The Vatican's top stargazer and the Pope's Chief astronomer, Fr. Jose Funes, has declared that intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space. The official Vatican newspaper headlined the item "Aliens are my Brother", which clarifies the Church's position that the search for extraterrestial life forms does not contradict belief in God.The logic is premised on the concept that God created the universe, and all life forms and intelligent beings therein are God's handiwork.
If so, does this official church statement validate to some degree the Mormon claims of God being a space man originating from some planet as an intelligent being? If aliens are our brothers, does it lend further credence to the Mormon claim that God populated the Earth, had begotten Jesus and His half brother Lucifer? These have been left unanswered. What the statement speculated was that these intelligent life forms could be free from original sin. At least we know there are no apple trees nor serpents in space.
After centuries of disagreements on the roles of science and religion, the Vatican has been funding astronomical research. Next year, it has scheduled a conference marking the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species. Whether this event will mean the acceptance of Darwin's theories and the rewriting of the Old Testament remains to be seen. But Charles Darwin's theories raised a furor among Catholic and Christian churches at the time it was published. Criticized and scoffed at, they tried to make a monkey out of him.
The Vatican brushes this aside by pressing the argument that the "Church is not afraid of science, and that truth does not contradict truth. That if you have faith, you're never going to be afraid of what science can come up with". This means that whatever scientific findings are unearthed, with faith, it can all be attributed to God's plans and creations. So if there are surprises, it's because God didn't want us to bother with the surprise earlier?
But what of contradictions to Church teachings? Galileo was tried for heresy by the inquisition in 1632 for supporting the belief that the earth revolved around the sun as Copernicus believed, but the scriptures interpretation was that of Ptolemy and Aristotle's view that the sun revolved around the earth. Galileo was imprisoned, his works were prevented from being published, and was later put on house arrest for the rest of his life. It was only in October, 1992, when Pope John Paul II corrected the error, that the Catholic Church finally admitted that Galileo was right. With all its educated priests and scholars, the Church was the last to know that the sun was stationary. Or, it takes a long time for it to admit and be sorry for its mistakes. It took 350 years for them to rehabilitate Galileo, whose remains, after that long spell, have already become fossil fuel.
This also brings to mind Erich Von Daniken, who concluded that there were ancient aliens who came down to earth, that these were God's angels, and the Arc of the Covenant was a transmitter that Moses used to communicate with God. Will these be the Theology of the future? Shall these be merged too with Scientology?
This is all getting to be confusing. Perhaps it's time to switch to a simple and more visual faith. One comes to mind, the Church of the Jedi's.
Harrrwwwwk...Twoooooph...Ting!
If so, does this official church statement validate to some degree the Mormon claims of God being a space man originating from some planet as an intelligent being? If aliens are our brothers, does it lend further credence to the Mormon claim that God populated the Earth, had begotten Jesus and His half brother Lucifer? These have been left unanswered. What the statement speculated was that these intelligent life forms could be free from original sin. At least we know there are no apple trees nor serpents in space.
After centuries of disagreements on the roles of science and religion, the Vatican has been funding astronomical research. Next year, it has scheduled a conference marking the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species. Whether this event will mean the acceptance of Darwin's theories and the rewriting of the Old Testament remains to be seen. But Charles Darwin's theories raised a furor among Catholic and Christian churches at the time it was published. Criticized and scoffed at, they tried to make a monkey out of him.The Vatican brushes this aside by pressing the argument that the "Church is not afraid of science, and that truth does not contradict truth. That if you have faith, you're never going to be afraid of what science can come up with". This means that whatever scientific findings are unearthed, with faith, it can all be attributed to God's plans and creations. So if there are surprises, it's because God didn't want us to bother with the surprise earlier?
But what of contradictions to Church teachings? Galileo was tried for heresy by the inquisition in 1632 for supporting the belief that the earth revolved around the sun as Copernicus believed, but the scriptures interpretation was that of Ptolemy and Aristotle's view that the sun revolved around the earth. Galileo was imprisoned, his works were prevented from being published, and was later put on house arrest for the rest of his life. It was only in October, 1992, when Pope John Paul II corrected the error, that the Catholic Church finally admitted that Galileo was right. With all its educated priests and scholars, the Church was the last to know that the sun was stationary. Or, it takes a long time for it to admit and be sorry for its mistakes. It took 350 years for them to rehabilitate Galileo, whose remains, after that long spell, have already become fossil fuel.
This also brings to mind Erich Von Daniken, who concluded that there were ancient aliens who came down to earth, that these were God's angels, and the Arc of the Covenant was a transmitter that Moses used to communicate with God. Will these be the Theology of the future? Shall these be merged too with Scientology?This is all getting to be confusing. Perhaps it's time to switch to a simple and more visual faith. One comes to mind, the Church of the Jedi's.
Harrrwwwwk...Twoooooph...Ting!
