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Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest
Reservoir Hill writes "Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university's physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633. In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was 'rational and just' and concluded with the remark: 'The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.' The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
You don't need dialogue with irrational nutcases. If you could have rational dialogue with them you'd already have shown that their beliefs are irrational. It's sad really...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The only dialog I see coming from The Church these days is [plugs ears] "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA LA LA LA".
That its only Christians and conservatives who are intolerant... Its not like a rational scientist or tolerant liberal would shout down someone they disagree with... /sarc
Let's see. He asks that the visit be canceled. The visit gets canceled. Then he complains about the visit having been canceled.
This sounds like the guy's ready to complain no matter what happens.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Why the hell should any science department give a rat's ass what any religious leader has to say? Does the Pope have any degrees in any sciences? Does he have any expertise, academic or otherwise that would apply in any way, shape or form, to the sciences?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
OK, I think the previous comments were off-the-hook, and indicated just how conservative this new pope is when compared with the previous. That said, I'm not sure what the physicist in question was trying to accomplish.
Did he want the Pope to visit? Why complain when he cancels? He pretty much admits that any move the Pope made would have been viewed as some sort of ploy or insult. And he complains about the Pope not wanting a dialog? And what dialog? Why does the Pope need a dialog with this University?!
with almost no relevance to Slashdot as there isn't even a specific technology in question here.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
the conundrum here is that by protesting his appearance before he said anything, he was given the opportunity to walk away, and the excuse to call foul later. although i agree that there is frequently nothing to gain in trying to rationally discuss issues with someone relying on a system other than rationality, there was most likely a way to save more face. sadly, it probably including letting him spout off a pile of nonsense.
Since when are religious people prohibited from "entering secular institutions"? This smacks of muslim holy sites. An intelligent scientist welcomes a chance to meet any prominent individual, even if they don't subscribe to each other's theories.
In any case, there is currently no unified theory that explains the connection of the spiritual realm ("soul") and physical world. Certainly there are dependencies (healthy body leads to healthy mind), but this still doesn't explain how we "feel" about the various chemical and electric processes going on in our brains. It only makes sense to study spirituality based on spiritual methods just like we study science scientifically. Perhaps some day we will discover more details about the connection between these two realms, but until then the two groups should just get off each others' backs.
Oh come on - the Pope is a figure of universal acceptance and love.
Banning the Pope today from speaking at a University because of what was done to Galileo 400 years ago is the thinest of all possible excuses for blatant anti-religious prejudice.
It is just mean spirited narrow-minded and wrong.
There are religious people who, as we speak, are cutting off peoples heads for being of the "wrong" faith, and putting women in prison for being the victims of rape. And yet their representatives get to speak at Universities.
This situation is just preposterous.
"because having little tolerance for absurd ideas and bigoted people is TOTALLY the same thing as having little tolerance for people living their life their own way."
Ahhh another who does not get it... Youre not tolerating shit if it something that does not offend you to the core!
Me saying: " I think X is sinful and shameful and within the context of this closed group is not allowed, but in society at large you are free to act as you wish" is tolerant
You saying " So long as you're not a nutball or hold no position I find too stupid/offensive youre free to speak at universities otherwise shut the hell up" is *not* tolerant
Tolerance is about putting up with crap that makes you see red!
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department? It's perfectly alright for a Holocaust Denier to give a speech at memorial to Nazi genocide victims?
No one is censoring the Pope. Quite the opposite, the man gets far more attention than I think he deserves. That he isn't showing up at a university for some sort of glorified photo op where he gets to pretend he's cozy with science is hardly some vast attempt to silence him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I really hope you were joking, but in the event that you weren't....
Bible infallible? Really? How much flamebait did you want to push? Also, I'd love to find out about your answer to how we came from Adam and Eve and yet our entire human race didn't die off from inbreeding resulting thereof?
Please, I'm tolerant of religion. Do what you want. Don't bother me. But don't dare shove it in my face, or I'm going to give to you in the form of a UFIA. Cept replace the F with fist, or flying spaghetti monster.
If we didn't have religion, people would have one less chance to believe that things "simply can't be explained" and might actually have to realize that you have to figure out how to live your life, and that religion can, at best, only be a guideline for life thousands of years ago. Here, today, 2008, it just doesn't work. The only positives from religion are to be of tolerance and compassion for others. If you ask me though, I believe!
SLASHDOT IS JUST STIRRING THE SHIT AGAIN
cmdrtaco and his bloody holy warz!!!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU5ZDk3NGY3OGI4NDY1OTdmNzc2NmEzYjUzZWQxNWE=
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The Catholic Church has declared public that they know they were wrong with Galileo. They can't listen to this man? Having him walk on their grounds stops them from being autonomous? That simple act forces them to bend to his will? I didn't realize the leader of my faith had that kind of power. I'd think we'd have more followers if that was the case.
You don't have to agree with all his points of view. Let him come. Ask him to clarify his statement (made 17 years ago). Debate him. Don't just exclude him. It's not like he's saying the holocaust didn't exist. The church has already admitted they were wrong.
I can't agree with this. Am I the only one who thinks this makes the scientists who signed on look petty?
It's great when institutions of higher learning show opposing viewpoints and respectful debate. Wait...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Ratzinger was elected for two very specific reasons. First, he is already old so he won't spend 30 years on the throne. That's important to the church hierarchy because they don't want another John Paul II setting policy for that long and progressively going soft on them. The second is that he's essentially a hardcore, old-school catholic. You'll see a lot more of this crap in the next few years, along with a resurgence of the more traditional major and minor orders within the church organization, slowly displacing the more enlightened groups that gained a lot of power during John Paul's tenure.
We'll have to wait about a decade or so to see if this new angle will work for them. Personally I don't think it will. The world has largely moved on. But so much power (most of it very subtle) concentrated in the hands of a group of people who think it wasn't so bad to punish people for claiming that earth is not the center of the universe cannot be good. To paraphrase someone, it's not God I dislike - it's his fan club that scares the crap out of me.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
If protests and letter writing aren't an attempt to silence him, what is?
More than refusing dialogue it looks to many of us as the Pope was forced not to be present under the menace of riots: One of the students stated "THERE IS NO DIALOGUE WITH THAT INDIVIDUAL" and the leader in his speech claimed the presence of many other collective outsiders to participate in the event to make it as much inhospitable as possible to the Pope. Last image is the invasion of the rectorate and a meal served outside the premises.
I am disgusted to be italian in the same university as those.
I'm disgusted as well to be forced to post as AC because they are VIOLENT-RED-FASCISTS supported by squatters in the SanLorenzo suburb next to the university.
I would hope that people see that this University is not representative of the broader intellectual community.
Going out and putting a gag on him, or making it illegal for him to speak. Other than that, it's a group of scientists who find his position on Galileo, and how that speaks to his views on science, troubling, and feeling that he really has no place speaking at an institution. The Pope has plenty of places he can say his spiel.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is funny to me how they call it dialogue. Dialogue to me is not a one way communication or a speach.
Putting him under house arrest and threatening him with execution if he doesn't recant would be.
Hmmm, that sounds familiar...
Universities hold a range of events. In certain events, such as panel discussions of controversial topics, it is entirely appropriate for the invited guest(s) to be challenged (or even denounced) as to the validity of their ideas - both by other invited guests and by the audience in general. In other events, such as university festivities and celebrations (e.g. commencement), it is entirely not appropriate to challenge (or denounce) the invited speakers ideas.
Generally, in events where it is not appropriate to challenge or denounce the speaker, the speaker should be chosen to represent some aspect of the shared mission of the university. That is, it is a responsibility of the university administration to avoid inviting controversial speakers to university celebrations where there is no opportunity for dissent.
Maybe some slashdot reader associated with La Sapienza can clarify this but my understanding was that the pope was invited to speak at an event where there were no opportunities to challenge the pope on the validity of his ideas. With this in mind, the pope seems to have been an exceptionally poor choice of speaker. I don't necessarily fault the pope for being invited, or even for (initially) accepting the invitiation - but someone in the university administration really messed up and, in my view, deserves to face some serious consequences.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
FTFA: Cini also recalled a colloquium on Darwin held by Benedict in September 2006 in which the "intelligent design" movement was given precedence over the theory of evolution.
"The Church can no longer use pyres or corporal punishment," [...] Cini said of Benedict on Thursday: "By cancelling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue."
You can't take the sky from me...
aside from justifying the horrors done by others he has plenty of his own.
his signature is all over the documents authorising the cover up of child-raping priests. he would be in jail if not for the diplomatic immunity he has as head of state for Vatican City.
the policy he implemented would be to have another priest hear the child-raping-priest's confession, thereby satisfying the need for justice in god's eyes. the raped child would then be told that since catholic confession is a sacrament, any discussion of what had happened to them with parents, police, councillors etc. would violate the sanctity of confession and the *child* would then burn forever in hell. the catholic church has now spent over $1 billion in America alone in compensation because for all their goodness they couldn't recognise that raping children was not a Good Thing.
this is also the pope that labelled a comedian who publically disagreed with him a "terrorist".
Pope's coming, what a shame !
Pope's not coming, what a shame !
Only God can do a miracle and save Pope in this kind of situation by providing someting and its contrary still having everyone happy.
Well something's rotten in Rome's La Sapienza university.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
John Paul II said the church was wrong about Galileo - because God's wisdom was speaking through Galileo's lips. Now would be a good time to vomit.
I thought they invited him, not that he demanded to speak. Where do you get the "demand" bit? I'd have to tag that [[citation needed]].
"Conservatives are evil, so they have no right to speak. We're liberals, we're good, so we get to play by different rules."
You have thus summed up the hypocrisy of many liberals. They will defend to the death your right to agree with them. Just don't dissent.
Intelligent, secure liberals are supposed to defend free speech, the idea being that more speech is better than less speech, and that "bad" ideas should be vetted publicly and debated. That's what we try to do in America, although our college campuses are just as bad, where Mahmud Ahmadinejad is treated like royalty, but Ann Coulter and other conservatives are assaulted and shouted down.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
You're right, of course. Protests and letter writing will silence the Pope, who has no other forum for airing his views.
If only there was some place he could speak from, that others could hear. Some sort of... what's the word... pulpit or even a balcony above a crowd.
I guess that'll always be the dream for the Pope though, since we all know he can only speak at universities.
Theoretically, since most baptisms are done without the consent of the subject.
You can't take the sky from me...
"In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was "rational and just"."
Funny how, no matter how bizarre your viewpoint is, there has always been a philosopher before you who wrote about it.
They weren't protesting about what he was going to say. They were protesting about what he said in the past. Unless the pope was going to say "sorry, I was wrong", the scientists were absolutely right.
People study more than science at Universities, so your analogy is flawed. There's nothing in the article to even suggest the Pope is speaking to a scientific audience or on a topic related at all to science.
If you've just got to have an explanation for the lack of inbreeding problems, one would assume that Adam and Eve were created genetically perfect - no nasty recessives to worry about. Genetic problems would only have cropped up after mutations crept in over generations, even if Adam's sons were marrying Adam's daughters. That's just a guess, but it's what a religious person applying rationality to the bible story would assume.
Clearly, religion doesn't work for YOU in 2008. It seems to be working fine for me, and for lots of other people - even slashdot readers.
Not only is there no mention of specific technology in slashdot's ethos, but you're effectively arguing that faith and science don't matter.
You can't take the sky from me...
Anyone wanting to have a general sense of how the world is presently seeing the bad side of religion can watch Part 1 of the excellent free movie Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist Movie is valuable but far from perfect; it needs heavy editing. For example, some of the comparisons of traditional Christian religious belief with belief in ancient pagan gods have been found to be exaggerated by the sources the makers of the Zeitgeist Movie used. Also, it is a preposterous exaggeration to suggest that Jesus Christ did not exist; if he didn't exist, someone originated the ideas; Jesus Christ is simply the name used for the originator. The need for editing is understandable considering the enormous expense of making a movie, which the makers of the Zeitgeist Movie are giving away free.
Another resource is the book, The God Delusion. That book also has theories that could use considerable improvement.
The best point of both is that what people call "religion" has done some harm as well as good. The movie and the book simply express something of the present quality of thinking surrounding that very old idea. Even some officials of the Catholic Church agree that Catholics killing Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, Catholics killing Muslims during the Crusades, and the U.S. government killing Iraqis now are evidence that what people call religion is sometimes not good but mixed with evil.
George W. Bush could not have been elected without support from those U.S. voters who call themselves "Christian Evangelists", who sometimes feel that their ideas are so superior that they should decide who to kill, even if it is people who live in places many of the "Christian" Evangelists could not find on a map of the world. George W. Bush was elected because Karl Rove's research discovered that if Bush claimed he was a Christian, he would get strong support from people who wanted to believe that an alcoholic magically became a loving person because of religion.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
Yes, if he were invited by the college governors, as the Pope was, then shouted down by some intolerant jerks. And he didn't "demand" anything. He backed out gracefully, no pun intended.
