Pope Pius XII’s Big Bang Creation doctrine:The courtship between Catholic faith and scientism reached a further low point when, on Nov. 22, 1951, twenty years after the Big Bang theory, the ultimate theory of evolution of everything was invented, Pope Pius XII decided to divinise that same secular natural story of origins against Fr Lemaître’s advice not to make “concordist” comments on science and Holy Scripture. The title of Pius XII’s talk was called ‘The Proofs for the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science,’ another address clothed in as holy a language as possible to give it spiritual and doctrinal credibility. Recall in his encyclical 1950 Humani Generis, he wrote of an ongoing investigation into evolution. It seems, one year later, in 1951, that investigation had ended:
‘It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty “Fiat” pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter bursting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial “Fiat lux” uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies.’ On the other hand, how different and much more faithful a reflection of limitless visions is the language of an outstanding modern scientist, Sir Edmund Whittaker (1873-1956), member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, when he speaks of the above-mentioned inquiries into the age of the world: “These different calculations point to the conclusion that there was a time, some nine or ten billion years ago, prior to which the cosmos, if it existed, existed in a form totally different from anything we know, and this form constitutes the very last limit of science. We refer to it not improperly as creation. It provides a unifying background, suggested by geological evidence, for that explanation of the world according to which every organism [including mankind?] existing on the Earth had a beginning in time. Were this conclusion to be confirmed by future research, it might well be considered as the most outstanding discovery of our times, since it represents a fundamental change in the scientific conception of the universe, similar to the one brought about four centuries ago by Copernicus.” It has, besides, followed the course and the direction of cosmic developments, and, just as it was able to get a glimpse of the term toward which these developments were inexorably leading, so also has it pointed to their beginning in time some five billion years ago. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator.’--- Pope Pius XII, 1951.
Yes, confirms Pope Pius XII, the changes to faith and science all began with Copernicus, whose heresy led to the cosmic development of a Big Bang theory of origins, the belief that caused Genesis to look like poetic cosmology. But there were other philosophical and theological consequences to the Pope’s placing the creative act of a triune God at the mercy of science’s Big Bang theory.
‘Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that we can refer “not improperly” to the initial singularity [the Big Bang] as an act of creation. What conclusions can we draw from it? That a Creator exists? Suppose still, for the sake of argument, that this, too, is conceded. The problem now is twofold. Is this creator theologically relevant? Can this creator serve the purpose of faith? My answer to the first question is decidedly negative. A creator proved by cosmology is a cosmological agent that has none of the properties a believer attributes to [the triune] God. Even supposing one can consistently say the cosmological creator is beyond space and time, this creature cannot be understood as a person or as the Word made flesh or as the Son of God come down to the world in order to save mankind. Pascal rightly referred to this latter Creator as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” not of philosophers and scientists. To believe that cosmology proves the existence of a creator and then to attribute to this creator the properties of the Creation as a person is to make an illegitimate inference, to commit a category fallacy. My answer to the second question is also negative. Suppose we can grant what my answer to the first question intends to deny. That is, suppose we can understand the God of cosmologists as the God of theologians and believers. Such a God cannot (and should not) serve the purpose of faith, because, being a God proved by cosmology he should be at the mercy of cosmology. Like any other scientific discipline that, to use Pope John Paul II’s words, proceeds with “methodological seriousness,” cosmology is always revisable. It might then happen that a creator proved on the basis of a theory will be refuted when that theory is refuted. Can the God of believers be exposed to the risk of such an inconsistent enterprise as science?’--- Marcello Pera.
So, was there, is there, a cosmology that refutes Pope Pius XII’s Big Bang theory as proof for a Triune God Creation? Yes, for back in 1543, Copernicus, the very person Pope Pius XII referred to in his address, had long written the following in his most famous book On the Revolutions, that if the geocentric stars are revolving at great speed around the Earth as Scripture reveals, then wouldn’t the stars fly outwards like children on a rotating carnival swing-ride, eliminating Hubble’s red-shift Big Bang theory as proof for nothing, let alone the creative act of God?
‘But why didn’t Ptolemy feel anxiety about the [geocentric] world instead; whose movements must necessarily be of greater velocity, the greater the heavens are than the Earth? Or have the heavens become so immense, because a vehement motion has pulled them away from the centre, and because the heavens would fall if they came to rest anywhere else.’-- On the Revolutions, Book 1, par 8.
Our final quote is from Chet Raymo, a well-known author and populariser who teaches physics and astronomy in Massachusetts.
‘The Big-Bang theory is only a provisional way-stop in a continuing inquiry into origins. It is possible to imagine a universe that had no beginning in time, and Stephen Hawking has been instrumental in investigating just such a possibility placing the so-called moment of creation off-limits for rational inquiry suggests that the lesson of Galileo has not been learned. Modern biology and neuroscience are other areas of potential conflict between the Church and science. Biologists of the next century will almost certainly create living organisms from inanimate materials. Computers may become fully conscious by any practical test of consciousness in the next century. Human consciousness and memory may also yield to scientific analysis. All these developments will present problems for a theology of the soul grounded in mind-body dualism.’--- Sky & Telescope of March 1993.
Where now Pope Pius XII’s ‘provisional’ creative act of God? And that is how they lowered the supernatural dogmatic Creation of God out of human minds.
Topic: ALETIA websight rejects Roman Martyrology as published under Pope Gregory XIII i (Read 3290 times)