Top Vatican official says Catholic scientists should “come out”

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 21, 2017

Intelligent Design, News, Religion, Science}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

From John L. Allen, Jr., at Crux Now:

Most basically, Consolmagno said, it’s important to maintain the proper distinction between what science can prove, and what faith can add.
“God is not something we arrive at the end of our science, it’s what we assume at the beginning,” he said, adding emphatically: “I am afraid of a God who can be proved by science, because I know my science well enough to not trust it!”

More.

Excuse us. Faith can add nothing to what cannot be demonstrated. Many popular theories such as the multiverse, Darwinism, alt right eugenics, cannot be demonstrated at all.

So, translation from Consolmagno: Not to worry, we really are theistic naturalists: Nature is all there is. But we do still have a right to holler fer Gawd in our spare time. Don’t we?

Yes, so long as we ignore the fact that naturalism is rotting science.

See also: Pope Francis and science

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments

cmow, yeah you took the risk and found Darwin wanting; the scientific community is aghast! Ch 1, 2, & 3; Darwin sets up the argument. Variation Under Domestication, Variation Under Nature, and Struggle for Existance. He holds your hand and gently bombards you with example, after example of man selecting desirable traits, and then nature doing the same. Ch 4, Natural Selection, where again in natural example after example he convinces the clear thinking of the robustness of his argument; Oh yeah, he introduces his other novel idea, Sexual Selection. Ch 5, Laws of Variation; as the title suggests. Ch 6, he begins to anticipate arguments; Difficulties on Theory. Here cmow says, 'Darwin has no answer for the fact the fossil record doesn't support his theory.' Eh!? 1) The earth is big we have just started looking. 2) Only a few ideal spots for fossils to form. 3) Gaps are and will continue to be filled. 4) Critics have no conception of time, prefering to dwell on their Biblical time scales. These four oservations and others I don't note have largely been proven as the fossil record grows, and rather irratatingly for creationists refuses to stop growing; kind of like the planets we keep inconveniently discovering. cmow, don't read the chaptes on biodiversity, Ch 11, 12, called, Geogrpahical Distribution. He asks why would an intelligent designer put no hot weather cacti in Africa, only in the Americas? When man transferred these plants to Africa they thrived. The designer saw fit to create two different types of hot weather plant for two near identical dry environments. One last thing, I'm not sure about your 'Origins', but mine has no Ch 15, it only goes to 14. Lucky you, you have publishing gold, keep it, it will make you a fortune. Also, Ch 10 is On The Geologic Succession of Organic Beings. I think you mean Ch 9, On The Imperfection of the Geologic Record. Ch 15!? Perhaps you could write it. Probably do better than Meyer's travesty. As Hitchens notes, 'unlikely to warrent a mention in the history of piffle.'rvb8_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:24 PM
9
09
24
PM
PDT}

All the fossils mean nothing if nobody can resolve the fundamental evo-devo problem described in the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816 Y'all may continue to discuss all you want for as long as you wish, but the whole discussion is a waste. Y'all may want to get serious and look at what really matters.Dionisio_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
07:27 PM
7
07
27
PM
PDT}

Bob, It's quite a long way away from what marfin is asking, but there are phylogenetic frameworks that include the idea that one of your samples (a fossil, aDNA or a virus sampled in historical times) is an ancestor of another. So-called "sampled ancestor trees" http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003919. Persumably you at least could use the posterior distribution of trees to get the probability that a given sample was an ancestor. Not that relevant to the question, I jut think it is a cool method! Marfin, As Bob says, you are failing to grasp the fact palentologists do not claim that Archaeopteryx is an ancestor of modern birds, just a close cousin. They key point is that a fossil needn't be a direct ancestor to be transitional.wd400_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
03:45 PM
3
03
45
PM
PDT}

Florabama @ 28 - are you saying that we never see change in the fossil record?Bob O'H_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
12:58 PM
12
12
58
PM
PDT}

Marfin @ 27 - I don't think you're reading what I'm writing. We don't think Archaeopteryx is the ancestor to birds, and I don't think that can be tested.Bob O'H_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
12:47 PM
12
12
47
PM
PDT}

cmow @35: Bingo! Exactly!Dionisio_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
12:43 PM
12
12
43
PM
PDT}

Dionisio @33 Agreed. Should have written "neither brilliant and not at all scientific."cmow_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
10:16 AM
10
10
16
AM
PDT}

