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Post by caseagainstfaith on Jan 6, 2011 10:34:50 GMT -5
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Post by tgrwulf on Jan 6, 2011 10:57:45 GMT -5
This is nothng more than the Pope grasping at straws to try and stop people from leaving the church.
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Post by Hades on Jan 6, 2011 11:23:44 GMT -5
Sure, we were wrong about the existence of purgatory, but we're right about this one. Like for realz, you guys.
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Post by Rime on Jan 6, 2011 12:08:41 GMT -5
"Yes, science doesn't include God, but thankfully the Catholic Church does!
Why waste your time with trying to discover more about the universe when you have a direct line to the Big Guy whenever you listen to the Pope!"
It sounds eerily familair. I get images of rabbis saying the same thing to throngs of late Iron Age peasants. I wonder what happened to those guys, they were really popular back then.
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Post by m52nickerson on Jan 6, 2011 14:30:29 GMT -5
I can't see this as a bad thing. The Pope could have come out and said that the Big Bang was BS and the universe is only 6000 years old. Instead he is trying to match religious beliefs with science, while not arguing that science is wrong.
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Post by CtraK on Jan 6, 2011 14:43:38 GMT -5
I can't see this as a bad thing. The Pope could have come out and said that the Big Bang was BS and the universe is only 6000 years old. Instead he is trying to match religious beliefs with science, while not arguing that science is wrong. To be really fair, expecting the Pope to come out as an atheist is really asking too much. |
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Post by Julian on Jan 6, 2011 15:02:55 GMT -5
I can't see this as a bad thing. The Pope could have come out and said that the Big Bang was BS and the universe is only 6000 years old. Instead he is trying to match religious beliefs with science, while not arguing that science is wrong. Every time the church is falsified and are losing credibility and hence power over it, they then adapt and say that was their position all along. Consider the evils and ills that they have inflicted and perpetrated this decade alone, so every time they acknowledge scientific fact, but refuse to advance their hideously primitive, sub-moral doctrines, no it's not a good thing - they are merely feeding the collosal beast as best they can. |
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Post by Julian on Jan 6, 2011 15:09:56 GMT -5
Not to mention they're cashing in on / usurping the credibility of astrophysicists. It's like watching a pasty 300lb flabbo politician being photographed with an adored sports star.
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Post by Sigmaleph on Jan 6, 2011 15:20:53 GMT -5
I can't see this as a bad thing. The Pope could have come out and said that the Big Bang was BS and the universe is only 6000 years old. Instead he is trying to match religious beliefs with science, while not arguing that science is wrong. I can. Sure, it could be worse, but the general problem is that it's promoting a terrible way to go about looking at the universe. If you say that "God" is an explanation and scientific theories are not, you are basically raping the concept of an explanation. "Magic man did it" "Why did magic man do this and not something else?" "Magic man does not like people who ask that question!" That is not explaining, that's asserting. An actual explanation should allow you to predict observations. |
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Post by m52nickerson on Jan 6, 2011 15:38:08 GMT -5
I can. Sure, it could be worse, but the general problem is that it's promoting a terrible way to go about looking at the universe. If you say that "God" is an explanation and scientific theories are not, you are basically raping the concept of an explanation. "Magic man did it" "Why did magic man do this and not something else?" "Magic man does not like people who ask that question!" That is not explaining, that's asserting. An actual explanation should allow you to predict observations. The only way you are rapping the concept is if you stop your understanding at a certain point. If the Pope comes out a says that God was the cause of the Big Bang and any other cause is wrong they we have a problem. On the other hand the Pope says that God triggered the Big Bang through natrual forces we really don't have one. In that case God is just used as the ultimate explaination of why there is anything, while allowing people to know and understand how things came about. Many people who believe in God and science think this way. |
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Jan 6, 2011 19:49:42 GMT -5
My beef is with the fact that he's still speaking about the subject as though he has some kind of god-given authority. As pleased as I am that the mainstream Catholic church has been starting to accept modern science instead of outright rejecting it, and recognize that this kind of thing can potentially act as a stepping stone, there are still two issues that bother me:
1) The statement that scientific theories alone are mind-limiting. He's still basically saying, "My religion is the right religion, and anyone who's not a part of it is lacking in life", which isn't any less ridiculous if they're incorporating a little bit of science.
