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from the in-a-parallel-Vatican-somewhere-in-the-universe dept.
Papas Fritas writes:
"Megann Gannon reports that nearly 200 scientists are attending a conference, called "The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignature & Instruments," co-hosted by the Vatican Observatory with the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory.
The goal of the conference is to bring together the interdisciplinary community required to address this multi-faceted challenge: experts on exoplanet observations, early and extreme life on Earth, atmospheric biosignatures, and planet-finding telescopes. 'Finding life beyond Earth is one of the great challenges of modern science and we are excited to have the world leaders in this field together in Tucson,' says Daniel Apai. 'But reaching such an ambitious goal takes planning and time. The goal of this meeting is to discuss how we can find life among the stars within the next two decades.'
According to the organizers, the conference will cover the technical challenges of finding and imaging exoplanets and identifying biosignatures in the atmospheres of far-flung worlds. Other presentations will discuss the study of life forms that live in extreme environments on Earth, which could be apt analogs for life on other planets. Scientists will give more than 160 research presentations (PDF) during this week's conference and NASA's Astrobiology Institute will broadcast a live feed of the sessions. Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes"
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday March 20 2014, @03:32PM
I am a practing Catholic and alien life wouldn't change our idea of God or Jesus in any way. What happened on Earth is God's plan for Earth. Whatever's going on on planet Zorbox is God's plan for Zorbox.
The Catholic Church accepts as true the theory of evolution and the big bang (the big bang actually first being proposed by a Catholic priest). There is no conflict between the Catholic Church and science, that little tiff with Galileo not withstanding.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1) by monster on Thursday March 20 2014, @03:44PM
The Catholic Church has gotten to accept reality, but that doesn't mean that there isn't conflict. Any time some new knowlegde contradicts scripture, the Church just talks about the foundations of Christianity being others (mainly Jesus), but like a ham where you take away slice after slice, more and more parts of the bible are now considered as just "inspired by god" (ie, inspired fiction), when not so many years ago it was "the Word of God", meant to be taken literally. Right now, the "bone" that keeps everything in place is the undisputed divinity of christ, but the implications for it in case of intelligent alien life is obvious. After it happens, you may talk about it not affecting you, but be sure there would be a big debate among teologians because of such event.
(Score: 4, Informative) by metamonkey on Thursday March 20 2014, @06:08PM
This is incorrect. The Catholic Church has never supported a literal interpretation of Genesis. In fact, both St. Augustine (who was a Church Father) and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote treatise about the allegorical nature of Genesis. Augustine wrote "One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: 'I will send you the Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon.' For he willed to make them Christians, not mathematicians." Aquinas went so far as to call anyone who believed Genesis was literal an embarrassment to Christianity.
The idea of a young earth and a literal interpretation of Genesis is a modern invention by American christian fundamentalists. Unfortunately, these people are both stupid and loud, and the uninformed sometimes mistake us for them. We are not and never have been similar, neither in scientific belief nor theological belief.
There are few if any instances of the Church persecuting people for scientific advances. The Jesuits were (and still are) dedicated scientists. The closest you're going to find is the Galileo affair, and even then, he was tried not for his scientific opinion, but for the manner in which he spoke about theology because of it. First, he presented heliocentrism as fact without a high degree of proof. Second, he insisted that it made scripture false rather than simply allegorical, and finally he was just a giant dick and wrote his arguments as a conversation in which he used an argument the pope had offered, and placed it in the mouth of his character Simplicio. He was placed under house arrest for his theological opinions, not his scientific opinions. Should this have happened? No, of course not. No one should be persecuted for their religious beliefs. But to say he was persecuted for his scientific stance is mostly false. Mostly.
It is a popular trope amongst the anti-religious to paint the Church as anti-science. I was really disappointed in the hatchet job perpetrated by the new Cosmos. They made Bruno out to be this great scientific mind persecuted by the Church for his belief in an infinite universe when Bruno was in fact punished for his religious beliefs (like denying the divinity of Christ) and not for his scientific ideas. And he didn't even have any scientific ideas. He was not arguing for an infinite universe from a place of experiment or observation. He just...had an idea. He was right in the same way a broken clock is right twice a day. He also believed the planets and stars had souls and wrote books about magic. Again, no one should be persecuted for his religious beliefs, but I have no idea why Cosmos sacrificed credibility to essentially lie about the relationship between the Church and the sciences.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by etherscythe on Thursday March 20 2014, @07:10PM
Are you sure about that? The Catholic Catechism [vatican.va] seems to imply that "sacred scripture" is still Gospel truth direct from God. They also seem to say that the traditions of the church are as much a core part of the belief system as scripture is, but unless tradition is allowed to contradict scripture (which does not seem to be explicit or even implied anywhere), you would appear to be incorrect.
I'm afraid the Catholic Church has not been the best at avoiding historical revisionism when it suits them, so you need enough meat to get around the grain of salt I naturally apply to these claims. Quoting saints is lovely and all, but they're not exactly considered canonical.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 4, Informative) by metamonkey on Thursday March 20 2014, @07:54PM
I'm quite sure. Like I said, I'm Catholic, and I'm one of the ones who actually pays attention to what we believe and why.
You're right about sacred tradition being as important as sacred scripture. That's one of the things that sets us apart from protestants who look at scripture alone (sola scriptura). The traditions of the Church, founded by Jesus, shared with the apostles and then transmitted in an unbroken line of succession to today's pope, bishops and priests are just as important as the words printed in the book. These are things like the format of the Mass and the nature and process of the sacraments.
