CHRISTIANS should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict has said.
Criticizing the ‘Big Bang’ theory among other complex scientific ruminations, he said: “The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe.”
In a sermon to some 10,000-odd people in St Peter’s Basilica to mark the Ephiphany, said to be the day the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star, he said: “Contemplating it we are united to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God.”
Scientists believe the Big Bang led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.
Some theories, the pope said were ‘mind limiting’ because ‘they only arrive at a certain point… and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality.”
Scientific theories, he said, have left many questions unanswered on the origin and development of the universe and humans.
“In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality…we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth,” he said.
Pope John Paul and now Benedict have been consciously trying to shed the Roman Catholic church’s tag of being anti-science. The church gained this reputation after condemning Galileo for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun. However, Galileo was rehabilitated and the church.
Sadly, the Catholic church does not teach creationism – the belief that God created the world in six days – any more. It says the account of creation mentioned in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is an allegory for the way God created the universe.