It's perfectly alright for a Holocaust Denier to give a speech at memorial to Nazi genocide victims?
No, because it is rude. Nor is it OK for one to be invited to Columbia University. But last time I checked, there were not 6 million scientists killed after which the Pope denied it.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
He dissertated in 1953 and habilitated in 1957. Both times in theology. Depending on your disposition you might not call that a science of course, but I guess that's entirely your problem. Every academic career forces you to learn about working scientifically to some extent, even theology.
Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament).
Although I could be completely wrong, Catholicism seems to be one of the more progressive mainstream branches of Christianity, whereas the bible-belt Christians seem to be moving in the other direction. (This is rather significant, given the Church's history)
Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What one would expect from a religious leader? To behave like an scientist? To promote that the truth is only verifiable by scientific methodology?
What if the guy went to the University? Even the fierstest atheist may find interesting what the man has to say, being that either as a filosofical exercise or simply to get the knowledge on how the Catholic Church thinks.
Now this academic hysteria is completely ridiculous, it sounds more like a science-as-religion bigotry to me.
And, quite frankly, the academic world (I'm not talking about Science itself) is not in a good position to point any fingers.
A huge number of academics are simply and only interested in self-promotion, stealing someone else research, professors taking a hike on his/her students' work, busy formalizing bad-science in a flowered paper and... Treating anyone else outside their circle as inferiors.
You want to meet bigotry, power hunger, deceit and elitism? Politics and religion are not the only options, nor Shakespeare, one would find plenty of such crap inside the Universities.
Yeah, (s)he was joking. See the line "The bible really is infalliable and contains nuthin' but true facts that can only be understood it it's native english.(sic)"
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I know a lot of religious nutters, but not one of them will claim that the bible was originally written in English.
Klingon, yes. But not English.
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected. From your link: "After Galileo went back to Padua, the leading scientific mediocrities started complaining. It was the scientists who said that challenging Aristotle was heresy -- not the Church."
From the Chuch: 1571, Paul IV issues the first formal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, including such works as De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus.
Galileo was 7 when that happened. Stop listening to people who are arguing that it was ok to censor the man's empirical proof of a heretical scientific theory.
You can't take the sky from me...
The very fact that this made it to Slashdot is a very direct statement in itself. Look, there have been bad Popes, good Popes, short-lived and forgotten Popes. The same can be said for Scientists, Politicians, and Geek websites.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
You do know that the Catholic Church, including Benedict XVI, supports the theory of evolution, with only a few caveats that it's part of God's plan?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
The reality isn't Heliocentrism or Geocentrism, it's arbitrary-centrism. There is no objective "fact" mandating the body you choose as "the center", all the bodies are in motion in a wider context of the universe. It's just simplest (and therefore most conducive to human psychology and conceptualization) to use the system that provides the least-complex description of their respective movements.
Weird that we have scientists actively discarding science that's been clear at least since Einstein's Relativity, for the sole purpose of maintaining a stance that lets them "stick it to religion" over a largely-misrepresented (misrepresented in terms of the sharp "science versus religion" duality that's commonly touted, if you know the actual history--e.g. Galileo had permission to publish, and it only became in issue when he presented his theory in a politically-inflammatory fashion) wrong of history.
Since, I think, many will reject this post out-of-hand in that it fails their criterion of "seems to be being said by a theist", I suggest reading Robert M. Pirsig for a philosophical perspective on this very same question. Good reading there on Euclidian-versus-Riemann geometry, too.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Do we even know what the Pope's speech was going to be about? Who said it was going to have anything to do with either a) faith or b) science?
1)He could have just wanted to talk about being a good scholar.
2)He could have just wanted to assure people that he wouldn't interfere with science...people are allowed to change, he made that comment in the early 1990's, and honestly-weren't some of us wearing ponytails and huge flannel shirts around our waists back then? Also: didn't he recently give a "official pope statement" that tried to re-affirm the Roman Catholic Church's position on evolution...mainly, that it accepts it as true?
3)He could have just given a very general, non political or religious speech, like one we see at university commencements.
It seems to me that the university, particularly this one professor, is the one starting the fire. I don't think that "the pope is being intelligent by cancelling", I think the professor is attempting to be manipulative of public opinion by making that statement, and the pope probably just didn't want a rock or whistle thrown in the direction of his pope-mobile. I mean, that thing costs money.
I'm not religious, I don't go to church every week, and I believe strongly in science. I'm actually really dissapointed with the way in which this Italian professor acted. It doesn't further the goals of science or faith-which are distinct. One deals with facts (science), and the other, belief.
I think Ratzinger wasn't even making a hard point in his speech in the 1990s. He is very much a scholar- his mind wanders this way and that, considering many options. There is no hard conclusion to his speech, which is a mistake on his part-it lets other people interpret it as they wish. Like said professor. In Ratzinger's comment on the citation he made in his speech that this professor seems to take issue with, "it makes his conclusion all the more drastic" , my translation of drastic was "irrational". I don't think that Ratzinger thinks Galileo "caused the atomic bomb". I think he thinks quite the opposite.
Ok, done.
Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian priest and a scientist. Would you not "give a rat's ass" regarding what he would have to say? Does the fact he's a priest somehow lessen his discoveries? There's plenty that a scientist could get from religion, providing he were to have with an open mind.
I don't have a degree in political science, but I can still tell Bush is messing up our country. Does my lack of academic expertise invalidate my opinion? Does the fact I hold no political office somehow disqualify me from saying anything about our political institutions?
And the humanities are soft sciences, Some philosophies of science don't distinguish between soft and hard sciences, so in that respect, yes, his expertise could apply.
I guess the -beep-beep-beep- of the truck backing up with meaty flamebait wasn't loud enough.
Actually I was refering to this comment: http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=32;t=000448;p=1
Although it can't yet answer a lot of the more interesting questions about life in succinct terms, rational thought and scientific understanding must be ubiquitous and powerful tools to understand the universe with. \Something that is likely to happen on other planets with extra-terrestrials, the concepts seem so self evident. Unlike religious attempts to explain existence where we can't get 50% of the planet to agree.
People study reason at Universities.
Catholicism is a fundamental opponent of reason.
congrats on the +5 mod up and another proof of Godwin's Law.
adj.
1. Having or exercising the ability to reason.
2. Of sound mind; sane.
3. Consistent with or based on reason; logical: rational behavior
4. Mathematics. Capable of being expressed as a quotient of integers.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
okay, I apologize. I didn't expect the inquisition :P and indeed wasn't thinking before posting.
he also gives credit to science by talking to those in the field...
If the Pope believes it worthy to talk to them and discuss with them science then it has his "tacit seal of approval"
The Church is not as ignorant as some of its adherents. I learned evolution in a Catholic school, strictly Darwin, thank you.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
People also study religion, art, music, etc. at university.
He held several chairs, i.e. was professor, for theology at various german universities and is a quite well-known theologian.
Oh, and can you provide the example of a single (just one) person that believes that the pope "knows more about science than the greatest experts in the various fields of science" ?
Even though my prior post was a stupid, I'd like to reply to this with a question for you....I do understand you are being theoretical, but as a point of debate...
How do you suppose people can believe things like that in the face of fact though? I know some of our nation does, but for what reason would you perceive that someone would consider your statement the end of the logic chain, as opposed to how examples like cheetahs and their problems come into play.
You are obviously aware that the Pope served in the Wehrmacht, his previous employment was as head of the Inquisition (which did in fact kill a few people in its heyday), forbids the use of condoms and family planning resulting in disease and famine, goes around dressed in gold (that's the first vice-boss who dresses better than the boss), that through history the catholic church has in fact persecuted scientists like Galileo, whose trial the current Pope considered "fair", and that exact quotation was the cause for the initial protest, aren't you?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Mendel was a scientist. His religious affiliations are rather meaningless to his work on heredity and genetics.
And politics is hardly the rigorous field that physics is, so I don't think equating "I know Bush is shitty" is the same as the Pope pontificating (ha ha) to a bunch of trained physicists.
And what exactly is science going to get from religion? Every time I hear the term "open mind", it usually gets followed by "believe a bunch of stuff for which there is no empirical evidence", as if science ever actually could.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry but your are wrong: no one has "shout down" the Pope. He owns a newspaper and a radio, and he's the politician that we see more than anyone else in TV here in Italy, even more than Silvio Berlusconi that owns half of the Italians TV stations.
Yes the Pope acts exactly like a politician in Italy: he tell which laws should be passed or not, or changed, for whom to vote and sometimes even tell people not to go voting, like in a recent referendum. And it's far from nice and good: the Vatican opposes (successfully, thanks to corrupt politician) the right of women, gays and lesbians, is opposing right now an anti-racism law (you read it right: they aren't opposing racism, they are trying to shout down an anti-racism law) and they even opposed a donation from Italy to a children hospital (they didn't oppose the use of the same budget money for the war in Iraq a few years ago), because they want to have the exclusive of charity in the minds of the Italians (the stupid ones, at least) so they get more donations.
And we already know exactly what he was going to say: that abortion is murder, even if it's a simple embryo one day from the fertilisation. And abortion must be completely illegal (in Italy we have a very sensible and balanced abortion law, that has reduced to less than half the number of abortions from when it was completely illegal and all abortions were clandestine, and saved countless women). I know this because I see him every day on every television news always saying the same things, and insulting women, gays, scientists and atheists.
Well he's free to says what the hell he wants, but scientists are also free to not invite him to say those things in a university. He can say the same thing but not in my home. This isn't censorship!
And the Earth is not flat. It's approximately spherical! And it goes around the Sun, not vice versa. I don't care what the Pope says about it: Galileo Galilei was right and the Bible is wrong!
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
This post is somewhat "flamebaity". If a Creationist wants to talk about his/her beliefs in a biology class, it's certainly less harming than a Holocaust Denier giving lecture at a Nazi genocide victims memorial. Well, it's a matter of opinion, but still, I think Creationism and Nazi Holocaust are in totally different categories and shouldn't be compared this way.
Of course atheism is a religion, it is a system of belief about the supernatural nature (or lack there of) of this universe. It's the null religion. Do you believe that zero is not a number? Or perhaps that a null pointer isn't a pointer at all? Come on now. If it isn't a relgion is it a taco? I think it fits the former definition better. Intellectual honesty does not entail an appeal to ridicule in lieu of an actual argument.
Zero apples is not food.
A null value does not point to a region of memory.
Worshiping no gods is not a religion.
You can't take the sky from me...
It's bizarre to live in a world where millions of people go gaga about guys who wear funny hats, paying attention to what they say as if it were important. If everybody would just ignore this Ratzinger fellow, none of this would be happening.
He dared to look for empirical proof of a scientific theory that had been rejected on theological grounds, and his proof was rejected as heresy.
You can't take the sky from me...
not to mention famous Radio Maria... especially notable for it's high power trasmission sites outside of Rome pumping illegal levels of EM radiation in the neighbourhood and raising health concerns because of certain leukemia incidence statistics of the area. But of course, the station is extraterritorial so there's nothing to be done safe cutting the power lines on italian soil. Oh well, at least the people living there can hear it on their entry phones...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
IF you really care... The book of Genesis says that Adam and Eve were perfect. They sinned, and lost perfection. When they reproduced, which was after they had sinned, they were still close to perfection. Simply put..
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
For those of you that don't know, The National Review is a conservative magazine that publishes political opinion pieces. It's not exactly a scholarly journal of well researched historical fact.
AccountKiller
"The Church can no longer use pyres or corporal punishment," Cini said in the communist daily Il Manifesto. "Today it uses the Enlightenment's God of Reason as a Trojan horse to enter the citadel of scientific knowledge." I'll be honest. I'm a maronite catholic and proud of it, but I also believe in evolution. I find it interesting however that Cini , the professor who spearheaded this campaign, is a communist. I don't think has anything to do with Galileo but more with the "opium of the people.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
No it is not OK to demand it but it is fine if the creationist is invited to give a talk by someone with the authority to do so. Some of the other members of the department may well disagree strongly but out of basic decence they should at least let the talk proceed. I understood that the administration had invited the Pope to give a talk.
Thankfully, most of the world subscribes to religion in one way or another, even if it's only an historical artifact of their upbringing.
Every self-professed athiest on this site appears to be completely amoral and intolerent. If there had never been any religion, there would be no civilization, as groups that large would tear each other apart.
And you do know that Pope Benedict supports the verdict in the case of Galileo, who dared to say the earth circles the sun even though this goes against the Bible?
Even all the idiotic Creationist/ID and young earth believers believe in heliocentrism now, but apparently not the new Pope.
He's a theologian.
... just like Lot and his daughters. Or Noah who expels one of his sons who's seen him drunk. Two of the most evident... Our morals come from our evolved urge to cooperate with other humans. It's a group-survival trait, only preempted by other evolved traits such as "war behaviour".
