The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism -- the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible -- and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.
But it objects to using evolution to back an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.
According to Ken Ham.
Now, if the book of Genesis is an allegory, then sin is an allegory, the Fall is an allegory, the need for a Savior is an allegory, and Adam is an allegory—but if we are all descendants of an allegory, where does that leave us? It destroys the foundation of all Christian doctrine—it destroys the foundation of the gospel.
If Genesis is an allegory then the first marriage is just an allegory, so marriage can be anything one wants to define it as!
Which would mean the Religious Right who insist the Bible is the LITERAL word of God and that Genesis is correct in every way would be WRONG (Gasp)!
HT: Pharyngula
The problem with ANY group, be it the ilk of Ken Ham or extreme liberals, is when they believe that their belief is the final authority on a subject and then close themselves to the possibility of dialogue. Any group, which is closed to open discourse, has no standing in my view. If one feels that one has the final word one should feel comfortable enough to engage in conversation and repartee. As you may remember, I wrote Ken Ham a well worded (at least I thought so) repartee when he lambasted the fact that homeschool conventions allowed vendors of secular material and *gasp* evolution. Not surprisingly Ken Ham never published my entirely non-aggresive post nor did he ever reply. For people like that I feel little else than contempt and pity.
ReplyDeleteAs for me? I go about my day teaching our children what we believe and show them what other people believe. I don't expect anyone to follow suit just as I will not follow what someone tells me to. I rarely get my tailfeathers in a ruffle about the religious right. They are as entitled to blieve what they perceive as their truth as am I. We live our life as an open minded family who honors the rights of others to pursue the life they envisioned for themselves. Even if they follow an allegory.
Ken Ham should stick to discussing his own particular theology and stop pretending that he knows the first thing about what the Catholic Church does or does not teach. There are so many errors is what he's claiming that it's laughable.
ReplyDeleteThe Catholic Church has no official doctrinal position on whether the God created the universe in a period of time corresponding to 144 modern hours or some other time frame. Similarly, it has no official doctrinal position on macroevolution. The Church does hold that God specially created the human soul, but leaves the question of whether there was evolution of the human body up to the individual.
A Catholic can be a "Young Earth" Creationist, an "Old Earth" Creationist, or a believer in theistic evolution. Most Catholics today do fall into the last category, but there's nothing in Catholic doctrine that requires it.