@tenderfoot,
Oh--I don't think that the Church speaks out of the side of its mouth on matters relating to the essential subjects of these disputes. It is quite unequivocal on all of them. And Its dogmatic doctrines relating to them are the primary energy source of the pro-evolutionists precisely because of the unambiguous nature of them.
If you wish to snow them over with refutations of a Creator, miracles, a 6000 year old earth and horror stories attributal to human weakness, then you are, of course, free to do so. But those are beside the point. Pretending they are
the point is the side of the mouth stuff I referred to. Like when a sweat factory owner goes around the deck of his ocean going yacht preaching to his guests, who are chosen to agree with him, that hard work never did anybody any harm.
But evolutionary forces will decide which side comes out on top and I sincerely hope that I won't be around if your side does. A sure sign that it has will be when your President stops sending you off to bed with "God bless America". Until that happens you're pissing in the wind.
You may delude yourself with such things but you won't delude me.
I'm only a religionist in the same sense that I'm a fairgroundist, or an ice-cream vanist when I neither go to fairgrounds nor eat ice-cream.
Ovid was anti-abortion you know. And I don't suppose he had ever heard of Jesus. And he made love to Corinna, gal you've bin on ma mind, through many a warm southern night. Probably some cooler ones as well. And days. It is a scholarly matter, on which I am unqualified to speak, whether he was the cause of the pregnancy she aborted without his knowledge and which led to the talking to he gave her. "Never do that again" he said.
He would have thought St Peter was a yokel. And it is said that his influence on Western literature cannot be exaggerated. Which is true.