This means he's spent most of his life poring over empty crap that has no use.
It's really sad that even I, loser, am so fucking superior to that monkey with his belief that the sky could fall on his head "if God wills it so". Not even beginning to think of the countless hordes of lobotomized morons who listen to what he says. It's a sad, sad world, where over one half of all people still believe in those disproven delusions.
Yeah, disproven. There is no God. Religion is full of shit. It only survives by vertical spread, even though any kid not blindingly stupid will, some day, see right through the lies and develop a profound hate for the elders who tried to inculcate him with a clear handicap for problem-solving, which is all that life's about. The paradigm of life as evolving replicates of genetic material is a problem-solving algorithm. Life is itself a problem-solving system, you'd think that we'd have abandoned a tool that's become as useless as religion, using Science instead! But the inertia of stupidity is infinite.
Oh, I see an argument coming... "Religion says why, science says how" Fuck That. Religion says "Because God Willed It So" and has nothing, NOTHING else to say.
"Teaches us great MORALS..."
Or Allah uh-akbar, let's go kill them all, God's with us, Blut und Ehre, and shit. Religion includes memes of the sort that gets the warriors jumping up and down, screaming "KILL! KILL!", when resources go down and people need to die to make room in the ecological niche. Not that we REALLY need that since we invented agriculture, but as we evolved in constantly warring small tribes for 6000000 years, we haven't lost the habit of killing the neighbours, take their land and capture their women, yet, because that's been one thousand times longer than we've been in towns fed by high-yield crops, instead of in small villages with scarce game and small berries.
The solution to all wars, and to religion to a large extent, is EDUCATION to teach Science to everyone, and RESOURCES so that they never get the perception that those will lack.
Add to the above the fact that religion is generally useful to control people and that explains why we haven't waked up yet. Causal loop : people in power use religion to keep religion in place.
Oh well. If someone repiles with an argument I haven't adressed yet, I'll destroy it then... So, creation of the world - check. The origin of war and the link to religion - check. Destroy the "Religion gives us Morals" argument - check. Destroy "Why vs How" - check.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Because the negative side of religion is death and persecution, and those are pretty consistently applied by theocracies.
I'm not saying you're just bidding your time to start raping and pillaging, but I think religion is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and you seem really focused on the softness of its hide.
You can't take the sky from me...
You know you have won the argument when your adversaries denigrate you by claiming you are just like them.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Why not? It's the same thing, just slightly different degrees since Creationism/Evolution is about the ancient past and the Holocaust is about an event that happened within many people's lifetimes. Either way, you're trying to argue that lunatics who don't believe in reason should be given an equal voice to other people. It's no different than if you allowed a fundamentalist Muslim to speak at a rape victims meeting, so that he can tell them how "they invited it" by not wearing burquas. It's all a matter of belief and philosophy, whether it's the Holocaust, Sharia Law WRT rape, Creationism/Evolution, heliocentrism, etc. If you believe that all beliefs are valid, then you have to concede that Holocaust deniers have a valid belief that it never happened. It doesn't matter if there's tons of evidence that it did. If you believe that all beliefs are valid, then you have to concede that people who believe it's ok to rape women whenever they please have a valid viewpoint.
If, however, you believe that some opinions are more valid than others, and that we can use reason to determine which viewpoints are worth listening to and which are utter rubbish, then and only then can we ignore the Holocaust deniers, the Creationists, and other such people with beliefs grounded in insanity.
Note, however, that this has nothing to do with government censorship or free speech. People should always be free to utter their opinions, no matter how stupid. But no one has an obligation to give such morons a podium to speak from. This especially applies to the Catholic Church, which has huge amounts of wealth, their own radio and TV stations, etc. The Holocaust deniers should be free to speak their idiotic opinion, but the genocide victims memorial council should be equally free to tell them to go to hell when they ask to speak at the memorial.
You do know that the Catholic Church, including Benedict XVI, supports the theory of evolution, with only a few caveats that it's part of God's plan? As factually correct as you are, I do not think he meant the Church, I think he meant hypothetical "Intelligent Design" pseudoscientists demanding to "teach" their made up controversy.
You can't take the sky from me...
There's a huge difference between studying a subject like religion and preaching it as a fundamental truth.
tic
I enjoy a good debate but I don't get where or why you come up with the rationale that without religion there would be no civilization? What makes you believe that?
Just because someone is baptized Catholic doesn't mean they agree with everything the Pope says. Despite what other Christian denominations would have you believe, not all Catholics are mindless drones to the papacy.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Do you understand that that was a just comparison?
(What passes for Insghtful these days...)
So the Uni people (scholars and students) campaigned against the pope giving the speech. So the pope obliged. And now they say he plays the martyr.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect." -- Freeman Dyson
Theoretically, since most baptisms are done without the consent of the subject. Just because someone is baptized Catholic doesn't mean they agree with everything the Pope says. Despite what other Christian denominations would have you believe, not all Catholics are mindless drones to the papacy. Tell me something I don't know.
You can't take the sky from me...
This is why I shouldn't be allowed to post on slashdot before I've had my coffee...
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.
> And the Earth is not flat. It's approximately spherical! And it goes around the Sun, not vice versa. I don't care what the Pope says about it: Galileo Galilei was right and the Bible is wrong!
I don't think that the current Pope, or the Bible, claims that either the Earth is flat or that it doesn't go around the Sun.
Now, long before people could measure stellar parallax, there were reasons to suppose that the Earth wasn't moving. But they were scientific ones, based on the incorrect science of the day. The Bible doesn't say anything of the sort.
I had a huge rant going, but as I was about to post it, I saw that most of the points I made were also made by others, but they only got responses that failed to address those points, continuing your twisted logic.
... ) are just fed up with Religion in general. How religions continue to push their dogmas without ANY evidence, sometimes illogically pointing to a LACK of evidence as evidence. How religions continue to spread FUD and actively damage the pillars of modern humanity as a whole to protect their precious Faith (look at the appalling damage Christianity (especially the Evangelical part) is doing to science and education, for example.). We tend to feel that Religion in general is outdated and is a very serious threat to the future of Humanity.
Instead, I'll just say that from what I've seen, most atheists (+ non-theists + secular humanists +
Oh, and the idea that Christianity "has intrinsic value in its morals/teachings/beliefs" is hilarious. You obviously haven't read the Bible. Unless you agree with slavery, killing your children when they misbehave, genocides, etc, etc. Basically general senseless violence and intolerance.
Lucky for the Human Race, Atheism ( + etc ) has been gaining ground world wide at a rate of about 1% a year, with the number at 25-30% (with the US being woefully behind).
One of evolution's central stipulations is that there is no "goal state" or ideal form for life. We're not all evolving toward something. Evolution is a reactive process driven by environmental change, copy errors and mutations. The "few caveats" espoused by the Catholic Church basically say that there is a goal state (since humans are "created in God's image") and that the driver is a supernatural being. That is not evolutionary theory. It's a useless theory that can basically be made to retroactively predict anything. "Humans evolved a digestive system to accommodate high-calorie diets without becoming grossly overweight? That was God's plan all along!"
People study films too. That doesn't mean every film student thinks that Star Wars actually happened.
You're claiming that the pope is a geocentrist. You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion. You have shown by your own statements that bigotry and general block-headedness is the problem of the person, not necessarily his belief system.
- Francis Ocoma
Please wait while Sig Request is being processed...
World Trade Center bombing on 9/11/2001: It is completely impossible for a very strong concrete and steel building with extremely large steel center columns to fall symmetrically into dust and small pieces by itself, after only being damaged near the top.
That has never happened before, in the entire history of humankind, and it has never happened since.
As the movie shows, numerous TV news reporters said the collapse looked like a controlled demolition. The people who made the movie are not the only ones who said that; it was the consensus of TV reporters at the time.
I guess the question becomes when does not allowing someone to speak their mind become censorship? I mean, we have BET, should that mean we can now stop all black leaders from writing articles in the newspaper or speaking on issue dear to them in front of the capitol building? After all, they have a venue.
Would it be considered censorship if we denied a Gay rights activist a change to talk about his struggle on TV because most Americans/people world wide think he already gets too much attention?
SO tell me, when does censorship kick in for a world as convenient as yours? There is a very real danger to limiting other speech because you don't agree with it. You should ask yourself how long before it is your speech that someone callously justifies the silencing off? Would you be just as content when they decided you had enough exposure too? I mean, the scientist can always use their free speech to say they don't agree with the popes message and counter any pretending that he's cozy with science.
How many religions in the world? Lots.
How many can be right? At most, one.
Therefore, the vast majority of religions are wrong.
heh, the catcha for this was 'accuracy'
what he has to say about Galileo, then I wouldn't recommend you bring up Alan Turing...
Give us this day our garlic bread and lead us not into vegetarianism but deliver us some pizza.
It's worth noting that the Church's position is that most if the Bible is symbolism, including Creationism (and especially Revelations aka. Book of the Apcoalypse). As such, it is not intended to be taken literally (Lutherans, on the hand, do take it literally). If you want to check this yourself, look up fundamentalism some time. Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Catholic, so I may be biased. But it also means that I have the benefit of being educated about our beliefs throughout my primary and secondary education.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
I wonder how they would feel if a Muslim scholar asked to speak there. I have listened to lectures by quite a few scholars who had PhD's in hard sciences (such as biochemistry), and as a Muslim I'd say our attitude towards science is that science is invaluable and deserves serious attention; all of my peers are graduate students or professionals. Mostly doctors and engineers.
No, because the fundamental church teaching is that humans were in the ideal state even when we were less evolved. In otherwords, Adam and Eve were the ideal human form even if they were Neanderthal. As humans change to specialize for the world around them, this is just adaptation. It isn't us moving toward an ideal state. The teaching isn't that God controls the evolution, but that he created the system of evolution within which humans evolve. To analogize, God is the coder who creates Grand Theft Auto, it isn't his role to control what you do in the game. It is good enough that he created the game. To have him control what you do (or how we evolve) pretty much adds up to a weird form that resembles scientific Calvinism (which is clearly not the Catholic view of things).
THIS IS BULLSHIT! The Italian Minister of the Interior, Giuliano Amato, explicitly said that the decision was NOT forced by any security consideration.
There was no violence, only a strong pacific protest. You cannot mark as fascists people that disagree with you, expecially if they are fighting for freedom, science and equal rights.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Right, because it's not like he has anyone with a Ph.D. advising him. Of course the Vatican has been completely ignoring science for a long time as well. Heck, I'm sure they have problems with the Big Bang and evolution.
[/sarcasm]
It's like if I told you that, the faster you go, the shorter (horizontally) you get. Lots of people still have a hard time wrapping their head around that one little side effect of Relativity theory.
If we were in the same space as them, we might just have had the same reaction as them ... and thought ourselves completely sane and rational people in the process.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This is a common mistake. Hardly anyone reads the bible, you see. If you'd read it, you'd realise that it doesn't say the Earth is flat.
In the future, please don't take what idiots tell you about the bible as what's actually written there.
And yes, I'm entirely serious.
...you're completely unclear on the concept of enlightened self-interest.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
I subscribe to Fortean Times. It questions both. ;)
Are they falsifiable occurrences? Are they repeatable occurrences? How trained were these "skeptics" in the sciences involved & Was that training from accredited institutions? Is there direct, first hand evidence that the occurrences actually happened (other than eye-witness accounts)?
If you have answered "No" to any of the above, your (unreferenced) claims have no meaning when placed in the same sentence as Science.
as far as logic is concerned
What does logic have to do with science? Common sense is logical. That does not make it scientific - or right.
I'll respect any theory or idea enough to examine it. Hell, I may even believe in it. That does not make it scientific or true.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Gallileo was told not to teach his theories as fact until they could be proven
It seems the trick to getting radical ideas tolerated is to present it as "merely a model than can be used to predict and compare observations" rather than selling it as a model of reality.
The guy who first proposed quantum multiverses in the 50's ran into similar roadblocks because the idea of multiverses, one for each potential quantum outcome, was considered way too radical. Thus, if he sold it as merely a prediction technique instead of a reality model, it may have gotten further.
Table-ized A.I.
Why would anybody want to have a "dialog" with the pope? Dialog presupposes that both sides participate honestly and with an open mind, and the Catholic church has demonstrated over two thousand years that it is incapable of doing that, and instead uses intimidation, violence, and murder to get its way. I hope many more institutions will follow and declare the pope and any other high Catholic dignitary "persona non grata".
The Catholic church is an evil institution. It is sad that so many well-meaning Catholic believers, good people at heart, don't realize that.
And have a Pope justify it three hundred years from now. How do you like this line of discussion? Or maybe you should be drawn and quartered?
These two systems aren't all that different in rationality from the user or average person's perspective.
