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Cardinal urges Catholics to heed modern science
The Associated Press
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2005

VATICAN CITY A Vatican cardinal said Thursday that the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.


Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate.


The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's declaration in 1992 that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus's theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.


"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.


But he said science should also listen to religion.


"We know where scientific reason can end up by itself: the atomic bomb and the possibility of cloning human beings are fruit of a reason that wants to free itself from every ethical or religious link," he said.


"But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism," he said. "The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity."


Poupard and others at the news conference were asked about the religion-science debate over evolution and "intelligent design." Intelligent design's supporters argue that natural selection, an element of evolutionary theory, cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.


Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project, Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul's 1996 statement that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis."


"A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false," he said. Evolution "is more than a hypothesis because there is proof."


He was asked about comments made in July by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Austria, who dismissed in a New York Times article the 1996 statement by John Paul as "rather vague and unimportant."


Basti concurred that John Paul's letter "is not a very clear expression from a definition point of view," but he said evolution was assuming ever more authority as scientific proof develops.


Poupard stressed that what was important was that "the universe wasn't made by itself, but has a creator." But he added, "It's important for the faithful to know how science views things to understand better."


The Vatican project has organized academic courses and conferences on the relationship between science and religion and is to be the host of an international conference on "the infinity in science, philosophy and theology" next week.

Hotfoot wrote:That's nice, but it's not official really until the current Pope gives the thumbs-up. Not saying it's bad, but I'm not about to get all worked up about it until Palpatine there in the Vatican gives order 67, destruction of the IDer's.

Hotfoot wrote:That's nice, but it's not official really until the current Pope gives the thumbs-up. Not saying it's bad, but I'm not about to get all worked up about it until Palpatine there in the Vatican gives order 67, destruction of the IDer's.