By PHILIP PULLELLA, REUTERS - MSNBC.COM
Added: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 14:59:55 UTC

VATICAN CITY — God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said Thursday.

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his blessing during an Epiphany Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday.

"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe," Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star.

"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God," he said in a sermon to some 10,000 people in St. Peter's Basilica on the feast day.

While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

Researchers at CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, have been smashing protons together at near the speed of light to simulate conditions that they believe brought into existence the primordial universe from which stars, planets and life on earth — and perhaps elsewhere — eventually emerged.

Proof God doesn't exist?

Some atheists say science can prove that God does not exist, but Benedict said that some scientific theories were "mind limiting" because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality."

He said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.

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TAGGED: CREATIONISM, POPE, SCIENCE