You see, to the average person who isn't convinced either way yet, you have a bunch of people telling you that this is true or that is true. You can say that is it written in this book or these books or somewhere else. You can say that this proves it and that proves it and this explains the magic away all you want. But to the average person, they have to make a choice to just believe someone along the lines. Whether it is a preacher or a science instructor or both is irrelevant to most because they won't have the ability to understand reasoning or proof behind one more then the other and they won't be able to do any experiments to prove or disprove anything on a level need to validate or invalidate any claim.
Somewhere along the lines you and I took a position to reject one and believe the other or to segregate a combination of both. You have had these influences imparted on to you by different people and experiences but in the end, you are just believing what someone tells you. Rarely will the average person have personal or intimate knowledge of the subject at hand whether it is religion or some science that attempts to disprove religion. So from a rational set of arguments, you or I have no more proof of something then the person worshiping goats or a bible. We just tend to believe our side is more true then the others because we have faith in what we are told is true for whatever reasons convinced us.
Further, there is really no reason for science to make a statement about religions at all. It seems that this happens when some self proclaimed atheist wants attention and isn't inherent in a discussion about science. The two aren't incompatible, usually it is only a few people interpretations of each that are. And even to that point, only a small portion of either is directly related to one another so it is pointless on a whole. Especially in this case where they are using an ancient thinker's persecution that was mild compared to many in the day, which happened by people who aren't alive today in which no body alive today has ever met anyone who was alive when they were as a reason to persecute someone today. I sense a little ulterior motive in this but to each their own I guess.
He didn't want the pope to cancel, he wanted the school to rescind the offer. Now the school does not have to face the protesters' challenges.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan.
So he protested the pope's visit. The pope then cancelled, giving him exactly what he wanted, and he protests the pope's cancellation?
I wonder which party is playing up to the publicity here?
I'm not interested, as long as he still preaches that Jesus B.S. and refuses to accept the plain facts of His Noodly Magnificence's Saucy imprint on all of creation. I'm sure the scientists would have been much more interested in a visit from a representative of the REAL Holy Church, whose beliefs speak to a much "higher" (not to mention tastier) rationality than anything the catholics could propose. RAmen.
**** You never REALLY learn to swear until you own a computer. ****
Q: What is an agnostic dislexic insomniac?
A: Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.
Haw haw haw ... Ok your turn.
And the sanity check is when they refuse to own up to their own hypocrisy.
tic
I'm afraid you didn't quite grasp the difference between "demand" and "request". Demand kind of implies that the "if someone agrees" step out of it.
Atheism is not believing there is no deity, rather it is the *absence* of belief in any deity.
There is a big difference between the former and the latter. Try to understand it and you will understand why Atheism is not - and can never be - a religion.
Also, 200 years ago probably more scientists were actually Atheists than you might think; it simply wasn't socially accepted not to be religious and instead of suffering the consequences they simply followed the other sheep. Similarly, there probably were as many homosexuals in those days as there are now - though you would not know it from the history books.
Religion mocks non-believers constantly. Religious leaders constantly call Atheists the worst kind of scum - and worse things.
Compared to that, calling someone stupid, brainwashed or delusional because they are religious is pretty tame.
Add to that I don't know any atheist people who would shy away from social interaction with someone just because that person is religious. The same can certainly not be said for quite a few religious people.
So who really are the ignorant bigots?
Any self respecting geek would want to get at least some of the facts straight before passing judgement on an ODF vs OOXML discussion, so why not this one? I guess it's easier to hold a bias.
You see the whole Science vs Religion argument in my opinion is fundamentally flawed, and frankly it's a bit deceptive to expect as default the notion that they are mutually exclusive.
Yes the Catholic Church has made some big mistakes, Specifically in the Galileo affair but also regarding Copernicus too. Over 2000 years or so the Catholic Church has accumulated quite a bit of experience and has had to learn lots from the mistakes of people who call themselves Catholic. That separation of Church & State is a good thing, that Faith can never conflict with reason and that the sacraments the Church offers for the benefit of the faithful should never ever be sold.
Specifically in the case of Galileo, several Popes offered tribute to him and Pope John Paul II in 1992, essentially apologised on behalf of the Inquisition that had wrongly admonished him.
"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...."
- Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - 4th November,1992
Over time it has been a humbling but healthy experience for the Catholic Church, and it grows wiser from it. It seems exceptionally unlikely to me that the current Pope was going to Rome's La Sapienza university to tell them that Science sux and that Galileo was wrong, so there!
Why?
Because Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. The very rigour of Science itself came from monks in monasteries attempting to understand and describe the observable world in objective ways. The first Universities were monasteries. Galileo himself quotes a Catholic cleric saying "The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach how to go to heaven and not how go the heavens".
A person can choose to be an honest Scientist. A person can choose to have an honest belief in God. A Person can choose to be an honest Scientist with and honest belief in God.
A 6000 year old Earth which is an evolution free zone with dinosaur bones pre-baked is not honest. An honest Christian should not believe such things, they are not consistent with reason. With this in mind, one who doesn't lie about science can also honestly have faith in God. Faith in God does should not require taking the Bible as being a literal, scientifically prescriptive document. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. "If Scripture cannot err", he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, "certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways".
Faith and Reason are actually quite compatible, and from a Catholic perspective are interdependent. On the relationship between Faith and Reason
Of course, It's always just a lot easier to criticize the Catholic Church and those that represent it as backward, anti-Science and probably involved in some kind of conspiracy. Trouble is, the truth just wants to be free.
You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion.
Are you saying that the pope supporting imprisoning a scientist for the rest of their life, banning their published work, and threatening them with death, torture and excommunication might be okay depending on his reasons for doing so???
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I couldn't have said it better myself.
The Pope's support for evolution is the same as Microsoft's support for open standars - with few caveats.
I don't like the word agnostic, because I consider it an evasion. I'm agnostic about God to the extent I'm agnostic about Mithra, or for that matter Mothra. Are you agnostic about Bigfoot and ESP? I don't believe in them, but I'd hardly call myself agnostic about them--I'd just say that I see no reason to believe in them, which is my approach to religion. What word do we use for people who just don't believe in religion? If only we had a word already that meant "lacks religion." Hmm.
"Religion was no more inherent to the Crusades than Nationalism was to the Holocaust." Here speaks someone who has never been to the Langue d'Oc in France. Have a look around for details of the Albigensian crusade and in particular the statement of Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury when the town of Beziers was sacked - "Kill them all, God will know his own!"
You are quick to take some of the goods that have come out of science but just as quick to reject the appalling things that have come out of religion.
When judging an event like this you need to contextualize it.
Italy is a very weird place, different from the other European countries. In Italy the bishops actually can veto or modify a law, actively lobbying the political power.
There has been a long string of attacks against science, the last was against the possibility to safely use assisted reproductive technology (you are forced to be implanted with all the embryos, no way to control the healthiness of each single embryo or their number!)
When the pope speaks, it's not a mere matter of religion. It's a political issue.
Those are not "scientists". They are nobodies. They didn't make any significant discovery, they have not and will not contribute to science in any meaningful ways. They are just overpaid teachers with a bloated opinion of themselves, and they only skill is being able to rouse the leftist rabble that are university students.
While I hold no sympathy for the Church and for the Vatican, we should remember that Ratzinger is an esteemed theologist and philosopher and he had been INVITED there. The actual Italian President of the Republic, Napolitano, is an avower Communist and has been through his whole life and has supported the Pope.
Anti-religious as I am, I'd rather listen to Ratzinger's learned oratory for a day than to those "scientists" for a minute or to all slashdotters for a second.
Interestingly, most people who say that most Catholics are stupid and weird happen to be Catholics. Seeing as how much they like to badmouth themselves, their mass (is that capitalized?) must invove some kind of groin-kicking ritual or something...
(*the chalice is passed around* "This is the blood of Christ. And because Christ was quite pissed for being nailed to a piece of wood, it's vinegar. That's what you assholes get for not helping him." - "But priest, we weren't born back then!" - "Well, that's hardly my fault now, is it?")
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Seen from Italy, the whole incident appears a consequence of the tension between opportunistic not-really-christian politicians and narrow minded atheist intellectuals.
Under the last Berlusconi government, up to two years ago, slimy right-wing politicians did their worst to appease and obey the influential Italian church, passing laws such as a crackdown on fertility treatments and an expensive tax exemption for "religious" private schools, inns, souvenir stores etc.
This earned them the support of a sadly politicized CEI (the Italian Conference of Bishops, the governing body of the church in Italy) and the irritation of opponents of the church and mere liberals.
Now that we have an allegedly left-wing government, this sick state of affairs has merely shifted to different political protagonists; in the past few weeks, for instance, restrictive reforms of the law that allows abortion have been threatened.
Inviting the Pope not for just another talk, but for the inaugural address of the academic year, is an unprecedented bad idea that maybe seemed attractive to the rector of La Sapienza because it allowed him to take a pro-church stance.
The excessive complaints against the visit have been an occasion to lash out against the church and vent the frustration of a politically underrepresented and misrepresented radical minority.
I'm afraid ut's going to get worse before it gets better.
He was threatened with torture and being burned alive if he did not publicly state that he was wrong, which wasn't an empty threat since natural philosopher Giordano Bruno had been burned in 1600 (a nice round 2000 years after Socrates' death). The church didn't consider that his theories could ever be proven, as they contradicted the bible (and aristoteles) in such theological matters as the sun rotating around the earth (and the earth being the center of the universe) and celestial bodies being perfect spheres attached to the 7 or so rotating crystal spheres that make up the heaven. Now why would a scientist want to stick his nose in this kind of theological stuff?? Also, he was kept a prisoner in his house in arcetri until his death (and he was in luck, since he had actually been sentenced to prison).
If you want to get a modern interpretation of why this pissed off the church so much, read Bertold Brecht's life of galileo. Great book.
Science as we know it today was brought into existence by religious people who
Contrary to what your statement could be interpreted, it is not BECAUSE they were religious that they were great scientist, and searched for more than "god did it". Science (or at least the premise of science, one could argue that only with popper and scientific method real science came to) was done IN SPITE of them being religious. Actually you would be hard pressed to find openly non-religious people in such period of time, so naturally anybody doing anything at that time would have to be from a religion. So IMHO it is a non-info to say they were religious.
Justice. It is from religion that we get the idea that all men are created equal, that equality before the law, equality of rights, equality of worth are good and right and true.
WHAT ???? That coming from a culture which ENSLAVED black african people and said they were NOT people and had no soul ? Sorry ? Show me where in history for example have religion said that those NOT belonging to their religion had equal rights. I can't see that from christianty, or islam. I dunno for any other religion but we already cut down the 2 bigggest middle age culture source of science with that.
And for your information most of the US founding father (which cited something similar) were either DEIST or atheist.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Oh, and let me touch lightly on the last bit while I'm here -- even though, I probably shouldn't. many atheists [...] attempt to convert others to that view (evangelize), and label as an idiot anyone who disagrees (condemn). In that case, the analogy to religion isn't totally off the wall. I don't know much about this "evangelism", so "many" must not be the right word. That said... Ridiculing unscientific belief is not the same as 'condemning'. I'll admit that atheists often ridicule (even mock) unscientific beliefs because the basis of their atheism is often scientific. They are free to do so, but it's almost the exact opposite of evangelism (or is it like a Christian saying, "what you believe will send you to Hell," some form of evangelism? Maybe I'm confused). But, I guess if irreligion can be religion then criticism can be condemnation. Why do we even have all these extraneous words anyway?!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament). If you're talking of the catholic church you can't exactly put aside the pope. The catholic church has absolved galileo in 1992 (that's timely justice!), but judging by Ratzinger's declaration on the issue (which was the main reason of this protest) that might not have happened if he was already pope. He also caused a setbak in dialogue with other christion churches by claiming that they are the only church (the other ones are "sects")
In my view the church is one of the few institutions on earth which thinks in centuries, rather than quarterly reports. So evangelism and demographics are it's main concerns in winning the war for the souls of men (which probably has something to do with the no-condoms-even-in-places-where-one-third-of-the-population-has-aids policy). Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own. They were not protesting a speech by the pope. The pope does speeches all the time and they are all over the media here in italy already. They were protesting that he was invited to give a lecture at their university in the ceremony for the beginning of the academic year (with no debate to follow of course).
Does "a few caveats" include "The Church's stance is that any such gradual appearance must have been guided in some way by God, but the Church has thus far declined to define in what way that may be. Commentators tend to interpret the Church's position in the way most favorable to their own arguments"?
Come on, let's be honest for a while. No Church supports evolution.
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable. He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him. Which leads us to...
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point. Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion. I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all? I'm saying that your answer to that might reveal a real bigotry against the Church, a bigotry that is willing to contradict scientific principles. Science isn't concerned with "geniuses" but with the proper presentation of evidence, which Galileo utterly failed due to his arrogance. It is the bigoted blindness that leads to such conclusions as that the current pope is a geocentric dunce, or that he wants to bring us back to the political environment of Galileo's time.