2) He's speaking in absolutes, which goes against what science is supposed to be. For all intents and purposes, the big bang can be treated as a de facto truth, but one should never view a scientific theory as absolute, lest it become religion. There is always a possibility that the theory could be disproven. If you say god was behind it, you turn it into an absolute. Likewise, he's not offering any evidence for his claims, just telling people what to believe. It's one thing to say that you personally feel that there was a higher power behind the big bang, but if you're going to try to sell that position to others, you need more than just personal feelings to support it.
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Post by Julian on Jan 7, 2011 2:58:02 GMT -5
Yeh, God was so much more fun when he covered the Earth in a blanket at night time with stars embedded in it,
The God of gaps is getting pretty pointless. Apparently now he stopped being relevant 13.7 billion years ago. Someone should tell the fucking idiot pope that if God caused the big bang, then the shape and form of the universe, including the distribution of super clusters, galaxies and so forth was largely random (in the indiscriminate sense) and the precursors and hypernovae etc and 8+ billion years that had to precede the formation of this solar system, let alone abiogenesis, let alone 3 billion years of evolution, to suddenly pop up and claim a whole pile of toss in a 6,000 yr old geocentric flat world is just another level of being not only pig ignorant about science, but also theology --- or far more likely relying on the fact that the people that they are instructing are pig ignorant of both, and continuing the theft of causation.
God did not make the sun rise despite early religions claims he did, and the God of the babble did not cause the big bang, despite latter claims he did.
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Post by Amaranth on Jan 7, 2011 4:35:00 GMT -5
Honestly, if it weren't from such an ignorant bastard, and such a harmful one, I wouldn't see the harm here. I don't really see anything wrong with people saying "science doesn't preclude God," long as they don't try and make God preclude science.
but....It's the Pope, and not one I'm particularly fond of even by papal standards, so....
Religious apology frequently annoys me, especially when it's only done as an ass-saving gesture.
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Post by The_L on Jan 7, 2011 11:08:30 GMT -5
This is nothng more than the Pope grasping at straws to try and stop people from leaving the church. The hilariously sad thing is, it should be obvious what to do: KICK OUT THE Child-MOLESTING PRIESTS! How you handle a sex scandal sends a clear message about how well you value the rank-and-file members. |
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Post by Sigmaleph on Jan 7, 2011 14:51:52 GMT -5
I can. Sure, it could be worse, but the general problem is that it's promoting a terrible way to go about looking at the universe. If you say that "God" is an explanation and scientific theories are not, you are basically raping the concept of an explanation. "Magic man did it" "Why did magic man do this and not something else?" "Magic man does not like people who ask that question!" That is not explaining, that's asserting. An actual explanation should allow you to predict observations. The only way you are rapping the concept is if you stop your understanding at a certain point. If the Pope comes out a says that God was the cause of the Big Bang and any other cause is wrong they we have a problem. No, the concept of explanation is already raped by claiming that "God did it" can be an explanation. What did God do? Why did he do that and not something else? How does that help us understand anything better? God is omnipotent and works in mysterious ways, so God can do anything at all and the God hypothesis doesn't admit falsification. It doesn't even tell one how to assign greater probability to some outcomes over others, except perhaps "you'll live on after death", which is a conveniently unverifiable experience. An explanation of x is something that, having it known beforehand, would have allowed you to predict x, and using it you can predict other situations based on the same principles as x. When we look for explanations for the Big Bang, we're looking for a set of rules we can apply and would result in the universe as we observe it, with the laws of physics as they are. What does adding the word "God" change? Would it be different if it said nothing, Allah, magic, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH)? Does it tell us anything that the actual laws of physics that say there was a Big Bang do not? And what qualifies the Pope to answer any of those questions, being that he does not understand the theories involved and can't tell you what universe is predicted by them? That's what I mean by raping the concept of an explanation. It is far too common to believe that an explanation is any set of words that more or less appeal to your intuition and end in x, instead of a testable tool that tells you what principles are involved in x happening, and how you should apply those principles to predict observations. It's human nature, but a stupid aspect of human nature that the Pope plays along with and he is in a position of authority that entrenches the mindset even further. |
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