The Head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has expressed his supported to the Big Bang theory and evolution.
Pope Francis, speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, October 28, 2014 stated that “God is not a magician, complete with a magic wand that can do all things,”. He stated clearly that his immediate predecessors were only being diplomatic.
“The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to something else, but it derives directly from a supreme principle that creates out of love.
“The Big Bang, that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God; on the contrary, it requires it.
“Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of [divine] creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve.
“When we read in Genesis the account of creation [we are] in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand that can do all things. But he is not,” he stated
Speaking further on the issue Pope Francis claimed that God set the Universe in motion, setting the rules that would create us and the Universe. Although these were the issues that was discussed in the past by his predecessors; Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVII talked about similar topics. Pope John Paul II summarized the previous position in this address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:
“In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.
“Taking into account the scientific research of the era, and also the proper requirements of theology, the encyclical Humani Generis treated the doctrine of “evolutionism” as a serious hypothesis, worthy of investigation and serious study, alongside the opposite hypothesis.
“Pius XII added two methodological conditions for this study: one could not adopt this opinion as if it was certain and demonstrable doctrine and one could not totally set aside the teaching Revelation on the relevant questions.
“He also set out the conditions on which this opinion would be compatible with the Christian faith—a point to which I shall return”, he added.
He however concluded that both the divine theory and the evolution theory are complementing facts to creation.
