Thread: "Intelligent Design" not science: Vatican Paper

Great article. Finally the Catholic Church get's something right.

Hopefully this will help to shut up all those Christian fundamentalists. Discuss.

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.

The ID movement sometimes presents Catholicism, the world's largest Christian denomination, as an ally in its campaign. While the Church is socially conservative, it has a long theological tradition that rejects fundamentalist creationism.

"Intelligent design does not belong to science and there is no justification for the demand it be taught as a scientific theory alongside the Darwinian explanation," said the article in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper.

Evolution represents "the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth" and the debate in the United States was "polluted by political positions," wrote Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at Italy's Bologna University.

"So the decision by the Pennsylvania judge seems correct."

EVOLUTION CONFUSION

Confusion about the Catholic view of evolution arose last year when both the newly elected Pope Benedict and his former student, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, said humans were part of an intelligent project designed by God.

An article by Schoenborn in the New York Times in July seemed to signal a Church shift toward intelligent design because it played down a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul that evolution was "more than a hypothesis."

This triggered a wave of "Vatican rejects Darwin" headlines and attacks from scientists, Catholics among them, who argued that had been proved man evolved from lower beings.

Schoenborn later made it clear the Church accepted evolution as solid science but objected to the way some Darwinists concluded that it proved God did not exist and could "explain everything from the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

The Church, which has never rejected evolution, teaches that God created the world and the natural laws by which life developed. Even its best-known dissident, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, echoed this in a recent book in Germany.

Schoenborn said he spoke up because he shared Benedict's concern, stated just before his election last April, that a "dictatorship of relativism" was trying to deny God's existence.

TENET OF FAITH

Pennsylvania Judge John Jones ruled that intelligent design was a version of creationism, the belief that God made the world in six days as told in the Bible, and thus could not be taught without violating a ban on teaching religion in public schools.

It was not science, despite claims by its backers, he said.

This literal reading of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is a tenet of faith for evangelical Protestants, a group that has become politically influential in the United States.

Many U.S. Catholics may agree with evangelicals politically, but the Church does not share their theology on this point. Intelligent design has few supporters outside the United States.

While not an official document, the article in L'Osservatore Romano had to be vetted in advance to reflect Vatican thinking.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute -- the main think tank of the ID movement -- said on its website that reading the Osservatore article that way amounted to an attempt "to put words in the Vatican's mouth."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060119/ts_nm/...ic_evolution_dc

Yes, yes, yes!!

I'm happy to see that.


To clarify, Intelligent Design, in its vaguest sense, is a belief of the Catholic Church, but that is not the same thing as calling it science. The Church also believes that a communion wafer transubstantiates into the literal body of Christ, but that isn't a scientific belief, rather a religious one.

I'm glad to see Benedict knows the difference.

Intelligent Design does not directly state God/s were the intelligent designer/s. It isn't showcasing one specific creationsim account, since there exists many. My main drawback with ID as it is presently known, is that it is not falsifiable. Once a testable model is presented, then by all means.

Inteligent disign... lol @ christians knowing evolution has to be right.

At first they thought the earth was the middle of the universe. Now they don't say that. They disproved of any thing but 'God made man in 7 real days'. OH THOSE 7 DAYS COULD HAVE BEEN AGES.

Now they use ID as a path between SCIENCE and RELIGIOUS BULLSHIT.

In a few years jesus will be a metafore. HA!

We we all knew it. I am glad the Catholics just came out and said it.

Sadly, I am sure all of the Christian sects are not together on this one.

*yawn

Is this what captivates you. I'd rather watch grass grow than monitor the catholic church's understanding. Seriously what grows faster, Definitely grass.

Originally posted by Incesticide
*yawn

Is this what captivates you. I'd rather watch grass grow than monitor the catholic church's understanding. Seriously what grows faster, Definitely grass.

Hehehe =)

I think that by 32492 the vatican will have their first homosexual pope.

Do any intelligent design supporters have the guts to post here

Originally posted by Neruo
I think that by 32492 the vatican will have their first homosexual pope.

You mean outwardly homosexual pope, right? LOL

I think most people aren't getting the real story behind this development.

Intelligent Design is an occult concept, period.

To understand contemporary Christianity you have to understand two things, that being that there are only two Churches:

(1) The Catholics
(2) The Non-Catholics

What I mean by this is that the Catholics since Constantine have been a structure lead by a single man, The Pope. This means that nothing in the Catholic Church happens without the assent of The Pope (apparently the guy is "infallible").

The Non-Catholics are structureless. They are a huge conglomeration of sects that beleive a bunch of different things, but the lynch pin seems to be the Bible.

How does this relate to ID? Its simple really...

The occultists saw what was happening in the USA as an opportunity to advance their agenda by presenting ID as a kind of kludge to the Chrisitans (Catholic and Non-Catholic) to allow them to teach "creationism" under the law of the US Constitution.

All the Christians bit the bullet and jumped on the occult bandwagon. However the Catholics have realized as an organization that the bandwagon is NOT going in the direction they want to go, towards the occult and science. The Catholic Church is filled with a bunch of really smart, deep-thinking experts, and it took them a little time to wake up to the fact that ID is actually an occult ruse.

However because the Non-Catholic Christians don't have such a structured organization, they have no mechanism to understand what the Catholics (via Pope Benedict) have foreseen, because the non-Catholics are without structure (ie. they don't think as a group and therefore their ability to collectively chart their way is limited compared to teh Catholics).

This is neither a victory for the Athiests, nor the Catholics, nor the Occultists, but interestingly a victory for the non-Catholics who will continue to pursue ID ideology. It will lead them in directions that will lead to a greater understanding of the Universe and Life itself, I think.

I was wondering when the Catholics were going to wake up to this.

This is neither a victory for the Athiests, nor the Catholics, nor the Occultists, but interestingly a victory for the non-Catholics who will continue to pursue ID ideology. It will lead them in directions that will lead to a greater understanding of the Universe and Life itself, I think.[/b]

I'd say it's a victory for the innocent school children that the fundamentalist christians were trying to brainwash.