selection (along with horizontal gene transfer, genetic drift, and other mechanisms) is sufficient to get the job done. A clever deity can be at least as clever as modern engineers who use genetic algorithms to design things, and is arguably even more clever than the one who grips his pencil, puts his tongue between his teeth, and tries to draft plans for the whole damn thing.
At one end of the theistic-evolutionary spectrum, that’s exactly what you find. Folks who affirm that the evidence is telling the story just as it happened–and, in addition, this deity happens to exist and to have been around the whole time. They’re untouched by your complaint that theistic evolution “needs” a god, while real evolution doesn’t, because they don’t claim that at all. They suspect that God poked his finger in now and again; for example, because He loves mammals best of all, he once heaved a big rock at the earth, thereby averting a future involving lizard-men. Not because evolution couldn’t proceed without him, but simply because he anticipated that if he didn’t do something, there would never be cats, and hence no cat pictures on the Internet.
Of course the other end of the spectrum has all manner of mish-mashed ideas, including the obvious god-of-the-gaps claim that abiogenesis required direct miraculous intervention, etc., etc. I’m just mentioning the other end of that spectrum for completeness. AFAICT, the only real point of disagreement between you and them is, “No, this deity of yours didn’t happen to be there witnessing all this, and looking forward to someday seeing cat pictures on the Internet.”
As long as they teach the scientific theory of evolution in their schools, I consider that support of the theory at least, if not the atheistic implifications of said theory.
Obviously, he’s referring to 4π. I mean, sure, that’s constant, not a parameter, but now you’re just nit-picking.
Makes me wonder if he actually thinks it’s going to end, or if this is another metaphor. But he doesn’t seem to grasp the “beginning” part at all yet, so maybe we should start there.
So the scientist is supposed to do Jebus’ bidding. It’s nice that (for now) he seems to be talking about environmentalism, and I’d like to think the rest is totally out of the question….
Well, Mr. Pope has a problem, doesn’t he? With no garden and no talking snake and now magic apple, the whole thing with his son (who is also himself) dying (even though the whole point is that he didn’t die) in order for us to be absolved of the original sin goes “poof”. So he has no choice but to spew bafflegab, the alternative being to get a real job, but he doesn’t actually have any marketable skills.
And you call yourself a biologist?! Humph!
…I think someone’s about to revoke your Biologist Card. :P
It’s so fucking dishonest…pretending there is no conflict between scientific reality and their preposterous, fictional bullshit….
I particularly hate that it promotes ignorance, rather than understanding evolutionary theory, people get the disastrously superficial version with the shitty diagrams of fish turning into amphibians and amphibians turning into reptiles, and the completely false pretense that a god controlling all of it is in any way consistent with our understanding of biology…
Because it assumes that the “mechanism” is divine magic, it prevents people from understanding the actual natural mechanisms behind it. It poisons minds and interferes with proper comprehension…it robs people of the beauty that exists in understanding these things, even if it’s an incomplete understanding…
Evolution (or any scientific topic, including cosmology, or even fucking planet formation for fuck’s sake) is not a theory which states a supernatural being occasionally intervenes in the process. That does not happen. Do you understand that it’s possible to spell out the process just as a science textbook would have it, then say “except when it doesn’t work as this theory describes, because God does crazy shit X, Y and Z sometimes, because I say so”? Because that’s what the Pope is doing, because he’s the fucking Pope being a Pope. This is just the sort of shit Popes do as Popes.
And since Popes aren’t generally schoolteachers, I’m pretty fucking sure you’re not actually considering this at all. You’re considering “that,” some other thing that you imagine is happening, which isn’t what the Pope himself is actually saying right in front of you. Why do that?
It also exquisitely showcases just how fucking ignorant the pope and the vast majority of clergy are about the shit they are pretending to authoritatively pontificate, which is kind of a positive…i’ll give it that….
Distinction without a difference?
c z @ 9:
Dude, I already stated that they don’t accept the atheistic implifications of the theory of evolution. That doesn’t change the fact that they do teach it in their schools as accepted science. I’m sure that P.Z. has had a few Catholic biology students who had no problem with the theory of evolution and the science that supports it.
