Thursday, January 31, 2008

Look, We Gave You The Law of Gravity. What Do You Want From Us?

Regular readers of this blog are probably familiar with disappointment...er...we mean familiar with our tales of life in the sanctified environs of the catholic eduindoctranational system. Ah, those were the days. Obsession, repression, sublimation, and that's just from sitting next to Dolores Williams in math class. On the bright side though, we did learn to swear in Latin, so it wasn't all bad, matrix prolapsus!

Which brings us to the subject of today's discourse: The pope doth spake upon science:

Pope Benedict warned Monday of the "seductive" powers of science. Hmm...now there are two words we never thought we'd see in the same sentence: science and seductive. Unless...mmm...science...

Sorry. What were you saying Mr. pope? "In an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer, it's more important than ever to befuddle our contemporaries' consciences so that science does not become widely accepted," he told scientists. "You guys trying to knock me out of a job or something?"

The Pope reiterated a plea, made in many speeches since his election in 2005, for mankind to remain stupid and quit asking all those questions. "Can we just go back to thunder is the angels bowling?" he asked.

The conservative former Nazi Pope's public stand on issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research and the search for Big Foot has led critics to accuse him of holding antiquated views on science. "That's just not true," countered a Vatican spokesman. That whole Galileo got what was coming to him remark was taken out of context."

Students and teachers at Rome's La Sapienza university – which was founded by a pope more than 700 years ago – protested so loudly during a papal speech that it had to be canceled. "Pope gave you a school. Pope can take it away. That's all I'm saying," said a Vatican spokesman.

The Vatican said the protesters misunderstood that a comment, made about 17 years ago when he was Cardinal Joseph "fingernails" Ratzinger in which he argued that disease is caused by sin and masturbation will make you blind. A press conference called by the Vatican in which a statement from the pope explaining his views on science was to be read had to be canceled because the spokesman could not find his glasses.

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