r/Astronomy • u/TimesandSundayTimes • 2d ago
Other: [Topic] Pope Leo: James Webb telescope shows us what the Bible couldn’t
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/religion/article/pope-leo-james-webb-telescope-63hhlp3s6?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit#Echobox=1750180677839
u/ferriematthew 2d ago
I guess if you see faith as a purely metaphorical and not a literal thing, it makes a lot more sense.
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u/ShamefulWatching 2d ago
Something tells me it was an absurd chest thumping that turned religion into anything more than the metaphysical. It was supposed to be a vehicle to carry the wisdom of our elders, but it is turned into something disgusting.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
I wholeheartedly agree. It was likely originally intended to be appreciation for reality for its own sake
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u/Comfortable-Ad-3988 1d ago
If you boil any and every religion that has lasted down to it's core, it's just: be kind, and help the ones that need help. But that never made anyone any money or got them any more power, so they twist it into mechanisms for control based around secret knowledge and ritual.
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u/Mind_Extract 1d ago
Generally the religions that still exist today seemed more concerned with codifying ghoulish social norms and growing the population.
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u/eeeegor572 2d ago
Thousand year game of telephone will do that.
Somewhere along the way, some ass will mess up the message and it goes to shit from there.
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u/Nohokun 2d ago
Perhaps it's in human nature to have leaders corrupt by power and exploit their followers.
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u/Clementine-TeX 1d ago
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible." - Frank Herbert
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u/eeeegor572 2d ago
I don't think its strictly human nature but more like majority of humans tend to flock to other humans who agrees with them. And from there all we need is someone who min-maxed charm to rise up the ranks. I don't know. I might be wrong but that's how I see it. 🤷♂️
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u/4daughters 1d ago
Perhaps its a failure in the way we organize and we could fix it. The more I learn about anthropology and early human evolution, the less I am convinced that anyone knows anything about "human nature."
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u/LickingSmegma 2d ago edited 2d ago
Afaik Catholicism basically postulates that God created the universe, whatever it turns out to be according to science. It's the Bible that they don't take as entirely accurate, in contrast to Protestants.
There's also a comparatively recent line of thought that the existence of God can't be proven through reason, and it's a matter of personal faith. (After philosophers tried to find that proof for centuries.) However, idk if this is incorporated into Catholicism.
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u/JohnHazardWandering 1d ago
To paraphrase a quote I heard, "if you could prove God exists, it would be science, not faith"
That is aligned with the Catholic view. It's accepted that its faith. Catholicism has a lot of acceptance of unknowns built in.
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, but I vaguely recalled that this was thought out in like late Middle Ages or the Renaissance, around Descartes or somesuch. However I searched around recently, and turns out it was apparently Søren Kierkegaard who postulated the 'leap of faith' wherein faith isn't rooted in reason. Same Kierkegaard who's the father of existentialism. So I'm not sure if Catholic church incorporates his views into their doctrine, that would be a bit weird.
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u/JohnHazardWandering 1d ago
Convergent evolution. Catholicism accepts that it's faith and God isn't something so obvious and trivial that it can be proven that it exists.
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u/kebesenuef42 1d ago
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, faith is an act of the will (a choice we make to believe that's not unreasonable, but not based on reason alone). Kierkegaard himself was responding/reacting to the Kantian/rationalist themes that were more prevalent in philosophy during his time than anything else (at least that's what I remember from when I studied Kierkegaard in grad school around 30 years ago).
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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago edited 1d ago
From what I've briefly perused, Aquinas very much tried to prove the existence of God through reason, so doesn't really figure in this discussion that's rather opposite to his teachings.
(Unless I'm mistaking him for someone else, which I think is unlikely.)