“c z”? I guess those two letters are in my pseudonym…. d f
Anyway, “a few” of PZ’s Catholics students support it. Let’s assume so anyway. That says what exactly about the quoted statements here, made by the Pope?
Absolutely nothing, right?
I don’t care. They don’t accept the theory of evolution, because their fictional being can arbitrarily contradict it whenever it likes. You think that’s somehow remotely similar to “accepting” it or “supporting” it. Good for you.
Meh.
Make “love” a metaphor for gravity, and it works.
Sort of. Kind of. If you squint hard enough….
They don’t accept the theory of evolution, because their fictional being can arbitrarily contradict it whenever it likes
That’s … not actually true. I mean it’s the implication, but it isn’t what a Catholic priest who understands both evolution and Catholic theology would say. They would say that the mechanism by which it works is evolution via natural selection and that God set things up so that that mechanism would work. And so while God theoretically could violate it if he wanted to, he wouldn’t because he set up the universe so he wouldn’t have to and so you need to be skeptical of any claims that you have a creature that violates the ideas of evolution and natural selection because it isn’t the kind of thing one would expect to see.
Look I’m not saying that it’s a particularly coherent belief system – religion demands a lot of cognitive dissonance from its adherents – especially the better educated ones. (Much like simultaneously holding the belief that modern psychology can explain demonic possession and still believing that demonic possession could be a real thing in theory that doesn’t actually ever happen – I had a Catholic priest with a PhD in psychology attempt to explain that conundrum to me and I ended up walking away very confused that anyone that well educated couldn’t see his own contradictions).
If they do not accept the atheistic implications of the theory then they are not accepting the entirety of the theory, nor allowing for a full understanding of its nuances when they teach it in their schools.
What you end up with is an acceptance of the superficial facade of evolution, but not its nuts and bolts. An authoritarian acceptance of the output of the theory without understanding of HOW the theory is producing the insights and knowledge, not because you recognize the internal logic and empiric consistency, but because your authority-du-jour in the funny hat told you this is what you should believe.
And this has consequences. One cannot grow knowledge from a foundation like this one. One day science will move beyond the current theory of evolution to an even deeper understanding of life’s diversity. And it will do so by exploring the full implications of the existing theory and extending it is incomplete, and correcting the parts that are demonstrated to be in error. Meanwhile, what the church teaches will stagnate. Perhaps three hundred years from now, today’s theory of evolution will become Church dogma, leading the Church to reject and oppose the CURRENT science of the day, which has moved on.
It would be like a religion today that accepted all of Darwin’s work but rejected all the science of genetics that came after him.
I just like the way “c z” rolls off the tongue @ 13:
As long as their deity doesn’t start inspiring them to misconstrue a piece of coal as constituting evidence that Man. Is. As. Old. As. Coal., I’d say they’re supportive of the theory of evolution. Heck, they’re verging on deism as they cling to the ‘God creates souls, if not the bodies they inhabit’ line, what with accepting the Big Bang cosmology as well as evolution.
For that matter when Ken Miller testified on behalf of the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover back in 2005, his being a Roman Catholic didn’t seem to be a problem for his credibility as an expert witness on the subject of evolution.
Evolution is not a chronological narrative played out by puppets, in which the identity of the puppeteer is irrelevant.
Evolution is the process and mechanism, it is the puppeteer, and no, it is not synonymous with the Christian god.
I’ll settle for them at least being aware of said implications. But if you think someone like Ken Miller isn’t capable of understanding the nuances of evolution, well, I disagree. Not that I agree with Miller over the idea of God as the Designer, but it’s not an all-or-nothing matter. Catholics do teach and understand the theory of evolution as a scientific theory, even if they don’t accept the implications for their faith.
Amphiox @14:
When you fall, you fall hard.
