"Intelligent Design" doesn't belong in classrooms: Vatican

[Cowperson]

Since our periodic "intelligent design" thread was wiped out, here's a new one with this news:

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, becoming the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.
"Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

Give credit when its due . . . .

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,176050,00.html

Cowperson

[Flame On]

You mean Fox?
I'll give credit, his point is 100% valid and from the horses mouth as it were.

[Cheese]

Read that on the weekend, and was happy to see it. He is right about it being taught in Religious classes, which means the Catholic Schoolboard and not the Public. Im still at odds whether it should be taught as "Cultural History" though. Dependant on what that means...if its "how religion started", and the many 100s of types of religions Im ok...if its a lesson in Bible theory keep it out.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by Flame On

You mean Fox?
I'll give credit, his point is 100% valid and from the horses mouth as it were.

FOX is irrelevant to the story . . . . the comments are attributed to the ANSA News Agency in Italy and have been passed on by other global news agencies, including FOX. If it makes you feel better, I could post a non-FOX link.

Cowperson

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by fotze

Oh and the most irrelevant group on the planet speaks up again.

Yep irrelevant to us...but still VERY powerful...heres a small piece on its net worth...and mostly tax free. Remember this when poor Catholics are begging for money or disasters hit mainly RC areas.

"The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone. "In a statement published in connection with a bond prospectus, the Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.
"Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely 'that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.' Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. 'The Catholic church,' he said, 'must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.'
"The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican's financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.
"The Vatican's treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.
"The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."

[Flame On]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

FOX is irrelevant to the story . . . . the comments are attributed to the ANSA News Agency in Italy and have been passed on by other global news agencies, including FOX. If it makes you feel better, I could post a non-FOX link.

Cowperson

I knew I should have included the , I was joking CP. About fox I mean.
I knew that Fotze wasn't commenting on the irrelevance of Fox.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Gee Cheese, I guess I was wrong when I said that the pope wanted the bible taken literally (including the creation bits) and to discount evolution.

Oh wait...that was you. Oh well, as always, I'm sure being proven wrong won't slow cheese down.

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Gee Cheese, I guess I was wrong when I said that the pope wanted the bible taken literally (including the creation bits) and to discount evolution.

Oh wait...that was you. Oh well, as always, I'm sure being proven wrong won't slow cheese down.

I figured you'd show up blurbing out your useful pieces of crap. Of course you are apologizing once again for the Churches, as an agnostic. Pick a side then pick the fight.
The Roman Catholic Church, and the POPE, are not magically reworking their religion to be in tune with the 21st century....they are still back in the 15th century for the most part. So go ahead and take solice in the fact that they are "allowing" people to believe in Evolution...just in case they are wrong. Or maybe its so they can put their own spin on things?

[troutman]

The Roman Catholic Church was only 359 years late in admitting Galileo was right.

http://www.dslnorthwest.net/~danwilcox/galileo.html

Thirteen years after he appointed it, a commission of historic, scientific and theological inquiry brought the pope a "not guilty" finding for Galileo, who, at age 69 in 1633, was forced by the Roman Inquisition to repent and spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by fotze

Oh and the most irrelevant group on the planet speaks up again.

Micheal Moore and his followers never said that.

With a billion + followers i'd say they are relevant.

[Hakan]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Micheal Moore and his followers never said that.

With a billion + followers i'd say they are relevant.

I think Fotze was being irreverent.

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Micheal Moore and his followers never said that.

With a billion + followers i'd say they are relevant.

At least in Africa or South America where they have the vast majority of support! The fact that numbers are dwindling in North America and Europe suggest less relevance in the industrialized nations.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

I'm by no means a supporter of organized religion, and currently don't support the evangelical movement afoot in the US and Canada.

That said, I'm not completely against the concept of intelligent design. To me, it doesn't seem totally unreasonable that something "seeded" life on this planet, and then evolution took over from there. I guess the difference is that the religious types have co-oped what ever this is for their own purposes.

