The Vatican's wrong turn or origins

Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life

Excerpta:

Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe."

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues "whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds."

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican's daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

"If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound," he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions.

In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said in that interview.

"Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom."

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered "part of creation."

The Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species..

Still, there are divisions on the issues within the Catholic Church and within other religions, with some favoring creationism or intelligent design that could make it difficult to accept the concept of alien life

Comment: Not the first wrong turn .... not the last!

The New Tolerance--Believe Evolution, or "You're Fired!"

In March of 2004, biologist Nathaniel Abraham, Ph.D., was fired from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a highly esteemed research facility based in New England. The cause? His religious beliefs differed from those of his supervisor. Dr. Abraham believes that God created the world. His supervisors believe that the process of evolution explains all that now exists.

Dr. Abraham, a scholar and noted research scientist whose specialty is the zebrafish, was fired after revealing to his supervisor in a private conversation that he believed in Creation, a belief that is somehow widely discouraged and disapproved of in today's scientific community. Dr. Abraham’s private beliefs did not affect his ability to do the job for which he had been hired, but his supervisors refused to tolerate his private faith. Although the tenets of evolution cannot be proven in laboratories any more than Creation can be proven according to the scientific method, most scientists would rather place their faith in evolution than in a Creator. And they are now apparently attempting to require that everyone who works in the field of science share their personal faith in evolution or be banned from that profession.

The Christian Law Association is representing Dr. Abraham in a lawsuit against WHOI to test whether America’s courts will permit this sort of blatant religious discrimination, which would result in limiting those working in the field of science to only those that share a common faith in the tenets of evolution.

To read more about this ongoing case, click on one of the following links:

onenewsnow.com

foxnews.com


Comment: From Christian Law Association Email Alert

Believe it or not—the earth is young!

Believe it or not—the earth is young!

Believe it or not, methods to ‘date’ the earth as being very old just don’t add up. For a start, the various methods contradict one another, and are often contradicted by the evidence itself.

Comment: good read with helpful links.

Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend

Diamonds: a creationist’s best friend

Comment: An interesting, somewhat technical read!

Excerpts:

What do hard sparkling diamonds and dull soft pencil ‘lead’ have in common? They are both forms (allotropes) of carbon. Most carbon atoms are 12 times heavier than hydrogen (12C), about one in 100 is 13 times heavier (13C), and one in a trillion (1012) is 14 times heavier (14C). Of these different types (isotopes) of carbon, 14C is called radiocarbon, because it is radioactive—it breaks down over time.

Some try to measure age by how much 14C has decayed. Many people think that radiocarbon dating proves billions of years. But evolutionists know it can’t, because 14C decays too fast. Its half-life (t½) is only 5,730 years—that is, every 5,730 years, half of it decays away. After two half lives, a quarter is left; after three half lives, only an eighth; after 10 half lives, less than a thousandth is left. In fact, a lump of 14C as massive as the earth would have all decayed in less than a million years.

So if samples were really over a million years old, there would be no radiocarbon left. But is this not what we find, even with very sensitive 14C detectors.


Diamond is the hardest substance known, so its interior should be very resistant to contamination. Diamond requires very high pressure to form—pressure found naturally on earth only deep below the surface. Thus they probably formed at a depth of 100–200 km. Geologists believe that the ones we find must have been transported supersonically to the surface, in extremely violent eruptions through volcanic pipes. Some are found in these pipes, such as kimberlites, while other diamonds were liberated by water erosion and deposited elsewhere (called alluvial diamonds). According to evolutionists, the diamonds formed about 1–3 billion years ago.
....
The presence of radiocarbon in these diamonds where there should be none is thus sparkling evidence for a ‘young’ world, as the Bible records.

Albert Mohler: Is Creationism a Threat to Human Rights?

Is Creationism a Threat to Human Rights?

Excerpt:

As if the world needed another crazy development, the Council of Europe, the continent's central human rights body, last week declared creationism to be a threat to human rights. The group's Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution stating that creationism is promoted by "forms of religious extremism."

As Reuters reported:

The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

The resolution, which passed 48 votes to 25 with 3 abstentions, is not binding on the Council's 47 member states but reflects widespread opposition among politicians to teaching creationism in science class.

The text of the resolution leaves no doubt about the Council of Europe's judgment. "For some people the Creation, as a matter of religious belief, gives a meaning to life," the text acknowledges. "Nevertheless, the Parliamentary Assembly is worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist ideas within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights which are a key concern of the Council of Europe."

Anyone looking for evidence of a secularized culture should take a quick look at this resolution. When the official human rights institution of Europe has to explain that "some people" believe that the divine creation of the universe "gives a meaning to life," this can only mean that Europe (at least as represented by the Council of Europe) has forgotten even its Christian memory.

Comment: Add Albert Mohler's blog to your RSS reader or bookmark it! Every article is worthwhile! Here he highlight's secularism run amuck! Truth has been turned upside down! Good is evil ... evil is good! More to come from our culture! (Yet God is still sovereignly in control! Blessed be His Name!)

The Creation Museum opens

The The Creation Museum by
www.answersingenesis.org opens this weekend!

Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs

Museum Review | Creation Museum
Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: May 24, 2007
At the $27 million Creation Museum evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Excerpt:

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.
....
Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall.



Comments:

1. The wife of my first Sunday School teacher is on staff at Answers in Genesis
   
2. I believe in a literal six day creation!
   
3. The New York Times does not trash the museum in its review (but is not convinced either)
   
4. 10 years of my childhood was just across the river from this in Delhi, OH
   

Map to