VATICAN CITY, 31 OCT 2008 (VIS) - Today the Pope received members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences whose plenary assembly is meeting from 31 October to 3 November on the theme of: "Scientific Insight into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life".
At the beginning of his address, the Holy Father asserted that both Pius XII just as John Paul II highlighted the fact that "there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences. Philosophy in its early stages had proposed images to explain the origin of the cosmos on the basis of one or more elements of the material world. This genesis was not seen as a creation, but rather a mutation or transformation".
"In order to develop and evolve, the world must first 'be', and thus have come from nothing into being. It must be created, in other words, by the first Being who is such by essence".
"To state that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments is the provident wisdom of the Creator is not to say", Benedict XVI continued, "that creation has only to do with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. It implies, rather, that the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously".
While recalling that Galileo "saw nature as a book whose author is God in the same way that Scripture has God as its author", the Pope emphasized that "this image also helps us to understand that the world, far from originating out of chaos, resembles an ordered book; it is a cosmos".
"The distinction between a simple living being and a spiritual being that is 'capax Dei', points to the existence of the intellective soul of a free transcendent subject". This is why, he concluded, "the Magisterium of the Church has constantly affirmed that 'every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not 'produced' by the parents - and also that it is immortal'. This points to the distinctiveness of anthropology and invites exploration of it by modern thought".
AC/SCIENCE EVOLUTION UNIVERSE/ACAD VIS 20081031 (340)
At the beginning of his address, the Holy Father asserted that both Pius XII just as John Paul II highlighted the fact that "there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences. Philosophy in its early stages had proposed images to explain the origin of the cosmos on the basis of one or more elements of the material world. This genesis was not seen as a creation, but rather a mutation or transformation".
"In order to develop and evolve, the world must first 'be', and thus have come from nothing into being. It must be created, in other words, by the first Being who is such by essence".
"To state that the foundation of the cosmos and its developments is the provident wisdom of the Creator is not to say", Benedict XVI continued, "that creation has only to do with the beginning of the history of the world and of life. It implies, rather, that the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously".
While recalling that Galileo "saw nature as a book whose author is God in the same way that Scripture has God as its author", the Pope emphasized that "this image also helps us to understand that the world, far from originating out of chaos, resembles an ordered book; it is a cosmos".
"The distinction between a simple living being and a spiritual being that is 'capax Dei', points to the existence of the intellective soul of a free transcendent subject". This is why, he concluded, "the Magisterium of the Church has constantly affirmed that 'every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not 'produced' by the parents - and also that it is immortal'. This points to the distinctiveness of anthropology and invites exploration of it by modern thought".
AC/SCIENCE EVOLUTION UNIVERSE/ACAD VIS 20081031 (340)
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