Saying that Evolution does not prove the non-existence of God the Holy Roman Catholic Church has rejected the position of Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, during a five day conference allegedly commemorating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Well, Richard Dawkins will surely reply to this. One wonders what Papa Razzi will do with JP2′s legacy of apology and detente with Science. London Times has the details after the jump…[Next Tuesday's episode of The Explainer with Manolo Quezon on ANC will be on Charles Darwin. I'll be in the show too.]
LINK The Vatican has rejected the claim by Richard Dawkins, the biologist and campaigning atheist, that evolutionary theory proves that God does not exist, proclaiming that on the contrary Darwinian evolution and the account of Creation in Genesis are “perfectly compatible”.
At a five day conference held to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species this week, Vatican theologians said while Christians believed that God “created all things”, the Vatican “does not stand in the way of scientific realities”.
Vatican officials joined biologists, paleontologists, molecular geneticists and philosophers for the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which ends tomorrow. Rafael Martinez, professor of the Philosophy of Science at the Santa Croce Pontifical University in Rome, said although the reaction of Catholic theologians, intellectuals and priests to Darwinian theory had been “generally negative” in the 19th century, “recent declarations by Popes have asserted the full accordance of Catholic doctrine and evolutionary biology”.
He said, however, that this was not widely known, and the false impression had arisen “that the Holy See is opposed to evolution”. Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which co-organised the conference with Notre Dame University in Indiana and support from the John Templeton Foundation, said there was “no a priori incompatibility between evolution and the message of the Bible”.
This is a clever rhetorical position for the Catholic Church to take–and absolutely necessary if she is not to fall into total intellectual disrepute. But it also puts Creationism and Evolution on the same level of validity and will only abet the continued mental abuse of children masquerading as “early childhood religious education” — in backward places where Damaso still controls the curriculum and continues to defy even the Papacy’s rear-guard action to save itself.
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God must be crazy in their own opinions, religions are fool one not us atheists. We share our knowledge to have a better understanding of our daily life situation. but those master of non-sense always take our money. If god knows how foolish they are well they will burn to hell.
Both the “God” theory and the “Evolution” theory are merely theories. Both theories have helped the human and his artificial constructs of society arrive at the civilizations we are in now. It is how people manipulated these theories for their own ends and goals that are subject to debate.
If we are to debate which theory is truer than the other, we will arrive at no finality, because each of these theories have sub-theories of their own. The God-theory alone is claimed by all known religions and metaphysical disciplines including quantum physics which calls it the “Boson” and even by Al Gore’s Green Movement which calls it “Nature”…relative to man, however, its primary god is its Self or its consciousness…because from that point, all other concepts and perceptions of the known world and reality is conceived and processed which our cells subject themselves to work for.
All of which are merely theories. Our time is better spent discovering which of these theories is truer (or rather, more relevant) than purely philosophizing over them and casting votes which is more popular or which is more convenient for us. That should actually be every person’s end goal in life. And that will contribute to all of our enlightenments…than simply saying, I believe this over the other.
Actualize your belief. Since history, we have been convincing others (and suspending their beliefs) with our assumptions and opinions without actualizing the same in our own experiences and proving/testing the same with our own methods. This has hampered everybody’s progress. We wasted so much time philosophizing without actualizing any…and we keep on encouraging other people to believe that same philosophy without testing and proving such at all.
We die as fools in the process…not knowing exactly the answers to our questions. We’re supposed to answer it. We owe it to our selves and to our existence.
One of these days, humans will meet intelligent extraterrestials, and this “man : created in the image of” will be shaken to its roots.
Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the Earth at the right distance from the Sun to receive proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance. – Isaac Newton
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Atheism is just as senseless as Theism
– Anonymous Agnostic
@Ridge, so are you saying that Theory of Evolution is not a fact?
Oh please, Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion is a total embarrassment, his stroll into the field of philosophy of religion has here resulted in a book that bellows mediocrity, The single biggest error in the book is that it misstates the question as an opposition between theism and science, when the opposition is between the ontological views of theism and naturalism. This is such a fundamental category error that any subsequent discussion is rendered not only irrelevant but also misleading. The trouble starts at page 2 where Dawkins writes: “‘the God Hypothesis’ is a scientific hypothesis about the universe”, which, I dare say, would be news to almost all theists.So why does Dawkins believe that the theistic hypothesis is a matter for scientific investigation? Because he assumes that naturalism is true and in naturalism any ontological hypothesis can be investigated scientifically (Dawkins thinks). But naturalism opposes theism (naturalism and theism cannot be both true) so by assuming naturalism Dawkins begs the whole question. And, by the way, he does not explain why he thinks that naturalism is true. Apparently his justification goes something like this: the vast majority of scientists are naturalists; science has proven its truth beyond doubt; therefore naturalism is true. A second example is his much ballyhooed “Ultimate Boeing 747″ argument for the non-existence of God. It seems Dawkins is so certain that theism is not only false but also trivially false that he fancies himself able to present a killer argument against the existence of God, one that academic philosophers were not smart enough to spot. What’s his argument? Well, Dawkins reasons that if God were an explanation for the existence of our complex universe then God would be an even more complex and improbable entity, which moreover would need an even bigger explanation for its existence. As Plantinga notes in his review of the book this argument is so primitive that it would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. After all the only reason to believe that an intelligent mind is complex is to assume that it must work on the mechanical principles that a naturalistic understanding of reality posits. But to posit naturalism as an implicit premise is – again – to beg the question. Moreover Dawkins fails to see that an explanation works on its own merits; it’s not like an explanation works only if you have an explanation for that explanation too – if that were so then no explanations would be possible at all.
