Big props to the Pope!

This isn't new, this is the long standing opinion of the Catholic church.

From a creationist view, sure, that's great, it overlooks some incompatibilities, but whatever.

From a non-believer, there's no point.

Of course this is nothing new. JP II has said the same thing himself, though I still end up pointing this out to people, as it seems that so many assume that all Christians are Creationist, or that it was an official position. I like to mention it now and then (also, in light of the couple creationism posts recently, I felt like theme-posting with something other than "silly Creationists". :p

I can agree with that, the problem is that there are some very basic conflicts between Creationist philosophy and evolution. The reconcilation is that evolution happens under God's direction at his behest. For the non-believer, that's like saying that there is no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks. Yes, the 'end result', we all stay on the ground instead of floating away may be the same, but the mechanism by which that happens are so amazingly far apart they aren't even on the same continents. So it kind of is silly...

I don't presume anyone to be a Creationist. Christians tend to selectively believe different portions of the Bible, and Creation, with Adam and Eve and the dividing of the waters, tends to be one that isn't really closely examined. I'm not saying that to be critical, but rather what my own experience has been in discussing it. An awful lot of the Creationist dogma in fact isn't anywhere spelled out in the Bible, but rather, it's been generated through the centuries by various priests and monks and popes, all of whom had an agenda. Then it gets passed through the general public, much like playing 'telephone'.

JMO. Hope this doesn't offend, I realize it has that potential but it's not my intent at all.

*high fives the Pope*

I understand; it is your honest opinion and assessment. Personally, I think that a lot of what you say has truth to it, though I would also add to that list "people who don't take the time to really study and just take everything at face value". Of course, it is much like playing "telephone" too, people hear that the Bible says something and then go with that, without actually looking it up themselves.

Personally, I take a huge interest in science, and I have a lot of respect for scientific thought. It was a serious career path that I considered (though now I've a computer science degree, it's sort of like science but not really, more like math :P). So, when I see people just throw out whole theories that have been tried and tested, and which have mounting evidence to support them, for whatever reason, I take offense too. I'm also slightly embarrassed by those that pit science at odds with religion.

So, it's a hot topic for me too. :)

So does this "Earth" who is now speaking to the Pope create a quaternity? Is the speaking Earth a saint? A spirit? A deity? Very confused about the Catholic Cosmology yet again.

So Benny is getting tired of being called old-school and decided to repeat something JP said years ago?

Now we just need Poop Benny to listen to medical professionals about public health and underdeveloped nations and we might be going somewhere!

The problem is that creationists tend to be from the Protestant branches.

Great post. I disagree with one point, and it might just be a misinterpreation of what you said. The Bible does not lay out a scientific reasoning behind a belief that God created everything in 6 days. The belief comes from (in my study) the passage in Exodus 20 (don't know exact passage, my Bible is upstairs and it's Friday...you do the math) where God Himself states that in 6 days He created the heavens and the earth and on the 7th He rested. I don't expect someone from a different faith to agree with me, but as for my faith to agree with a theory that says that He did not is calling God a liar, and I'm not really comfortable doing that...if you read the next few chapters of Exodus you'll see that He doesn't like to be contradicted.

Actually, the subtle difference is that "someone" *said* that God said it. God isn't the authour of the Bible. The furthest you can possibly go towards God being the authour is that he inspired it.

So, if you say that he didn't do it in 6 days, as laid out in the Bible, you're not calling God a liar, you're calling whomever wrote Genesis a liar.

HUGE difference.

That's one point where creationist theory and evolution are directly incompatible, though not what I referred to. I was talking about the 'young earth' theory, which is based on calculations of time for biblical events from the time of Genesis through the modern era. Evolution can't happen, in the macro-level, given a young Earth. But, the Bible doesn't specify the length of a day, so the reconciliation that was explained to me said God's 6 'days' could be equivalent to a human 'day', or each day could be a millennium, thereby providing a loophole for evolution to occur, under His direction.

