Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution

[Ed]

This could have gone in a few area but I thoiught it best here.

In essence, the good Prince of the Church says that John Paul's statements notwithstanding, the notion of randomness is not consistant with church dogma.

Read the NYT article here. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/science/09cardinal.html?hp&ex=1120968000&en=c1d22e12f70c2ef1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The article goes on:But he said he believed students in Catholic schools, and all schools, should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories.

Now this could be good or bad. It seems to me that here you have a RC Church official saying that "Intellegent Design" is in fact catholic dogma. That makes it rather hard to make the case the it is not religiously based.

Thoughts?

[hammegk]

SFAIK the Strong Anthropic Principle does not require the catholics' version of G*d.

[Ed]

Originally posted by hammegk
SFAIK the Strong Anthropic Principle does not require the catholics' version of G*d.

I have not idea what this means.

[pupdog]

So cardinals trump popes. Give the Church another 200 years, they'll see the light, as they finally did with heliocentrism.

[fishbob]

But he said he believed students in Catholic schools, and all schools, should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories.He failed to say what those other theories are. Now I'm curious about his actual level of knowledge in this area. If it is low - as his statement indicates - he is talking out his wazoo. Big hats apparently don't make you smarter.

[pupdog]

And I'll bet that he thinks the tribe that is trying to block construction of an astrophysics observatory near Kitt Peak, Arizona, because the site is too close to where their Creation Deity dwells, are a superstitious lot that ought to be converted.

[Nucular]

Originally posted by pupdog
And I'll bet that he thinks the tribe that is trying to block construction of an astrophysics observatory near Kitt Peak, Arizona, because the site is too close to where their Creation Deity dwells, are a superstitious lot that ought to be converted. I don't know that particular story, but if I was a Creation Deity, I'd be quite flattered at those astrophyisicists taking such an interest in my work.

[gnome]

Originally posted by Ed
This could have gone in a few area but I thoiught it best here.

In essence, the good Prince of the Church says that John Paul's statements notwithstanding, the notion of randomness is not consistant with church dogma.

Read the NYT article here. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/science/09cardinal.html?hp&ex=1120968000&en=c1d22e12f70c2ef1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The article goes on:

Now this could be good or bad. It seems to me that here you have a RC Church official saying that "Intellegent Design" is in fact catholic dogma. That makes it rather hard to make the case the it is not religiously based.

Thoughts?

I think it is logically fallacious as an argument, though in fact I agree ID is religiously based.

However... just because a Church holds something true as dogma, does not mean that the proposition is solely religion-based.

For example, if Catholics say slavery is a sin, that does not mean that anti-slavery is a religious viewpoint.

[Skeptical Greg]

I didn't want to register to read the article..


Did he say anything about those other silly stories in the Bible, or did he just limit himself to the creation bit?

[DuckTapeFileMan]

I think that if evolutionists want to take on creationists they are just going to have to really get down and read the bible old and new and really familiaris themselves with it. I have seen such well read people take on creationist in their own field and beat them to a pulp.

[Ed]

Originally posted by gnome
I think it is logically fallacious as an argument, though in fact I agree ID is religiously based.

However... just because a Church holds something true as dogma, does not mean that the proposition is solely religion-based.

For example, if Catholics say slavery is a sin, that does not mean that anti-slavery is a religious viewpoint.

Quite right, I misspoke. I think the issue is that they add their voice to the other side so the appearence is more religious. Also, the rationale for their support is religious i.e. God does not play dice.

[bgwowk]

Ed wrote:


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by hammegk
SFAIK the Strong Anthropic Principle does not require the catholics' version of G*d.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no idea what this means.

The Strong Anthropic Principle hypothesizes that a profusion of alternative universes exist in parallel with our own, each with slightly different initial conditions and/or physical laws. There are actually a number of plausible generating mechanisms for such universes, the most widely-accepted one being the Oxford interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. With enough universes in play, life becomes inevitable no matter how unlikely its occurence may be in any single universe.

By the way, a skeptic should recognize a flaw in James Randi's agreement with Tom Cruise about extraterrestrial intelligence this month. All we can say about the probability of intelligent life arising in the universe is that it is non-zero. We do not currently know how to close to zero it is. It may be so close to zero that we are the only intelligent life in this universe (plus many other ones too).

---BrianW

[CurtC]

I'll agree with that - all the unknown factors in the Drake equation make for an unknown probability. It seems likely that the conditions for life would be common (not rare) enough that there is at least some life out there, but I can't say with mathematical certainty that it's so.

My best guess is that there are quite a few other life systems just within our galaxy, but we all are limited by the vastness of space. But that's just a hunch, not a certainty as Randi seems to think.

[gnome]

Originally posted by bgwowk
By the way, a skeptic should recognize a flaw in James Randi's agreement with Tom Cruise about extraterrestrial intelligence this month. All we can say about the probability of intelligent life arising in the universe is that it is non-zero. We do not currently know how to close to zero it is. It may be so close to zero that we are the only intelligent life in this universe (plus many other ones too).

Here's a point I've wanted to make in the past... it makes no sense to speculate on what the probability of a fact being correct is. If you have some evidence you can use probability to express how certain you are... but there is no question of how "accurate" the probability is... if you have enough information to know, it's not a matter of probability. It's true, or it isn't.