- Francis Ocoma
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Wouldn't this be similar to the the city of Redmond banning MS software in their offices? Is this just one of several parallels between two cultural artifacts? Who has more money and a larger monopoly I wonder?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable.
...and so on...
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone can claim freedom from slavery doesn't make slavery unforgivable.
Man, just because you live in a world where rape and murder are illegal, doesn't make rape and murder unforgivable.
See I can justify any action with handwaving.
He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him.
In some ways that is much WORSE. It means the very people who claim to be the protectors of mankind from all things evil were quite happy to trash scientific truth just to put down anyone that would question their authority.
I also hear this argument a lot and it simply doesn't hold true. You do realize that Copernicus held off publishing his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) until he was old and close to dying for fear of retribution from the church? He didn't go around insulting the pope now did he? His works were still banned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point.
You DOUBT? You mean I'm having this argument with someone who doesn't even KNOW the history, but is happy to rabbit on about things he knows nothing about? If you're actually interested in what really happened I can recommend a couple of good books I studied as part of my History of Astronomy subject when I did my Astronomy Masters. Never mind...I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? You're prepared to repeat whatever you've heard without examining it at all.
I didn't say the pope threatened Galileo with anything. I said the current pope condoned the actions of the inquisition that did threaten. Go look up a biography some time.
Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion.
Again you show your ignorance. It's more than just a "cruel expulsion". A man who is excommunicated became a pariah, often had his belongings stripped from him, and was threatened with the fires of hell for eternity. This was no mere slap on the wrist.
I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Ahhh so it's a form of control. A man's life, livelihood, and beliefs mean nothing because he dared to make fun of the holy church. This is no defence. You clearly have no conception whatsoever of what excommunication meant in the 1600s!
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all?
The pope was condoning torture, forcing a person to recant deeply held beliefs, interference of the church with scientific freedom and publication.
But yes strictly speaking you're right. If you're running an evil and descructive totalitarian organisation it is rational to cond
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'm sure it sounds stupid, but my 'beliefs' make a very coherent picture, I'll just sum it up:
- The world follows logical rules
In fact illogical things can not exist.
- No god
It's impossible for anything "supernatural" to exist in this world, it would simply be natural.
- There is no special reason for our existance
We are here because we are a succesful self-replicating system, it's quite obvious.
- All 'things' including humans are purely conceptual
We are all swirling vortexes of particles interacting with other particals. We only have the perception of consciousness. And 'things' only exist in purely subjective standpoints.
I think the will to believe in things we don't see purely comes from wishful thinking. My standpoint is quite nihilistic and not satisfying at all. It doesn't take a long line of reasoning to see the thruth in these points, it takes guts to except your own insignificance and the pointlessness of your existance. Morals don't come from universal truths, they come from social structures.
Incoherent pictures follow from the clash between rationalisation and wishful thinking.
storm in a teacup: age old italian games
Yes.
It's not necessarily morally better, though.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Really? That's a rather extreme, and in fact logically unsupportable hypothesis.
It would be better to say that any concept of a "goal state" is extraneous and unnecessary to either fitting existing facts to the theory or predicting new ones from it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think anyone fits all their beliefs together into a coherent picture of the world.
Have a gander at Rothbards work, totally self consistent, absolute genius.
For any physicts or mathematicians dabling in the world of finance and economics with the view that a lot of what you're doing is based on supposition and "what if's" and would like an insight into economics (and ethics) based purely on deductive reasoning from basic axioms - then this guy's work is fascinating. His work is a consolidation and continutation of the much forgotten enlightenment.
Well said, and I think it's because at the lowest level of existence everything has it's foundations in faith. Religions people put thier faith in gods, signs and mircales, secular people put their faith in observations, logic and repeatability. No human is fully one way or the other, we are all somewhere in between (yes, even the Pope and R.Dawkins).
IMHO, mysticisim, religion, science and personal rituals (how one showers, shaves, applies make-up, wipes their arse, ect) are not that far apart. The pragmatic difference is that science has a methodology and philosophy that has transformed the planet in the last 150yrs or so (science & math started to spread rapidly through the advent of public education and cheap books in Victorian times). Religion has lost a great deal of it's power over everyday life, and people rarely notice (let alone question) the usefulness or otherwise of thier personal rituals.
The Pigeon dance: ( a derogatory term used to describe conclusions drawn from random/insufficient data )
Also it's said to be an experiment in animal behaviour that goes something like this...
Scientists trained a pigeon to peck at a lever to dispense seeds. Once the pigeon had learned the trick the changed the machine so that the lever did not work anymore, instead the same size meal of seeds were dropped randomly over the entire length of the birds feeding time.
At first the pigeon started getting frustrated as it pecked away at the lever and nothing happened, it started performing random movements such as pecking the wall, spining around in frustration, standing on the lever, ect. When a seed happened to drop the pigeon would eat it and repeat whatever movements it had just performed.
After some time the pigeon would build up a whole routine of spins, bobs, flutters, pecks, ect. If no seed dropped after the pigeon performed it's intricate dance the bird would repeat it with slight adjustments, if an adjustment "worked" it was kept. After a while the time taken to execute the dance remained roughly steady even though the dance was slowly but continually changing as the pigeon tried to adjust it's "theory" to compensate for luck.
Some might think that individual humans would behave differently in similar experiments and soon work out via logic alone that the reward was random, however they would be wrong.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How have people been killed and tortured in the name of rationality, science, skeptic inquiry?
I won't mention that you can't really compare the numbers: We are much more efficient in killing people now than at the times of the holy crusade or the spanish inquisition.
The point is: Name one bad deed specifically done in the name of unbelieve in a higher being?
Now name one bad deed done in the name of any higher being?
Note that I am merely summarizing what is in the Zeitgeist Movie, and several other movies.
[quote]planned visit recalled a 1990 speech [/quote]
What freaking revelance does an 18 year old action have to this story? 18 years ago you were probably still in your mother's lap nursing... Guess that means you should be considered momma's boy titty sucker today? Of course not... The past is the past. Lets move on. Get over it. The real story here is that there's a bunch of dumbass irrational scientists that want to protest since they think their limited view of the universe is the only right one... which is completely dumb.
Contraception policies of the catholic church (instigated by JP II) are killing people today.
But there are people still defending these bozos. Amazing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome.He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage"
What about his moral authority then? There are governments that set policies in place that are agreeable to the catholic church and many millions of people that follow literally whatever they are told is good for them.
You must also know that a woman having sex with her husband is not permitted to used condoms.
The stance of the Catholic church has nothing to do with celibacy and lots to do with puritanical rules of an elite that does not even have practical experience about the issue they are dictating.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you would like to read excerpts from his prepared speach , you can get it here (and links to the full thing):
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/what-can-a-pope-say/
I think you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find there.
Zapman
Is the Bible universal truth, yes or not?
For bunnies sakes, if god can't come up with some good ass general moral rules, then who can?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The point is that the world does not need religion, it is evil and serves no purpose but to perpetuate its self and get in the way of rational, proper thinking.
Evil and with no purpose? In essence, it's purist form, religion is there to provide a spiritual path such that one can solve their problems. It is an act of utter sanity and proper thinking to attempt to solve ones problems and give away anything that causes hardship. That is the purpose and rationality of religion.
It's natural to object to the dogmatic and prescriptive aspects. Thats fine. Some people need that, some don't. We're all different in that regard. There *are* religious congregations that are not dogmatic *at all*. And their are dogmatic and prescriptive "rationalists" as well. The point is that dogma is not religion.
However much you or anyone else think you believe in some sort of god doesn't change the fact that there is no god and that you have simply been deluded either by yourself or by your parents or elders into believing that nonsense.
Really? I'd say it's impossible to prove either way, although I'm leaning towards the idea that there is no god, I couldn't say for sure. If somebody finds a belief useful in getting through that day, and it causes them to act with more kindness and genuiness, then I'm all for it. If a belief in god or otherwise does not have this effect, then I'd privately question the sanity - but alas, there is no way to help such a person, but try to support them in finding happiness for themselves.
Imagine a family of dole bludging crack addicts, assuming any children survived they would be convinced that leeching of the state and undertaking petty crime to pay for their crack is perfectly normal behaviour and something to be applauded. The fact is no matter how much they might believe in that it still doesn't make it right and society has a duty to get involved when things go wrong like this and put an end to the problem.
I think this "bite" highlights a difference in how we think. Deep down we are all aware of when something is unhealthy and when something is not. Belief won't change that. It's basic intelligence, and works at the level of "hand on stove equals burnt hand". Thus, it would be impossible for these crack addicts to be happy. Deep down, they'd be painfully aware of what they are creating. The easy road is denial. The hard road is dealing with the whole problem.
Societies traditional way of dealing with "the whole problem" is spirituality. Sure it's confused, sure lots of bad stuff happens, but that's because spirituality is practised by human beings. If human beings weren't confused, then they wouldn't need spirituality in the first place. So pat yourself on the back if you think that you're perfectly wise, sane, and live life with absolutely no regret and never cause harm to yourself or anybody else. You'd be the one in a trillion who would derive no benefit from genuine spirituality.
Unfortunately it doesn't matter that most peoples actual belief is more or less half hearted and innocuous in order to target the real criminals, priests, nuns, monks and evangalists etc they must be brought to understand that supporting religious activity is no longer an acceptable behaviour. Without their 'flock' the real work can begin; taking down the organisation and infrastructure of relgion. There is no real need to imprison any but the most hardline extremists ( who will undoubtedly turn to terrorism to maintain a grasp on their power ) it will be enough to make sure that no religious nonsense can ever be taught to children and no religious organisation can be allowed to operate, eventually with a lack of support and aggressive teaching about the fallacy of religion it will wither and die a natural, but long overdue death.
While I respect that you truely believe that, I find it difficult to think that any but a very small portion of religious leaders would resort to terrorism. Those that woul
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"The physicist Marcello Cini ...wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
What? I paraphrase:
"You want to come, but you shouldn't come. You're not coming? Oh, very clever, by not coming, you're playing the victim."
Two problems here. One, the Pope is trying to debate something in the wrong place. Two, I'm protesting that by arguing about religion... on a tech news site. Ok, fine. Next I'm going to a church to discuss compile flags.
on your first point, "These two systems aren't all that different in rationality from the user or average person's perspective." i disagree. i agree, sure, that your average person does not understand the logistics behind most scientific discoveries. but the fact of the matter is that science deals with evidence and data. *YOU* may never have read the first published research into bacterial infection, or be able to fully grasp the organic structure of an antibiotic, but you would give them to your child if they were sick. you may be just taking their word for it, but with good reason. just because Average Joe doesn't look up the human trial results for a prescription, he COULD. and the entire system is set up so that you shouldn't have to. trusting science when it is done right is usually a good move. religion on the other hand, deals with comepletely different subject matter, and therefore cannot be dealtwith in the same manner as science. you can try to rationalize it if you wish, but in the end you are only trying to use logic to prove a bunch of assumptions and non-observable, non-objective things. i have no problem with religion. it just isn't a rational and evidence based subject. nor should it be. and when people try to treat it as such, they swiftly look clueless. it's like trying to describe the texture of your food using colors.
secondly, there is NO DOUBT in my mind that there was some other motive at work here. on both sides. in my mind, i suspect the pope wanted a platform to spout a lot of the non-scientific nonsense he's been known to spout. i highly doubt that this professor was simply worked up about the "wrongs" done to Galileo. most likely, that is a jumping off place to talk about the broader subject of the subjugation of science to religion, which is a big important thing that should not be ignored. it makes a good stepping stone since, as i understand it, this pope has refuted the claims made previously that the church handled it incorrectly. now i doubt the pope is dumb, and he realizes that many people will be able to see that the church is grasping at straws to take away speed from this scary intellect based movement called science. so he uses this protest, that has now gotten large enough to gain his attention, as an excuse to cancel. now science is the big bad guy, trying to do away with religion, disprove it.
in reality, this was a shot for attention by both sides. religion is run like any other business. they want more customers, and they are playing the victim card to get some. some people made a bad call, and now the field of science is "taking the hit" so to speak. but science has little to say about spirituality, outside of measuring its effects. no one said it did. my point was that people should take the upper hand, let them scream, and explain calmly why they are incorrect. don't get sucked into this stupid game of he said she said. science will "win" on it's own merits if you allow the evidence to speak for itself on this playing field.
Yea its ok to study that crap for the perspective of how they screw everything up for up nice tolerant reasonable non religious folk /sarcasm
In contrast, religious theories are pulled out of someones ass to support some preconceived notion, contradictory evidence is ignored, and criticism is discouraged. Religous types like to point to disagreement among scientists as a weakness of science when in reality it is its greatest strength. Science is constantly examining alternatives to ensure it has the correct answer, while religion shuns alternatives and simply *asserts* that it has the correct answer.
