Pope Says God Behind Theories Like Big Bang

I don't think that's why they're doing this at all. I think this is just an attempt by the Church to take possession of something they've been utterly unable to control, i.e., "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Science is about discovering natural causes for natural phenomenon. They aren't acknowledging anything even remotely "scientific" about evolutionary theory, they are simply trying to apply "supernatural causation" to something that can't be proven to be supernatural at all.

That's not being open to new ideas, that's just trying to use religion to take over science. I find it laughable, myself.

Why dismiss Genesis to only an allegory then?

That's kinda hardcore for them isn't it?

Not really, in fact, it was silly for them to insist on taking it literally for as long as they did.

Hell, I read through Genesis when I was about 10 years old, although it took me a while and I skipped the "begat" nonsense, and I remember telling my mom that it was very obviously a fairy tale.

I do see what you're saying, that yes, it's quite a step for them to do this, but, it would be impossible for them to support evolution as being their god's work while still insisting that Genesis is to be taken literally, don't you think?

Yes...
Except for all the commotion they created not too long ago about creationism.

It seems, to me, they have adopted all the new scientific ideas, but want to create a so called war of ideology on atheists in the same breathe.

Chaosx almost dropped to the level of Excelior.

Explain yourself!

I totally agree, hence, the use of the phrase, "make us believe". It was inflammatory. That's part of why I said I don't believe they are open to new ideas, they're simply finally acknowledging that Genesis is a silly way to explain life on earth while trying to maintain the "us against them" status quo.

Ah, well. If someone wants to believe in creationism, I have no issues with that, just don't try to force it alongside scientific theories in taxpayer-funded schools. That's my only problem with it, and sadly, this may be an under-handed way to do just that.

Surely if the pope says it's an allegory, to then enforce it in public schools seems futile to say the least now.

Perhaps, but they may regurgitate the "intelligent design" card.

Actually, scratch that, lol...I just remembered the court ruling several years ago in which a judge, a Republican, church-going, Bush appointee, ruled against teaching ID as an alternative to evolution:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The entire debate hasn't had much steam since that ruling, except maybe in Texas. 8P

Hopefully more people will appreciate the plasma cosmology theories now instead of the big bang.

Well, the "Big Bang" has a catchy ring to it, whereas if you say the words, "plasma cosmology", most people are going to think it's a new alternative to Botox...

I'll bump this later with something witty later on.

Going to play C&C: Zero hour right now, later.

reason we have religion is same reason a kid carries around a blanket or a stuffed bear its for comfirt but everything religion said is just BS

I think that's a bad analogy. If religion was just a security blanket then the U.S. would have two more towers than it does currently. If anything it's more like carrying a concealed weapon.

At any rate, people stick with religion because it makes them happy. Same reason a man sticks with his girlfriend.

In modern times, very few people actually believe that the bible was a set of strictly true stories. Atheists generally blow things way out of proportion then criticize the extremes, which is actually a logical fallacy in itself. You'd be hard pressed to find normal religious people who take anything that literally.

It's also faulty logic to think that being atheist automatically makes you more intelligent than anyone that's religious. More than anything, that's just being conceited.

This is called a "strawman" logical fallacy, for those who may be wondering, and making such a sweeping statement is also a logical fallacy. "Some" atheists do that, just as "some" Christians do.

It's kind of funny how you criticized atheists for using a logical fallacy then do the exact same thing to them.

Just sayin'... 8)


Agreed, however, demographic statistics are known to point towards the fact that the more educated one is, the less religious they tend to be, and vice versa. That's not arrogance or conceit, that's just the truth. I don't go around parading it, and neither should any other atheist.

In return, I would LOVE it if Christians would stop trying to pretend their religion makes them morally superior to every single person of every other religion in the entire world. That is the sheer epitome of arrogance. 8(

@Spicyryan

by normal religious people I mean the majority of "religious" people in North America (If you're outside that bubble it's really none of my concern until you enter it, so I'm not going to make any statements regarding that). If you put them on a scale from atheist to extremist the average is going to be somewhere along the lines of "believes in god but doesn't do really pay attention to it". Mean, median, mode, take your pick. I'm sure you could find a few nut cases but there's extremists in every grouping. I'm sure some old lady has killed another old lady for a figurine to add to her collection at some point in history.

