Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Pope's Misconceptions about conception and science history

Tony Ryals | 29.10.2005 05:40 | Culture | Ecology | Gender

The pope's apparent ignorance of science history and modern agricultural technology obscures from his vision the disastrous effects of his policy of unchecked population growth on future generations who will find "no food on the table" nor the resources with which to grow it. This ignorance also shows that the pope has no more expertise in the fields of agricultural science, population planning, or resoure management than the pope in Galileo's time did in the area of astronomy.

Pope John Paul II may be gone but Pope Benedict XVI maintains a tradition of ignorance and human materialism that has no justification even in a literal interpretation of the Bible and only insures perpetual human ignorance and misery.

And this statement goes double for the fundamentalist protestants such as America's Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk, who have promoted human ignorance, hatred, and greed everyday of their worthless lives.



Pope's Stances Lack Scientific Basis
by Tony Ryals
The Daily Californian September 22, 1987

On Nov. 10, 1979, a meeting was held in Rome by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in honor of the 100th year anniversary of the birth of Albert Einstein. The meeting marked the first time in the history of the church, since the formation of its own science academy, that any pope had presided over such a session.

This meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences may well be more memorable for Pope John Paul II's statements regarding science, Galileo, and the church than for the honoring of the centenary of the birth of Einstein himself.

In discussing the case of Galileo and the church, Pope John Paul II addressed the academy as follows:

"Mr.President, you said very rightly that Galileo and Einstein each characterized an era. The greatness of Galileo is recognized by all, as is that of Einstein, but while today we honor the latter before the College of Cardinals in the apostolic palace, the former had to suffer much - we cannot deny it - from men and orgainzations within the church. The Vatican Council has recognized and deplored unwarranted interferences..."

Approximately one year after his Pontifical Academy of Science speech on Galileo, the pope, in criticizing what he termed "artificial" methods birth control, made a notable statement on modern agriculture, simultaneously. The pope stated:

"There are attacks on fecundity itself with means that human and Christian ethics must consider illicit... Instead of increasing the amount of bread on the table of a hungry humanity as a modern means of production can do today, there are thoughts of diminishing the number of those at the table through methods that are contrary to honesty. This is not worthy of civilization."

Now that the pope has pardoned Galileo for telling the church that the earth is in orbit around the sun, it is time to tell the pope that the other half of Aristotle's church-approved cosmology has also come unglued. The "Four Element" concept (earth, air, fire and water) was the other half of the Aristotelian Earth-centered universe adopted by St.Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

Although the Renaissance astronomers successfully challenged Aristotle's and the church's geocentric universe several centuries later, atoms still had not been discovered. For this reason the Four Elements remained intact and unchallenged long after the death of Galileo in 1642.

The discovery of atoms in the last couple of centuries has totally transformed our concept of elements. The former "elements", earth and air, are both composed of a variety of elements. We now know that even the ancient element "water" can be further divided into the elements of hydrogen and oxygen. And the element "fire" is now understood to be a form of radiation.

Justus Von Liebig, the 19th century father of agricultural chemistry, and other pioneering chemists did to Aristotle's Four Elements what the Renaissance astronomers did to Aristotle's concept of the Earth as the center of the universe - they overturned it!

Liebig first pointed out the for plants to utilize carbon dioxide in the air for growth, they must have adequate amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in their soil. Unfortunately, in popularizing the N,P,K concept of modern chemical agriculture, Liebig paved the way for overreliance upon energy-intensive fossil fuel consumption in the mining of phosphorus and potassium as well as in industrial production of nitrogen fertilizers.

We now know that for every orbit of the Earth around the sun - one year - the pope, each member of the Catholic Church, and everyone else on the planet consumes in their food and excretes from their bodies approximately two pounds of phosphorus and various quantities of nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, and other trace elements. All these elements generally go unrecycled, often into rivers and oceans or even municipal dumps, further enriching fertilizer industries (who will sell the farmers more for a price) at the expense of the Earth's non-renewable mineral nutrient resources.

When the remaining fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, are exhausted, only bacteria and blue-green algae utilizing phosphorus, potassium, and trace elements in "soil-culture" and "aqua-culture" will be likely candidates to fix atmospheric nitrogen for agricultural fertilization.

Both the trade of grains and the direct trade of phosphates speed the depletion of our limited reserves of phosphate rock in the United States, which comes mainly from mining operations in Florida. Deposits in Idaho are also being mined, at present, and Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum has eyed public land near Ojai, Calif. to strip-mine for phosphates.

We should realize the need to conserve our dwindling reserves of phosphates for future generations. The United States not long ago was a net exporter of petroleum, but now we are importers. The same situation could occur with phosphates if we refuse to learn from the past. Some researchers have suggested that we may become dependent upon yet a new OPEC (or Organization of Phosphate Exporting Countries), such as Morocco, with its relatively large rock phosphate reserves.

The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that our reserves of phosphorus will be depleted some time in the next century. This will inevitably lead to a food and population crisis that will make our oil crisis seem minor by comparison.

The pope's apparent ignorance of science history and modern agricultural technology obscures from his vision the disastrous effects of his policy of unchecked population growth on future generations who will find "no food on the table" nor the resources with which to grow it. This ignorance also shows that the pope has no more expertise in the fields of agricultural science, population planning, or resoure management than the pope in Galileo's time did in the area of astronomy.

The nutrients that subsidize the life of the pope, and everyone on the planet, are a finite resource. Unless the pope realizes the seriousness of the linear flow of elements through himself and the rest of humanity, he shall be partly responsible for contributing to the collapse of modern agriculture.

To sum up, Pope John Paul II is as confused about the movement of atoms as the pope of Galileo's time was about the movement of the Earth and celestial bodies. Based upon the rate of depletion of chemical fertilizers, the present pope does not have 300 years to re-evaluate his view on modern agriculture and birth control. The question still remains as to why the Pontifical Academy of Sciences has not made this disastrous movement of atoms clear to the pope.

Tony Ryals
- e-mail: endoscam@lycos.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech