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Sound Off: What is being said about this story from around the blogging and opinion world.
Transcript of today's show:
Pope Benedict made his first papal visit to the US this April. Is this Pope an ally to creationists? Last year we reported on Vatican holy cards, praised by creationists, that declare that humans are not a casual and meaningless product of evolution. And yet, Time magazine portrays this new pontiff as celebrating America’s separation of church and state -- calling him the "American Pope".
[source: Time magazine]
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from an article published in April 2007 in the Daily Mail:
Pope Benedict has aired his views on evolution fo the first time - and says he partially believes Darwin's theories.The Pontiff said science had narrowed the way life's origins are understood and said Christians should take a broader approach to the question.
However, he did not adopt a strictly scientific view of the origins if life, believing instead that God created life through evolution.
He said he "would not depend on faith alone to explain the whole picture".
As well as praising scientific progress, the Pope's views, published in a new book 'Schoepfung unt Evolution' (Creation and Evolution), did not endorse the creationist, or 'intelligent design' view of life's origins.
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from a comment posted on the Daily Mail in response to the above article:
As we understand more and more about DNA, Scientists are proving that there is intelligent design behind the creation of human beings. Darwin's theory was exactly that, a theory, but because people choose not to believe in God or Creation, they have adopted his theory as fact.
Darwin's theory is increasingly becoming flawed with more and more medical and scientific evidence proving we are created by an intelligent design, although some Scientists won't tell you this truth, why, what are they afraid of?
quoted from Pope Benedict XVI:
Ultimately it comes down to the alternative: What came first? Creative Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, strangely enough brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say: I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. [more]
Transcript of today's show:
In a direct fire across the bow of Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity, the presumed Democratic candidate for US president has clearly stated where he stands on the evolution-creationism controversy. In his first speech after winning the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama took this very public opportunity to remind voters that his administration will be renewing a commitment to science, as had Bill Clinton when he was president.
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Like the PBS documentary about Intelligent Design, Judgment Day was equally harsh for Texas Child Protective Services. The Texas State Supreme Court upheld an appellate court’s ruling that the 450 girls forcibly removed from a Mormon cult in Texas be returned. The court ruled that the Fundamentalist Mormon’s polygamist and other sexual practices were protected by the separation of Church and State as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.
The order signed by Texas District Judge Barbara Walther, responding to a state Supreme Court ruling last week, allowed parents in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to pick up their children from foster care facilities around the state almost immediately.
In exchange for regaining custody, the parents are not allowed to leave Texas without court permission and must participate in parenting classes. They were also ordered not to interfere with any child abuse investigation and to allow the children to undergo psychiatric or medical exams if required.
However, it does not put restrictions on the children's fathers, or require parents to renounce polygamy or live away from the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch in West Texas. "We're really grateful to get the order signed," said Willie Jessop, an FLDS elder.
The FLDS denies any abuse of the children. Church officials have always maintained that they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs. The FLDS, whose members believe polygamy earns glorification in heaven, is a breakaway sect of the Mormon church, which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Walther's order does not end a separate criminal investigation. Texas authorities last week collected DNA from jailed FLDS leader Warren Jeffs as part of an investigation into underage sex with girls, ages 12 to 15. He has been convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape and is jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate charges.Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]
Somehow, the same constitutional law that scientists invoke to keep creationism out of the classroom has now appeared to favor polygamy in the bizarre case of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints in Eldorado, Texas.
Hundreds of pro-bono lawyers looking to distinguish their careers by being associated with the case (& staying in the national news cycle), have won their appeal in a citing that uses the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution to guarantee the rights of the FLDS, a plural marriage fundamentalist religious cult that established itself near Austin, Texas.
Scientists will have to support this pro-Creationism decision, because if religion cannot influence secular education, then secular education cannot influence religious practices. This means that the court's decision is a left-handed compliment to secularists invoking the Constitution's establishment clause to keep creationism out of the classroom.Listen to the 1-minute broadcast of this story [mp3]Comment on this story.
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