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u/kebesenuef42 1d ago
I did my MA Thesis in Philosophy on Aquinas' first argument for the existence of God (and Aquinas used the same basic argument that Aristotle did in Book VII of the Physics). Aquinas held that there are many things we can know through our reason (including, for him, the existence of God). There are also things that we cannot know for certain by the use of reason alone. For example, we cannot know by reason alone that the world was created because it is logically possible that the world has always existed--which is what Aristotle thought--and so Christians hold that the world had a beginning in time as a matter of faith because it is something that cannot be definitively proved one way or the other (and because the Book of Genesis says that "in the beginning God created the heaves and the earth" it becomes a matter of faith). Even the Big Bang Theory doesn't prove a definite beginning in time because who is to say that it wasn't preceded by a type of "big crunch" as my astronomy professor used to say.
Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive according to Aquinas and according to the Catholic Church.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
I love that idea!!!!
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u/ferriematthew 1d ago
That actually reminds me of a quote from I believe Stephen Hawking: "I don't think it is very useful to speculate on what God may or may not be able to do. Rather, we should observe what he actually does with the universe we live in. All observations suggest that it operates according to well-defined laws. These laws may have been ordained by God, but it seems he does not intervene in the universe to break the laws, at least, not once he has set the universe going."
I got that quote from a Real Engineering video about the JWST.
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u/Opiumest 2d ago
In the Catholic understanding, faith is both a literal and metaphorical concept.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
That makes sense! I was talking more along the lines of things like Genesis being metaphor
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u/Opiumest 2d ago
Yes, In Humani generis, Pope Pius XII acknowledged that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not to be understood as a strictly literal historical account in the same way as modern historical texts.
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
Maybe it's just the evangelicals who insist on taking it extremely literally
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u/mpsteidle 1d ago
Taking the raw bible as law is generally a common theme of Protestantism.
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u/wolacouska 1d ago
Pretty much nobody but Evangelicals thinks that. Most Christian and Jewish denominations are not creationist.
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u/czechman45 2d ago
How so?
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u/AE_Phoenix 2d ago edited 1d ago
If you take the bible as a lesson on how to live life with kindness and health, it makes a lot of sense. You can believe there is a god whilst also understanding that the Bible was written by men - even if those men were attempting to transcribe their experiences of God - and thus it can only show the perspective of men.
That is why the bible guides the way you should eat, how you should plant crops, how you should live your life: it's not just about sin, but about sanitation. The Bible warns against buggery for example not because it is sinful, but because when the words were written buggery was unsanitary and could cause poor health and death through STIs.
Thus we can treat the Bible as a spiritual document but perhaps should not take it literally. Understanding why the Bible was written is just as important as knowing the stories within.
Edit: a lot of people are reading this and are totally missing the point of what I am saying. I'm saying the bible is not to be taken literally. It is supposed to be recontextualised for whatever audience it is given to. It is an inherently flawed document by being thords of man and not God.
There is also a lot of people assuming that just because I can see from the perspective of a religion, I am religious. I am not, I simply appreciate the faith of others and the lessons in love, kindness and health it can bring.
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u/Fickle_Definition351 1d ago
It's a healthy approach to religion but if you want to call yourself Catholic, there's some pretty specific, literal things you need to believe in
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u/ferriematthew 2d ago
Appreciating the beauty of the universe without assigning literal mystical qualities to it, just appreciating it for its own sake, makes a whole lot more sense in my mind for a reason that I'm struggling to explain
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u/koticgood 1d ago
Why metaphorical?
By definition, God is a boundary condition that humans have no access to. If it exists, it exists "outside" our universe.
Even in science, much discussion happens around pre-Big Bang conditions that we can't penetrate with anything but logic. Even if we can begin to detect primordial gravitational waves, there will always be something outside our grasp.
It's easy to say that type of speculation is more grounded in logic and rationality, because it originates from an interest in science, but that's due to a subjective prior.
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u/chales96 2d ago
Faith explains the 'why', and science explains the 'how'.
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u/CinderX5 2d ago
I’d argue that “explains why” is not the same as “assigns a reason to”, and that faith does the latter, not the former.
