The Pope and the Bible

The Pope declared that evolution and the big bang are real, historical events. He urged Roman Catholics to embrace current scientific theories as ‘required’ methods to understand existence. People like ourselves who regard the Biblical creation account as factual, noticed that he said, ‘When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so.’ ^1,2

The Pope basically told the Catholic Church to believe both the Bible and ‘science [evolution].’  That means that God is the Creator, but He created in such a way that evolution took place.

It is well known that the Catholic Church believes the pope’s proclamations are infallible: ‘Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church that states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error.’ ³

They base this on Jesus’ words to Peter, And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ ⁴

Just to remove any misunderstanding, science has to do with repeatable, observable, testable experiments. Things that happened in the past cannot be repeatedly tested. So evolution, said to be the account of how everything came to be, is not science, because it can never be tested and proved true by repeated experiments.

If the Pope meant the only kind of ‘Biblical’ evolution that is possible, namely changes over time (when children look different from the parents), or for example, that Anolis male lizards develop longer limbs on certain islands to escape from predators, ⁵ nobody would have raised an eyebrow. Nobody disputes those observable changes, but Darwinism is molecule to man evolution, and has never been proved true.

Blind faith in Darwin is the only way to believe that evolution is true. The person who trusts that the Bible is the infallible revelation from an omnipotent God, cannot reconcile God’s six day creation with slow evolutionary processes over millions of years.

Conclusion: The Bible is infallible because the Trinity, as its Author, is infallible. If a human being claims infallibility, and it contradicts Holy Scripture, we have to reject his claim.  The Bible is either the Word of God, or not. It is either true, or not. There are no shades of grey for the simple reason that man then has to decide what is true and what is not. If six day creation is not true, why would the claim that Jesus is the Son of God who came to die for our sins, be true?

Besides, to argue that six day creation is not true, but evolution is, is basically accusing the Holy Spirit of lying, since all Scripture is inspired by Him. ⁶  If the Holy Spirit tells us that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, then that’s it. Nobody, not even the pope, can claim otherwise.

Reference:

1. J Elliott, Pope Francis: Evolution is Real, God did not wave a ‘magic wand,’ CTVNews, October29, 2014
2. I Tharoor, Pope Francis says evolution is real and God no wizard, The Washington Post, October 28, 2014
3. Papal Infallibility, Wikipedia
4. Matthew 16:18,19
5. C Luskin,  Since When Is This News? Rapid Microevolution in Lizard Feet Reveals Little About the Origin of Species, Evolution News and Views, October 28, 2014
6. 2 Peter 1:21