LocalMinimum @32:
But, how am I going to sell our politely-dissenting interlocutors on the the promise of finer analytical literature when there are those among them who still swear by Darwin’s original pulp philosophy, without even recognizing the primacy of nostalgia in their tastes?
Interesting question. Maybe somebody here can answer it?Dionisio_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:59 AM
9
09
59
AM
PDT}

cmow @29: "[...] neither brilliant, nor particularly scientific." What's scientific about a concoction of afterthoughts that grossly extrapolate what is known as microevolution* in order to try explaining macroevolution? (*) robustly built-in adaptation framework underlying the biological systems.Dionisio_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:55 AM
9
09
55
AM
PDT}

Dionisio @ 21:
As it’s written @17 & 18, your politely-dissenting interlocutors may have all the fossils they want, including the “missing links” (whatever that means). The real problem the evo-devo folks have to resolve is briefly described in the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816
Nicely stated. Definitely what should be sought over naked...errr, naive Bayes in the current form of cladistics; though, sadly, that's the state of the industry and the market continues to bear it. For now. But, how am I going to sell our politely-dissenting interlocutors on the the promise of finer analytical literature when there are those among them who still swear by Darwin's original pulp philosophy, without even recognizing the primacy of nostalgia in their tastes?LocalMinimum_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:50 AM
9
09
50
AM
PDT}

Heartlander @30: Thank you for that excellent quote that confirms the creative power of random mutations + natural selection through time.Dionisio_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:37 AM
9
09
37
AM
PDT}

cmow @29 ”He [Darwin] compared the fossil record to a multi-volume history book written in a changing dialect, for which we only have a few pages.”
On the Derivation of Ulysses from Don Quixote IMAGINE THIS story being told to me by Jorge Luis Borges one evening in a Buenos Aires cafe. His voice dry and infinitely ironic, the aging, nearly blind literary master observes that "the Ulysses," mistakenly attributed to the Irishman James Joyce, is in fact derived from "the Quixote." I raise my eyebrows. Borges pauses to sip discreetly at the bitter coffee our waiter has placed in front of him, guiding his hands to the saucer. "The details of the remarkable series of events in question may be found at the University of Leiden," he says. "They were conveyed to me by the Freemason Alejandro Ferri in Montevideo." Borges wipes his thin lips with a linen handkerchief that he has withdrawn from his breast pocket. "As you know," he continues, "the original handwritten text of the Quixote was given to an order of French Cistercians in the autumn of 1576." I hold up my hand to signify to our waiter that no further service is needed. "Curiously enough, for none of the brothers could read Spanish, the Order was charged by the Papal Nuncio, Hoyo dos Monterrey (a man of great refinement and implacable will), with the responsibility for copying the Quixote, the printing press having then gained no currency in the wilderness of what is now known as the department of Auvergne. Unable to speak or read Spanish, a language they not unreasonably detested, the brothers copied the Quixote over and over again, re-creating the text but, of course, compromising it as well, and so inadvertently discovering the true nature of authorship. Thus they created Fernando Lor's Los Hombres d'Estado in 1585 by means of a singular series of copying errors, and then in 1654 Juan Luis Samorza's remarkable epistolary novel Por Favor by the same means, and then in 1685, the errors having accumulated sufficiently to change Spanish into French, Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, their copying continuous and indefatigable, the work handed down from generation to generation as a sacred but secret trust, so that in time the brothers of the monastery, known only to members of the Bourbon house and, rumor has it, the Englishman and psychic Conan Doyle, copied into creation Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and then as a result of a particularly significant series of errors, in which French changed into Russian, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina. Late in the last decade of the 19th century there suddenly emerged, in English, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and then the brothers, their numbers reduced by an infectious disease of mysterious origin, finally copied the Ulysses into creation in 1902, the manuscript lying neglected for almost thirteen years and then mysteriously making its way to Paris in 1915, just months before the British attack on the Somme, a circumstance whose significance remains to be determined." I sit there, amazed at what Borges has recounted. "Is it your understanding, then," I ask, "that every novel in the West was created in this way?" "Of course," replies Borges imperturbably. Then he adds: "Although every novel is derived directly from another novel, there is really only one novel, the Quixote." - David Berlinski
Heartlander_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
09:16 AM
9
09
16
AM
PDT}

regarding post 24 -- I took the risk, rvb8; I saw your suggestion to PaV, and I was worried that it might rock my world to open up my copy of Origin of Species, but I took the risk anyway, and read through a couple chapters. Good grief. Darwin had no answer for the fact that the fossil record doesn't support his theory, other than to offer the excuse that the fossil record is incomplete. He compared the fossil record to a multi-volume history book written in a changing dialect, for which we only have a few pages. This is a more-than-tacit admission that a) the geological record doesn't support his theory, and b) even subject to future discovery, it might not ever do so. His rebuttal to the lack of fossil evidence (see chapter X and XV of Origin of Species -- these chapters more directly deal with the difficulties of the geological record) is just an attempt to push the issue aside and is neither brilliant, nor particularly scientific.cmow_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
08:55 AM
8
08
55
AM
PDT}