There's a big difference between ignoring that last 1% uncertainty of science to treat something as fact, and accepting some religious bozo's 100% unfounded claim as fact. Any attempt to equate the two is woefully misguided. Some 'assumptions' are in fact better than others.
I don't think that most of the religious community today is intolerant of science or scientists, although there are certainly disagreements. However, this displays the vitriolic hatred scientists have for religion, which is just as irrational. I think the majority of scientists are just as intolerant of religion as the catholic church was of them in centuries past. If scientists such as these were in charge, they would wipe out religion for secularism. Those of religious beliefs would not be burned at the stake, but simply medicated and warehoused away as mentally deficient.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Kind of amazing how the "Hitler Youth" pope is whining about oppression.
Take your fruity red Prada shoes and go home, Ratzo. Nobody cares about you. The last guy who had your job is being nominated for sainthood. Think you are going to measure up? Not likely.
In fact, the pope wrote a book (actually a collection of homilies) delving into the catholic understanding of creation, evolution, et al. If you can be bothered to read just a little more than 100 pages, you should check out then Cardinal Ratzinger's "In the Beginning...," ISBN: 0802841066.
It's really a shame that so many bright individuals dismiss religious folk out of hand because of the actions and ideologies of vocal minorities. Always read what a person has to say, not just what others have to say about what that person has said.
I am a religious person and a long time reader of Slashdot, and I'm getting tired of the vitriol poured out against religion in all its forms. The Bible is not a scientific textbook, and a scientific textbook cannot tell us how to live our lives, order society, or interface with our community. Science is an orderly heuristic that answers 'how.' It can never answer 'why.' For that, we need philosophy and religion. Surely, there are scientific philosophies and philosophies of science. Some of them are theistic and some atheistic. But none of them are science. Science is a method. Nothing more and nothing less.
I agree with your initial reply in a general sense. But it has nothing to do with the Pope. He does not belong in a list of great thinkers. He doesn't ask questions. His answers come from a book that requires a resupposed belief in it to have merit.
wait what? I actually had not heard of that term, but I had never said that atheists are intolerant. If anything they simply want to do their own thing and not be discriminated. People can claim no religion (be it atheism or agnostic, secular humanism) and not be an anarchist.
Religion is only one form of social control, not the only form.
I mean religious doctrines have guided human behavior for all of collective memory, but government laws and regulations are essentially the same thing, but secular. They are both codes of conduct, they just cite different authorities. Are you implying that there can be no government without church?
"adversary", huh? Harsh stance against someone who disagrees with you.
Because you can't prove that god does not exist. Therefore you accept something without proof. Therefore, by definition, atheism is a faith. One might call it religion even.
So I choose the point of view that pisses off both camps. Since I have no proof either way, I choose to ignore the issue altogether. This pisses off religious people because I don't believe in god, and atheists - because I don't believe god doesn't exist.
"And you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of doing that, other than some rant by Jonah Goldberg that makes a bunch of claims without citing sources"
Uhhh, Goldberg does give sources in his article, namely author Roger Nisbet's book, and quotes from Sheahan and other named sources from the newspaper article he cites. You're insinuating that he pulled a Stephen Glass and just made shit up. He writes for National Review, not The New Republic, thanks.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Goldberg cites sources and names interview subjects in his article. His article can be fact checked. So are you saying that the content should be ignored because it came from National Review? Would you have the similar objections to same subject in The Nation or Mother Jones or Rolling Stone?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I don't normally comment on humorous sarcasm, but yours was especially well-done. Kudos!
"Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss."
If by "open minded" you really mean "willing to chuck aside their convictions", then no, I wouldn't agree with you. Catholicism is actually in the process of stepping back from Vatican II and reaffirming some older traditions. JPII also put his foot down on the subject of Liberation Theology and heresies, and Benedict has followed in his stead.
Your more "open minded" churches...the ones willing to bend or toss aside teachings from the Bible and older theologians in the interest of "adapting to the times" are actually losing bodies. I don't think its a coincidence that the theologically conservative and evangelical churches are growing (and Catholicism is included here), while the mainstream denominations that embraced liberalization and a turning away from Biblical principals are losing members every year. The Episcopal Church is a hollow shell of its former self, and is splitting up in a schizm between conservatives and liberals. The same is happening to other "liberal" denominations. Even the Jesuits, considered a liberal order this past century, are starting to do an about face theologically. And its the younger generation of priests that are actually embracing the return to Catholic tradition, such as the Tridentine Mass. Its the 60's/Vatican II generation that is horrified by this. That generation is the one that fought the hardest for liberalization, but that battle was lost with the coming of JPII.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It's absolutely offensive and astonishing that people keep trying to cast scientists as intolerant. You're really comparing science's rejection of bull with religion's rejection of facts? Scientists reject ideas that don't pass scientific muster -- not because they're intolerant, but because that's how being logical and rational works. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; if you can't back up your crazy new claim with some sort of evidence, they're not interested. Unfortunately, the religious crowd has tricked a number of people (such as yourself) into talking about their bullshit as if it's on par with any other scientific theory. They take advantage of the way many people equate 'theory' with 'total speculation'. Gravity is a theory, even though it's tested trillions of times a day on our planet. Evolution is a theory based on a vast body of evidence, and predictions based on that theory have been proven correct (fish with limbs, dinosaurs with feathers). Discussing creationism in church is fine, but scientists *must* object when religious beliefs are passed off as facts, or even as being of equal merit; especially in educational settings.
Creationism is simply what some religious people *want* to believe is true. It has no body of evidence, and is not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable and has no predictive power. Counter-evidence is simply dismissed as 'a test of faith'. It has no business being discussed in the same context as science. Creationism also doesn't answer anything; if you believe god did it, then you're left to answer 'where did god come from?" which is really the same question with an extra, unnecessary step. Similarly, if you believe god has always existed, why not believe the universe has always existed?
Science isn't true because it says so. It lays out a set of principles designed for making objective, logical assessments of the observable world. If you disagree with any of those basic tenets, feel free to enlighten us; but we can all see what they are and judge whether or not they achieve their goal of objectivity. On top of this foundation is a mountain of research. You're free to read reports, examine evidence, and conduct experiments yourself if there's anything you're skeptical of. If you *do* manage to find counter-evidence or come up with a better explanation for something, other scientists will be eager to verify and learn from your findings.
With religion, you're expected to believe what they say simply because they said it, which is exactly the opposite of science. By definition there isn't any evidence to examine, because it's all about faith. Preachers just grab whatever parts of the bible support their preconceived notions. A lot of the time those are good notions, but it's still based on fiction. That doesn't mean everyone has to stop going to church, but I think all the worthwhile parts of religion can be had without the superstition and dogma.
Are you talking about the same things as the rest of us? From reading this I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
Pope Benedict XVI never said Galileo was wrong. He didn't even endorse the sentence against him. What he did, while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, was quote some (agnostic, by the way) philosopher's opinion of the matter in relation to the revisionism that was occuring in the 18th century: "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism."
You can not read this fairly without noting that Cardinal Ratzinger himself refers to this opinion as drastic. He favors the quote by Bloch saying, "Christianity has the right to remain faithful to its method of preserving the earth in relation to human dignity, and to order the world with regard to what will happen and what has happened in the world." Meaning basically that although physically the earth revolves around the sun, it's still the center of human activity.
This speech was two years before Pope John Paul II publicly apoligized for the way the church responded to Galileo. Cardinal Ratzinger never himself said the church was right in handling the Galileo affair, and he most certainly never supported geocentrism. However, it seems there's plenty of people who are happy to falaciously believe that claim, sadly including this supposedly well-educated Professor Cini.
You also don't appear to know what historically happened. The board of Inquisitors told Galileo and others not to publicly advocate heliocentrism. He was still permitted to discuss it hypothetically. Galileo had been vocally advocating it and creating quite a stir at the time, because a lot of sticks in the mud flat-out rejected it because they were ignorant, knee-jerk reactionists. He graciously agreed.
When Galileo's friend, Pope Urban VIII succeeded to the papacy, he returned to the subject. Urban actually requested he write a book on it, but again, not to press the arguments directly. However, he didn't hold very well to that condition, and actually used quotes from Urban in presenting Artitotelian viewpoint that ended up sounding rather mocking, although probably inadvertantly.
This public embarrassment unfortunately alienated the Pope, and the sticks-in-the-mud won out, forcing him to publicly recant the theory of heliocentrism, banning the book, and placing him under house arrest for several years.
Ironically, Copernicus had been teaching about heliocentrism 100 years earlier, and his theories were well-received at the time by several popes and innumerable academics. It took that long for the knee jerkers to gain support higher up and find a fittingly controversial victim.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
This has cropped up several times and is a fallacy. The pope, and the catholic church's official position is that god created everything through evolution. Pope John Paul stated it in 1996 and Benedict just re-iterated it again in 2007 as evidenced here. Please, get your facts straight before making emotional arguments.
And by "higher rationality" we mean wishful thinking.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
It is impossible to honestly take those action into account and come to the conclusion that the church did not oppose science.
The church would let them build their proof, and then reject it our of hand for unscientific reasons.
The fact that they would pretend to be willing to listen is NOT a good thing: It's hypocrisy.
You can't take the sky from me...
If the inquisition had machine guns and a population of similar size to shoot at, they'd have had the same kind of scorecard.
You can't take the sky from me...
but it is wrong. Science has stopped answering the type of how or why questions and has been relegated to making models that give good predictions. There are no absolute claims from science about objective reality of any kind. The word as we know it is made up of (always evolving) stories. And that's about as good as it will ever get with science (and I'm a mathematician by the way).
Some of the questions asked can't even be studied using scientific methods (not testable), and others could perhaps be modeled by artificial life left to evolve sufficiently long.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
if there is good evidence supporting something, then there is no need for belief.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Fair enough to protest this planned speech, but it seems a little tacky for Cini to go ahead and attack the Pope for complying with his original request, which was basically to cancel his speech.
All through this thread you keep saying religious ideas are just as valid as scientific ones, but that's simply not the case.
As much as I'd accept that religious ideas might not be as scientifically valid as scienctific ideas, universally less valid is a pretty big claim to make without first proving something about religion.
Ideas based on facts are superior to fiction and superstition.
I'd totally agree with that. Unfortunately, way too many "facts" aren't facts.
Science isn't true because it says so.
I'd accept that. To me saying "science is true" is about as helpful as saying "swimming is true."
It lays out a set of principles designed for making objective, logical assessments of the observable world.
I'd also agree with that.
If you disagree with any of those basic tenets, feel free to enlighten us;
As much as I basically agree with your definition of science, I don't know which list of tenets (doctrines, beliefs, dogmas) you're referring to.
but we can all see what they are
When you're advocating scientific methods, you shouldn't try to prove things by saying "we can all see." I think that attempting to find/create such a list that would be (fairly) universally accepted (and proving that acceptance, of course) might help you see how non-monolithic science is.
and judge whether or not they achieve their goal of objectivity.
Make a list of hot moral/political topics (I'll start you off):
Divorce, Slavery, Racism, Global Warming, Environmentalism, Communism, Democracy, Homosexuality, Divine Right of Kings, Class Structures, etc.
For any of these topics, was (is) science (or scientific concensus) coherent about them BEFORE societal opinions changed? No.
The scientific method IS objective. Unfortunately for the objectivity of science, the method is applied by inherently non-objective beings.
On top of this foundation is a mountain of research. You're free to read reports, examine evidence, and conduct experiments yourself if there's anything you're skeptical of.
Sure, but for most of it, I don't do studying and experimenting. I just take most scientific conclusions on "faith." For example: Does oxygen (that lifegiving gas that sustains regular combustion) exist in the way that modern science claims? I believe so, but I'll never do an experiment to prove it. I just accept it.
If you *do* manage to find counter-evidence or come up with a better explanation for something, other scientists will be eager to verify and learn from your findings.
That's not borne out by the history of science. Scientists, because they're human, have the ability to form pet ideas and believe them after evidence should compel them to give them up. For example, England's mathematics fell WAY behind that of Europe because too many mathematicians got too wound up about the Newton/Leibniz calculus controversy.
With religion, you're expected to believe what they say simply because they said it,
Either you're taking this on faith, or you haven't done enough research, because my religion, as one example, teaches pretty much the opposite of that.
which is exactly the opposite of science.
I'll agree that believing just because you're told to is unscientific. It's just not true that all religions teach that.
By definition there isn't any evidence to examine,
Not strictly true. There may not be any legal evidence or scientific evidence, but that doesn't mean there's no evidence.
because it's all about faith.
See, I think all is an exaggeration.
Preachers just grab whatever parts of the bible support their preconceived notions.
Look around. A lot of "scientists" do that same kind of thing. It would be unscientific to
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
... given that Italian Fascism was founded on *opposing* Marxism?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The church is a keeper and defender of faith. So, any wrong teaching should be corrected which is the duty of the institution to guard the deposit of faith left to it by its founder Jesus Christ.