P.Z, I’d say that the theory of evolution explains the apparent ‘design’ we observe in nature without resorting to supernatural explanations. That’s not incompatible with Catholic dogma, as far as I know. Catholics these days insert their God in ever smaller gaps… ;^)
That’s kind of a silly statement, in exactly the same way as if you replace “atheistic” with “not believing in extraterrestrials.” Biology gives precisely zero fucks whether (to use my example from #2) the asteroid chanced to hit the Earth, or was aimed by Klingons, or Zeus, or the Nac Mac Feegle.
If someone who is otherwise indistinguishable from Carl Sagan says, “…and I believe that Zeus existed and was an inter-dimensional traveler from an alternate universe predating the Big Bang,” you can certainly say that he believes some mighty weird things without evidence, but you can’t say that he rejects evolution, the Big Bang, or anything else.
If someone otherwise indistinguishable from Carl Sagan says, “…but natural selection is actually an insufficient mechanism for speciation, because someone must externally administer the new species’ essence for the process to complete,” then yes, you can feel free to tell him that he rejects evolution.
The fact of believing in one or more imaginary beings’ existence by itself tells you nothing about whether they accept or reject evolution. You can play the odds, and bet that they reject it in part or whole, because a majority of theists in the US do, but that’s not inherent to theism itself. The religions of 200 years hence (which will, most likely, still exist) will have rewritten themselves to incorporate evolution as seamlessly as they incorporate heliocentrism today.
“Assured ‘them’ of his continuous presence?”
I guess atheists must be going against the natural order of the universe. Is this a subtle little bash at those autonomous beings who are denying God’s obvious assurances?
PZ, #18:
Not sure who you’re replying to. On the chance you’re replying to me, I should point out that very few strains of Christianity conceive of god as a puppeteer. Nor do they conceive of god as a “bystander,” but that’s a much closer approximation than “puppeteer.” I.e., they regard the universe as an orderly, rule-bound system that runs by itself, without the need for tinkering or routine maintenance. This was the entire premise behind “natural philosophy”: that the system is orderly and that its principles are discoverable.
Other than initially wishing the whole thing into existence, God is essentially superfluous, according to most flavors of Christianity. The only difference between himself and a bystander is that he interferes on those occasions when he feels like it.
To suggest that this type of theist rejects evolution is about like saying you reject evolution, because you think humans affect its course by over-hunting, or by driving climate change. Evolution works just fine without human intervention, but it so happens that we exist, and we love eating meat and running air conditioners, and so for better or mostly worse, we have affected the course of evolution pretty dramatically over the last 150K years or so.
You seem to be appealing to a false dichotomy between deism and a micromanaging, puppeteer god. Those are not the only choices. It’s perfectly possible (albeit not the norm) to be a theist while understanding and accepting evolution as well as you or Dawkins.
Which is not seamlessly at all O_o Ignoring your own holy book is not the same as seamlessly incorporating shit into your religion….
Uh, what? You’re suggesting that Christians are geocentrists? That’s funny; although I’ve heard about such a fringe, I’ve never encountered them in my travels. The majority not only accept that the Earth orbits the sun, but in fact they believe that expressions to the contrary in the Bible are, and always were, figures of speech. Most would in fact argue with you if you claimed that the Israelites were geocentrists. It would actually be news to them. The issue is so dead, you’d have trouble convincing many (if not most) Christians that there ever was an issue.
This despite the fact that once upon a time, Galileo was urged to make the disclaimer that heliocentrism was just a fiction that made his calculations easier, and Christians were generally convinced that the Bible explicitly taught geocentrism.
Laplace said it best: We have no need of that (god) hypothesis.
@26 A Masked Avenger
No, that’s not what i’m saying. What i’m saying is that while they are certainly heliocentrists, this is not something that is seamlessly incorporated into their religion, this is something they accept DESPITE their religion..in other words, by ignoring the shit out of what it’s convenient for them to ignore. That is not seamless….that is forced as fuck.
What the hell is he supposed to say? He’s the pope. That’s his job. This is why the western world moved forward when it stopped listening to the Catholic Church.
