Pope ponders Darwin

[Newswire]

More... (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1516073,00.html?cnn=yes)

[Bimtly]

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."

So in other words king theologian idiot of the theologian idiots is going to sit around thinking about how he can incorporate evolution into theism.

[YHWH666]

Didn't john paul the second already state very plainly that evolution was a fact? I would figure it would have been the official position of the vatican already. The new pope is not allowed to contradict him, right? Papal infallablity and all. :huh:

[flintknapper]

I think Pope John Paul II has more clout dead than Pope Benedict Arnold has alive. We'll see how far he gets trying to undo what JPII has already made clear.

[Brother Daniel]

Didn't john paul the second already state very plainly that evolution was a fact? I would figure it would have been the official position of the vatican already. The new pope is not allowed to contradict him, right? Papal infallablity and all. :huh:
I don't think the "infallibility" rule is supposed to apply unless the pope states explicitly that it applies to whatever he is saying at that moment. As in: "Blah blah blah, and this is being said infallibly, so there." And I'm not aware of JP2 ever having done that, about anything.

[post tenebras lux]

IIRC, JP2 only went so far (in a paper that was drafted by the then Cardinal Rat) as to state that evolution was not automatically contradictory with catholicism. i.e. that it was OK to 'believe' in evolution so long as you allowed room for some form of 'special creation' whereby god took some proto-human and gave it a soul/called it Adam, etc. (if I understand 'special creation' correctly).

[Lowly Idiot]

"This is a myth that has become history," he said of the findings of the British naturalist.

Nice to see that the Catholic church is moving on.

[PopeInTheWoods]

"This is a myth that has become history."

Projecting much?

[Draconis]

IIRC, JP2 only went so far (in a paper that was drafted by the then Cardinal Rat) as to state that evolution was not automatically contradictory with catholicism. i.e. that it was OK to 'believe' in evolution so long as you allowed room for some form of 'special creation' whereby god took some proto-human and gave it a soul/called it Adam, etc. (if I understand 'special creation' correctly).

Yes this is essentially what my mother (catholic) believes, God sat around waiting for intelligent humans to appear then dumped a soul in each one.

[Wads4]

Yes this is essentially what my mother (catholic) believes, God sat around waiting for intelligent humans to appear then dumped a soul in each one.

But if they were already imtelligent then what was the Soul for?
Putting a soul in, in order that He or someone can remove it again later, sounds like nothing more than just posting a letter and then emptying the post box in due course. What is it meant to accomplish? If a soul is already immortal why risk them going astray by posting them into humans? Satan might steal them!

[Shake]

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."
You know, even from a believer's standpoint, this is ridiculous. One could argue the evolution of man was simply how their god planned things to be. If he's powerful enough to create "the heavens and the earth", surely he could create a process of evolution for living creatures.