Again, it's picking and choosing. To me, that kind of thing would just be MORE troublesome than saying no, the earth is only ~6,000 years old simply because it indicates God lets the Bible deceive and misdirect. If a concept as simplistic as 'day' can have whatever meaning we want to
give it to best wrap the book around the world we see, then what else is duplicitous? A whole book, or a book of holes...There are too many holes for me to believe any of it.

Also of note it that the people whe wrote those texts that made up the Bible were on a heedsenu calendar system than us. The Gregorian calendar (which we use) was not created until the days of the Holy Roman Empire, if I recall correctly. So, it would be fallacious to try to equate those measures of time with our own without doing some historical research. Also, allegory is not beyond the use of those writers either. And, yes, if you were going to go with the 6 days explanation, the "first day" starts out before the universe came into being, which means time did not exist either, much less the Earth and Sun, so any measure of time would be impossible and meaningless as it is. The nature of the Genesis account has too many holes if you took it to be historically accurate as written, but if you read it to learn the lessons it teaches about the basic nature of humanity and the world, etc, there is a lot there that is useful. And, from what I have gathered, that is more in line with how it was meant to be read anyway.

And this is why I have no conflict between the evolutionary model and the Bible.

dang phone browser...

But even still, the Bible nearly implies evolution took place. If you read a little further in the book, when Adam and Eve's son, Cain, goes off into the world, he finds other villages and starts his own family. They were not listed in the "God said..." lists, and so if they did not arise there, the only other conclusion we can make is that they arose through another process, which we could identify today as being evolution.

You make a very valid point. I have argued this exact point with "old earth" believers, that you can not say that you accept the Bible as truth but then twist it to say what you want. Truth is truth. I choose to believe that God created the earth in 6 literal days for two reasons 1. God said He did (see my earlier post about calling God a liar) and 2. If He couldn't create everything in 6 days He's not really as impressive. If you look at those "holes" from a different standpoint, you will see that most of them "fill in". Others may not be easily filled in but that is why we call it "faith"...because it is something that we feel that needs to be believed. It's not blind faith...I don't just believe any ol' thing, but it is faith that what I don't fully understand there is an answer and that God has that answer.

Dude...Exodus...Genesis...HUGE difference...

As for your other comments *moves to avoid lightening strike*

I wish we could call the debate Science Vs Magic.
It might put it in perspective.

The standard reconciliation for that is that "day" is clearly a relative term not limited to 24 hours.

It varies from planet to planet so no reason to assume it is the same for us as it is for the big floaty sky magician.

As most of the Bible is allegorical there's no reason to suppose that Genesis is anything other.

Make a day more of an epoch and the timeline is pretty accurate. The events described fit with the expectation of the big bang theory.

Roughly speaking it goes like this:

God creates the heavens and Earth
The mass and emptiness of the universe is created. Planets, stars and other celestial bodies form from this. Focusing on Earth, it's a big ball of dust with more dense dust in the middle.

God says "Let there be light"
Matter coagulates and the atmospheric dust settles sufficiently that the sun's light begins to come through. That level of atmospheric particles diffuse the light enormously so that light is pretty much constant anywhere on the planet.

God divides night and day
The more the atmospheric particles settle out the less diffusion there is and so darkness finally starts falling.

God creates the firmament, dividing the waters above from the waters below
The surface of the planet is now covered in water and atmospheric evaporation cycles begin.

God separates the land from the water
Yep. That's pretty much what went on. The planet was covered with water and then land rose from the water.

God commands the seas to teem with life
Life on earth did start in the oceans.

God creates the beasts of the land and the birds of the sky
Previously aquatic creatures evolve to occupy the land and the skies.

The last thing he did was to create man
Guess which species was the last to appear in evolutionary terms? That's right - man.

Perhaps if the early part of Genesis were labelled "The Parable of Creation" we wouldn't have to deal with the literalist POV and the trouble that causes. After all, no-one has a problem with the parables being parables do they?

You should perhaps go get your bible and re-read it if you're going to base your life on it.