In Reply to: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: summing up posted by Aimsearlaithreac on February 25, 2009 at 16:37:23:

So you disagree with the official teaching as printed in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church? And you now agree that bugs evolve resistance to antibiotics and wheat rust evolves resistance to fungicides? That it's not all a plot?

From the last bit of your post it now seems your objection to a useful scientific theory like natural selection is based solely on the idea that someone might use it as an excuse for not going to Mass on a Sunday? Well looking at the 'crowds' nowadays I don't think it takes much to keep them away. It's a pretty tenuous argument and certainly it's intellectually dishonest. It's definitely covered by that Commandment that forbids fibbing.

Even the Pope allows us to believe' in evolution. The idea that there are 'Darwinians' running around the place like a cult is nonsense. It's just another scientific theory that is used on a daily basis to make life better for millions. It's not quite as useful as the theory of gravity but it's definitely more useful than the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics unless you watch a lot of satellite TV or make a lot of mobile calls (both of which make a lot of use of the latter theories). But if you are hungry and like to eat bread meat or drink milk Darwin's theory is your only man. If you get sick and need a good antibiotic then natural selection is more relevant than quantum mechanics or relativity - or homeopathy come to that.

In the old days the monks hid the books away in the monasteries case the peasants would read them and learn something. Better to keep them in ignorance and poverty in case they might find stuff out. Shock horror if they discovered the world was round or that the Earth orbits around the Sun. The funny thng is that when they did find out it didn't make any difference. An article of faith (i.e. that Earth was the centre of the solar system and wider universe) that people like Galileo were actually excommunicated and worse for challenging did not actually reduce the number of believers by one iota. Like natural selection it became harder and harder to sustain the disbelief required to believe that the Earth did not orbit the Sun. The truth came out in the end. And for a religious organisation with a 'do not tell a lie' high up on its list of tenets it's really a bit rich to be requiring belief in a blatant lie. In this case the blatant lie being that DNA does not change and the world was created 5000 years ago and other rubbish of that ilk. "Lying is always sinful" I think is what the Catechism says about this kind of dishonesty.

Your forgiveness is admirable and regarding Muslims you realise you are in very good company in promulgating the lie that man and other of God's creatures did not evolve over the aeons - because they are even more vehement than the fundamentalist bible belt types in the USA (and they are pretty fundamental).