All the chimps give a shout out to Benedict
Sat 28 Jul 2007 01:04 PM
Speaking recently before a bevy of priests, Pope Benedict is reported to have claimed (in effect) that creationism is bunk. In this story, he is quoted as saying that "there is much scientific proof in favour of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such."
Yet (as befits a Pope) he still thinks that God fits in somewhere: Evolution "does not answer the great philosophical question 'where does everything come from?'" This suggests a potentially unstable compromise position wherein evolution provides the story of how events unfolded and religion provides the story of why.
Regardless, the story (I think) misunderstands the Pope's remarks. It adds, not quoting the Pope: "His comments appear to be an endorsement of the doctrine of intelligent design." Yet, proponents of ID claim that it is a scientific rival to evolution, an alternative story of what happened. The Pope does not seem on board with such claptrap. He confines theology to the philosophical domain, which is incompatible with the IDists demand for counter-evolutionary teaching in biology classrooms.
And the Pope wants mass to be offered in Latin more often.