Breaking: Pope Does Not Have Magic Powers, Says Vatican
An article in the Scotsman says that
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
The rest of the article goes on to say that the god of the creationists is a “nature god”, harking back to the days when there were different gods to explain thunder, tides, spring, etc.
From this I infer that the Catholic church (or at least the Vatican astronomer) has adopted more advanced theology that basically boils down to “dude, this can’t be right” and accepts that scientific explanations are a hell of a lot better than “goddiddit” in a lot of cases.
“Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism – it’s turning God into a nature god.
So kudos to Consolmagno for aligning himself with the reality-based community, at least on this issue. I can’t tell which gap he’s put God into, but I think it’s clear that he’s a lot closer to a deist than Joe Average Baptist Preacher.
And here’s the bit that I wasn’t expecting:
Brother Consolmagno, who was due to give a speech at the Glasgow Science Centre last night, entitled “Why the Pope has an Astronomer”, said the idea of papal infallibility had been a “PR disaster”. What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept “somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority”.
“It’s not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear,” he said.
Okay, this is blindingly obvious to just about everyone, but it’s nice to have Consolmagno acknowledge it. It’d be nice if the Vatican would stress this a bit more, to make it clear that when the Pope makes a pronouncement, that’s just a referee’s judgement call, not Ye Final Word from God Almighty. (And hey, maybe you won’t go to hell for using a condom.)
Personally, I’d like to see this trend continue: if they’ve conceded astronomy, evolution, etc. to science, perhaps they’ll concede large chunks of morality and ethics to evolutionary psychology, game theory, and philosophy. And thus God will be pared down bit by bit until all they have left is a lot of pageantry in a dead language. And then maybe they’ll become upscale Unitarians.
(Hat tip to PZ Mhmhmrrrrz.)
