How does this work, exactly. Does it mean that the Church refuses to accept that a Pope could be wrong or does it mean that a Pope cannot be wrong because the Holy Ghost won't allow it. The terms are synonymous. Try again. infallible –adjective 1. absolutely trustworthy or sure. 2. unfailing in effectiveness or operation; certain. 3. not fallible; exempt from liability to error, as persons, their judgment, or pronouncements. 4. Roman Catholic Church. immune from fallacy or liability to error in expounding matters of faith or morals by virtue of the promise made by Christ to the Church. inerrant –adjective free from error; infallible.
I tend to agree. Reality is the state of being actual or true. That which exists objectively and in fact. Aww, you let him make you twist yourself into a corner! This statement is simple untenable. Many very distinguished scientists are Christians or otherwise religious. Their science can be outstanding and I know such people. They have keen minds capable of abstract thought and have the ability to separate their science from their faith. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Science will never confute an article of faith, just as certainly as faith will never confute an article of science. It is only those faithful who attempt to show scientific "proof" of their beliefs or those few scientists who let religious beliefs get in the way of their work that will never rise to the top of the heap. Frankly, there aren't many of these.
Its more like the second one, but that is still not an entirely correct understanding. The Pope is only infallible in matters of faith and morals when he is teaching a doctrine. It does not apply to anything and everything a Pope says. He could incorrectly solve an equation or mis-identify a species of bird or say the 16th President ws James K Polk. But when making a docrtine over something like women being priests, gays getting married, or the Church's teaching on contraception he cannot teach in error. His judgement would be protected from error by the Holy Spirit. That is why church teachings do not change. What is true will always be true.
i read lots of books about science, and not one of them has been written by a christian. i understand that some of your co-workers might be good scientists and christians, but i am talking about guys who are ground-breakers, real thinkers. the kind of guy who wins a nobel prize or worked at los alamos or somes up with a groundbreaking new theory. not regular folk like your coworkers or my dad. a truly elite scientist who is also a christian, really doesnt exist. of course they are. you should watch my dawkins interview that i linked somewhere around here.
oh and to be clear, when i said "a christian biologist is a bad biologist", meant it as a respsonse to: "Christian biologist can tell you that evolution can be a foundation for the belief in a creator" in this context i am critical of the christian biologist, not a christian who is a biologist, and is removing his prejudices from his work. i am talking of a biologist who integrates his creator into his science, who is simply a bad scirntist.
Then you haven't read "On the Origin of Species", I suppose. Charles Darwin was a Christian. Yes they do. You know, some of my colleagues here at LSU are internationally respected in their fields despite their relative anonymity to someone like you. But what you don't consider is that scientists meet at national and international confereces quite frequently. I've met a broad spectrum of the scientific community and some of the top minds in the world including a couple of nobel laureates. Many are atheists, many are theists and most are simply private about it. But ackowledged christians and top scientists include: Isaac Newton Charles Darwin Louis Pasteur Galileo Galilei Johannes Kepler Nicolaus Copernicus Gregor Mendel Benjamin Franklin Linus Pauling Max Planc Enrico Fermi If you include Jews the list gets even longer. But you didn't really mean some of the most influential scientists of all time, did you. You mean today, right now. OK. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, has written a book which is just out: The Language of God. A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006). Or Nobel prize winner Charles Townes, a protestant Christian and Berkely physicist. I could go on and on, you really don't know what you are talking about here. Plenty of top scientists are non-religious too, probably most of them, but your statement that Christian scientists don't exist at the top levels is just wrong. They exist at every level in about the same percentage. Townes' views on religion just might interest you. Especially if you imagine that science and religion are mutually exclusive. Explore as much as we can
dr francis collins is alot less competent than people would have you believe. his government-backed genome project was half as competent as the pirivate one. i have listened to him speak and he is an idiot. in fact in the interview i linked in my dawkins thread they play a clip of him and you should listen to it, he is a moron. again, i think if you take a look at the really elite scientists, not the everyday guys who teach at lsu, i mean the top men in their field, basically none of them are christian, and almost none of them believe in a personal god of any kind. according to the journal nature: "Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists." furthermore: "among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0_fs.html there are quite a few scientists out there, who like you, believe in the possibility of a creator of some sort. but the percentage of christians in elite modern science is tiny. 200 years ago, technology was much more primitive and many more scientists believed, many of them even worked for the church, which used to be one of the few ways to pay for research. i am not going to argue your list, but i think the fact that you have Ben frankilin on there says alot about it, because he is positively not christian. neither is darwin. you clearly got that list from a christian website. you gotta work on those research skills.
To be fair, Darwin lost his faith only after his daughter died of illness, which doesn't suggest much about either the truth of his faith or his logical reasoning capabilities (given that he previously knew that the illness, death, and weakness of his children was most likely due to the fact that he married his cousin, I would question his decision making at that time)
sure, i guess i agree very slightly, and i think it is well known that darwin was not christian, and may even have have never been, in spite of the fact that he attended christian schools and was raised christian. so was i, that isnt saying much. in fact there is a whole wikipedia page for this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin's_views_on_religion i think the fact that darwin is on red's christian list says a little more about red's suspect research skills than it does about darwin.
