Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are right | Hacker News Reader

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are right

independent.co.uk

20 pointsarunpjohny6 comments

This isn't anything new. It's long been accepted in the Catholic church. The problem is that catholics get lumped in with american fundamentalists. There's a good video on YouTube with Richard Dawkins debating/interviewing a bishop/scientist which gives a good overview of what catholics actually believe.

As noted in the article, it is new in that it us seen as a return to the position of John Paul II from which Benedict XVI was seen to retreat.

The only evidence given in the article that the previous pope refuted evolution wasn't even from him - it was from something written by one of his advisors as the article states. Seems like it was more of a 'we can make it sound like the previous guy backtracked so lets write a headline to make it sound like something we thought would never happen has happened even though the original thing never happened".

NB: Sorry if I sound a bit aggressive but this article has nothing to do with HN and is click bait. No idea why it was submitted.

> The only evidence given in the article that the previous pope refuted evolution wasn't even from him - it was from something written by one of his advisors as the article states.

Its important to understand that, in general, fairly major shifts in the approach of the heirarchy on issues in the Catholic Church are often signaled by very subtle differences in wording from the Pope and/or his inner circle.

> Sorry if I sound a bit aggressive but this article has nothing to do with HN and is click bait.

If that's your opinion (rather than that it is relevant to HN but merely has points that are worthy of debate), you probably should have flagged instead of commenting.

Besides the fact that no scientific theory is "right":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

The big bang theory itself was first formulated by an ordained "chanoine" from the catholic church...

This is almost as misunderstood as Copernicus being wrongfully thought to have been persecuted for believing that the world circled the sun, which he the opposite is true. The vast majority of Christian and Jewish beliefs are varied on creation. A very small subset of whom believe only in a literal 6 day creation.

FACT: Genesis has TWO creation stories (Very much inline with Ancient near East writing)

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