@Sylvaria

Actually, straw man refers to attacking a position that is similar to, but different from the opponents position and concludes that the opponents position has been refuted. Extremism is an entirely different thing than your average person that happens to believe in god, so in this case I wouldn't really call it a straw man fallacy.

I'd say it's more of a lack of proportion fallacy. There might be one that better fits the situation that I'm unaware of though.

My statement is only a fallacy if you generalized it more than I intended it to be, but I guess that's my fault for not being more clear. I was more referring to the people doing it right now.

I will give you that a lot of religious people feel they're morally superior though, which in all honesty is annoying. The real problem with that is the meaning of morality. Morality is really vague, so if the religious people define it as "belief in god", then I guess they're right but that doesn't really have any meaning. By that token I could go change my name to Tony Hawk, doesn't mean I'm ready to go grind telephone line though.

How is that not occurring here?

Haxor, the way I would explain a Strawman to someone is that one is essentially creating an argument that doesn't exist, then arguing against it.

For example, one day in my local paper there was a letter against abortion, and in it the author claimed that if we allow people to kill babies because they're "inconvenient", we may as well start allowing people to kill the developmentally disabled and the elderly for being "inconvenient", and no one can argue that isn't murder and so this must all stop right now before it gets out of hand!

The "strawman" here is that no one on the pro-choice side is saying that we should be allowed to kill the DD or the elderly. Therefore, the anti-abortionist has created an argument that does not exist, and then argued against it. They set up a "straw man", then knocked him down.

Same idea, just different ways of explaining it, I guess. 8)

Just to clarify, I was referring to my statement being an accusation of lack of proportion rather than straw man. I guess it could be arguable to say it's both though.

By your definition though, there are religious extremists who hold those beliefs so they're not really creating a position that doesn't exist. They're simply considering the extremists to be a much larger percentage than they actually are, which is why I think it's more of a lack of proportion.

By my definition, people using extremism as an argument to refute all religion isn't really a straw man simply because I wouldn't consider extremism and views of a common believer to be remotely similar.

That's just semantics though, it's 12:30 at night so I don't really care about definitions anymore.

I'm a little confused as to what you were referring to as being a straw man though. Did you mean that my statement,"Atheists generally blow things way out of proportion then criticize the extremes", is a straw man fallacy? I don't really see how that's a straw man. If that's what you were getting at would you mind elaborating?

Not a problem, I was actually agreeing with you that any atheist who blows something out of proportion and then criticizes the extreme is committing a logical fallacy...I simply consider it a "strawman".

For example, the atheist insists that Christians are out to kill him because of his lack of religion and argues that this would be wrong. Since I've not really seen any Christians demand that atheists be executed for being such, I would consider that the atheist had created a "strawman" argument.

But it appears we have slightly different ideas of how to interpret that particular fallacy, which is all good. It's nice to talk to someone who even understands the meaning of the term. 8)

P.S. And someone is negging all my comments, and no one else's, lol...I'm immensely flattered.

/grins and blushes

You don't need to have a gf to get pussy, only consistent pussy in most cases but they're rarely worth the hassle for that.

I don't believe when they say they dismiss Genesis as scientific fact that they can mean the entire book like some of you guys are seeming to claim, I think they're solely dismissing the creation in 6 days part.

However, if they do believe in Evolution and were to dismiss the first half of Genesis with the flood etc and accept the current evolutionary timeline then they are basically saying that God only spoke to Prophets for a period of about 3400 years, ending with Jesus, in about 100,000 years? Now that just sounds like complete *** and for one to be a Christian/Jew/Muslim you have to be a Creationist or it's all looking like ***.

And here I thought, just maybe, the catholic church was trying to be more realistic in its teachings, but yet still keep their spiritual ideology.

Seems more like a PR stunt then, no?

just goes to show. All religious zealots = "god did it".

Morons.

Oh wow, were just now realizing that every religious person isn't a fundamentalist?

Sometimes I think I know more about religion than the average religious person. Sometimes...

The Catholic chruch has been pretty good with accepting/tolerating ideas that will let them keep followers and their followers money, throughout history.

Which means maybe, sometime, eventually they may accept homosexuality. But not condoms......