Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.
Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”
Well it had to happen. As the trial in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District comes to a close this week, the defendants are doing everything they can to save themselves from losing the case. This includes changing their testimony, selective memory, and the ever useful – attacking the media. The plaintiffs in the case also questioned the school board on their hiring of the Thomas More Law Center to represent them. The center states as one of their missions: Defending and promoting the religious freedom of Christians.
I offer two short items I came across on the Internet yesterday. One is a positive item and the other is an example of the issue facing this country. Posted on the Charlotte Observer website on 10/31 in the op/ed section was a book review and commentary on “The Godless Constitution” by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore and a letter to the editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, on 10/31, takes “Secularists” to task for mixing microevolution and macroevolution.
Friday night I was surfing TV and came across the end of a special program on NBC hosted by Tom Brokaw called “In God they trust: NBC’s Tom Brokaw goes inside the world of Christian Evangelicals”.
Even though I missed most of the show they do have a transcript of the show on MSNBC.
In the discussion that followed the film and continued on our member’s e-mail list, it was suggested that Flemming and many non-believers go too far in “attacking” people with religious beliefs. It was said that we need to acknowledge that religion plays an important role in most believers lives and by “attacking” their beliefs we have crossed the line of decency.
As expected the charge was made that we non-believers who “attack” religious beliefs are hostile to religion and the religious and how this hostility undermines our credibility as a group to better the human condition. The assumption is made that we must not question people’s deeply held beliefs lest we hurt their feelings.
On October 21st, the American Enterprise Institute sponsored a forum on the issue of teaching Intelligent Design in the public schools. C-Span has Real Media videos of all three sessions available to view online at least through the first or second week of November. I haven’t watched them all yet as they total about 5 hours of video but I have heard it was a good event for supporters of Evolution.