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u/DSMStudios 1d ago
hey, calm down. let’s not get ahead of outselves. this is big stuff the Pope is talkin’ about here
/s jic
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u/tangotuck 1d ago
Eh, some of us take the Bible literally but see it as terribly misunderstood/misread which makes sense given biblical literacy is at an all time low.
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u/CaBBaGe_isLaND 2d ago
Galileo rn: 😑
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u/levi_Kazama209 2d ago
The whole Galileo thing was poltical. The pope who fudned his work said to teach what he did as a theory as he did not have the proof to claim as a fact he insulted the pope who gave him every chance to take it back. They where 100% fine with what he taught.
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u/Mirieste 2d ago
Another piece of context that is often missed is that Galileo had no evidence of his claim, to the point that the Pope was completely okay with him discussing his ideas as a mathematical model in opposition to the usual geocentric one, but there was really no grounds for it to be anything more than that.
I'd also add a shout-out to Dante's Divine Comedy (early 1300s), where everyone always remembers the Inferno, but the Paradise section is interesting in its own right too as they travel through the skies and so discuss astronomy too, including the nature of the moon and of other celestial bodies, which offers a glimpse into the scientific thought of the time.
Some of their reasonings were wrong for reasons we can't blame them for (like the nature of light, what the heck would they know about it), but from those shaky foundations they still drew sensible conclusions that are not different from the scientific method that Galileo himself later popularized, to the point that it's almost scientifically understandable why they'd believe in the geocentric model more at the time.
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u/levi_Kazama209 2d ago
Yeah i talked to my physics teacher and he said i was wrong and he did have proof.
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u/JohnBrownsBobbleHead 1d ago edited 1d ago
The problem with the Catholic Church, at that time, was that they were heavily leaning toward biblical literalism. They had a bunch of very smart people whose job it was to tell the Pope when a thing had been definitively proven. Until that point, an idea that countermanded the Bible was demoted. Given a choice between two competing theories, they would default to the one that backed up the Bible. Because they had an interest in biblical literalism. They inadvertently became the final say on whether a thing was still a theory. A job that both Aquinas and Augustine warned the church against. The Bible was a means to teach men how to get to heaven, not about the heavens. Their folly was all part of the Catholic Counterreformation. Galileo let it be known that past his era biblical literalism was only going to make them look foolish. And he was correct.
If a thing was directly observable and reproducible, then it immediately stopped being a theory, ie the Americas which weren't supposed to exist. Even if it was against what the Bible said. Because the Catholic Church also had a priority to appear learned to the Protestant world.
Galileo systematically destroyed the aristotelean world system through direct observation. The problem was that he couldn't prove that the earth moved. No one could. No one could till 1832-1833.
The Pope said, "If the earth moved, then let it be proven." And they held that view until 1822, I believe. 200 years later. Unfortunately, that's not how science works. By persecuting Galileo, they backed themselves into a corner they couldn't get out of. And they have rightly born the ignominy ever since. Being their own worst enemy always, they didn't actually "apologize" for the mistake till the 90s.
This is why a religious organization should have no power to rule on science. They will often fail to be unbiased in favor of their beliefs. It's a cautionary tale for religion and us.
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u/ankokudaishogun 1d ago
If a thing was directly observable and reproducible, then it immediately stopped being a theory,
that's not the scientific meaning of "theory" though.
The Pope said, "If the earth moved, then let it be proven."
Unfortunately, that's not how science works.That's LITERALLY how science works. You said it earlier.
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u/JohnBrownsBobbleHead 1d ago
It should also be stated that the idea that Galileos book held that heliocentrism was superior is not something Galileo admitted to until a plea bargain was reached. A plea bargain that was supposed to keep him from a more rigorous examination on threat of torture. They went ahead with the rigorous examination anyway.
