re: Pope Francis endorses evolution and big bang

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You are a know it all that acts like you are an expert on every subject.

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Not at all, I just know more than you about most subjects. This is why I probably come across as a know it all from your perspective.

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the church as a whole really doesn't believe in scripture and they morph and change as necessary to keep congregates.

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Wow!
That's quite a step out.

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That's quite a step out.

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Not really NC. When a region says that oral tradition, church writings and experiences like miracles are on par with scripture or even surpass scripture, this tells me they don't put lots of stock in it.
Plus my own personal experiences as a former Catholic and my dealings with those in my home region affirm my belief.

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Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

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He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment.

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He refers to intelligent design as pseudoscience and then basically says that we are here because of what amounts to theistic evolution, which is basically just the most sane version of intelligent design on offer, usually by moderates.

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“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

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How the frick does he know this? Is it from his undisclosed work in cosmology or did he simply get God on the phone and ask him?

What a fricking joke. Yeah, let's praise the Pope for realizing that the Church's position has yet again been blown away by the forces of modernity and science.

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How the frick does he know this?

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Divine revelation?
Introspective Revelation?
Either way it's faith.

OTOH, he knows it at least to the same extent as any Atheist knows the opposite.

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1) This is not true. Authorship of the gospels was agreed upon well before the catholic church.

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Considering the Catholic Church was around BEFORE the Gospels, this is a lie. St. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, is the first known attested writing we have for the tradition of who wrote the Gospels (this writing being estimated back to 180 AD). And guess what. He was Catholic as he acknowledged the ultimate authority of the Bishop in Rome over the whole of the Church in his writings.

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2) Even if this is true, there a good chance the accepted authorship of the gospels is incorrect, which would negate the authority of the catholic church.

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It would also negate the canon of scripture. Because the only reason why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are considered canon is because the Catholic Church long believed that those Gospels were either written by an Apostle or a disciple of an Apostle.

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This is definitely not true. The 27 accepted writings that comprise the NT had been widely circulated since the time they were written. Especially the Pauline epistles.

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There were also other "accepted" writings circulating around Christendom in those early days. These include the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, a few other epistles that were attributed to Paul, the Didache, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the list goes on and on. Some books that are now in our New Testament were even disputed by the Church Fathers. These include: 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, James, Hebrews, Jude and Revelation. It was the Catholic Church, at the Synod of Rome in 382 as well as the Council of Hippo in 393 and the two Carthage Councils in 397 and 419 that finalized the canon of the Bible.

It would seem to me that you are the one who is woefully misinformed.

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I hope you are joking here, otherwise you have no knowledge of early Christianity.

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You're right. I don't. I'm just trolling here. But I'm curious as to when the Catholic Church was indeed founded.

Okay...I can't take the anticipation any longer so I am going to go ahead and answer for you. You don't want to say the answer because you know I'm right.

Let me point you to a guy you won't find in Scripture, but was very much beloved by early Christians. His name was St. Ignatius. Ignatius was the Bishop of Antioch. If you know your church history as you claim to, you will know that it was at Antioch where Christians first got their name. So this church at Antioch is a big deal to Christians at this time. St. Ignatius became the Bishop of Antioch somewhere around 69 AD. He was the third Bishop of Antioch after St. Peter and St. Evodius. In fact, Ignatius had been ordained into the priesthood by St. Peter and St. Paul themselves. He knew them personally and was probably very good friends with them as Peter left Ignatius in charge in Antioch after Evodius died. Another fact about St. Ignatius of Antioch - he was a disciple of St. John the Apostle. The two would have known each other very well.

Around the year 106 AD, however, Ignatius's reign in Antioch came to an end when the Romans arrested him and ordered him shipped off to Rome for execution in the Coliseum. On his way to Rome he was able to write seven letters - six to the churches he stopped at along the way, and a final letter addressed to his best friend Polycarp (another disciple of St. John). In his letter to the Church in Smyrna, Ignatius wrote the following:

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“Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. ”

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St. Ignatius, writing sometime in 107 AD, gives us the first written use of the term "Catholic Church" and he does so without explaining what it means - thus giving the reader the impression that this term was already in frequent use at the time. In fact, most scholars believe the term was conceived at Antioch (the same city where the followers of Christ were first called Christians) in the latter half of the 1st Century.

St. Ignatius wasn't some bishop in some offshoot sect of Christianity either. He had been appointed the Bishop of Antioch by St. Peter himself and had been ordained into the priesthood by St. Peter and St. Paul. The churches he visited, which include the Church in Corinth, all came out by the hundreds to greet him as he was hauled off to Rome. So this was a very well-respected man in the early Christian world.

So yes, the Catholic Church has been around since the beginning since Catholics were indeed the first Christians. And I challenge you to produce something that proves otherwise.

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Atheists don't claim to know how the universe began

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In terms of God vs no god, of course they do. By definition. The thing speaks for itself.

I trust that's why you'd be correctly categorized as agnostic.