Creationism, who needs it?

My friend, The Roan is waging a war against evolution on his blog. I've told him that literal readings of Genesis don't seem to be necessary from a religious viewpoint (let alone the problems with their scientific accuracy). Today, I thought I'd put up a couple of quotes on the matter. This one comes from blogger Daniel Larison:

"Fideistic understandings of religion and materialistic philosophies that seek to exploit evolutionary biology to their advantage enjoy a symbiotic relationship, since they both thrive on promoting mutual antagonism between reason and faith. Tell the Christian that he must either endorse evolutionary theory or accept the Bible, and he will typically take the Bible, especially if he is not grounded in an authoritative teaching tradition that tells him that this choice is a false one. Tell the average educated secular person that revealed religion is incompatible with scientific theory, and he may very well conclude that those who continue to adhere to revealed religion must be either ignorant, insane or up to no good."

And from a Jesuit astronomer:

"If you read the Church fathers, going back to St. Augustine, it's clear that they are not what modern people would call literalists, or Creationists.

In a lot of ways, that's a modern heresy that comes from our mechanical world, where more people are likely to be reading owner's manuals than poetry."

Feel free to post your dissent.

John Paul II on the Origins of The Universe

The more I look at it, the more I wonder why this issue looms so large for the Huckabees of the world when a conservative pope like John Paul II was able to see that evolution need not be some massive theological stumbling block:

"The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer."

Perhaps after the bad press that the Vatican got from the whole heliocentric thing, they decided to take a more cautious approach about science. In the meantime, Jason is preparing his dissent here.

Geocentrism is the New Creationism?

We've had half a millenium of assuming that the earth goes around the sun, and now there are some folks that want to refight Copernican and Galilean understandings of the universe?

These aren't just any people either, one of them is a Texas state congressman. Apparently they have a website espousing these views (along with some of that old-time anti-Semitism). It sort of reminds me of the time cube site to be honest, except they seem to be more serious.

What are the geocentrists thinking? Is it a sort of test of faith that you should be able to swallow a very absurd view of the natural world?