The Pope recently announced that he thought Darwin’s theory of evolution was correct and that the universe was created as a result of the Big Bang. Educated, intelligent people who are religious wouldn’t argue with this (my sister, who regards herself as a born-again christian, sees nothing in science that contradicts her beliefs. Indeed, she follows science with more enthusiasm than most people I know). I assume the Pope believes that god sparked the Big Bang for reasons obcure and inscrutable.
So where does that leave us? As an Epicurean I cannot believe in the Bible, or the Koran, as the literal words of god, nor can rational people believe in a religion that beheads its enemies. What I can say is that we don’t have any evidence about what caused the Big Bang, that the possibility of it being part of a great plan by an old gentlman with a grey beard, sitting on a throne, surrounded by angels, is a fairy tale, but that you cannot categorically say that there was no Prime Mover, because we just don’t know.
Which implies, does it not, that head of the Catholic Church is roughly on the same belief page as Epicureans! What we appear to differ on is the need for expensive real estate, a fancy headquarters that includes a museum with stunning exhibits, and a priesthood and believers who believe appear to believe in wildly different things. Superficially, it might seem a good idea for Epicurus to have churches, bishops, vestments and vergers and to pull in a weekly audience. But in reality we are not good joiners and are attracted to the common sense, humanistic message of Epicurus, and need no weekly service or communion to tell us what we instintively know.
Comment:
To The Times, London
In the past, centuries elapsed between Pope Saints – St Pius V, died 1572, and St Pius X, died 1914. Now we are to believe that every pope since 1958 (1939 if one counts Pius XII) was of exalted sanctity. John XXIII, imminent canonisation; Paul VI, imminent beatification; John Paul I, case opened; John Paul II, imminent canonisation.
As an atheist I cannot comment on the medievalism of miracles or their holiness. However, it does seem odd to laud those under whose guidance the practice of the faith, numbers of clergy and moral authority of the Catholic Church have all but collapsed.
Ian Slade, London
Second comment
In an exciting declaration, Pope Francis I stated that God should not seen as a “magician with a magic wand,” while unveiling a statue of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Pope Francis also stated that evolution and the Big Bang theory are both true and not incompatible with the church’s views on the origins of the universe and life.
“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said, according to the Independent. Francis continued by stating that God “created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment.”
“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it,” Francis explained. ”Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
While the pope’s understanding of the origins of life still requires a divine force (rather than a scientific one), his views are a leap forward for the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is not the first pope to welcome these two scientific theories. However, the Catholic Church has a long reputation of being at odds with science, and Pope Francis’ declaration is looked at as “trying to reduce the emotion of dispute or presumed disputes” between the church and science. ( Salon October 28th,2014)
“Epicurus …equal relationships…male female,,…slave or free.”
I just wonder how he found it possible to have an equal relationship between himself and his slave?….
They weren’t his slaves. They were someone else’s slaves. There is no evidence that he ever had any slaves himself.
Oh. Ok. My mistake!