You can choose to accept that or not. It doesn't matter either way. For those who believe in Jesus, they are convinced that gates of hell will not prevail against it because Jesus said so:). For those who don't, it's completely irrelevant (in their mind at least) and will usually have some cynical remark against the church or faith.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
You know what was the first reaction when the pictures came out? Ban soldiers from having cameras.
Scientists don't get to arrest, torture and kill people (but when given a position of power by Nazis, many did), the pope lost that power long ago, and the people who have that power today do the same with it as people have done throughout history with power: They abuse it.
The important thing is not who you give that power to, but that you don't.
Peace.
You can't take the sky from me...
I want five different atheists (not just random net trolls) who have called for the extermination of people who believe in gods, with supporting quotes. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm glad you have that "reportedly" disclaimer in there, because otherwise you would be wrong.
Pope Benedict said or implied nothing of the sort. First of all, there was no threat to Galileo's life. He was placed under house arrest and ordered to recant his arguments for heliocentrism. Galileo's enemies were only able to accomplish this much after he inadvertantly but publicly embarrassed Pope Urban VIII, who had previously been very supportive of his work.
Second, if you will read the second link in the submission, you will see that the speech referred to did not defend the Church's treatment of Galileo. Rather, in a paper discussing the relationship between faith and science he turned to the obvious example of Galileo, particularly how it was distorted in the 19th century to make it look like a simple case of good Galileo vs the oppressive church (There really was much more going on and Galileo had many friends in the Church who defended him). During this passage, he quotes several opinions on the matter. One of them defends the decision of the Inquisition. He quoted it. He didn't accept it. In fact, he appears critical of that opinion and calls it "drastic."
Third, this speech was made just two years before Pope John Paul II's public apology for the Church's treatment of Galileo. If we're going to consider implied viewpoints, note that he was a close friend of John Paul II. Similarly, Benedict has said something to the effect of "ideologies of power can never erase truth." That sort of philosphy rather contradicts a justification of suppression.
As another poster stated, it's perplexing that this faculty member complained when Benedict arranged to come speak (on invitation), seemingly ignorant of the above, and then complained again when he cancelled. Professor Cini's position, in fact, was not merely that he didn't want him preaching religion on campus, but the ridiculous argument that allowing a religious leader on the campus was "an incredible violation of the university's autonomy."
Yeah and don't forget intolerance of people who believe in UFO abductions, the Loch Ness Monster, Shark Cartilage, Laitril, Faith Healing, Indigo Children, etc. etc.
See, the problem with this propaganda is that it's just attempting to sugarcoat what the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) did to Galileo and explain it all away. Pope Benny sounds like a lawyer, trying to convince everyone that black is really white after all, and many others are attempting to trivialize the damage that was done by trying to paint Galileo as being in the wrong.
The reality of the situation is that no, the RCC's dogmatic stance that the Earth is the center of the universe was not explicitly mentioned in the Holy Bible, but it was an extension that was "reasoned" through Christian philosophy. You know, the same, old, tired crap about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, trying to reconcile "God's Law (including the bits about persecuting homosexuals et al.)" with so-called "Natural Law", and it fit the purpose of the dogma at the time to reason that the Earth is the center of the universe and mankind was the center of the Earth's existence, for that humankind-centric view was the basis of much of the philosophy. It used "logic" to discover man's place in the grand scheme of things, and that place was front-and-center.
The RCC set a ludicrously high bar of "proof" to anything that would challenge their dogma. In the end, ALL of science is pretty much a collection of theories, and no real scientist will ever claim differently. Everything we know is subject to being rewritten if an Earth-shattering discovery takes place. Even well-respected theories that have stood the test of time are sometimes prone to receiving minor modifications as underlying principles are understood better. What science really is, is making observations, devising a method to further test them, and then discussing them. Which is exactly what Galileo did. No, he didn't prove anything at all. He made an observation, built a theory around it, and put forth his theory for public scrutiny.
Of course, the RCC has plenty of circular arguments at its disposal to declare itself "truth" and "absolutely proven". Science can NEVER measure-up, from a theological perspective, to that degree of delusional logic. Science will always be uncertain relative to the unwavering belief in mythological truths that have no objective basis or means to prove or disprove. In the eyes of a RCC theologian, no scientist will every prove anything. Pope Benny established that in that speech, as he attempted to reason how the RCC was correct to persecute Galileo. The rational seems to be that attempts to think freely, or to encourage others to think and reason, MUST be punished for the public good. The RCC apparently feels that ignorance of anything they don't explicitly approve on theological and scientific grounds is in the public's best interest.
On another of the comments posted above, of course Galileo worked for the Church. Almost nobody at that time wasn't a slave to church-dominated society in one way or another. The Pope headed governments, kings answered to him and were bound to do his bidding. There was no education except through the church. There were no jobs in higher education except for the church. The church was the be-all, end-all of everything, they had perfect monopolistic lock-in. It took brave heroes, the ramifications of whose deeds transcended their goals, such as Martin Luther and Galileo to stand up against this tyranny and thought-policing, and open the door for independent research and more objective scientific and theological orders. The RCC was, of course, the police too, and placed Galileo under house arrest. This is far more serious than the trivialization that Galileo was rightly censored for speaking out against his employer's viewpoints. If it was so trivial, fire the guy. They were able to arrest and confine him because they controlled nearly every aspect of everyone's lives. Those people who stood-up against the church's attempts to suppress and censor opened the door for secular thought and secular governments. Martin Luther and Galileo helped to make science and philosophy things th
Bitter, are we?
:)
Actually, studying religion/mythology is an excellent way to learn about human society and culture; just won't tell you anything about the structure of reality
tic
The problem is also about who came to the house before, with invitation and all. AFAIK, among other more fitting people, there were nice guys like Oreste Scalzone, criminal charges dropped because of prescription, now in politics.
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You can't take the sky from me...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreste_Scalzone
So without doing more research into Scalzone to learn about any specific point you're trying to make, all I can say is that, assuming that if I did know anything about Scalzone I would then agree that he should not be invited to any university ever, I would say that a previous invitation, even to a convicted criminal, should not imply that everybody else who ever wants to visit ought to necessarily be welcomed. If members of the physics department were not allowed to state their disapproval of their university's invitation to somebody who represents and supports a history of theocratic dictatorship, or who says rude & untrue things about Mr. Marconi, or who wears shirts that say E != mc^2, those would be examples of censorship. The closest thing to censorship I detect in the original article, is what the Italian Prime Minister said:
Mr. Prodi, any of "Italy's traditions of civility and tolerance" which really exist, are no thanks to the Catholic Church.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
translated into English
- Francis Ocoma
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It's still not a great article (Jonah Goldberg doesn't do a good job of distinguishing what he's quoting and what's his own commentary), but I was wrong; He does cite his sources.
http://outcampaign.org/
Humans can survive in a wide range of climates and environments due to our ability to use tools, but we can't survive anywhere, and without our tools, we are severely handicapped in terms of raw strength, speed and reproducibility. (Humans females have a pregnancy period of 9 months, which severely inhibits reproductive capacity.)
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Facts? Truth?! What is the truth that Galileo defended? What is the truth that this evil organization called the Catholic Church tried to hide from the world, the truth that poor, lonely Galileo had to stand for by himself, risking his career and his reputation? Well, let's see!
Is the sun truly stationary?
Is the Earth's orbit circular?
Is the moon NOT a cause of the tides?
Since these are wrong, can we now say that Galileo was a bad scientist, since the goal of "truth" wasn't achieved? Can we say that Galileo was willing to "trash scientific truth" in favor of his own scientific interpretation of evidence?
No, because Science is about evidence, not about "Truth". Truth is (in part) for philosophy, something that Galileo and many other scholars of his time weren't really good at, and something that they often confused with Science.
But the Earth DOES revolve around the sun, doesn't it? Yes, how heroic of this one man, what GUTS he had, to face the bad, tyrannical pope who would dare threaten to torture him, the best scientist in the world, the Father of Modern Science, just to cruelly abolish the obvious *glaring* TRUTH that the Earth revolved around the sun! How dare the pope put his horrid religion and his stupid assumptions above Galileo's clear-as-the-sun truth. How dare he!
...Except, Galileo wasn't the only one. You're so happy to point out that Copernicus never published his works until shortly before he died, apparently because he was afraid that Evil Church will get him (instead of, say, because he was afrad that his scholarly peers might reject such a revolutionary idea). But he DID publish it! And years later, a non-insignificant number of scholars were already heliocentrists, some of them part of the clergy. And the pope never persecuted them, though a few theologians wanted to. Hey, the Church isn't so anti-Science after all, huh?
Let me borrow a favorite phrase by atheists: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." For generations the most brilliant scholars of Europe were under the spell of Aristotle, and thought that the Earth was the center of the universe (among other incorrect things). Now, when the theory of heliocentrism was thought up, the only evidence for it was the clever mathematical interpretation of strange astronimical data. It was a solid theory, and explained the data beautifully, but it was not enough, because geocentrism was too ingrained in the scholars' minds. A good scientist would have waited for further evidence to convince geocentrists that they were wrong (e.g. the eventual discovery of other planets, the development of optics, astronomy, etc.), but Galileo wanted to brag about his perceived superiority. He was so fanatical about his belief that he was willing to challenge his religion on the basis of a clever (and, as we know, not completely correct) mathematical model. That is not good Science. That is just heresy.
Now, your claim that the Church was willing to "trash scientific truth" is misleading because, as I said, there is no such thing as a scientific truth. We only have what the scientists of the present have agreed upon, based on evidence, to be the most believable theory. Science is Occam's Razor applied to present data. Evidence will always accumulate, and it will sometimes be discredited, and it will sometimes change. But all in all, evidence is not "truth". What the Church was willing to do was to punish the irrational fanaticism bordering on heresy towards a strange (to them at the time) theory, which has been presented in such a disrespecful manner.
You call it an atrocity, yet any defensive act by an enemy will always be considered offensive. I'm not saying that there weren't harsh punishments done by corrupt authority figures during that time, or that the harsher punishments weren't atrocities, but what the heck wouldn't you call an atrocity, when you consider "house-arrest for fighting religion" to be an atrocity? You are unden
- Francis Ocoma
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So you and Dawkins believe people would have nothing to fight about and that everyone would be happy if there was no religion? and if you buy into 9/11 being an attact on the US's "religious freedoms" you have watched too many George Bush speaches and not researched what the US and the CIA have been doing over the last 100 years. Greed is not what most would classify a religion yet that truely seems to be the driving force of most wars.
My point was not that Scalzone oughtn't be allowed to visit universities, quite the opposite. Invite both and ask the Pope about Galileo if that is an issue for you. It's not the first time the Pope had to clarify his position (backpedal?), it happened with phrases about Islam.
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. He deplores, not censors. Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power.
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>What makes people generous and charitable is, when they have enough resources, then, their basic urge to cooperate with other human beings overrides their aversion to loss and so they share their resources. you are not using the US as an example of this I hope? I mean they have enough but still feel the need to go after others. >Yes. The research on the atomic bomb has brought us nuclear power, ending our dependence on those fanatics who have all the oil. again I hope you are not using the US as an example of this? what do you think the US is doing in Iraq? teaching Christianity with bombs and bullets? defending their freedoms? beating up those mean ol' terrorists? or securing their supply of oil?
But you see, religion isn't the exect opposite, you have a set of things that happened that makes sense and it is explained to. Not on the level of science but to a logical conclusion, "the glass fell off the table because pulled the paper out from under it." Seems logical to me. Now when you get into specifics, it doesn't matter if you tell me it was because the friction pulled the glass to the point a mystical force called gravity took over and cause the glass to plummet to the floor, it still happened because I did something. IT isn't all that wild to think a God couldn't do something either.
Similarly, we goto doctors because we have faith that they know more about the illnesses then we do. You don't goto the doctor and quiz him over first year medical questions to see if he is competent, we have a process that says they should be but in all, we are taking their word at it. They could be very well killing us or our children with that pill and we just believe by faith that the science behind it and everything else in place wouldn't allow that to happen.
But you see, It is all the same to the laymen. You don't believe the bible says Hate all black people, look it up. Surprise, it doesn't say that in any ways that a rational person could find. So it is the same to some regard, you say I should be able to look up science and validate it, And I say anyone can look up scripture to validate it. On the level of comprehension and understanding with the average person, they are about equal in the idea that one is better then the other.
I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the individual who has to take faith in order to believe in either. This is inherently different then religion in and of itself. The person who believes one way or another has faith that what they are believing in is correct. To that person, if they are like the majority of people, it is the same with science.
