Professor Pope
I found this article to be very interesting. Before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Professor Joseph Ratzinger would meet with his old doctoral students for a weekend once a year. Every year they would choose a subject to discuss. Becoming the pope hasn't ended this tradition, and the subject of this year's discussion is evolution.
As an intellectual wanna-be, I find the whole concept of taking a weekend for discussion and debate over one topic between a bunch of intellectuals fascinating. I would love to be in that room, hearing all of the sides of the argument turned over, point and counterpoint batted back and forth. But alas, I'm not Dr. Osborne or even Professor Oz (though I bet I'd have made a really cool college professor).
I think it's cool that despite becoming pope, with all of its demands on time and effort, that Pope Benedict is still making time to continue this tradition. It certainly is a far cry from some "religious" figures who blindly ignore science and try to push that ignorance onto school children.
IMO, there's nothing the requires that evolution and divine influence in the universe are exclusive. Evolution is a mechanism, and just because you don't believe in the literal interpretation of your chosen creation myth it doesn't mean that you can't believe that the end result was influenced by more than just random chance.
I also find it interesting that the literal interpretation of Genesis, with the Earth only being roughly 6,000 years old, is predominantly an American phenomenon. We are supposedly the most advanced country in the world, but there are still those trying to push this into schools. And we wonder why we're losing ground to other countries in science and technology?
As an intellectual wanna-be, I find the whole concept of taking a weekend for discussion and debate over one topic between a bunch of intellectuals fascinating. I would love to be in that room, hearing all of the sides of the argument turned over, point and counterpoint batted back and forth. But alas, I'm not Dr. Osborne or even Professor Oz (though I bet I'd have made a really cool college professor).
I think it's cool that despite becoming pope, with all of its demands on time and effort, that Pope Benedict is still making time to continue this tradition. It certainly is a far cry from some "religious" figures who blindly ignore science and try to push that ignorance onto school children.
IMO, there's nothing the requires that evolution and divine influence in the universe are exclusive. Evolution is a mechanism, and just because you don't believe in the literal interpretation of your chosen creation myth it doesn't mean that you can't believe that the end result was influenced by more than just random chance.
I also find it interesting that the literal interpretation of Genesis, with the Earth only being roughly 6,000 years old, is predominantly an American phenomenon. We are supposedly the most advanced country in the world, but there are still those trying to push this into schools. And we wonder why we're losing ground to other countries in science and technology?
posted by Oz at 9:55 AM
4 Comments:
I dunno...it sounds like abunch of priests and divinity students debating, which means some pretty serious assumptions that tend towards ID.
Hey, dave, it sounds like you are making a generalization about all priests and divinity students and how they behave.
So aren't you making some pretty serious assumptions too? Hmm....
Anyway, it is odd that this post is here, as I spent an hour debating this topic with people of various levels of faith and various beliefs on evolution. It led to my borrowing a book called The Marriage of Sense and Soul. It seems exactly like the type of text I have been searching to find.
The debate never ends. Yet, I love debating, so I'm not unhappy!
Based on the article, Pope Benedict has already acknowledged that evolution occurs and the the Earth is the roughly 4 billion years old that scientist says it is.
I would guess part of the concern is that he wouldn't want the church to get associated with unscientific arguments like American Creationism, which might turn off more intellectual Christians. But that's just my guess. I'm just a druid, I don't get invited to intellectual shindigs.
God created Evolution. Next!
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