Re: [asa] Vatican Astronomer Replaced

You've clearly never met nor talked with Dr. Coyne. Nice! JimA

Janice Matchett wrote:

> Good riddance! ~ Janice
>
> Vatican Astronomer Replaced
> <http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1687772/posts>Evolution News
> and Views ^ | August 21, 2006 | Bruce Chapman
> Posted on 08/21/2006 11:16:59 PM EDT by johnnyb_61820
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1687772/posts [refresh browser]
>
> Pope Benedict XVI has replaced an evangelizing Darwinist, Dr. George
> Coyne, as director the Vatican Observatory, according to Zenit News. A
> Jesuit with a doctorate in astronomy, Dr. Coyne in recent years made
> himself the public scourge of Darwin critics and scientific proponents
> of intelligent design. Increasingly his theology resembled that of
> "process theologians" who believe that God is still learning and could
> not have known what his world was becoming.
>
> While media tended to avoid the pro-design statements of the pope over
> the past year (see " Is the Pope Catholic?
> <http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/05/is_the_pope_catholic.html>"),
> they frequently sited the hostile remarks of Dr. Coyne, sitting at his
> office at the University of Arizona, as supposedly representing those
> of "the Vatican." That could not have been well-received at the
> Vatican in Rome. Rumors that Coyne might be replaced have circulated
> for months.
>
> In the past year since he criticized the pro-design essay of Austrian
> Cardinal Schoenborn in the NY Times, Dr. Coyne has been feted at a
> number of unlikely gatherings where his job was to express Church
> support for Darwinism. At a meeting of the American Association for
> the Advancement of Science, Coyne pronounced in favor of a "fertile
> universe" where "chance and destiny embrace." The notes handed out for
> a talk given by Coyne by that title state:
>
> If we take the results of modern science seriously, it is
> difficult to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the
> sense of the scholastic philosophers. Science tells us of a god
> who must be very different from God as seen by the medieval
> philosophers and theologians. Let us ask the hard question. Could,
> for instance, God after a billion years in a fourteen billion year
> old universe have predicted that human life would come to be? Let
> us suppose that God possessed the theory of everything, knew all
> the laws of physics, all the fundamental forces. Even then could
> God know with certainty that human life would come to be? If we
> truly accept the scientific view that, in addition to necessary
> processes and the immense opportunities offered by the universe,
> there are also chance processes, then it would appear that not
> even God could know the outcome with certainty. God cannot know
> what is not knowable.
>
> (The Dance of the Fertile Universe
> <http://www.aei.org/docLib/20051027_HandoutCoyne.pdf> by George V.
> Coyne, S.J.)
>
> However, what even Fr. Coyne himself apparently could not know is that
> the Catholic Church, while endlessly tolerant of theological
> deviations these days, can't really have someone whose views
> contradict those of the Church representing himself around the world
> as "the Vatican."
>
> The new director of the Vatican Observatory is Dr. Jose Gabriel Funes,
> also an astronomer and a Jesuit--an Argentine rather than an Arizonan
> like Fr. Coyne.
>

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Received on Tue Aug 22 02:22:50 2006