Honestly, even Catholics don’t give a crap about the Pope.
azhael, #28:
Ah, I get you now–sorry about that.
I’d still say that calling it “forced as fuck” assumes things that need not be true. If a Christian accepts Genesis 1-3 as mythological, does that make them “no true Christian”? A fundie would say so, of course. But why is the fundie’s opinion normative? It’s obvious that Genesis 1 contradicts Genesis 2, so what could be more natural than to say, “See? We were obviously never intended to take it literally: otherwise, two contradictory versions of the same story wouldn’t have been placed back-to-back like that. Neither J, nor E, nor the redactor, were idiots; they would certainly realize that the two accounts were contradictory.”
Most of us imagine a rigid document that clearly and unambiguously commands the readers to regard the Earth as 6,000 years old, and hate homosexuals, and subjugate women. None of that stuff is nearly as unambiguous as the fundies (of which I once was one) would have you believe. There’s as much latitude as you need to pretty much get what you want out of it. The fundies deny that it’s so, but they exploit this property to the fullest in bending their scriptures to their will, and then feigning submission to them.
As just one example, it’s hermeneutical child’s play to look at Sodom and Gomorra and conclude that the Sodomites’ crime was inhospitality, as evidenced by threatened rape, and that it had nothing to do with homosexuality. So much for the homophobes’ favorite story. Is that “forced as fuck,” or is it more natural than the homophobes’ interpretation?
There’s also the fact that “forced as fuck” is actually just par for the course. I alluded to Paul earlier: the New Testament contains clear examples of Old Testament exegesis typical of the second temple period, which make it easy enough to take any verse in the Bible and argue that the meaning is the opposite of what it actually says. Paul used it to argue that circumcision was unnecessary, based on the passage that made uncircumcision a capital offense. His argument is clever, but I’ll skip it. His conclusion is that “real” circumcision is “circumcision of the heart.” Unstated but implied is that the capital punishment for uncircumcision is reserved for the afterlife, for those whose hearts aren’t “circumcised.”
With Paul as your example, there’s not much limit on where you and your Bible can go.
Wrong. Most strains of Christianity, and most Christians, believe in human exceptionalism. Maybe a rule-bound system generated breeds of dogs and fruit flies, but God created me. I ain’t come from no monkey.
That’s a pretty big lump of wrong in their concept of evolution.
A Masked Avenger, #24
Huh, ya learn something new everyday.
I didn’t know most branches of Christianity don’t believe in things like a god actively looking out for some Homo sapiens (prayer) and deciding their futures (heaven and hell). Because that would be tinkering and routine maintenance for sure.
I dare say you would, but that’s because you’re an accommodationist, and either don’t know much about the relevant issues, or prefer to gloss over them. That “Man” was a latecomer on the earth was accepted in the early 1800s, but most of those accepting it believed in the theory of “successive creation”: that God periodically made a new lot of species while removing many of those in existence.
Not so, and certainly not true of Catholicism. It is Catholic teaching that all human beings are descended from a single pair, Adam and Eve, whose “souls” were made by God:
This claim is absolutely contrary to the scientific evidence. Now for all I know, Ken Miller rejects this hooey. But if he does, he’s rejecting Catholic teaching.
Neither in this nor any other conceivable reality is that sentence a proper usage of the word “supportive”.
The hubby and I graduated from a Jesuit University many, many years ago. Evolution was taught there very factually. The hubby earned a couple of science degrees and it started him on the road to questioning religion.
The Jebbies taught us to question everything, including authority. This pope comes from the Jebbie tradition, so I wonder if he does understand the science, but is mouthing what his base wants to believe.
I certainly hope that my alma mater is still teaching real science.
Evolution means no Adam and Eve.
No Adam and Eve means no inherited sin.
No inherited sin means people aren’t born needing jesus’ intervention for their sins.
No jesus intervention means no christianity.
Nice.
