Pope Francis: The Big Bang and Evolution Are Real

Trooper said:
Because things that do not exist cannot be the cause of other things. If anything is to be put forth as a valid cause the "thing" itself must at the very least be existent.
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Well here we reach the usual great imponderable. Some people choose to define that which exists as only that the existence of which can be corroborated objectively by 3rd parties (a scientific approach), whereas others take wider and more subjective definitions. You evidently apply the scientific definition, which is very popular. But not universal.
 
I should add that I don't think that all religious beliefs are compatible with all scientific beliefs. That's obviously not the case. But I do think that it's possible to simultaneously be a religious person and a scientist, without contradiction or cognitive dissonance
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It better be, because science suffers from its current lack of religious dimension and supported practice.

Perhaps the muddle begins in the confusion of deity with magic, and both with religion, in the Western cultures that launched modern science. Religions with deities in the modern sense of God - that is, not the metaphorical embodying spirit of a particular spring or the like, but encompassing universal powers and beings consciously responsible for governing the fundamental properties of life and reality by magic, are a subcategory. Other ways of religious belief are available, and imho overdue for serious consideration in the Western scientific community.
 
exchemist said:
Well here we reach the usual great imponderable. Some people choose to define that which exists as only that the existence of which can be corroborated objectively by 3rd parties (a scientific approach), whereas others take wider and more subjective definitions. You evidently apply the scientific definition, which is very popular. But not universal.
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We will accept unremarkable assertions as true, so long as the person making the assertion has a reputation for making accurate observations and truthful assertions.

"I encountered a raccoon in the rest room this morning." Here in the Maryland suburbs, raccoons are common and they are noted for their ability to find their way into buildings. So if someone I know to be sensible and accurate told me that, I would believe him.

If he said, "There was a bear in the restroom," I would be far more skeptical. Unless there's a broken window that I didn't notice on my way in this morning, there's no way for a bear to get into this building without being seen. The Animal Control officers would already be here! My friend would have to provide some evidence beyond his assertion, such as taking me upstairs to see the enormous mob of people trying to keep the bear from getting out into the hallway.

"There is an invisible, illogical universe full of preposterous creatures and incredible forces, which emerge at rare and random intervals for the specific purpose of fucking up the operation of the natural universe." This is an extraordinary assertion, and in conformance with the Rule of Laplace (or "Sagan's Law," as American TV viewers know it from Carl Sagan's long-running PBS series) it must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat it with respect.

No one has ever provided that evidence. The best they can come up with is a tortilla (out of hundreds of millions fried every year) bearing a scorch mark that is said to be the likeness of a person mentioned in the Bible... of which no portraits exist against which to compare it!

So not only are we welcome to doubt this assertion, but as people who respect science and scholarship, we are urged to dismiss it as a fairy tale.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
We will accept unremarkable assertions as true, so long as the person making the assertion has a reputation for making accurate observations and truthful assertions.

"I encountered a raccoon in the rest room this morning." Here in the Maryland suburbs, raccoons are common and they are noted for their ability to find their way into buildings. So if someone I know to be sensible and accurate told me that, I would believe him.

If he said, "There was a bear in the restroom," I would be far more skeptical. Unless there's a broken window that I didn't notice on my way in this morning, there's no way for a bear to get into this building without being seen. The Animal Control officers would already be here! My friend would have to provide some evidence beyond his assertion, such as taking me upstairs to see the enormous mob of people trying to keep the bear from getting out into the hallway.

"There is an invisible, illogical universe full of preposterous creatures and incredible forces, which emerge at rare and random intervals for the specific purpose of fucking up the operation of the natural universe." This is an extraordinary assertion, and in conformance with the Rule of Laplace (or "Sagan's Law," as American TV viewers know it from Carl Sagan's long-running PBS series) it must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat it with respect.

No one has ever provided that evidence. The best they can come up with is a tortilla (out of hundreds of millions fried every year) bearing a scorch mark that is said to be the likeness of a person mentioned in the Bible... of which no portraits exist against which to compare it!