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. Indubitably! That is the reason that I said the professor's comments, even coupled with any number of shirtless radicals, cannot be called "censorship" -- they have no power to enforce their wishes, or impose their opinions in any way on anybody who chooses not to do what they request. The message by Stephen Samuels called Cini's actions "suppression," and called them "censorship" three times. My argument is with that "drama queen" description of a statement of protest. Of course, you're right, too, from what I can see here, across the pond. Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power. Yes, playing the martyr gets these clowns much more mileage with their supporters than bothering to take any real risk for anything they claim to believe. I read Cini's statement on the Pope's cancellation to mean essentially the same thing you just said, albeit less clearly, cluttered by a prediction of the future and sarcastic use of a phrase that IMO should only be used when giving a genuine compliment -- especially from a college professor! Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.' If the Pope does turn around and use this as "a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue," I wouldn't consider that evidence that he is "very intelligent." Playing the martyr is such a crude gimmick, a chimpanzee could do it in sign language. They are more intelligent than many other animals, but for a human to call that "very intelligent" is sorta stoopid.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
let me be more clear. i am not saying that Average Joe doesn't just take waht people tell him on faith, be it science or religion. what i am saying is that religion is not rational. it does not follow an observable pattern. your faith in religion is pure faith. your faith in science is statistical in nature. i do not simply "believe" that vaccine will keep my from getting sick. sure that's what i do on the surface, but there is a huge amount of evidence to SHOW that. i don't even have to see the evidence. i just have to understand the vigorous methodology used to produce it to know that the vaccine will work. you don't belive in god because you have been shown. you believe in god because it feels right, brings meaning to your life, or any other reasons that are completely internal. and there is nothing inherantly BAD or wrong. love fits into the same category. it's a comepletly different animal. so why on earth would you try to treat them the same? it does a disservice to both.
now don't get me wrong, i AM a scientist to the core. but i don't think for a minute that the people in question cared much about science OR religion as evidenced by these actions. i think they both have an agenda. the pope doesn't think science is crap and god put fossils there to test your faith. the professors don't think that the pope is out to get them. well, they probably don't. but you better believe that science and religion are at odds. they have the same customer base. science takes money. so does religion. to get money you have to have public support. science has produced data that education makes people more likely to turn away from religion. if you can muster up the faith to accept that the idea may have some validity, you have to understand that it would be in the church's best interests to portray science as anti-religion.
although i agree with your statement that science really has nothing to say about religion, nor should it, science as a system it is based on some critical thinking and rational thought processes that can be gained only through education. since statistically, education DOES keep people away from the church, it is natural for the church to think of science as an enemy.
of COURSE it's about power. thats the idea. it ISN'T about the validity of the statements, or the truth behind them. and THAT is where i think the folly lies. it should be.
I had thought about the issue of scientific validity vs just validity, but then I couldn't think of any other framework for evaluating the validity of an idea. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing about alternative methods for making objective and/or reasoned assessments, or an argument in favor of a non-objective method. Also, religions are typically the ones making the extraordinary claims, which leaves them with the burden of proof. This is part of why I referred to it as fiction, though 'inspired by actual events' may be a slightly fairer characterization.
Fair enough. I guess my point was simply that science reveals its inner workings (not the usual "everyone knows that's true"), as opposed to religion which I see as very intolerant of inspection and criticism. But, for your review, here are the principles I was thinking of
These points seem so simple and straightforward that I'm unable to imagine a rational thought process that *isn't* based on them. The closest thing religions have to an equivalent tenet that I'm aware of is 'it says so here in this book'.
Re: science not being monolithic -- I'll certainly grant you that; however I think this is a major strength of science. Virtually every idea as at least one detractor. Everything from the wildest new theory the fundamental tenets are constantly being reassessed. This ensures that nothing is being overlooked or taken for granted. Incidentally, it really irritates me when I see people such as the creationists claiming that the handful of dissenting scientists either proves their side (while ignoring the opinion of the other 95%) or shows that science doesn't know what it's talking about and should be summarily dismissed. Certainly no idea can be proven as absolute fact, because the number of test cases is infinite. However, this doesn't make it any less irrational to treat well-researched science as if it were random speculation.
Clearly we don't all go out and independently verify every finding we're told. However, I don't think this is the same as taking it on faith. I think we come to trust science because we're surrounded by results which match the predictions of scientific theories. I can't see how something similar could happen with religion because I'm not aware of any religions making testable predictions. Also, maybe you could elaborate on your reference to non-scientific evidence. Maybe this ties into your statement that your religion doesn't expect you to believe
There is evidence that the god of the ancient jewish people was at first only the husband of the dominant deity, which was later displaced and eventually banned.
Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Why should you believe in that god and not in another? There is as much faith in their believers as there is in your peers and as much proof of the existence of any of them (none).
You can't take the sky from me...
What I was referring to is the fact that most everyone -- including you -- is "indoctrinated" into the idea that if they harm others, they will be punished. That is not remotely the same as saying that the only reason to not harm others is to avoid punishment. Though since people like that do exist, I can see why someone made up an invisible watcher You have absoultely no evidence he was "made up." There is plenty of evidence of the progression of the myth, from polytheistic origins towards simplification of the pantheon on to assimilation of competing gods and their attributes and eventually leading to monotheism. Actually, no, there's not. People have tried to make that case, but it is extremely weak, especially since the records of the monotheistic Jewish God go back as far as our records of polytheism. It's only by begging the question, ignoring and re-interpreting evidence that doesn't fit the hypothesis, that you can arrive at this conclusion. There is evidence that the god of the ancient jewish people was at first only the husband of the dominant deity, which was later displaced and eventually banned. No, in fact, there is no evidence of this at all. It's a common view among anti-religious folks, but it's a made-up theory with no serious evidence behind it whatsoever. Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. First, you are using the wrong word. You mean "evidence," not "proof."
Second, your use of the word "require" implies something that is literally impossible: that there is some objective standard by which my claims must be measured in order for them to be valid. That is logically not possible, because no such objective standards can possibly exist.
Perhaps what you meant to say is, that you won't believe my claims without providing strong evidence to convince you. That's a given. But as I am not trying to convince anyone that my religious beliefs are true, it is irrelevant. For example, I am not saying "the Bible is true and you have to accept it." I am merely saying "the Bible is true, in my opinion." That is perfectly legitimate, period.
On the other hand, you seem to be saying "it is invalid for you to believe something that isn't proven," which is utter nonsense. Why should you believe in that god and not in another? Another poorly worded question. Perhaps you mean, why I do I believe in this theology, and not another?
Simply, because I am convinced this is correct theology. I could explain the many reasons why, but I don't think you'd care, and I don't have the time. There is as much faith in their believers as there is in your peers and as much proof of the existence of any of them (none). Again, you are misusing the word "proof." Strictly speaking, yes, there's no proof. But evidence? There's quite a bit. None of it amounts to proof, of course, but then, there's no evidence that comes close to disproving any of it, either.
Similarly, there is no "proof" that you are more than a brain in a jar imagining this entire universe. Literally, none.
Alleged hypocrisy is still a lot better than your idiocy.
The "soft" sciences (psychology, economics, etc.) have a hard time with your first principle. (We don't like to test things that, if true, make people suffer.) Which may be why they aren't nearly as predictive as we'd like them to be.
Mathematics doesn't really seem to work that way at all. (I have an M.S. in math.) A theorem in math isn't anything like a theory in physics, as far as "proof" goes. Testing something in math isn't the same, either. Clearly we don't all go out and independently verify every finding we're told. However, I don't think this is the same as taking it on faith. I think we come to trust science because we're surrounded by results which match the predictions of scientific theories. I can't see how something similar could happen with religion because I'm not aware of any religions making testable predictions. Also, maybe you could elaborate on your reference to non-scientific evidence. Maybe this ties into your statement that your religion doesn't expect you to believe simply because they said so. I think the biggest reason why the evidence I have can't be considered scientific or legal evidence, is that it's pretty non-transferable. Unmistakable feelings, "coincidences" beyond coincidence, lifestyle direction that really does make me happier, predictions that are always accurate but too personal to share, things like that. So, the evidence is real, just not very shareable.
Now, you don't know me, so I'm not really a very credible source. Even if you DID know me, it still wouldn't matter, you'd still have to find out for yourself, doing your own "experiments."
How do you find out? Some examples: (the second one relates to your concern that not all religions can be right.)
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/alma/32 (starting with verse 26)
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1 (how Joseph Smith "experimented")
Do You Know?
Ye May Know.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
What is painfully ironic here is that you reject this history on the basis of a supposed (but erroneous) complete lack of evidence, but you reject the idea of questioning your theology for lack of evidence.
You've begun to contradict yourself quite a bit
You can't take the sky from me...
Your other point, that what he might say presently or in the future might be independent of what he has said in the past, allows for a "change of heart" [or of mind, assuming existence of such] and, aside from falsely portraying him as underdog, is well said.
I support the right of Cini and his cohorts to say that they dislike the invitation to the Pope. Beyond that, matters of State vs. Individual & University Ownership of Property become involved and add too uninteresting complexity for me, a United States citizen, to comment more.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Cini expressed dislike of his university's choice to invite somebody to be their guest, which means, to receive their money, for nothing but speaking. What is "intolerant" about saying "I dislike the Pope, and do not like that my employer invited him"? If he had said the same thing about expenditure of university $ on a particular flavor of Gelato [essentially, "ice cream" to the North Americans], we would be discussing only the absurdity of wasting university $ on Gelato, not on Cini's dislike of a particular flavor.
All categorization of Cini's comments as "censorship" relies on application of a double standard to The Pope. If he were anybody else, any faculty member would be welcome to declare that, for professional reasons, they disagree with the invitation.
Expressing disapproval is not the same as censorship. Censorship is prohibition of unapproved speech, by force. To classify unenforced disagreement of any statement, or of any speaker [and/or their previous statements] as censorship is an error, and ominously close to censorship of all disagreeement with that statement or entity. That is double-plus-ungood.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
I agree with whomever it is that said ...
You agree with whoever it was that said ... If 'who' is doing the saying it is 'whoever.' If you don't grok the whole 'whom' thing just omit it entirely. If you use 'who,' where 'whom' would be appropriate you merely sound ignorant, if you use 'whom' where you should not, you sound both ignorant and pretentious.
"You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
No indication that the other gods are false, in fact, he wouldn't be jealous if they there was no competition.
Deuteronomy 7:4
for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Exodus 34:14
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
You were seeing clear implications?
Judges 3:5-8
The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
7 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. 8 The anger of the LORD burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, [b] to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.
Judges 6:7-10
When the Israelites cried to the LORD because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, 'I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me."
still talking about them as other gods, not false gods. In fact, if you jump to the new testament, there's even toned-down language to show that there are other beings at the level of that god...
2 Peter 2
Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings; 11yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
Calling these celestial beings "nonexistent" is slander in the eyes of your lord, you know.
You can't take the sky from me...
First, there are many mentions that there is only one God, and that others are false. I already gave you some (despite your incorrect claim that none exist). And all other statements must be taken in that context.
Second, your claim that God would not be jealous if they did not exist is nonsense. God is jealous of the time and attention that people give to these false gods, whether they exist or not. Almost your entire post is based on that one illogical assumption, that God can only be jealous if those other gods exist.
Finally, as to 2 Peter 2:10-11, why do you assume "celestial beings" refers to "other gods"? The word "doxas" can refer to any of a number of things, including angels, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, and even of Christians who have died. I don't know which it is referring to here, but to assume it means "other gods" is clearly unwarranted by the text or by other existing usage (indeed, looking through the majority of uses in ancient Greek literature via the Bauer's lexicon on my shelf, I cannot find a single example that refers specifically or contextually to "other gods").
What's clear is that you are not very knowledgable about this topic, and that you are cherry-picking examples, and reading into them, to fit your preconceptions.
There is no way this refers to mortals or angels. Angels are ranked between men and celestials in this hierarchy. you are cherry-picking examples, and reading into them, to fit your preconceptions. "And all other statements must be taken in that context."
Take the fucking beam out of your eye before telling me there's a speck in mine, hypocrite.
You're the one with the preconception, I'm just reading the bible for what it is. You told me that when other gods are mentioned, there are clear indications that they are false gods. I quoted you a whole bunch of examples right from the source where that simply isn't the case. You gave me deuteronomy 4, where there are sporadic indications that the other gods aren't real, but the examples given as reasons to believe in that other god are laughable: Pyrotechnics, assassinations and acoustics. "Ohhhh, a voice came out of the fire, it must be the creator of the entire universe and all life!!!"
"Ohhh, all the people who didn't obey Moses died, it must be an act of god! Not poison, nah, couldn't be poison, gotta be a god what gone an' done it."
You're taking a retcon (retroactive monotheism) and making it apply indiscriminately to all inconsistent statements by warping the meaning of "other gods" to "false gods".
Seriously, it says "other", you tell me it says "false". WTF is wrong with you? No wait, I know very precisely what is wrong with you: You're acting out of bad faith.
You can't take the sky from me...