Is Pope Benedict the American Pope?
Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.
Pope Benedict made his first papal visit to the US this April. Is this Pope an ally to creationists? Last year we reported on Vatican holy cards, praised by creationists, that declare that humans are not a casual and meaningless product of evolution. And yet, Time magazine portrays this new pontiff as celebrating America’s separation of church and state -- calling him the "American Pope".
[source: Time magazine]
from an article published in April 2007 in the Daily Mail:
Pope Benedict has aired his views on evolution fo the first time - and says he partially believes Darwin's theories.The Pontiff said science had narrowed the way life's origins are understood and said Christians should take a broader approach to the question.
However, he did not adopt a strictly scientific view of the origins if life, believing instead that God created life through evolution.
He said he "would not depend on faith alone to explain the whole picture".
As well as praising scientific progress, the Pope's views, published in a new book 'Schoepfung unt Evolution' (Creation and Evolution), did not endorse the creationist, or 'intelligent design' view of life's origins.
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from a comment posted on the Daily Mail in response to the above article:
As we understand more and more about DNA, Scientists are proving that there is intelligent design behind the creation of human beings. Darwin's theory was exactly that, a theory, but because people choose not to believe in God or Creation, they have adopted his theory as fact.
Darwin's theory is increasingly becoming flawed with more and more medical and scientific evidence proving we are created by an intelligent design, although some Scientists won't tell you this truth, why, what are they afraid of?
quoted from Pope Benedict XVI:
Ultimately it comes down to the alternative: What came first? Creative Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, strangely enough brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. [more]
The Voice of Science: Shelley Greene, Ph.D., comments:
The propaganda power of these little cards may or may not be substantial. What we do see here, though, is another example of conservative Christians trying to make their point (ie, proselytize) with the public through slogans that have no scientific basis or context.