So not only are we welcome to doubt this assertion, but as people who respect science and scholarship, we are urged to dismiss it as a fairy tale.
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Yes I think most of us are aware by now which camp you sit in, Fraggle.
 
Pope John Paul III acknowledged the importance of Darwin's TOE on October 22, 1996. He also apologized on behalf of the church for the inquisition, the house arrest of Galileo, and also for the crusades, and for the church's inaction during the Holocaust.

Pope Francis is doing just fine, but I'm sure there will be many more tests of his leadership. Too bad about Benedict; he really would have made a great stunt double for Star Wars evil emperor. At least, it didn't last very long, and sorry, but no sainthood for you.

Incorporating the idea of the Big Bang theory of cosmology as an element of religious faith gives me pause, however. At least, my own does not go that far. I would be more impressed if he simply declared that religion and science are not mortal enemies. They are not, save for a few who are OC about religion (or about science). All faiths seem to have members like this.

This is a very progressive church lately.
 
Science and faith are exactly opposite ways of looking at the world, and they are not compatible. Nothing Francis said is any different from church doctrine from 30 years ago. Yawn.
 
Not necessarily. It would not, for example, explain someone like Gregor Mendel (both a friar and the father of the science of genetics).

For some scientists, faith may actually be a motivation for doing it. These are not folks like young Earth creationists, obviously.

Science may not be compatible with superstition (or if it is, not for very long), but superstition almost always precedes science on some level. The way astrology preceded astronomy and alchemy preceded chemistry are only two examples.

When something is completely unknown to science, and potentially dangerous, what do you do? What Madame and Pierre Curie did may have been foolhardy in retrospect, but how else could we learn about radioactivity? Make like Thomas Edison and move as far away as possible from Daley's x-ray machine? Dozens of rocket boosters blew up on the launch pad before America got its space program going. I wonder how many explosives 'scientists' blew themselves to pieces before Nobel invented dynamite?

A scientist, in short, may need a bit of faith in a power higher than science once in a while. I'm not joking when I say, the scientific method is little more than glorified trial and error until it reaches a certain level of induction. No apologies to Popper for that demarcation idea.
 
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Faith is the anticipation of things not seen by the eyes. All innovation uses the charisma of faith. Faithful visionaries use the same tools, since their vision is often not be seen by their contemporaries until after the fact. Faith builds the visionary skills needed to function alone, even when walking in the wilderness of contemporary thinking. Without faith you won't leave the box out of fear. The fearful and faithless throw stones from the walls where one is safely afraid of change.
 
Religious faith is not the same thing as confidence or trust. It's pretending to know something you don't know.
 
You can only get tickets in the Vatican Post Office.
All the tickets for the loot are going to be bought by Bishops and Cardinals.
I'm annoyed now.
 
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Vatican Post Office
 
Pope John Paul II Declares Evolution to be Fact!

Pope John Paul II, on the 23rd of October, 1996, while speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary session at the Vatican, declared the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to be fact, tacitly acknowledging that man evolved from the apes, and reducing the biblical account of Genesis to that of mere fable!
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http://www.biblelight.net/darwin.htm

This link contains excerpts and link to the actual speech made by Pope John Paul and analysis of its implications.


 
Oy! Vatican!
Why don't you give us all a chance of winning the white Papal Fiat?
This isn't the Middle Ages you know.
 
wellwisher said:
Faith is the anticipation of things not seen by the eyes. All innovation uses the charisma of faith. Faithful visionaries use the same tools, since their vision is often not be seen by their contemporaries until after the fact. Faith builds the visionary skills needed to function alone, even when walking in the wilderness of contemporary thinking. Without faith you won't leave the box out of fear. The fearful and faithless throw stones from the walls where one is safely afraid of change.
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Well reasoned, but it does not answer the question of "faith in what?" We normally associate the term with belief in an unknowable deity, butI looked up the definition of faith and there seems to be a great variety in types of faith.

There is even an example of "blind faith" which to me appeared worse than "doubt".
It is obvious that blind faith does not allow for thinking "outside the box".
 
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