Nerds here may recollect the ST:TNG episode where alien beings seeded life amongst the cosmos and there was a race to unlock the DNA clues... doesn't seem any more preposterous than saying one supreme almight being did it. Heheh, although I busted that one out against some evangelical Christian friends when they tried to "save" me...I think they gave up right then and there...

The underlying problem with calling ID "science" is that is just can't be proven by scientific means.... I'm at least open to the possibility of it and feel it's mention doesn't undermind evolution by any means.

[Flashpoint]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

The underlying problem with calling ID "science" is that is just can't be proven by scientific means.... I'm at least open to the possibility of it and feel it's mention doesn't undermind evolution by any means.

It does undermine evolution. ID is the promotion of a falsehood that is attempting to challenge the truth. Anyone who has studied evolution is well aware that it isn't "just a theory" - as ID proponents like to claim. It is a fact, and to propose otherwise is simply as foolish as saying "the universe revolves around the earth", or "all man is descended from Adam and Eve".

The main appeal of ID is that it is intellectually lazy. Rather to take the time to investigate evolution, and learn about how life evolved on this planet, it is easier to accept ID prop it up with an absence of evidence (you can't prove it DIDN'T happen so it MIGHT be true!) and accept it on par with evolution.

STNG - Do you think the guys who planted the seeds of life looked a hell of a lot like The Founders from DS9?

[mykalberta]

While I do believe in the bible, I dont believe in any of the church(s) (you should figure shat out for yourself - doesnt make sense to have it read to you). Please dont bash the book when bashing the group that tries to exploit the book.

Thanks.

MYK

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

While I do believe in the bible, I dont believe in any of the church(s) (you should figure shat out for yourself - doesnt make sense to have it read to you). Please dont bash the book when bashing the group that tries to exploit the book.

Thanks.

MYK

I think weve touched on this one before myk. IF you believe in the Bible and its writings, and there are other groups out there that do too...doesnt that lump you in with the Christian masses? Do you only use certain pieces of the pie that benefits your taste, or do you support fully the entire book?

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

While I do believe in the bible, I dont believe in any of the church(s) (you should figure shat out for yourself - doesnt make sense to have it read to you). Please dont bash the book when bashing the group that tries to exploit the book.

Thanks.

MYK

Why not? "They" wrote the book.

This link, which supports the notion the Bible was "divinely written" concedes the Bible has 40 authors and was written over 55 generations and 1600 years.

http://www.ao.net/~jmo/john/personal/origins.html

The bottom line is, the infrastructure feeding off the Bible is also its author and the two cannot be separated.

Cowperson

[northernflame]

If you read the latest edition of 'American Scientist' (not! Scientific American), the Marginalia Section contains an interesting article on how ID attempts to undermine evolution through the "back door."

As an example, the author cites a Phd Candidate in 'Science Education' who was getting set to defend his dissertation which contained the following research question:

"When students are taught the scientific data both supporting and challenging (emphasis mine) macroevolution, do they maintain or change their beliefs in time?"

The problem, of course, is that there is no scientific data that challenges macroevolution. None.

The scary part is that this is a Phd student who actually teaches biology at the high school level, and that his Phd committee consisted of academics who support the ID position, but who as a group lack any formal training in biology. Other concerned academics at the university voiced their concern with these problems, and as a result one of the original dissertation committee members resigned. He was replaced by the Dean of Biological Sciences at which point the the disseratation defense was scrapped. Presumably the Phd candidate is starting a whole new research assignment.

Another point brought up in the American Scientist article is the way proponents of ID cloak their agenda in scientific language in order to confuse an unknowledgeable lay person. From my own personal experience, it seems this strategy is working. Listening to one of these ID types dump jargon on you is akin to listening to somebody babble on about 'technical analysis' in the stock markets, or to a tax-cutter claiming 'supply side' economics is an intellectually sound theory. It's confusing for anybody, including for those who ought to know better.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Nerds here may recollect the ST:TNG episode where alien beings seeded life amongst the cosmos and there was a race to unlock the DNA clues...

I am not a nerd.