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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Message-ID: <1186@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 3-Dec-84 19:40:06 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1186
Posted: Mon Dec  3 19:40:06 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 08:46:40 EST
References: <281@uf-csg.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 19

The modern, post 18th Century, Roman Catholic Church has always deferred
comment on the subject of evolution and the origins of life.  While the
Church is "conservative" in many senses, it has never subscribed to the
tenets of fundamentalism and literalism.  Scientific inquiry which does not
directly conflict with matters of morals (oh, I dunno, no fetal brain
transplants, or some such) has always been welcomed as a manifestation of
man's search for intellectual truth within God's Creation.  Faith and
scientific knowledge are not seen to be at opposites, but are always in the
position to be resolved, a modern manifestation of the Thomist arguments on
Faith and Reason.

The Church may remark on abuses of scientism and technology, warning of the
pitfalls of reductionism, but it rarely proscribes scientific inquiry.  For
example, even its rather Neanderthal attitudes on contraception would not
necessarily limit basic research on fertility.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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