“God’s mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said Thursday.
“The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe,” Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.
“Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God,” he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica on the feast day.
While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth — and perhaps elsewhere — eventually emerged.”
Read more at MSNBC (Thanks Christopher C)
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It still, to this day, amazes me how many people can follow an ideal that has no grounds for existing!
There is no actual proof of a god and it all seems to be based upon nothing more than the idea that it is too amazing to believe the world happened by chance and so it must have been a big beardy guy in the sky!
I appreciate that many people find solace and meaning in religion which they might not find elsewhere but is it any different from a delusion such as believing you live in a world populated by Smurfs?
So, as well as a paedophile protector he’s also a plagiarist.
I believe that my pet dog knew of the science theory of the big bang and everything else was created by him too for you and me. Come on, because I say it do you believe it???
It seems like a pretty slippery slope, no? Shall we push our luck or lock our fingers together behind our heads and lean back all smug? I propose we do both!
Ha ha ha ha. Got to love the way religious types ascribe everything to him upstairs. The universe, inevitable result of the chemical and environmental state? No, god’s will. Life evolving, the inevitable result of the chemical and environmental state? No, god’s will. Testicles being on the outside where they look funny. Result of evolutionary pressure to keep sperm cool and therefore more lively? No, god’s will. Lol.
So everything wasn’t created in 6 days, that means the bible isn’t true? If its not right about that, does it mean its wrong about other things? What about the talking snake, that was my favourite bit!
So the whole creating the universe in seven days is out now then? I like it, surely then this paves the way to a huge Bible really edit?
So then why doesn’t it say so in the Bible? It doesn’t, It says that the Earth and presumably everything in the Universe was created in 7 days, not 14 billion years.
Yet another transparent, pathetic attempt at keeping his religion relevant in a world that does not need it and is no longer afraid to say that it does not want it.
Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity, as Ockham sets out with his metaphorical razor. This universe, since it’s existence has never had, and never needed a divine creator right up to and including the time when Ratzinger’s god, and the rest, were made up by higher thinking primates.
Correction: Everything in the Bible came into being in 6 days. God had a little rest on the seventh day because even (against the definition of the word) omnipotent beings get a little bit tired. It begs the question; what did he do on the eighth day?
Here one sees very clearly the difference between how scientific truth and religious “truth” is generated.
Regarding the Big Bang:
Science: Meticulous measurements. Expensive equipment. Regular re-measurements. Incorporation of any new available data. A huge theoretical model to support the theory. Constant re-evaluation of models and theory when new data comes in.
Religion: The pope got an idea in his head how to adapt reality to his dogma.
The fact that we still don’t know how the universe came into existence should rather encourage us to find out more about it than to withdraw on the narrow-minded position “God did it. We aren’t allowed to ask further”
i thought god created the earth and all the stars 4000 years ago is he saying that’s not true now another part of the bible not to believe i really hope in my life time we can prove religion is just made up of folk law and tales
“Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.”
Actually, the bible never states how many kings follow the star to Jesus.
Obviously CERN are attempting to make god.
I know some devoted anti-evolution Christians who are going to be bitterly disappointed to learn that their God apprently did create something which they labeled as pure lies.
Brought this Robin Ince sketch to mind…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV9yDhu5rBA
I wonder whether this pope suffered from a big bang to his head?!
The universe is not the result of chance well…. If it isn’t why is it such an enormous amount of empty waste land… (sorry waste void). If there was intelligent design wouldn’t it make more sense to not created billions of light years of empty space around us? Even if we are not alone than still the universe is a highly inefficient place to harbor life. Get your head out of the bible man and reason logically for a change! Than you’ll find it’s ludicrous that a God would create this and if he did he surely did not have a degree in engineering.
As soon as someone starts going down the “this can’t all be a product of chance” route, my heart sinks.
It shows an absolutely fundamental lack of understanding. No-one, who has read even a little bit about what the theory of evolution proposes, claims it suggests this.
It shows you’re arguing with someone too lazy to even understand the basics of what they’re disagreeing with. Although something tells me the pope knows this already and has other motives for pushing misleading comments…
Ha! What a bloody joke! You reckon that loser comes up with this stuff himself, or he pays people to do it?
For what it’s worth, I focus on evolution in my previous comment because that is the idea the pope is attacking here, albeit he’s trying to tar other aspects of science with the same brush.
The reason you can infer that is that no-one’s claiming the universe started randomly either, in fact people are looking for very specific answers to exactly what caused it.
