Pluck Your Magic Twanger, Froggy!
Let's Go Back To the Middle Ages?
[BREAK]
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design
Hey, if you're going to live in a world where Crusades Part Deux is on the menu, you might as well "unlearn" modern facts as much as possible.
I can see the ad push for our drive to take science, and society, back into the 16-17th Century:
1) Tonight on the National Geographic channel "Monkey Business: How atheistic scientists tried to prove that man wasn't Godly, but just a large chimp with anger management problems!"
2) Tonight on the Discovery channel: At 8 PM, "Alchemy, or how to turn inquisitive students into robots lacking critical thought capabilities, while saving billion$ on education."
At 9PM, "Witch Burning: A Cruel and Unusual Punishment, or an Effective Means of Halting Alimony Payments?"
At 10 PM: "Prosecuting The War With Iran: How Allowing Driving Permits and a 25% Discount Coupon For Any Ebay Item (up to a value of $100) for 13 Year Olds Who Sign To Enlist In The Military at Sixteen Has Removed Any Need For A Draft!"
On CNN, at 9 PM, Larry King Interviews the new Secretary of Defense, Paris Hilton, on her plan to make the Marines new dress uniform "Hot!"
At 10PM, "Why Women Should Be Forced To Carry The Baby To Term, Even If We Must Enforce An Artificial Pregnancy On Every Women at Their 16th Birthday!"
On MSNBC, at 8PM, "Why Using Government Funds To Conduct Stem Cell Research Is Now A Capital Crime!"
On The E! Channel: How With Just a One-Time $250,000 Payment You Can Buy A Privately Funded Stem Cell Package To Cure Any Single Ailment You May Have. (For More Than A Single Ailment, We Have A Special $100,000 Sale For Each New Malady You Need Cured.) Cash Only, No Medicare Accepted!
On FOX News, we have blond Big-Breasted, Jabba-The-Hutt Lipped blow-up dolls panting and heaving to a montage of photos of Bush administration officials interspersed with photos of unidentified, but bloody, brown people. (On Our FOX Pay-Per-View Channel, Live Torture Sessions Are Available For $4:95 per hour. (You must click on YES to certify you are over 18, or over 12 and have signed up for the prolonged military option at your school.)
On all of the Network News channels we have Anderson Cooper, still standing in the unchanged destruction from Hurricane Katrina. Anderson tells us that the Bush administration has agreed to let Disney take over the whole of New Orleans. Disney will put together a tourist attraction, where visitors can poke dead bodies, walk through devastated homes and bitch slap those residents who are still homeless and in shock at how their government proved such a failure!
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict contemplates excommunicating Louis Pasteur, Madame Curie and all scientists that have ever hinted they believed the earth revolved around the sun and/or evolution was a fact and/or that sending a glass of wine, a single fish and a loaf of bread to Darfur would not feed all the starving people.
Tune in next week, when Vatican TV explains how pedophilia is just a way of showing God's love to the children. [Sorry, but having religions corrupted by government tax breaks, "Faith Based" funding and a sharing of power of both the church and government pulpits, all to get us moving backwards, just pisses me off!!]
=====
Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design
John Hooper in Rome
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
Philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals close to Pope Benedict will gather at his summer palace outside Rome this week for intensive discussions that could herald a fundamental shift in the Vatican's view of evolution.
There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism.
[/BREAK]
[BREAK]
A prominent anti-evolutionist and Roman Catholic scientist, Dominique Tassot, told the US National Catholic Reporter that this week's meeting was "to give a broader extension to the debate. Even if [the Pope] knows where he wants to go, and I believe he does, it will take time. Most Catholic intellectuals today are convinced that evolution is obviously true because most scientists say so." In 1996, in what was seen as a capitulation to scientific orthodoxy, John Paul II said Darwin's theories were "more than a hypothesis".
Last week, at a conference in Rimini, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Austria revealed that evolution and creation had been chosen as the subjects for this year's meeting of the Pope's Schülerkreis - a group consisting mainly of his former doctoral students that has been gathering annually since the late 1970s. Apart from Cardinal Schönborn, participants at the closed-door meeting will include the president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Peter Schuster; the conservative ethical philosopher Robert Spaemann; and Paul Elbrich, professor of philosophy at Munich University.
Last December, a US court sparked controversy when it ruled that intelligent design should not be taught alongside evolution theory. Cardinal Schönborn said: "The debate of recent months has undoubtedly motivated the Holy Father's choice." But he added that in the 1960s the then Joseph Ratzinger had "underlined emphatically the need to return to the topic of creation".
The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."
A few months later, Cardinal Schönborn, who is regarded as being close to Benedict, wrote an article for the New York Times backing moves to teach ID. He was attacked by Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory. On August 19, Fr Coyne was replaced without explanation. Vatican sources said the Pope's former astronomer, who has cancer, had asked to be replaced.
[/BREAK]
Comments
Posted by: Progressive Traditionalist | August 29, 2006 12:19 AM