Pardon me if this has been posted elsewhere, but I didn't find it. Pope Francis continues to push the evolution of religious belief into the 21st century... Read the rest here. Interesting stuff and kudos to the pope. I went to 12 years of Catholic school during the 60's and 70's and was always taught evolution as science, so this is not surprising to me. Creationism was never part of my education.
I don't think there's any dispute about this in mainline Christianity. Unfortunately, a vocal minority has done its best to shout itself into the fray and argue that the earth is 6,000 years old. It feels like this is a largely American phenomenon that's even newer than Biblical literalism.
Exactly. I grew up in the Episcopal Church..I've been a member of Presbyterian church and a member of a couple of non-denominational churches. I've never once heard Genesis preached as literal truth. It's a concept that wasn't really around until the 1800's, as I understand it.
This is nothing new in the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II acknowledged evolution 20 years ago and it was acknowledged before that as well.
What we now call The Big Bang Theory was first postulated by a scientist who also happened to be a Roman Catholic Priest, so no, Catholicism is definitely not un-supportive of science. The Vatican runs a rather large observatory and even employs an Atheists medical Doctors to confirm miracles (thinking that the Atheist will not be biased for the church).
That's not the point. The point is that many people think the Catholic Church is anti-science and that Creationism as written in the Bible is an absolute. That is not the case.
Mainline protestant churches may not have it as doctrine, but in my experience, there are many who identify with these churches that don't necessarily know that much about church doctrine or the bible and DO believe in literal things from it. Likewise, I doubt the average Lutheran or Methodist could have much of a discussion about the beliefs of Martin Luther or John Wesley, or know what makes them distinctly different. And organized religion kind of depends upon that to survive. Religions need members and fistfights over whether transubstantiation is literal or not isn't the sort of thing anyone needs. As far as I understand, the Great Awakening was a reaction to the Age of Reason, and not the other way around.
My point is that the Pope speaks of his own personal opinion, regardless of what has made him believe this. If someone wishes to believe what the Pope is saying, great, to each his own, but the fact remains that no one alive today was present during the so called Big Bang or during the millions of years it took for evolution to occur, so as far as I'm concerned, these are all theories! Evolution/Creationism/Big Bang etc. are all an attempt to explain something that occurred millions/billions of years ago, so buyer beware! ....... ....... .......
I can't tell if you're being facetious. The word theory has two definitions. 1) mere conjecture or 2) the current explanation for a natural phenomenon based on copious verified experiments and testing based on sound science. The first definition is the layman's understanding of the word. Don't be a layman. And please don't include Creationism with Evolution or the Big Big. It gives the impression that it's on equal footing with those two when it's not, especially in the science community.
Let me ATW this place up for you a little bit: The US population is 300 million x 82% Christian population x 67% = 166,830,000 Christians that believe in Creationism ... JUST IN THE US ... OF COURSE there's no dispute .. . CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN CREATIONISM. Now I don't have a problem with moderate Christians like yourself, but the vast majority of Christians think God waved a magic wand 6000 years ago and humans popped out with ipads in their hands, just like today. AND they're teaching this to KIDS. It's unbelievable that Christians behave this way.
Many of the responses here are very encouraging and I agree that (at least among us here) this is not a contentious issue, BUT if our consensus here was more indicative of the general public, then I would not be worried about the Texas Board of Education wanting to give equal time to creationism.
Huge flaw in your numbers here. You are using the 67% number from "attend church weekly." What are the polling numbers on that though? I have a hunch that the "vast majority" of self identified American Christians DO NOT attend church weekly.
Quick research shows that gallup reports something like 39% of Americans attend church in a given week. Christian research groups should the number to be close to 20% that attend church every week.
For the sake of accuracy... Gallup (in 2004) reported that 39% of Americans attend church weekly. 67% of that number is about 26%, times 300M is roughly 78 million Americans who believe in creationism. Not exactly a small number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance#Weekly_statistics
Many a Americans believe in creationism, especially in more rural areas. Still the fact remains that the Catholic Church has become far more progressive than many people assume. The Catholic Church is huge. There are groups very conservative that do not follow the Second Vatican Counsel and do not and will not believe in evolution, but they are a minority. Hell, the majority of Catholics do not even go to Church every week.
That is disheartening to see, but I suggested in my original post that this seems like a uniquely American phenomenon. I hope it contains itself here and that Christian populations in Canada, Europe, Latin America and elsewhere don't allow good old fashioned ignorance to take root. I also should've distinguished what I meant when I said "mainline" - I think that most denominational churches, be they Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc., will not dispute plain scientific fact. They have the benefit of hierarchies and checks and balances at local and national levels. Where things get muddy is in unaffiliated, evangelical churches. Unfortunately, those are the churches that seem to be growing the fastest and attract the loudest members. Without the benefit of tradition, they bring in people who are looking to inflate their individual sense of self ("I'm a Christian," "I know what's right and wrong," etc.) under the cloak of faith. These are the same people that don't want to be told they're wrong when presented with clear scientific evidence and try to justify cocky ignorance with scripture.
I had no idea that being a layman would be a major faux pas in the DD! I will assume that you are not a mere layman and have a plethora of PhD's, hence your disgust for the layman. If you want to believe that experiments and testing done in a lab definitively prove what actually occurred millions/billions of years ago, go right ahead, I mean after all, they are the current explanations. ....... ....... .......