That’s a step in the right direction. With luck, that’ll trickle into other offshoots of Christianity and the US will be allowed to teach Evolution as a true scientific theory, not as some idea Darwin came up with (that may or may not be a fact depending on what your Pastor says). Even when I was a Christian, this is what I believed–now I’m just not a Christian anymore…
…Wait, who’s kidnapped the pope and replaced him with a reasonable human being?! Condoms and the Big Bang? Where’s he going next?
This peadophile, Ratzinger, should not be spreading such nonsense.
The real story of the Big Bang -> http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/african-mythology.php?deity=BUMBA
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious – - the Pope would say that, wouldn’t he? The Pope’s got to make sure that he keeps God at the forefront of everything or the Pope might be out of a job.
So, dear pope,
And where did your ‘god’ come from? He was always there? What was that ‘there’ then exactly? There must have been a ‘there’ BEFORE it could become occupied. There must have been time too. God or not, eternity or not. That ‘there’ and ‘time’ could not have been created by intelligence or a life form or machine or whatever. You need space and time FIRST before you can have little thingies like gods and stuff. Wait, you say your god didn’t because he is god? OK, god was never and nowhere then. He only exists in your imagination (which I doubt really). Anyway, case closed.
PS, still waiting for a miraculous healing of an amputee. All the other ‘miraculous’ tricks are not really convincing. Derren Brown is far better.
Oh well if the Pope says so….
I think the pope has it wrong, science does not infer that the big bang was blind luck, only that the cause of the big bang is uncertain at the moment.
As a strong christian/catholic, i believe the pope is correct.
Well, at least he’s acknowledging the Big Bang actually happened. It’s a start anyway..
If God created the big bang, then what created God?
Some of the knee-Jerk responses are so predictable I could play anti-christian bingo. Instead of having a honest discussion, everyone falls into the pit of mocking and name-calling.
I was taught in a Catholic school where we openly discussed both theories, one physics teacher even challenged anyone who literally took the creation of the world as literal 6 days. I remember a talk with a Jesuit priest when someone put the ‘problem’ of the big-bang to him and his answer was. The big bang? Why Not?
The Pope is just commenting on something I was taught in school. The dispute is not on wether or not the big bang happened, but it’s cause. It makes sense when you do know science. The proof is those who ‘claim’ to be rational end up being irrational when the questions go too deep.
I don’t see the problem. God can lurk behind the big bang and the rest of us can continue happily evolving and twirling our DNA. Christians are never going to say that god isn’t real, so if they want to put him somewhere quiet and harmless that’s fine by me.
I’ve spoken to the pope about this and he said that he was misquoted whilst mashed on scrumpy.
His words, not mine.
I’ve noticed one or two people questioning the origins of God, and the way I understand it stems from some of the philosophies of St Thomas Aquinas’ (which are not so much proofs, but evidence). It goes something like this: The universe works on the laws of cause and effect. This is the foundation of all science. If those causes are traced back, we get to The Big Bang. However, due to the fact that the Big Bang exists in the universe, it too must have a cause, and the cause must be BEYOND the universe. There is no reason (based on this argument alone) to assume that this cause must be God, but there is also no reason to assume the laws of this universe effect anything beyond it, and so the laws of cause and effect need not apply, and THAT is why God can be said to need no cause.
@Physics-Student
What a load of bollocks!
Kevin, it’s not bollocks, it’s philosophy, and I find it an interesting line of thought. Does the ‘Big Bang’, as the event that initiated temporality, need a temporal cause itself? As PS said, this is no reason to assume the presence of a god (I’d find that a very unlikely assumption), but it’s a nice illustration of how confusing extratemporality can be for us as temporal beings.
Chicken and egg. (chicken.) Anyway, if the bible is the word of god then did he lie?
If the pope believes it was god who created the big band.. let him, gives him something to think about in his spare time, Haha. Doesn’t everyone live in there own little world, Where limitless things are possible?… He chooses to believe it was god. I don’t choose to believe it. Everyone has there opinions. People have had this debate for hundreds of years and argued over it. So why are we still arguing over it? I thought the whole point of evolution was to evolve into something better, and not to live in the past… If I have offended anyone, I am sorry.
So the one god created a big bang and blew himself into little gods ? Allah,Mohamed, etc ?
Yeah i met big bang lol. woooops.
Prove it ain’t so.
In my grandfathers’ day, we didn’t assume his day was a 24hour period – but a 67 year period.
In my fathers’ day, we found that his day lasted 52 years.
When the bible says ‘to God a day is equal to 1,000 years’ – we figure each of the 6 creative days lasted ‘a long time’ in the way humans measure time. Maybe thousands of years, maybe millions.
Think of the way a house is built. There’s a time for making blue prints, and a time for pouring cement, and a time for carpentry and a time for electrical work. Sometimes those days overlap but those activities are contained and compartmentalized by the supervisors of those jobs.
Silly to allow knee-jerk reactions like disregarding theories out of ignorance and arrogance.
How differently might it have turned out if he’d accidentally stood in front?
The sooner all religious dogma is shot in the head and buried in the back garden of history the better!
I wish I could find out though what happened before the big bang, then before that, then that as well. What I struggle with is the idea of something always being there…
If there is a God then who created him?
This also applies, for me with the creation of the universe too.
Ex Anglican.
Sherlock Holmes said “Base theory on fact not fact on theory”. Or something clever like that.
The Big Bang is just a theory.
Religions including Christianity are just theory.
To say “God exists” is the same as saying “The Big Bang occured”
It is stating fact on theory.
Hopefully the R&D in Geneva will turn one of these conflicting theories into fact without killing us all in the process. Happy 2012 people lol.
To all those who ask, “wasn’t the world made in 6 days according to the bible?”, I say this:
The bible was writen by human beings, who were told by God what to write. However, before the connonisation (compilation)of the Old Testament in 285 BC, alot of these books were passed down by word of mouth.
Genesis states that the world was made in 6 days, however, the hebrew word for day(hebrew being what it was originally writen in) can also mean ‘age’ or ‘eon’. As we humans like to embellish things to make them seem better, which sounds more powerful and scary to your enemies. A God on your side that created the world in 6 eons or a God that created the world in 6 days? So to answer your question, the original author of the Book of Genesis may well have ment 6 eons, not 6 days…
Even the idea of the “big bang” being the start of the universe is becoming outdated (see Dr Penrose’s latest musings) So unfortunately the pope us running the risk all religious people take when linking dogma to scientific theory ie what to do when the science moves on. Pro tip pope, keep to the bible and we’ll happily leave you alone. Oh n while your at it hand over the nonces to the cops. There’s a good lad.
hi kevin, it may be “a load of bollocks” but there’s money in it…
God is just a idea, there is no evidence he is real therefore should not be the answer for any of this.
HEY POPE GUY! Go get some solid scientific evidence then people will actually take what you say seriously…wait you can’t find it, TOO BAD!
I love how these religious people go on that god is the answer to everything, well sorry to break it to you, he isn’t.
I also love how this idea of a “god” caused so much fuss…
Oh, and if this guy was on the internet…the internet trolls would be like “OMG YAY! SOMEONE TO TROLL!!!” His god won’t save him then…just saying.
Its like the Pope is copying someone else’s homework…
“Blimey this big bang thing sounds convincing – better tell everybody it was God’s idea..!” :p
Bruce: Scientific theory is something other than ‘theory’ in regular speech. God, in scientific terms, wouldn’t be a theory. He’d be a hypothesis, and a badly funded one at that.
Kieran: Hebrew? Are you sure? I thought the bible was written in Arameic.
I’d find a god that created a world in six days a bit more scary than one that takes six eons. I’d consider the latter a bit slow, god-wise, as most of his competitor gods created THEIR worlds in a matter of weeks or less.
Has the Pope taken on board the implications of the proposed cosmic conformal cosmology I wonder!
I’m loving how everyone assumes they’re experts in Christianity.
The Bible does not specify 6 24-hour days, and as the Earth hadn’t been created til the second or third day, a twenty four hour period wouldn’t have existed. The Hebrew word for ‘day’ also means ‘period of time’. This is now considered the correct translation because later in the Bible the same word is used to mean 10,000 years.
And Catholicism isn’t another word for Christianity, it’s a type of Christianity. Christians don’t all follow the Pope and believe the Bible is a word-for-word guide to God.
Sorry for the rant but I’m sick of people lecturing about religion when they’ve never even picked up a Bible.
read this then you might actually want to re-discuss.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy#The_Watchmaker_argument
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions (and other belief systems) who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism. – not a man with a great big bushy beard
If the smashing protons created the big bang, then whjat created the smashing protons? If the multiverse created them, then what created the multiverse. This debate never ends. Maybe there is something eternal behind this (doesn’t have to be called God or remind the concept any known way), what does not born or die.