28 August 2006

Infallible or just plain stupid?

IMHO, religion has a lot to answer for.

Now, we have news that the pope (sorry, not going to give him a capital letter), is ready to embrace intelligent design. Even conservative Pope John Paul II had apparently said that Darwin's theories "were more than a hypothesis".

So, what gives with this pope? Is he having fond memories of his time in the Hitler Youth, and the Nazi's attempts at "intelligent design", generally known as eugenics? Or is he thinking back longingly to those Catholic Church glory days before Gallileo was causing trouble?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's just an absurd, wilful denial of an established fact (for a given value of "fact").

Especially as most theology students (even Catholics!) are taught that the creation story is allegorical and have been taught that for many, many years.

Even more so when one reflects on the fact that evolution doesn't, in fact, threaten Christianity (or any other religion's) central moral message at all.

Stephen Jay Gould's essays on this subject are interesting. I'll dig out some references if you're interested.