The Catholic Church Hates Creationism

You have got to love the Roman Catholic Church in a way. Ok, so their views on contraception is really dangerous and wrong in this day and age, but at least they do have something when it comes to science.

The Panda's Thumb has an article on the RCC having an 'Evolution Congress'. And they don't want any stinking Creationists and IDiots there.

Ok, I guess that is a bit mean, Fr. Marc Leclerc said it rather nicer then that.

PZ Myers also writes on this issue, however I'm following the vein of PvM in saying that PZ is a bit wrong with what he has said.

I suspect that part of this involves what certain Catholics said of him when he wrote about a cracker. (As a side note, the head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, was in a South Park episode.)

To be honest I prefer that the Catholic Church has decided to exclude Creationists and ID supporters from this congress. So they might have also said that the non-religious are allowed as well, but it might be for the best at the moment.

There would have to be Catholic creationists out there, even though the official stance on Genesis is that it is allegorical, especially when it comes to creation. This would help to encourage Catholics to support evolution, to look into the matter and see that there is nothing wrong.

I'm being rather optimistic here, but I think that if the largest denomination of Christians follows evolution, other denominations will follow. The Roman Catholic Church has between around 0.75 billion to 1.05 billion followers. If other denominations follow suit, then the creationist movement might start to shrink as more and more denominations will see that they can reconcile their beliefs with the facts.

However what will most likely happen is that regardless of how many denominations accept evolution, many of the US denominations will just brand evolution as "Atheistic Catholic Devil Worship" or something like that, which might push more people away.

Anyway, back on track.

Basically my point of view on this is similar to my view of religion in general. You have to have a middle ground at least, where they can relate to the desire for religion, yet still accept scientific advances. Just going about saying "you're wrong, you're wrong" is probably a far worse way of trying to convince someone that evolution is real, and works. They've built up this belief in their book and their specific version of God and then you yank it out from under them. What are they going to do? Immediately accept evolution as real? Or are they going to retreat further into their shell?

I want to comment on what the DI has to say about this, but at the moment Friday has only started in the US (It's just become Saturday here) so I guess they haven't had anything to say. I'll check on this later on today and if they say something will add it here.