From "Things Creationists Hate"
www.skepticreport.com/creationism/thingscreationistshate.htm
The Definition of Christian
Every dictionary I can lay my hands on defines Christian (n.) as "one who
professes belief in Jesus as the christ" or words to the same effect. Not a
one of them defines Christian as "one who believes in the literal truth of
Genesis, especially as regards the creation and flood accounts." (Who would
have thought that the ranks of lexicographers had been so infiltrated with
atheists and satanists?) If you've ever been around fundamentalists for
long, you've run into statements like, "I don't believe in evolution,
because I'm a Christian." If you've ever said anything like that, here's
some unpleasant news: it's NOT because you're a Christian. It's because
you're a literalist-fundamentalist, and you're in the minority even among
Christians. As a matter of fact, most of the Christians in the world are
people whose beliefs you would find abhorrent, and a great many of whom
accept evolution. They include many millions of Catholics, not to mention
Episcopalians and other mainline Protestants, Mormons, Orthodox, Coptics,
and many hundreds of denominations other than Southern Baptist and
Pentecostal. (If you want to really reveal your ignorance and prejudices,
ask someone if he is a Catholic or a Christian!) creationist does not equal
christian!
Luigi Novi points out that... Among the many Christians who accept evolution
is....Pope John Paul II. Yep. The Big Guy himself. On October 7, 1996, in
an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome, he declared [the
Church's] acceptance of evolution as a scientific fact, and noted that there
is no war between religion and science: "Consideration of the method used in
diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view
which seem irreconcilable. The science of observation describes with ever
greater precision the multiple manifestations of life...while theology
extracts the final meaning according to the Creator's designs."
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