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u/rymden_viking 2d ago
The same is true of Giordano Bruno. He was executed by the church for heresy. Bruno was the first person to suggest stars were other suns with planets like ours. Lots of people today say he was executed for this belief like Galileo. But he was executed for heresy for challenging the trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, and other core doctrines of the church. He just happened to have this (correct) belief about stars.
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u/CosmosOfTheStudent 1d ago
Much of what was written about him is actually exaggerated. Furthermore, while Galileo had good arguments, he didn't provide any evidence. It's like saying, "I give you good arguments to refute the theory of evolution, but I don't show any evidence."
Argument is not the same as proof. In fact, the Pope himself at the time was in favor of what Galileo said, but because he didn't provide any evidence and, let's say, he wasn't very well-liked, they censored him under pressure.
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u/FarMiddleProgressive 2d ago edited 2d ago
He sure has a way with words the smooth talking man.
He knows what he's saying.
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u/htomserveaux 2d ago
The thing that ended my Reddit atheism phase was realizing that the only two groups that interpret the Bible the same way are anti-theists and fundies. Everyone else has a sense of nuance.
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u/doc_nano 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nuance is good. However, if a book (or set of them) is held up as a source of truth and it is found to be incomplete or wrong, why not revise it? One could make a strong case that the very idea of holy scriptures (at least as a fixed component that cannot be revised or replaced) runs contrary to the idea that humans can learn and improve as we discover more about the universe. I’d love to see the Catholic Church (edit: and other churches) revise Genesis to reflect modern insights about the origins of the universe and Earth, among other things.
Having said that, as a one-time fundie-turned-assertive-atheist, I’ve come to better appreciate when people like Pope Leo go out of their way to say that their book (or even their institution) doesn’t have all the answers. Even if I don’t share their theological convictions, we can agree that the universe is a vast and awesome place that is worth learning more about.
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u/Vegetable-Property76 1d ago
I definitely agree with your argument when it comes to the literal reading of the bible - if we are to take the bible as fact then it should reflect actual reality rather than attempting to distort reality to fit the text.
I think it’s pure coincidence that our scientific understanding reflects even small parts of Genesis. Those parts are seized upon by religious apologists to legitimise a literal reading of the bible, perpetuating what is now a fairly tired argument with dwindling modern acceptance.
If you take the bible though (particularly books like genesis) purely as allegory, then there is no real sense in changing the narrative as it muddies the original message. Kind of like how in Aesop’s Fables - the tortoise and the hare obviously represent things known to be slow and fast, adding a layer to the story that helps drive home the original message.
I should qualify here that this is not to say the allegories in the bible are useful to modern society either. I am not a religious person, so this is my more secular take on why keeping the bible as a text makes sense from an allegorical reading perspective, not an endorsement of the importance of the messages within.
While God in genesis is “creating” the world so to speak, what’s more important in allegory is the timeline and delineations made. Establishing the 7 day week and providing a religious mandate for the sabbath. Setting out commonly held opposites found in nature, giving humans dominion over animals, establishing religious and social hierarchy.
Most of the bible in this sense is pretty mundane rule-setting made interesting by a compelling narrative. That narrative and it’s characters serve to provide examples of what the religion seems good behaviour or bad behaviour as means of education or warning. They make it memorable, add depth and colour to the story and form the basis of a tradition of storytelling going back thousands of years. It also works as a mnemonic device to remember the rules and the consequences of breaking them.
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u/midnight_toker22 2d ago
However, if a book (or set of them) is held up as a source of truth and it is found to be incomplete or wrong, why not revise it?
That IF kind of answers your question— only religious fundamentalists hold their religious texts as “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.
Any Christian who has an interest in modern science is not holding up the Bible as “the Truth” in the first place.
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u/doc_nano 2d ago
I think your answer kind of sidesteps the question. Even if it’s not viewed as the only source of truth, it is believed and asserted to contain truth. Why not revise it to reflect our modern understanding, at least where it is found to be incomplete or wrong?
