Pope Francis recently made headlines by insisting that God is not a
"magician," and that scientific theories like Evolution and the Big Bang (a
concept that actually originated with Belgian Catholic priest and mathematician
Georges Lemaitre) are consistent with belief in God's creation of the
universe.
While surprising to many, this is no surprise to me. We Catholics don't
generally take everything written in the Bible in its literal sense, or
independently of other passages. For instance, fundamentalists will insist the
world was literally created in 7 days, but biblically speaking, they are
ignoring passages like 2 Peter 3:8, where it says a thousand years is like a day to God.
Much of Genesis is largely a divinely-inspired parable, intended to teach
moral/spiritual lessons including that God created the universe, and not to teach us history or science. Tragically, many
fundamentalists eagerly smear those who can make this distinction as not being
"Bible-believers."
On the flip side of this coin are scientific atheists who, while right to
seek and accept scientific facts about life in the universe, are closed-minded to
the ideas of a higher power or of the soul and its eternal existence. Even if
evidence like near-death experiences come to light they refuse to believe it and
operate from a cynically prejudiced perspective-which is actually abandoning the
scientific method. Science shows there are other universes, black holes, etc...why are
heaven and hell - when biblical descriptions of them are actually pretty vague - so difficult to consider?