Talk:Vatican issues defence of evolution, rejects fundamentalist creationism

This whole thing has been taken out of context. The title of this article is highly irresponsible, as was the article by news.com.au.

A balanced look at the story is currently linked to (http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/03/news/vat.php) That is actually what happened. Anything beyond that is stretching the truth.

Someone who cares more should change this article to a redirect to a title that isn't so blatantly misleading.

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M. Retriever, 10/11/2005

The article of Wikipedia is a résumé/shortening of the original news from an inevitably subjective point of view, I do not consider it is out of context enough to modify it. The importance of this happening is that the Catholic Church understands that we shouldn't take the Bible literally word by word, and that fundamentalism is not convenient in any form. Religion should consider scientific advances as positive if they may be so, and science should take into account ethical reasoning; that's the conclusion.

First of all, evolution is not more then just a hypothesis, and is hardly even that. A hypothesis is something that can be tested, which relates to "observational science" and not assumptions about the past based on one's own worldview. And contrary to popular belief, there is absolutely not any irrefutable proof for evolution. Science, it would seem, is not infallible.

Secondly, if the Bible is "properly" interpreted, it can be compatible with Mormonism, Marxism, Fascism, Naziism, Socialism, Communism, Hedonism, Racism, Botulism, Terrorism, or any other -ism that you can think of. I could "interpret" the Qu'ran to say that Muslims are superior in their beliefs, and that everyone else is human scum and are ordered to be killed by the great Allah. As good of an interpretation as that may be, I don't think most Muslims would necessarily agree with that.

Also, what scientific qualifications do any of the head "churchians" of the Vatican have that will coerce people into believing they know the first thing about the validity of evolution anyways? And "scientific reasoning" does not suggest that evolution played any part in the creation of the Earth, nor the existance of humans and all living creatures. In fact, the evidence more coherently points toward a young earth, created no more then 6 thousand years ago.

Furthermore, the Earth may in fact be at the center of the universe, but that was never a disputed case, and there is no evidence either way to refute such a claim. We know that the Earth is not at the center of the Solar System, as we have plenty of evidence to support this through observation, but to say that because the Catholic church back in the time of Galileo claimed something out of ignorance(such as they continue to do),then the Bible must now allow for "scientific" conjecture(e.g. evolution) to coincide with its teachings is completely ludicrous.