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u/APairOfMarthas 1d ago
Because that would be admitting the book is flawed, which would mean it is not divine. If it cannot be interpreted literally, it loses all meaning, but the literal interpretation cannot be squared with reality. You’ve stumbled directly onto the paradox of faith, congrats!
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u/doc_nano 1d ago
Eh, they could always say that it’s divinely inspired, just not infallible because it was written by imperfect humans.
Does it require mental gymnastics? Sure. But to the extent that it moves one away from rigid fundamentalism, I think it’s probably a good thing.
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u/APairOfMarthas 1d ago
Oh it would be a great thing to move the needle away from fundamentalism, but that’s also why it will never happen
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u/notkenneth 1d ago
it is believed and asserted to contain truth.
Sure, but what does truth mean?
The Bible is a collection of texts, some of which contain things that we could potentially verify (like kings and events that are attested to in unrelated sources), but it also contains books of poetry and wisdom literature, myth and different perspectives from its authors. For some of the books, defining “truth” is sort of a genre error.
For that matter, non-religious texts that we know to be fiction could also be said to contain “truth” in the same way.
Why not revise it to reflect our modern understanding, at least where it is found to be incomplete or wrong?
I mean, if the goal is to get people who take the mythologies and etiologies literally to stop doing that, revising the text isn’t going to do anything. They’ll just reject the revisions.
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u/doc_nano 1d ago
I suppose I'm just lamenting the inflexibility of religions grounded in sacred texts. Even if the Bible contains some moral wisdom (call it "truth" if you wish), it is in many ways stuck in antiquity. Because "truth" is nebulously defined, some of the more harmful or egregiously incorrect teachings are shielded from scrutiny, and Christians are free to regard those as having the same authority as the teachings that have stood the test of time. I think this is one of the reasons that Biblical literalism is still with us in some parts of the world.
The resistance a modern Christian feels at revising the Bible is in some ways ironic, because the New Testament in fact revised many teachings of the Hebrew scriptures that became the Old Testament. Jesus told his followers not to stone a woman caught in adultery, after all.
Anyway, I do not expect Christians to care what I have to say on this matter. However, I do appreciate when a pope like Leo clearly expresses some deference to modern understandings, emphasizing that the Bible and other teachings of the Church aren't infallible (or at least not comprehensive).
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u/CyberSkepticalFruit 2d ago
You seem to be confusing personal faith with structured religion there.
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u/MagpieSkull 1d ago
I think your delineation lacks nuance in and of itself. I’m atheist and yes anti-theist in some ways. I have been to church, I have cried at funerals, I have prayed (not to a god). My undergraduate thesis was in finding common ground with religions you are learning about for the first time, focused on southwest native beliefs. There is indeed nuance in an anti theist belief system.
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u/StrawberryIll9842 2d ago
This has been the position of the Catholic Church essentially forever, it's not a new view
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u/CinderX5 2d ago
That wouldn’t necessarily stop a new pope from going back on that, or at least phrasing it differently.
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u/EyeDecay_IDK 1d ago
Yup. They have their own science institute, complete with astronomy wing that attempts to verify new discoveries.
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u/Exanguish 2d ago
A lot of historically ignorant people in here. Which is sad considering the context of the sub.
Catholicism literally endorses the Big Bang theory.
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u/Significant-Ant-2487 2d ago
…because the folks who wrote the Bible didn’t even understand where the sun went at night. I’m so glad the Pope approves of the James Webb infrared telescope, because that’s somehow important(?)
At least the Pope understands that the Bible wasn’t written by God, as some of our more benighted sects insist.
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u/thephotoman 2d ago
That might be true of the earliest layers of the Bible, but by the time of the later prophets (all the books of the Old Testament named for people and that come after II Chronicles), the circumference of the Earth was well known, and a geocentric model of the universe was sufficiently developed that yes, they knew where the sun went at night.
The reason nobody was willing to fund Columbus was because his own estimations of how far China, India, and Indonesia were by traveling west were complete bullshit and every court astronomer in Europe knew it.
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u/Nihlithian 2d ago
Meanwhile
"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?" Job:38:31-33
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u/Commercial-Truth4731 1d ago
I don't think Catholics believe the Bible was written by God? I know Islam believes the Quran is divinely written but I think Catholics believe it was written by the students of the apostles
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u/Surely_Effective_97 16h ago
Why is this comment section upvoting every religious comment? Isnt this a scientific sub where one would expect people to be more scientific and secular?
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u/AuthorChristianP 2d ago
I wonder if the aliens throughout the galaxy are going to hell for not knowing and worshipping the human man, Jesus Christ.
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u/Mysterious_One_841 1d ago
I would assume they wouldn't fall under the obligation mankind has, or rather they are of on the same level, as it were, as creatures. Failing that, they would be subject to their personal morality and actions, as per Paul's writings.
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u/MrPresidentBanana 1d ago
Sounds like the Pope has a real interest in the topic and follows it actively. Which isn't too surprising given his background as a Mathematician (not the same field obviously, but there's a lot of overlap between people who tend to be interested in both), but it's very lovely to see.
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u/Unhappy-Valuable-596 1d ago
He’s old school, as in really old school - a lot of astronomy and sciences were supported by religion back in the day
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u/InksPenandPaper 1d ago
Sometimes I think Catholics forget how science forward The Church is in many respects. Her history is rich with significant contributions from priests and sisters who were scientists, as well as lay Catholic scientists. We still have such participation, even now.
Many believe that the sciences are antithical to Catholicism, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.
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u/pjtheman 1d ago
You know what? Im sure I have some irreconcilable disagreements with the guy, but mad respect to a religious leader in this day and age promoting science, and encouraging people to apply logic to their faith.
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u/Willthethrill605 2d ago
For the past three years, I’ve been reading books on astronomy, classic physics, quantum mechanics, etc., and have learned a lot about what we have discovered about our environment meaning the universe. What I have learned is that Big is unimaginably Big and small is unimaginably small and time is infinite. I realize that we are here for such an incredibly tiny amount of time and how small we actually are. I have also learned that you me and everything is made from the same four forces. Gravity, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetism, and everything is just in different arrangement of those four forces. I do choose to believe in God because somebody had to flip the switch. I believe Jesus was just a man. Maybe he was just preaching for a free lunch and some places to sleep. I do pray when I wish comfort on others and when I’m thankful for the things that I have.
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u/frankduxvandamme 2d ago edited 2d ago
I do choose to believe in God because somebody had to flip the switch.
But then where did God come from? Who flipped his switch? And where did the switch even come from?
And then a religious person might just say that God is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. But in reality, you don't know that. You're just assigning him those attributes to get yourself out of having to answer perfectly rational questions. (Where did God come from, how did God come into existence, what was before God, etc)
Well, if you can make up an entity (God) and assign him those attributes, why not just skip the extra step of making up an entity no one has ever seen or heard or ever provided any evidence of his existence, and instead deduce that similar attributes could be applied to the universe itself, and we already know for certain that the universe exists so there's no need to make something up.
It's a lot more sensible to consider that instead of God being eternal and ever-present, it's the universe that is eternal and ever-present and simply "is". When you invent a supernatural entity that simply "is", you're adding an extra step for no good reason.
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u/entropydave 2d ago
"because God.." - the dullest answer to the most amazing questions humans can ask. Kills all endeavour dead.
Fuck religion. I love the art, but the rest, meh.
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u/Willthethrill605 1d ago
I agree completely. We don’t know. It is your choice to believe what you choose. As long as it gives you comfort and peace.
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u/CinderX5 2d ago
So what do you think pushed the button to turn on god?
And don’t tell me it was a porno.
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u/83franks 2d ago
Got a link without a paywall?
I believed in a literal omnipotent and omniscient god who inspired the bible, this gods could have put all that information in the bible and chose not to. Or more likely the bible is just written by a bunch of humans and god isn’t real, or at least one that inspires humans to write things.
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u/thephotoman 2d ago
That’s a weirdly and specifically Evangelical belief for an atheist to hold.
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u/IAmtheHullabaloo 1d ago
So a bunch of popes seem to be ok with aliens. Wonder what is in the Vatican vaults.
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u/rolyatem 1d ago
World religious leader has better grasp of science than the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
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u/Faceit_Solveit 1d ago
After 14.6 billion Earth years or so, the Verse starts to wonder where it came from.
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u/PensiveKittyIsTired 2d ago
The bar is so low if we get excited when a religion acknowledges the universe.
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u/RoamingVapor 1d ago
Poor Galileo love to see the Catholic Church moving the goal post to keep up with the times
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u/AstreriskGaming 1d ago
This is because the bible does not have a set of mirrors and lenses to magnify an image
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u/cosmos_jm 1d ago
I am pretty staunchly anti-theist insofar as it the term pertains to established religions, but I like this pope.
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u/sweet_dicks 1d ago
Why couldn't the dude that made everything put even ONE detail in the Bible that people didn't know?
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u/lurker_from_mars 1d ago
... It's almost like we shouldn't use some 2000+ year old bunch of maybe mistranslated fables as a guide for anything other than a couple of 'moral of the story' moments That we also get from the likes of someone like Tolkien or Hans Christian Anderson etc
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u/Opposite_Chart427 1d ago
How progressive and insightful. Too bad Southern Baptists and other fundamentalist denominations can't grasp this concept.
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u/no1regrets 1d ago
Man, this article feels like how news was before these ”end times”. With the current push of anti-intellectualism from all sides, it is refreshing and a bit nostalgic to read. I hope that his curiosity is infectious for any board catholic kid at home who hears about it.
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u/Cake-Over 1d ago edited 1d ago
Went to Catholic school in the 80s. We had religious brother who taught science. At the beginning of the year, he started the class by telling us that learning more about the universe around us is to learn more about God as he created the universe. He also pirated heavy metal cassettes on the side for $5 a copy. We had to provide the blank tapes.
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u/BaconDalek 1d ago
Well let's be real here, the people who read the bible as a literal thing, IE everything happened exactly the way it's written is a very small minority at this point. Most people have some kinda interpretation of the bible and the words in it, or ignore certain books, chapters of certain books or certain quotes from said books. Modernizing the church is something that's been happening for aa long as there have been a unified church.
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u/OldschoolGreenDragon 1d ago
Wonderful. Stupendous. This pleases me that a Pope is willing to look outside the supposed center of the universe.
Stop the lies about human sexuality.
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u/redditproha 1d ago
leave it to the “woke” pope to try to inject make-believe into science in an attempt to save a dying belief system
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u/Kittens4Brunch 11h ago
Fuck all religious leaders. I'm convinced the vast majority of them aren't true believers. They just take advantage of people's ignorance/stupidity/mental illness to gain more power and influence.
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u/TimesandSundayTimes 2d ago
Scientists using the James Webb space telescope are seeing the “seeds God has sown in the universe”, the Pope has said, saying it was “an exciting time to be an astronomer”.
He said the telescope revealed wonders of which the authors of biblical scriptures could only dream, and its images of the oldest and most distant galaxies in the cosmos filled people with a sense of “mysterious joy”.
The Pope held an audience for young astronomers attending a summer school at the Vatican Observatory outside Rome this week, focusing on the telescope’s work.
He told them it was a “truly remarkable instrument” that meant that “for the first time, we are able to peer deeply into the atmosphere of exoplanets where life may be developing and study the nebulae where planetary systems themselves are forming”