Vatican: Creationism == Superstitious Paganism
Posted on May 5, 2006
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This really ought to nail shut the whole “debate” between creationism and science. The Vatican’s astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno (whom I’ve written about before) has come out quite clearly, frankly and harshly against those who believe in creationism and a literal interpretation of the Bible (including that of a vengeful god, the type who’d rain down a hurricane upon New Orleans because of all the gay people for instance):
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday.
Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a “destructive myth” had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.
He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a “kind of paganism” because it harked back to the days of “nature gods” who were responsible for natural events.
Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods. “Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That’s why science and religion need to talk to each other,” he said.
“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.
(Via Creationism dismissed as ‘a kind of paganism’ by Vatican’s astronomer)
Fundamentalists will not listen of course, which is really quite depressing, because extremism and flexibility of thought do not tend to come in the same package.. There will still be calls for the teaching of creationism in science classes in high schools; there will still be people insisting that God put the dinosaur bones deep in the earth on Day 4 to fool us, there will still be people who think they got hit by lightening because it was “God’s will” (which has always struck me as very arrogant on the part of the person) but at least this is a step towards an increase in rationality.
Brother Guy Consolmagno is emerging as one of the most fascinating voices of science and reason in quite some time.
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