Pope Affirms Big Bang and Evolution, Disavowing God as Having "Magic Wand", Yet Hold On...

In about August, 2021, the Pope declared in his position as the head of the Catholic Church that "the Big Bang theory and evolution are real, and that God is not a magician with a magic wand."

The Pope is probably talking mostly about evolution. Still, he may be actually meaning to emphasize the importance of Christian and other humanism and personal effort, rather than physics. Actually, for the Big Bang, it IS something out of nothing. Scientists explain the Big Bang because they have extrapolated back. The question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" actually does take us to a "magic wand" moment, the instance before the Big Bang. In fact, that´s where philosophy "rears its ugly head," and blows the whistle on science. Science itself has "magical" aspirations for some number, as if the ancient Greeks and atheist humanists created it. The simple principle that modern science requires intense and sustained community and honest effort to work should make anyone "suspicious." Stan Jaki and James Hannam have done great work around that, among others. Historical sociology shows how Christians imperfectly but significantly were oriented by their religious values in creating science, including the freeing thought of an omnipotent Creator.

As for abiogenesis, it is so fascinating a subject that it deserves special attention. Science tells us that God hasn´t needed to intervene specially in physical and biological evolution because lawful regularities have unfolded. "Random mutations", BTW, are actually only random as interpreted by parameter-limited, and perhaps control hungry, scientists. In fact, it is merely complexity. Philosophically, we set that straight. Yet even with everything showing lawful regularities, a biologist named van Bertanaffly started thinking about the interrelatedness of biology, chemistry, and physics, for starters. Physics doesn´t actually map out chemistry, even though chemistry is defined as how atoms and molecules interact and react in combination processes. Biology itself is a whole complex level of complex, self-sustaining chemical activity.

So, whoa. They observe that the processes in the shift in levels involves a new whole that seems to be more than the sum of its parts. Chemistry is more than just fancy physics, and biology more than just fancy chemistry. They call that quality, "emergent properties," "emergence," and "emergentism."

Thus, science´s true nature shows through again plainly, that it is one kind of philosophy, not technical "revelation of truth." Thus, the Pope´s point is directed at anti-science fundamentalists, but it´s not a full and fair assessment. "Emergence" actually challenges many scientists who focus so much on reductionism that they even say that "mind" doesn´t exist, just "brains." Never mind the question of psychosocial and cultural experience, and of course, Transpersonal and Transcendental spiritual and religious experience and God.