I have two stories about religion today, but they are related. Firstly, the Pope has conceded that evolution and the big bang really happened. It’s ok though, we can still believe in god. I’m not sure how he justifies this position however. He seems to be saying that evolution is fine. God created the first thing, and it evolved. Except, in my bible it says god created man fully formed. There are all sorts of issues with this. Apart from anything else, the pope is supposed to be infallible, though this one apparently doesn’t agree with the previous one who was also infallible.
Secondly, a new study appears to reveal that 2% of Anglican priests do not believe in god. The article in the Independent is so badly written it’s not really possible to work out what the original study actually said. The raw data is however available here. In fact the actual question on the study asked if the participant agreed with the statement, “I am not sure ‘God’ is more than a human construct”. Which is actually a totally different thing to saying that they don’t believe in god.
So lets go with the raw data and say, 2% of Anglican clergy partaking in the survey in UK stated that they “weren’t sure that god is more than a human construct”. That’s fairly alarming I would say. To put it in my own words, it seems that one in 50 preaching clergy are probably making it up because they don’t have any confidence that god, and therefore presumably the word of god, exists outside human imagination.
As an atheist, I have no theological investment here, but I’m going to make a moral judgement. If you’re taking a salary for delivering the word of god, but in fact knowingly deliver only bullshit, you’re pretty scummy, and in my book only about one rung up the slime-ball ladder from fake psychics.
One might expect heathens like myself to welcome stories like these emerging from the church, but I don’t. The church has for centuries denied evidence, persecuted scientists who turned out to be right, impeded human progress, and indoctrinated people with rubbish. Just because now they are back-peddling doesn’t mean they are putting things right, only that they realise they can’t continue to pull the wool over people’s eyes any longer. It’s more of a humiliating climb-down than an honourable move toward common sense.
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