Pope contradicts Science on Aids
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- Published on Saturday, 28 March 2009 21:41
- Written by John Draper
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It seems that the Pope has decided that science is wrong on Aids. A recent editorial in the prestigious British Publication, The Lancet, has strongly criticized the Pope for his recent statement on Aids. [Download the editorial here (pdf)]. To quote their conclusion: " Whether the Pope's error was due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to manipulate science to support Catholic ideology is unclear. But the comment still stands and the Vatican's attempts to tweak the Pope's words, further tampering with the truth, is not the way forward."
So the Pope is either ignorant or a manipulator of Science - in either case he should keep out of statements about disease. Most religions have positions on Social behaviour, particularly sex and male/female relationships so talking about promiscuity and abstinence is OK since this doesn't harm others. Unfortunately religious "authorities" often stray outside of behaviors and get into subjects they know nothing about.
But we should not be surprised. From the beginning of the Christian Religion, there have been deliberate attempts by the "high priests" (otherwise known as bishops) to bend the truth. One early example was the Council of Nicaea (325AD) when disagreement meant beheading for the dissenters (Arius and Marcius) and the choosing of only those texts that agreed with what they wanted to say. So the bible is limited to a small part of the available writings - the texts that did not agree with their conclusions were destroyed (except for some hidden texts found in the 20th century). So Christianity started with the idea that we are right and if anyone disagrees, they must be wrong. So any new ideas such as Galileo's and Darwin and others take a long time to be accepted. It takes a long time for Churches to even think that they might be wrong and then they have to dream up suitable words to explain the change in their absolute truth! (There's an oxymoron!)