Catholic Church Finally Agrees: "Creationism" Isn't Science, Just A "Cultural Phenomenon"... Like Paris Hilton

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Culture led the Church on a major backflip concerning Darwin and his work on Evolution. While agreeing that the Catholics may have been a little hostile to Darwin from time to time, he points out that the Church "had never formally condemned Darwin" (let alone burned him at the stake), "and he noted that in the last 50 years a number of Popes had accepted evolution as a valid scientific approach to human development." Besides, he said, it was St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine who actually discovered evolution in the first place! (Last year, in preparation for the marking of the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On The Origin of Species, the Anglicans started discussing owning up to their own backward attitude towards him and are talking about issuing an apology.)

The Catholic Church will be hosting a conference on Darwinism next month and, although they first planned to ban the kooks pushing Creationism, they relented and now say they "consider Intelligent Design as a 'cultural phenomenon' rather than as a valid scientific theory, giving US-based IDers the chance to be smirked at by a room full of Monseigneurs, Cardinals and Bishops. Don't expect an apology from the Vatican, however. Ravasi doesn't care what the Anglicans do; the Pope is infallible. "Maybe," he said, "we need to abandon the habit of issuing apologies and treating history as if it were a court always in session... "Science can purify religion of superstition, but religion can purify science from false absolutes," Ravasi said, quoting John Paul. In fact it's been nearly two decades since Pope John Paul "publicly expressed regret" on how another infallible Pope "dealt with Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who was forced to retract his observation that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun," something even many Republicans now accept.

And even many who have been sucked into the bizarre and backward Mormon cult endorse evolution. Most Republicans, however, are sticking with their firm stance against science and reality. Still, Monday's NY Times-- just in time for the Catholics' embracing of Darwin-- reported that it's time to move beyond him-- or to accept that we already have.

Using phrases like “Darwinian selection” or “Darwinian evolution” implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, “Newtonian physics” distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So “Darwinian evolution” raises a question: What’s the other evolution?

Into the breach: intelligent design. I am not quite saying Darwinism gave rise to creationism, though the “isms” imply equivalence. But the term “Darwinian” built a stage upon which “intelligent” could share the spotlight.

Charles Darwin didn’t invent a belief system. He had an idea, not an ideology. The idea spawned a discipline, not disciples. He spent 20-plus years amassing and assessing the evidence and implications of similar, yet differing, creatures separated in time (fossils) or in space (islands). That’s science.

That’s why Darwin must go.

Almost everything we understand about evolution came after Darwin, not from him. He knew nothing of heredity or genetics, both crucial to evolution. Evolution wasn’t even Darwin’s idea... [O]ur understanding of how life works since Darwin won’t swim in the public pool of ideas until we kill the cult of Darwinism. Only when we fully acknowledge the subsequent century and a half of value added can we really appreciate both Darwin’s genius and the fact that evolution is life’s driving force, with or without Darwin.

God only knows (obviously) what to expect from the Vatican next-- an argument with Thomas Friedman that the earth is round after all?


UPDATE: TWITTERING IDIOT JEFFREY FREDERICK WON'T BE GETTING AN INVITATION TO THE VATICAN COUNCIL

Virginia Republicans elected this imbecile to be their leader. He's got a birthday message for Charles Darwin: