Vatican says aliens could exist

[John G]

Tuesday, 13 May 2008 23:08 UK


Vatican says aliens could exist


By David Willey
BBC News, Rome


Artist's impression of a black hole at the centre of a remote galaxy (NASA handout - file image)
Father Funes says the universe is so vast that other life forms may exist


The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out.


Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.


Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world.


The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.


The official Vatican newspaper headlines his article 'Aliens Are My Brother'.


'Free from sin'


Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.


Asked about the Catholic Church's condemnation four centuries ago of the Italian inventor of the telescope, Galileo, Father Funes diplomatically says mistakes were made, but it is time to turn the page and look towards the future.


Science and religion need each other, and many astronomers believe in God, he assures readers.


To strengthen its scientific credentials, the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.

 

[dantem]

They had to semi-officially 'set the aim' on extraterrestrial life sooner or later. Let's meet the Vatican along with the 'love-and-light' crowd. What an achievement dudes!

They may also find a day on the calendar for St. Darwin now.

The dispute where all this 'rewriting' started may be that around 'intelligent design'. Funes, a Jesuit, replaced George V. Coyne S.J. (also a Jesuit), at the head of the Vatican Observatory.

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Coyne

Coyne has been a vocal opponent of intelligent design since at least August of 2005, when his article was published in The Tablet. This opposition was further publicized in November of 2005, when he was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." He was also interviewed for the BBC documentary A War On Science where he criticised intelligent design as being unscientific, and suggested that the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn was pressured by the think-tank the Discovery Institute to publish an article in the New York Times critical of evolution.

Coyne has been forthright in criticizing the Church's lukewarm admission of responsibility for its persecution of Galileo in the early seventeenth century.

He retired from the position in 2006 and was replaced by the Argentine astronomer José Gabriel Funes. As this followed closely Coyne's prominence in the debate over intelligent design, speculation arose that he was replaced due to his criticism of it and its supporters, particularly Cardinal Schönborn, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI. In a statement to the Arizona Daily Star Funes publicly rejected the idea that Coyne's retirement relates to his views on Intelligent Design. Coyne himself has said the idea was "simply not true". It was also revealed that Coyne is undergoing treatment for colon cancer.

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

Prior to the publication of the book Of Pandas and People in 1989, the words "intelligent design" had been used on several occasions as a descriptive phrase in contexts that are unrelated to the modern use of the term. The phrase "intelligent design" can be found in an 1847 issue of Scientific American, in an 1850 book by Patrick Edward Dove, and even in a 1861 letter of Charles Darwin. The phrase was used in an address to the 1873 annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science by Paleyite botanist George James Allman:

No physical hypothesis founded on any indisputable fact has yet explained the origin of the primordial protoplasm, and, above all, of its marvellous properties, which render evolution possible—in heredity and in adaptability, for these properties are the cause and not the effect of evolution. For the cause of this cause we have sought in vain among the physical forces which surround us, until we are at last compelled to rest upon an independent volition, a far-seeing intelligent design.

 

[ark]

The original article seems to be removed from L'Osservatore Romano" site, but it is still available from here:

_http://vaticandiplomacy.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/vaticano-per-padre-funes-lipotesi-sullesistenza-di-extraterrestri-non-contrasta-con-la-fede/

I wrote about it on my Polish blog today:

http://arkadiusz.jadczyk.salon24.pl/74935,index.html