Pope Francis has died

I would like to know more. My impression is that most Christian institutions have long ago disentangled from scientific debate - providing interpretative value rather than alternative science. This is part of a larger trend to focus their scope and mission in modern life. Have the last few popes made comments on scientific issues?

(The exception is evangelical Americans.)

https://www.pas.va/en.html

As such, they've traditionally been more open, and a disproportionately high proportion of Jesuits have been scientists. At one point about 1/3 of all members of the Jesuit order were scientists.

"The pope's astronomer"[1] is a jesuit, and the Jesuits have a long tradition in astronomy, with the result of numerous lunar craters (e.g. McNally) and several asteroids named after Jesuits. More than once, Jesuits have also tangled with the question of extraterrestial life, e.g.[2a] - a question fraught by the question it would raise about what it would mean for belief [2b].

Wikipedia also has a long list of Catholic clergy scientists[3]. When reading it, it's worth considering that if anything they had more influence as teachers (e.g. Descartes, Mersenne were both educated at Jesuit colleges), and that the order ranged from low thousands to a few tens of thousands during the centuries the list covers.

With respect to the last few popes, the most notable recent intervention is Pope Francis making clear that he saw the theories of evolution and the Big Bang as real[4]. But already in 1950, even the deeply conservative Pope Pius XII, while expressing hope that evolution would prove to be a passing fad, made clear that catholic doctrine officially did not conflict with evolution. John Paul II formally acquitted Galileo, and stated that "truth cannot contradict truth", when talking about evolution vs. catholic doctrine. [5]

[1] https://www.deseret.com/faith/2024/07/27/vatican-observatory...

[2a] https://aleteia.org/2020/08/28/jesuit-astronomer-calls-extra...

[2b] https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/men-black-belief-aliens-no...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...

[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis...

[5] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vatican...

I know several priests who are scientists or teachers/professors.

Evangelicals have a simpler dogma where the individual minister or church has more sway (hence the joke about the man on a desert island with a hut, a church, and a church he doesn’t go to). It’s a more populist form of worship, which has ups and downs.

A conversation with a Jesuit for example can be enlightening because they have intellectual and moral arguments, it’s not just castles built on the shifting foundations of a Bible verse.

This leads to different approaches compared to a lot of American Protestants. They don’t seek to undermine science.

I found it inspiring. I'm genuinely sad about the Pope's passing. He was a man who followed the teachings as he understood them.

the fun thing, ironic itself, about dismissing religion in it's entirety is that most religions have long understood that G'd can't be proven, measured, captured with experiments. the irony in this is that while you can't prove G'd you can't disprove G'd either, so the lack of proof is no proof of a lack of "The Force". quantum physics did not not exist just because the was no proof for it.

one interesting train of thought in this regard was the conclusion of a book on the neurobiology of meditation, (the title escapes me right now): what if the only "instrument" to measure religious experience is the brain? we can measure effects of systematic religious practice on the brain, like meditation aka contemplative prayer. we can identify some aspects of states that humans describe as religious experience, in the brain, as they happen. why would we dismiss those as mere "brain formations"? while we accept equally measurable effects of sound or light on the brain as "real"?

it's non-trivial...

Science doesn’t say we are the only intelligent forms in the universe. Science doesn’t say intelligent max’s out with humans. Science doesn’t describe concepts outside of time and space.