I just saw the Young Turks on You Tube did a video about this and while they thought Francis’s statements on evolution were just fluff also, they were still amazed at how he seems to be breaking with previous teachings of the Catholic Church. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXKxrA7d3jM I wasn’t really impressed by the pope’s statements, since he’s just reaffirming stuff Pius XII already said in “Humani Generis” 60 years ago. The really interesting thing to me though was that Francis made these statements about evolution and the Big Bang while unveiling a bust of Benedict XVI, and went on to say what a great pope he was. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/pope-francis-evolution_n_6057378.html I’ll just copy and paste part of a You Tube comment I left on that Young Turks video, which linked to this HuffPo article below their video.
“This is the same Benedict who helped in cover ups of priest abuse, lifted the excommunication of a holocaust denying bishop in a misguided attempt to reconcile with the schismatic SSPX, a radical traditionalist Catholic group, and said that condoms help spread AIDS in Africa, amongst other things. Francis’ “progressive” image is just him playing good PR with the media, and him defending the legacy of Benedict XVI is just another sign that he has no real intentions of changing the church.”
Marcus Ranum, #36
That’s pretty much it. Nicely done.
At least until we hear from the “but Christianity isn’t really about all that. It’s all a metaphor for… for… look over there! *WHOOSH*” people.
“but God created me. I ain’t come from no monkey.”
The world is larger than your country, PZ. In The Netherlands and several other European countries christians totally accept that they come from monkeys. Including catholics. Especially catholics. The pope was not only speaking to American you.
I’ll take (and did for my kids) theistic evolution over a teacher who says they’re teaching evolution only because the state requires it. Now that they’re in college, they openly mock any mention of creationism.
As for the pope’s statement, even small doses of reality (whether science or law) can increase cognitive dissonance in his followers. Rome wasn’t built in a day – nor would the church collapse even if the pope were to reveal himself to be an atheist. Instead, the church will continue to become irrelevant at an increasing pace as the realities of science become understood by more people.
Ironically, the only truly nonsensical statement about evolution in the post is not by the Pope, but by Myers himself: “There’s also no goal in evolution other than survival and reproduction, so the whole phrase “reach their fulfillment” makes no sense in the light of evolution, unless you’re willing to allow that monkeys fucking is a sufficient goal for Catholicism.” Survival and reproduction is not a “goal” in evolution, anymore than writing a novel, or ordering a cappuccino, or reaching one’s “fulfillment”, so this point is very muddled; either there are no goals in evolution (and the first part of the quote is a misleading representation of evolutionary theory), or survival and reproduction are a goal in evolution (in which case the prevalent understanding of evolution as a non-teleological process is false)…..you can’t have it both ways.
tfkreference @40:
Why does it matter if the teacher is only teaching evolution bc its required? What should matter is if it is being taught properly.
Hmmm…Did the Pope just say : ” We are not a scientist.”?
eldritch #41
Ironically, if you use the [return] key, you look less stupid.
<blockquote> is also good.
Or an even lamer version. A god being omnipotent was able to select the starting condition of the universe that would eventually lead to the current configuration. It would be predetermined and totally indistinguishable from what actually happened. Granted this eliminates the possibility of a personal god, so it’s clearly not what the Pope is suggesting.
@30
If you have to bend over backwards finding ways to contradict or modify what is very clearly said in the bible, yes, i’d call that forced as fuck. I know that people do it, i see my parents do it all the time…that doesn’t mean that it’s not a conscious effort to find some way, some how to make the bible not say what it evidently says.
chigau#44
If that’s your sole barometer of intelligence, I think I can live with looking stupid.
And you are.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls.
That’s superfluous to chigau’s comment and my reply.
Tony:
I agree with you, but that’s a mighty big if. To me, teaching properly means instilling the desire to learn more about the topic, something more likely to happen when teachers accept the truth of what they are teaching.
