Kolbe Center for the Study of Paganism!?
by Michael Fishwick
It is rather difficult to comprehend but, if you sympathize with the apostolate of the Kolbe Center, you are apparently a pagan. At least according to Brother Guy Consolmagno, a cosmologist, who is attached to the Vatican Observatory.
"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature God" quipped the Jesuit Brother.
This "superstition" appears to apply to the dogma of Papal Infallibility as well as belief in the literal historic truth of Genesis. Apparently Papal Infallibility has been a "PR disaster". "It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear", the Scotsman newspaper was told. See news.scotsman.com
Whilst it is true, as far as we know, that the Almighty doesn't whisper in the Holy Father's ear when making an ex cathedra pronouncement, it is also true that the Holy Ghost prevents the Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church making an erroneous proclamation.
"It's turning God into a nature God" is a statement that requires some mental gymnastics to figure out. It would appear that because creationists believe that God is supernatural, we mean that He is very, very natural. And what could be more natural than nature! Hence, we are turning God into a "nature God". If you are confused, please try not to worry about it too much. Confusion seems to reign supreme at the Vatican Observatory. As reported in an earlier news commentary on this site, the Director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. George Coyne, S.J., believes that God did not design him! And despite all the scientific evidence that Earth is uniquely designed for life in the universe, the Jesuit Brother is certain that one day we will meet and interact with space aliens. They may even need baptizing. Apparently, the special creation of man is no longer a doctrine to be believed. Writing in his book "Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist", the confused Jesuit asks the question: "Do aliens need to be saved?" and then answers, "Depends if they are subject to original sin or not". Perhaps Adam and Eve were the first spacemen, beating America by several thousand years, and maybe they left descendents elsewhere in the universe. After all, the Brother does consider that if alien life exists then that would make us cousins. Ah, the wonders of evolutionary philosophy! www.beliefnet.com/story/35/story_3519_1.html
www.arn.org/arnproducts/videos/v039sk.htm
This report is probably strange enough already. But it becomes even more like the "X-Files". It would appear that mental gymnastics are fundamentally ingrained within the evolutionary view of cosmology. The Schwassmann-Wachmann comet has been making news recently. It was discovered in 1930 and, as with all comets, it pursues an elliptical orbit around the sun. Comets are an enigma for those who believe in an immense age of the universe, because as they pass the sun they begin to disintegrate, forming a trail of debris that follows in their wake. The evolutionary hypothesis used to be that comets originated at the beginning of the solar system. However, modern cosmological observation has led to the realization that if our solar system was indeed immensely old, as claimed, there would be no comets left in existence. They would have all disintegrated completely by now. Most cosmologists have reluctantly recognized that this would indicate a relatively young solar system. edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/04/28/comet.breakup
In order to counter this observational evidence - evidence that destroys the evolutionary long-ages worldview - a number of cosmologists have philosophized that comets were not formed at the beginning of the solar system after all. They are continually being formed in what is known as an Oort Cloud. It is posited that the Oort Cloud is an enormous icy mass far away from the sun. Occasionally, so they say, a large lump of icy material somehow breaks away from the Oort Cloud, and eventually finds its way into the inner solar system, where it can be observed as a comet. But of course, the alleged Oort Cloud has never been observed or detected by science. It is pure imagination. www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/oort.asp
However, there is a further perplexing problem that evolutionary cosmologists cannot address successfully. Recent empirical testing of material collected from the tail of a comet that had been traveling the outer regions of the solar system, and is known to have been knocked off course, into the inner regions, has left them scratching their heads. As reported in an earlier news commentary, (see Comet Dust is Driving NASA Scientists Wild too!), it is now known for certain that comets consist of "fire and ice". That is, the mineral content collected from a typical comet, Wild 2, reveals minerals that only form at extremely high temperatures. The mineral elements are both within and mixed up with the ice. Such high temperature elements could not possibly have formed in an unknown Oort Cloud somewhere in the cold outer regions of space.
So yet another philosophical assumption must be made. It is claimed that the mineral particles are remains left over from the formation of planets. But yet, doesn't the evolutionist view of the formation of the universe say that planets were formed by the attraction of particles that somehow came from somewhere and just happened to be floating around in space? If trillions and trillions of these particles were somehow attracted towards each other, and somehow joined together to make solid masses, why are there particles left over that were not attracted to the developing planets? And where did these particles come from in the first place? The "Big Bang", cries the evolutionary cosmologist. It's the explosion of an enormous primordial gas cloud. But where did the gas come from? Atomic chemistry? And where did the atoms come from?... Never mind. Evolutionary cosmology is truly confusing. It is assumption, upon assumption, upon assumption. It is certainly not science. It might be a best-selling work of science fiction perhaps, but not science. It is undoubtedly a religiously held philosophical belief, and yet, it is creationists who are accused of "turning God into a nature God".
It would appear that it is the Vatican Observatory that fits the bill for accusations of paganism and even astrology. We cannot in justice call the practice of this magical belief astronomy. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: When man ceases to believe in Our Blessed Lord, he doesn't end up believing in nothing - he believes in anything!