Bob O'H @ 9 "Ah, I see, Florabama. the fossil record doesn’t provide any evidence for a Designer. You are just claiming that it doesn’t provide any evidence for evolution." Wrong!...and right... sort of. The fossil record DOES NOT provide any actual evidence for Darwinian evolution. Stasis is NON-EVOLUTION, correct? And stasis is the only thing that can be determined SCIENTIFICALLY from the fossil record and stasis is the dominant feature -- in fact the only feature of the fossil record that can be measured. Why? Because it is the only thing that can be measured objectively from the fossil record by comparing EXTANT organisms to their fossils. Making statements about evolutionary linage is purely, unadulterated speculation and should be banned as a field of science as it is nothing more than story telling -- AS MANY EVOLUTIONISTS ADMIT. As Jonathan Wells makes clear, if we dug up the skeletons of two dead humans in a field, we couldn't even determine if they were related to each other unless we had DNA. To make evolutionary claims from bones is the height of speculation and imagination. You might as well call in the local witch doctor and let him spit on the dirt and cast the bones and tell the future. Recently I gave a presentation to my Friday morning study group. I said that if I could hold up a picture of a 50 million year old fossil, and ask you what it is, and you would all unequivocally say, "shrimp!" "Spider, Crab," etc etc. And I could give hundreds of other such examples -- all hundreds of millions of years old and unchanged as far as can be determined from their fossils. To ignore this fact is not even willful obtuseness -- it reveals a level of brainwashing and inability to reason that is revelatory about the pitiful condition of mankind. rvb8 and others just repeat the mindless mantra without so much as a passing thought that the actual facts are the complete opposite of their unquestioned dogma. And to say that the fact that the dominant pattern of the fossil record -- which is sudden appearance followed by non-evolution -- is not only anti-Darwinian, but also supporting evidence for a creation narrative, is mind bogglingly dumb. I hope that helps.Florabama_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
07:12 AM
7
07
12
AM
PDT}

Bob O`H -How do you know or test that Archaeopterxy is ancestral to modern birds and not just a creature that looks like it might be.Marfin_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
06:39 AM
6
06
39
AM
PDT}

Marfin - I have no idea what you mean by "general ancestry", I'm afraid.Bob O'H_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
04:44 AM
4
04
44
AM
PDT}

Bob O`H- Bob you say you cannot test specific ancestry please show how you test general ancestry, please cite any fossils and show how you test that those fossils are the ancestor of any other fossils.Marfin_{May 24, 2017
May
05
May
24
24
2017
03:20 AM
3
03
20
AM
PDT}

PaV, please, please, please, attempt to varify your thinking before thinking. "In the 'Origins of Species', I believe it is the fourth chapter that is titled, 'On Difficulties on the Theory'." No! In my copy it's chapter six entittled, 'Difficulties on Theory.' PaV, I suggest you don't read this chapter as it is everything you don't want to know. A better title for this chapter would be, 'Difficulties on Theory, Asked and Answered.' But like I said don't read it, it makes brilliant sense. The man's ability to for see problems to his theory, and then explain simple, easy to understand solutions, predictions (vindicated by modern science), and brilliant guesses, is amazing. You put up Steven Meyer's, 'Darwin's Doubt', as a robust rebuttal? Perhaps, but more than forty people must read said rebuttal before it is taken seriously. And of course the title is a flat out lie; Darwin had no doubt of the voracity of his theory, just concerns it would upset the Christian apple cart; he was completely right there too!rvb8_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
06:04 PM
6
06
04
PM
PDT}

What Consolmagno actually believes:
Consolmagno said that Lemaitre (Monsignor George Lemaitre, a Jesuit cosmologist) shows the church and science need not be at odds, but complement each other. God created the world, and 'our science tells us how he did it', he said. Though some scientists may not believe in God, 'The search for truth is what unites us'. He added: 'Lemaitre himself was very careful to remind people — including Pope Pius XII — that the creative act of God is not something that happened 13.8 billion years ago. It's something that happens continually.' He emphasised that in Christian thought God is not a distant deity who merely causes the Big Bang, since otherwise 'you've reduced God to a nature god, like Jupiter throwing lightning bolts. That's not the God that we as Christians believe in'. In 2014 Pope Francis said that Christian theology was compatible with the theories of evolution and the Big Bang. He rejected creationist theories, saying that God is 'not a magician with a magic wand'.
rhampton7_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
02:43 PM
2
02
43
PM
PDT}

rvb8:
Darwinism does have physical evidence, they’re called fossils.
In the Origin of Species, I believe it's the fourth chapter that is titled, "On Difficulties on the Theory," Darwin mentions that the fossil record does NOT support his theory, and gives reasons why this may be so. He ends with the hope that further exploration of the fossil record might fill in what is "missing." The Cambrian Explosion nullifies Darwin's expectations, and his theory. You can read all about it in Steve Meyer's Darwin's Doubt. So, try again.PaV_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
11:19 AM
11
11
19
AM
PDT}