But where Dawkin’s systematic begging the question becomes painfully obvious is in his discussion of the so-called anthropic principle. This plausible principle states that reality must be such as to produce any phenomenon we now observe, and specifically must be such as to produce humans like us. Now an as yet unanswered scientific question is the origin of life (which must not be confused with the origin of the species), i.e. how come the enormously improbable phenomenon of life has started on Earth, which is a necessary condition for the natural evolution of the species to subsequently take place. Now instead of clearly stating that science does not yet know the answer and leave it at that, Dawkins notes that some theists claim that the answer is some supernatural action by God which started life on Earth. So he must find an alternative explanation and he thinks that the anthropic principle fits the bill. Here is his reasoning (page 136): “The great majority of planets in the universe are … not suitable for life. … However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it.” So, from the premise that life can evolve by itself (i.e. on naturalistic grounds) given the right planet it follows that our planet has had these right conditions. But of course whether life can or can’t evolve by itself on *any* planet is the very question under discussion, so here – again – Dawkins begs the question. He goes on to discuss the far more serious problem of the apparent fine-tuning of the fundamental physical constants of the universe. It turns out that if these constants (e.g. the value of the strong force) were even a little off then life as we know it could not evolve, so some theists argue that this evidences God’s design. Dawkins coyly fails to mention how fine that apparent fine-tuning is: if the combination of physical constants were off only 1 part in 10^100 then life would not have evolved. So how does Dawkins explain that strange state of affairs? He writes (page 145) “Once again, the anthropic principle does its explanatory duty”. So, we are here, naturalism is true, therefore there must be some naturalistic explanation for the whole thing. What explanation exactly? Why, just hypothesize anything no matter how implausible or lacking of evidence as long as it is naturalistic. Amazingly powerful that anthropic principle. Anything out there that naturalism cannot explain? Well, as naturalism is true the anthropic principle will always do its duty as the explanation of last resort. A one-size fits all question begging magic wand.
There is no space to mention the many other fallacies in “The God Delusion”. It basically just recycles the theme that theism is false because naturalism is true, and that naturalism can’t have any problems because after all it is true. What’s really amazing is that so many people would be inspired by such a superficial book. It seems you don’t need to be a religious fundamentalist to be able to switch off your capacity for critical thought and to full heartedly (or foolish heartedly) embrace non-explanations.
You know you should quote your sources.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A274QHZCDFXV4J?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
Pinoy Genius x? Does X=Copy Paste?
Sorry for multi posting, but maybe this is a better link:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RWOA24C1J9M2O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
to me the anthropic principle is just a truism, statements true solely by virtue of their verbal form and not because they conform to reality, and yet scientists like Dawkins would criticize us for “God of the gaps” while they themselves would resort to the almighty anthropic principle as a deus ex machina for where they fail to explain things, it’s really pathetic…
The Anthropic principle is a collective term that covers conjectures which try to explain why the universe is fine tuned to intelligent life. These are theories based on observable facts. Scientists do not ‘believe’ that these theories are true. Just that, based on current knowledge, the anthropic principle best explains why the universe seems to be fine tuned to produce intelligent life (or humans). The ‘God of the Gaps’ phrase are instant answers to phenomena currently unsolvable by science. Throughout history, science has explained away things that were previously thought to be miracles or acts of God (The Sun, Fire, Lightning and Thunder, Earthquakes … Michael Jackson) God of the gaps, and the strong anthropic principle are both truisms, but they are not equal.
neantherdal-man,java-man,peking-man,homo-habilis y erectos and all apes resemblanced to man..Although evolutionist were frequently postulated the existence of evolution..Yes i agree with their claim the there was an evolution occured long-atime ago,but evolution must begin with creation..The rational question about the theory of evolution.What comes first Itlog or Manok?(chicken or egg)..If we relie on scriptural doctrines of course the answer was chicken becuase chicken lays eggs that becomes a chick eventually grows up as a chicken…The scientist staunch ally of charles darwin will disagree on this claim..because they believe all living things started on dna that came from matter that gives birth to molecules the mother of atom subdivided into protons,electrons,nucleous and undending mind bogling complex matter of universe. The universe which born from another universe which is literally infinite but boundless in nature confusing behavior turns back again the questions of where is the universe came from? It becames a circular habit of unending puzzle turns out to be a top question of the universe. where it comes from? recursion and repetition of questions left unaswered,no conclusive explanations…My answer to that is simple universe is boundless-spherical in motion that connected in the universal law of universe.What i mean is the natural law of cause in effect was actually sperical in motion similar to the axis and revolution of our planet in the solar system which is the small portion of the universe..where all this law and universe came from? only your faith in fate can reply to that question.
Evolution does not explain how life began but it explains how life change and diversified once it began… I cant accept that there is a sort of divine creator that created life because it will post another great question:”Who made the creator/designer?”
Science doesn’t pretend to know everything.. there are things that science cant explain right now but it doesn’t mean that science cannot answer it in the future. There are lots of things now that in the previous centuries thought that science cant answer.. What i love science is that it has progress even if it is little by little better than no progress at all…
Today, experiments shows that we are now able to make nucleotide by means of gathering all basic elements and allow chemical reaction in a condition similar to primodial earth. and also we can make a synthetic ribosomes that can make protein out of RNA strands. Sometime in the future we can little by little formulate or remake life through abiogenesis. That’s what i love about science, it is making a progress..
Science gives me explanation of life more wonderful and far more moving with evidence and done through scientific method..
This is a very broad topic i am glad to have a friendly debate..
This topic has been up for debate really a good deal of times but none of the posts had been as detailed as yours. AdminI hope to determine such high quality posts from you inside the future.