I’ve believed this for a long time, and am glad that the Vatican agrees, even if I am not a Catholic.

“The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim,” [Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture] said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that “the universe didn’t make itself and had a creator”. [link]

I wish fundamentalist Christians, especially those who feel compelled to force their views onto the political scene, would read this, coming from the heads of their own faith, and accept the fact that the Bible is not a literally-translated be-all and end-all. The Vatican says that it is the message that is important, not the precise details. They are in no way denying or even hinting at the absence of a Creator. They simply, and intelligently, leave the details of implementation up to science, putting an end to the fundamentalist notion that an Intelligent Designer is responsible for the creation of all that is, down to the most minute detail.

Thank you, Vatican, and thank you to all Christians (and, for that matter, followers of any religion) who live by the ideals of their faith, but are not unthinkingly blinded by it.

Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.
-Joan A. Hutchinson

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
-Albert Einstein