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United States: Just when you thought the Catholics couldn't manage to step any further back into the dark ages, along comes a wingnut to disabuse you of that notion.
An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.
The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing,Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection — is not.
It will come as a surprise to no one that the deranged man in the frock is in bed with a loony fundie whose mission in life is spreading complete bollocks to impressionable children.
One of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort.
Mark Ryland, a vice president of the institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write the essay. Both Mr Ryland and Cardinal Schönborn said that an essay in May in The Times about the compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory by Lawrence M Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested to them that it was time to clarify the church's position on evolution.
Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution - New York Times, 9th July 2005.
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Church and State
at 02:25. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Phil Hunt | July 11, 2005 6:15 AM
I thought the Catholics were fairly sound on evolution, having had a few run-ins with science before (e.g. Galileo) and a long institutional memory.
2: Posted by: Alexis | July 14, 2005 12:05 PM
With Pope Ratzi in, look for them to be experiencing a bout of institutional Alzheimer's.
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