And consequently, non-Catholics for instance, do not accept the word of the Pope as the word of God in all cases.

Most of us agree that he is a spiritual leader, a figurehead of a faith, but he is still a man, and capable of being co-opted, and so just because he decides that Evolution is fine, it doesn't mean that everyone who believes that Jesus Christ is their saviour will accept that God set evolution in motion and did not directly create man.

Plenty of people still believe in the story of Adam and Eve and Eden, and the theory of Evolution in large part denies that, or at least leaves it as nothing more than a metaphor.

It all depends on how sure you are that the Bible is just metaphors, and how much you take to be literal. There are varying degrees of acceptance as well. Some people believe in evolution, but also believe that a certain group of people, the ancestors of the Israelites, perhaps, came separately from Eden, which would explain how they reproduced, or rather how their children reproduced, as if there were not other people outside of Eden, God would either have had to create spouses for the children of Adam and Eve, or those children would have had to mate with eachother.

For all of the way we're mocked around here and elsewhere, plenty of people are still fundamentalists, believing that the Bible speaks of literal events, that miracles like walking on water and creating food from nowhere can occur, and that our God did craft man personally, at a particular time, not as the result of some well-organized evolution.

Does that make sense?

Essentially, accepting the Pope's decision depends on whether you accept certain things in the Bible as more than metaphor.


Arok Manok - Ex-admin Extraordinaire
Future Post-Apocalypse Warlord



I'd rather be throwing a frisbee right now