However, nowhere in the part of the cathechism you quoted does it say the sacred scriptures are literal. Just that they're inspired by God through the Holy Spirit.
In terms of quoting saints, there really are no greater theological minds or writings in history than Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. They have been (and still are) deferred to on many, many matters of faith, and if those two said "genesis is allegorical" (as they did), you can rest assured the popes and bishops who followed them did, also. The other bishops and priests and monks read Summa Theologica, and didn't argue with it.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by etherscythe on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:53PM
On further scrutiny, I'm seeing the subtle distinction between "direct from God" and "direct from God in plain English" (well, Hebrew or Greek, perhaps). It could be worded a little better in the Catechism to reflect that. So, with sponsorship from a Bishop or better, it's internally consistent to say that the writing of those men is, in fact, part of the canonical belief system through the Holy Tradition angle.
I still have my issues with the Galileo affair, the Spanish Inquisition, the modern cover-up and shielding the pedophiles from prosecution, and in particular how long it's taken the Church to admit fault in each case. So, to bring this all back on-topic, I struggle with the idea of the Catholic Church being particularly forward-thinking as a greater organization when it comes to anything particularly earth-shaking like aliens having a religion completely in contradiction with theirs. There are a few more enlightened individuals, I'll grant, but it seems to me they are not the greater voices of the collective when push comes to shove.
I can hope I'm wrong, and that voices like yours will be prominent. This thread has been a breath of fresh air compared to my usual experience with Christians, so thank you for that.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday March 20 2014, @10:43PM
No problem, I'm always happy to be a positive ambassador for the Catholic Church. There's a reason we call ourselves "Catholic" and not "Christians," because we don't much like the ideas of christians any more than you do. They're heretics, and generally don't have any rational basis for their heresies. If I agreed with them, either they would be Catholics or I wouldn't be.
As far as the abuse scandals go, we Catholics are also shocked and horrified by those events. No one approves of this behavior. However, you have to realize that we're an organization of 1.2 billion people. Not all of them are going to be nice, but my priest never touched anybody, and my bishop never covered anything up. Compared to the whole of the organization, the incidents were vanishingly small. There should be zero, agreed, but I'm not going to throw out 2,000 years of history for the actions of an exceedingly small number of people.
The Church is a fallible* organization, as it is made by men. But if you want to talk about history, the Catholic Church is the scaffolding on which Western Civilization was built. Our monks in their monasteries kept the written word alive during the dark ages. Many of our priests and monks were scientists, like Gregor Mendel the father of genetics, or the centuries of Jesuit astronomers. The disciplines of modern engineering and architecture were spurred on by the construction of our cathedrals. The contributions to art and music go without saying.
Also, in general, science and democracy go hand in hand with an outsider religion like christianity. The God-Kings of eastern religions nor the statist theocracies of Islam handle dissent very well. Without the Catholic Church, I don't think western science and democracy would have ever come to be. On the whole, the 2,000 year history of the Church has been a net positive for humanity.
*Papal infallibility only applies to matters of faith
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:40PM
But, if reports are true [go.com], the last pope did, and that's part of the reason I hesitate to believe the organization at its deeper roots has changed enough.
On the plus side, I will give credit where it's due. I see a lot of good things being done by, in particular, Catholic hospitals, and I'm a believer in "by their fruits you shall know them" (and the Sufi corollary: "rot at the core spreads outward"). Humans seem to have a need to seek God (and I am not an atheist despite how many attitudes I tend to share with them); It does not surprise me that some of the more notable historical figures involved with important work were some flavor of Christians (although the list of prominent atheists is pretty impressive as well) and, as the most well-organized group, Catholics will be at the top.
I just haven't been able to conclude that the faith itself is a net positive, as opposed to anything else that would have filled the void.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 1) by doubleoh0 on Friday March 21 2014, @03:47PM
"I wish not merely to be called Christian, but also to be Christian." -- St. Ignatius Loyola
(Score: 3, Informative) by metamonkey on Thursday March 20 2014, @08:25PM
Just to add to my last comment, you kinda can't have it both ways. The stereotype is that the Church hierarchy is beholden to old ways and old writings and punishes anybody who says anything contradictory. If this is true (which it basically is on matters of theology, only now we just shake our fingers at people instead of burning them), then the Church has always considered Genesis allegorical. If in fact the Church is revising history and during the middle ages/renaissance they held a literal interpretation of Genesis, then they must actually be open minded and allow dissent since they allowed people to disagree with Augustine, Aquinas et al.
Church Fathers like Augustine and the hugely influential Thomas Aquinas wrote that Genesis was allegorical. This is fact. The writings still exist. Summa Theologica exists and is the mostly widely read religious text next to the Bible itself.
These people were canonized as Saints, so clearly the Church didn't have any problem with their writing that Genesis was allegorical. If they had, the Devil's Advocate during their canonization would have pointed to these terrible heresies and they would have been right out. If, later, priests and bishops of the Catholic Church attempted to argue that Genesis was literal, and saying otherwise is heretical, then they would have been calling Augustine and Aquinas and many others heretics after the fact. You can't really get away with calling St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas heretics. Anybody arguing for a literal interpretation of Genesis would be more likely to be put on trial for heresy.
So either the Church is a bunch of hardasses who never change their minds, in which case they have always held Genesis to be allegorical, or they're easy going and tolerate dissent, in which case they thought it was allegorical, then literal, then allegorical again whenever it's suited their purpose, so they do in fact change their minds.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.