Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis

Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis. But this evolution is theistic rather than atheistic.

The type of evolutionary theory the Catholic Church espouses is teleological with Homo Sapiens as the end-product of a pre-determined process. But this is really nonsense given the catastrophes that life on Earth had to survive: asteroids, climate change, ice ages, super-volcanoes, Oxygen. Humans were reduced to about 2,000 to 10,000 individuals during the Stone Age. It was probably luck just we got through this at all.

What is more interesting is the tail-end of the article:

Pope Francis also delivered an off-the-cuff, mini-encyclical on the rights of the poor, the injustices of unemployment, and the need for environmental protection on Tuesday, saying he's not preaching communism but the Gospel.

He said the poor need land, a roof over their head and work, and said he knew well that "if I talk about this, some will think that the pope is communist".

"They don't understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel," he said. "Demanding this isn't unusual, it's the social doctrine of the church."

Francis' remarks to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, delivered in his native Spanish, ran for more than six pages, single-spaced.

Francis has already been branded a Marxist by conservative US commentators for his unbridled criticism of capitalist excesses, for his demand that governments redistribute social benefits to the needy, and his call for the church to be a "poor church, for the poor".

This sharpening of the divide between the interests of the Capitalists and the workers has forced the Catholic Church to side with the interests of the workers. But this does not mean that the Church espouses Socialism or Communism. These are still anathema.

The decay of the Capitalist superstructure means that the interests of the workers can be accomodated through reformist politics. Harsh choices have to be made about what people support: Capitalists or workers. There is no longer a middle ground—only the extremes.