(And in the case of evolution, learning more about it reveals the superfluity of including a god.)
eldritch:
If you’re wondering why your post isn’t being received well, read a book on evolution written from a scientific perspective and think about the difference between a species and an individual.
well ya, eldritch is right, evolution doesn’t have goals, it just happens.
if tfkreference wants to explain themselves, I’m all ears, but I don’t see how “the difference between a species and an individual” makes a difference to that. Unless maybe I just don’t know which statemtents, exactly, tfkreference was responding to.
although I can’t agree that the Pope didn’t say anything nonsensical. If what PZ said was “truly nonsensical”, then so was the “reach their fullfilment” comment by the pope. Possibly also his statement that we merely “imagine” the god of genesis to be a magician.
The rest of what the pope says isn’t so much “nonsensical” as it is bullshitsical.
I was referring to e’s post @41.
I did miss his (correct) statement that evolution has no goals, and I was responding to his claim that PZ is contradicting himself, which doesn’t even rise to the level of pedantry.
It’s the same argument used by Dawkins’s critics who have read no more than the title of The Selfish Gene.
tfkreference @50:
The way I figure it…until evidence turns up that shows said teacher (the one who is only teaching evolution because the state mandates it) isn’t teaching properly, I’m going to believe they’re doing their job correctly.
Thought y’all might like Andrew Dyson’s cartoon from The Age today:
Just a thought: I don’t think “creation” in Catholicism is what some of you think it is. Unfortunately, you probably share that conviction with most Catholics, including priests.
Anyway, a good insight into what “creation” is actually supposed to mean in Catholicism (in philosophical and theological terms, not in everyday language) may be found in works of William E. Carroll, such as this one: http://www3.nd.edu/~ganders2/Foundations/Carroll.Evoution.pdf.
Then, since you supplied a reference, try explaining it to us without time to chase rabbits down their holes….
Explaining it in one or two sentences isn’t easy, or at least I’m not good enough to do it. Please take a look at the “Creation” section, which is five paragraphs long. Should you decide to read it, it’ll be good to note that the language used there is not theological but philosophical. In other words, “God” or “Creator” is not yet the Catholic God (the latter has all the qualities of the former, but not only those). It is rather the God of some strands of European and Arabic philosophy (very roughly speaking: the Aristotelian tradition)
For this scientist, philosophical alone equals bullshit. Physical evidence is needed, so it is meaningless drivel.
Well, then there’s nothing to talk about indeed. However, I guess we can both at least wish each other a good day (or night, depending on the timezone you’re in!).
Stanisław, #59
I read all five paragraphs. It just says God created things, science just talks about change, not creation.
It’s the same horse manure but with a few sprays of cologne on it to hide the fecal matter underneath.
Without any conclusive physical evidence, physical evidence that would pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin, I presume. Otherwise, the physical evidence, not the sophistry/theology (philosophical bullshit) would have been cited….
Yes, I’ve yet to see two different arguments for creationism/intelligent design. They all just state “my god did it” over and over.
The philosophy ones just do it without misspelled words and better grammar. And in PDF format. PDF gives cred.
@Saad, #62 (nice way to quote specific comments, I’ll stick to that!)
No, it’s different. Creation in this sense is logical, not temporal. “X creates Y” means roughly the same thing as “Y could never exist without X”.
This is a little like saying that oxygen could not exist without electrons, in the sense that the very existence of oxygen is contingent on the existence of electrons. In other words, even if there’d been oxygen from the beginning of time, you could still say that electrons “created” oxygen.
I realize that this meaning of “creation” is rather counterintuitive. However, we’re talking about hundreds if not thousands of years of intellectual tradition here. It may well be that when the term was conceived, its associations were different than today’s.
Notably, this doesn’t have much to do with intelligent design as proposed by some American evangelicals. There is little love lost between them and the Aristotelian-Catholic tradition.
Finally, I’m not saying that this line of thought is flawless or anything. I am just trying to show how this idea differs from the common understanding of creation as “at time T1, X did not exist; at time T2, X exists”.
And now I’m going to bed, because it’s night in my timezone. Have a pleasant day (or sleep!)
It’s odd that you think Catholicism is supposedly something different from “most Catholics, including priests.” Evidently, it also doesn’t need to include Cardinals like Schönborn, who doesn’t seem too fixated on “everyday language” for that matter….
So this version of a god is an Aquinas-flavored Ground of Being. Things are “contingent” or “dependent” on a god. “Creating” essentially happens all of the time, because at every moment a god is making sure stuff still exists. (Nothing better to do, apparently, than keeping every one of those bosons and fermions flying around in space and interacting with one another.) Somehow, this idea is supposed to squared with the idea that he most certainly doesn’t “create” with “preexisting” stuff. Nevermind that the stuff is already existing while he’s still continuing to make it exist…. He’s not in time or space, see, and his “actions” are way beyond anything like a cause-and-effect relationship in time. Literally originating stuff “in the beginning” as the Bible would have it is just such a silly idea. What actually happens in nature is not important at all — how silly to think such things would really matter! — it’s that things need reasons to exist and god is that reason. He’s a concept and a person, and he originates and he doesn’t, he acts and doesn’t act, he has a penis and doesn’t have a penis… In short, he does it all!
Yeah, it’s hard to even get something coherent out of that, much less attribute the belief to a group of people (or, as you suggest, to attribute a belief to an impersonal institution which can’t have beliefs and despite what the people in it actually believe).
@consciousness razor, #66
I’ve read your comment before going to bed (I’m a weak, weak person), so briefly:
1. Naturally, I meant “Catholicism” rhetorically as “actual Catholic philosophical tradition, or some strands of it, as opposed to common ideas about what it presents”. My mistake, I should’ve expressed myself differently, but I hope things are clearer now.
2. Nice to see someone mentioning Aquinas’ ideas here. Of course I disagree with you about their interpretation, but I don’t feel the need to argue that point. If the technical meaning of “creation” has been at least a little disentangled, then my work is done.
Actually, you can’t. The element is dependent upon the nucleus with its number of protons only, not upon the electrons, which orbit the nucleus at QM distances and shapes.
Can you have oxygen without a single electron? If so, then sure, “protons” will work better in that example.
If you are going to be stupid, Citation, quote:
And atomic number is the number of protons in the nucleus.
Now, what is your point?
And SK, I taught General Chemistry, which is this is, at the university level back in the day.
So, evidence your point, or drop your point….
Or stars, let’s say. That would work too. Without them, you wouldn’t have oxygen. And precisely the kinds of physical laws that we happen to have. Those too. And I suppose certain local conditions like temperature and pressure, maybe even value of the gravitational or other fields, or maybe a million other things like the lack of some antimatter sitting right next to this oxygen.
But none of that is analogous to “existence-making-by-the-necessarily-existing-thing” in the sense you and Aquinas want it. Because that idea doesn’t make any sense.
@Nerd of Redhead
Let’s just say that if I’ve made a mistake, then thank you for correcting it. The example with protons apparently works better for what I tried to say in one of the former posts. At any rate, “the point” is that this sense of “creation” doesn’t need to include chronological causation.
@consciousness razor
The example has been a metaphor, which is why I wrote “a little like”. I wouldn’t attempt to explain an abstract idea fully in this way. Also, as I said, I won’t try to elaborate on Aquinas’ reasoning here – I’m not a specialist in this field and I can only trust myself to point the general direction.
Now, my procrastination time has run out and I will not be able to read further comments, let alone participate in further discussion. Thank you for the conversation, and – this time – good night for real!
Stanisław, #65
Sure, you’re using sophisticated sounding words and even sciency ones. But where does Jesus’s dad come into this? That’s their entire point after all. Jesus’s dad. So oxygen requires electrons. Still no step leading to the guy.
Actually it does. An imaginary deity doing things prior to the measurements of science, which ignore imaginary deities, and trumps it as an observation. You have no case, as it it relies on presupposition.
I have never understood why certain people insist that the same god who created billions of galaxies (Hubble Ultra Deep Field) also cares about contraception, same-sex marriage or lenten fasting. Their god keeps getting bigger and bigger while remaining the tribal god of bronze age shepherds.
underwear
Don’t forget the underwear.