John A. Broussard

I'd like to see the source for the above. Polls, over and over again, show that increased education is inversely correlated with such beliefs.

I do agree with you, however, that intelligence, education or whatever is no absolute guarantee that one won't believe in the absurd.

Waning Moon Conrad

The Catholic Church accepts evolution and there are priests, many of them Jesuit who are practicing scientists in various fields. The Vatican has its own observatory and has not rigged it up to make it appear that the Ptolemaic world view is the correct one when you peer into their telescope.

They also teach that the Bible is not the literal word of God, to be taken absolutely literally or you'll burn in hell.

Some fundamentalists claim that Catholicism is not true Christianity. You can believe them or disbelieve them.

Waning Moon Conrad

Catholics, Anglicans, Russian Orthodox and other varieties of Christian do not reject these things.

Biff the unclean

Yeah, you would think that would be true. Yet the courts had to be called in at Dover PA to save the science classes from being attacked by Christians who feel it's their duty to lie about sciences discoveries of fact. Why is that?

John A. Broussard

Hey!

I didn't say reject, I said resist.

As for the Catholics, Galileo would certainly feel the Church resisted heliocentrism. For the Anglicans--ever hear of Bishop Ussher and the fact that insisted god created the world in 4004 BC?

I know little about the Orthodox churches except that, unless they bring their calendar in line with science's measure of the earth year, they'll eventually be celebrating Christmas in July.

No. Science is definitely the enemy of religion--not intentionally, it's simply that where religion makes some pronouncement about the nature of the world (and so far as I know, all of them do) they will be corrected eventually by science.

If religions want to stick with such fantasies as the Immaculate Conception, that's another matter entirely. Science is neither interested in that myth nor equipped to challenge it.

John A. Broussard

Don't your follow the news? The Church is revising it's views re evolution.

And, by the way. Bruno was burnt at the stake for rejecting the Ptolemaic world view. And Copernicus' treatise was on the Index of forbidden books until the 20th Century--which meant that a Catholic reading that book about the heliocentric theory was commiting a mortal sin.

So? The Church simply substitutes the popes infallible statements as being the literal word of God. I fail to see where that's an improvement.

I take no stand on that important issue, especially since the Catholic Church long ago branded all Protestants as heretics.

Incidentally, Catholic Dogma states categorically that it is a mortal sin for a Catholic to believe that: "Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ."

You lead a very sheltered life.