LocalMinimum @19: As it's written @17 & 18, your politely-dissenting interlocutors may have all the fossils they want, including the “missing links” (whatever that means). The real problem the evo-devo folks have to resolve is briefly described in the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816 You may ask your politely-dissenting interlocutors to read the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816 and see if they understand the described problem. If they do, you may ask them if they agree.Dionisio_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
09:38 AM
9
09
38
AM
PDT}

Marin @ 16 - one cannot test ancestry specifically, as one would have to be able to demonstrate a direct line of descent from a fossil. I don't know that any palaeontologists seriously suggest direct ancestry nowadays. if they do, then they're being careless.Bob O'H_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
09:31 AM
9
09
31
AM
PDT}

rvb8:
That is what happened with Tiktaalik, when evolutionary biologist Neill Shubin predicted the location, rock age, and likely ancient environment, this transitional animal would be in.
So, what is the significance of this find in light of the fact that it's likely Tiktaalik is preceded by tetrapods rather than their origin, as seemed to be the big idea? https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature08623.html Once it becomes "just another fossil", it only serves to show that "walking fish" have been around at least as long as our current earliest discovery of tetrapods minus 20 million years; right? May still have been an excellent geo/ecological prediction, but I fail to see how that serves your purpose. Funny enough, if we never found those tracks, the actual factual truth would remain the same, but our expectations based on the fossil record would be different. Interesting hypothetical divergence, no?LocalMinimum_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
09:02 AM
9
09
02
AM
PDT}

Marfin, You may ask your politely-dissenting interlocutors to read the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816 and see if they understand the described problem. If they do, you may ask them if they agree.Dionisio_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
08:50 AM
8
08
50
AM
PDT}

Marfin @10: They may have all the fossils they want, including the "missing links" (whatever that means). The real problem the evo-devo folks have to resolve is briefly described in the comment posted @1090 in this thread: https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/a-third-way-of-evolution/#comment-621816Dionisio_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
08:37 AM
8
08
37
AM
PDT}

BOB o H- In my last post I was not speaking about a specific fossil but fossils in general , if Colin Patterson admits you cannot test fossils for ancestry , prove him wrong cite a test. Why do you think the whole human ancestor thing is so fluid with fossils moving in and out of mans lineage, its because THERE IS NO WAY OF PUTTING FOSSILS TO A TEST . once again if I am wrong cite the test.Marfin_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
08:28 AM
8
08
28
AM
PDT}

Marfin - I've already indicated that it's almost certainly not an ancestor. Please read what I wrote (all of it!). it may be that you can work this out (at least to a first approximation) yourself from what I wrote. But even if not, I think it will help if you refine your question.Bob O'H_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
06:59 AM
6
06
59
AM
PDT}

BOB o H - Bob thats not a test thats an opinion based on a hypothesis, how do you test to see if your opinion based on your hypothesis has any validity. If I Richard Leaky finds a fossil and says its our ancestor and Donald Johanson and Stephen J Gould says no its not , tell me what test can you do to see who is right and who is wrong. Once again test please.Marfin_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
05:57 AM
5
05
57
AM
PDT}

Marfin - simple. The hypothesis is that human ancestors evolved in Africa. if we find fossils that correspond to our ancestors(*) outside of Africa, then it suggests that our ancestors evolved elsewhere. (*) of course we cannot be sure that the fossils are from a species ancestral to us - they could also be a close relative. We would probably also need some evidence that there were no sister species in Africa at the time, who could be our ancestors.Bob O'H_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
05:26 AM
5
05
26
AM
PDT}

Bob O`H - Honest question Bob how specifically is a fossil a test?.As I have said before Colin Patterson late Head of the NHM London stated " Is Archaeopteryx the anccestor to modern birds perhaps yes perhaps no , as there is no way of putting it to the test". So how do you test if fossils are ancestral to any other fossils, how do you know if any given fossil left any offspring at all. So once again how is a fossil a test.Marfin_{May 23, 2017
May
05
May
23
23
2017
04:52 AM
4
04
52
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 4 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply