Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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 funny thing about rationality is that it's entirely subjective (however irrational that rationality may be, and vice versa, ipso-facto, falcon punch, etc... now I'm just confusing myself).
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.
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.
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
Have you READ his remarks?
But why talk about anything "rational", when such an "irrational" reaction like yours is acceptable? After all, EVERY day is bash-a-christian day.
I would hope that people see that this University is not representative of the broader intellectual community.
Freedom of religion does not prevent my right to mock it.
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.
What persecution?
How about something simple like being able to enjoy the "free exercise thereof" part of the establishment clause ...
He has that. Nobody has suggested that he be detained, censored, injured, or kept off public property.
If freedom of speech includes Nazi rallies, KKK marches, and the Pope's ramblings, it also has to include the right of other people to say that they don't like it.
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
And you are not guilty of stereotyping how? And this isn't a form of bigotry how?
What's wrong with this syllogism?
Some people do bad things.
Some people are religious.
All religions are bad.
Sorry, but I think the "ignorant" label is correct in this case.
"Irrationality" is any thought that defies the predetermined narrative (as defined by the mainstream). In the 17th-century, it was any man of science. Today, it's any man of faith. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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__()
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...
I don't think anyone fits all their beliefs together into a coherent picture of the world.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
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
Start with science. Science as we know it today was brought into existence by religious people who -- unlike their atheist contemporaries -- believed that, because God exists, the universe must have order, and rules, and that those rules are discoverable. It is because of Isaac Newton's religious beliefs that he brought so much knowledge to our world.
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.
I could go on but dinner is approaching. Now, to turn things around, all the things mentioned to me -- the crusades and so on -- don't appear to me to be related to religion at all. Religion was no more inherent to the Crusades than Nationalism was to the Holocaust. Those were both just tools used to promote other fascistic ideas about conquering and destruction. You could make the case that unthinking religion or nationalism is bad, but that's nothing new, and not unique to any particular idea. For example, courage is not bad, but courage without wisdom is bad, and so on. There's nothing bad inherent in religion.
Now, maybe there's bad things inherent in a particular religion, such as Scientology. But that's a separate discussion.
He was drafted into the army by a fascist state. Not something he had any choice over or should be blamed for.
his previous employment was as head of the Inquisition (which did in fact kill a few people in its heyday)In 1981, Ratzinger was named Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition, although the activities we now associate with "the Inquisition" ended centuries before Ratzinger's birth.
forbids the use of condoms and family planning resulting in disease and famineHe holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome. He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage, but so is the Dalai Lama.
goes around dressed in goldYes, the Pope does wear papal vestments, although "dressed in gold" is another exaggeration. You might have also noticed that the Pope is indeed Catholic. Look, if you have a bone to pick with the Pope, at least be honest about it. Don't go around misleading people.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Y'know, it's strange that your self-evident moral and intellectual superiority have somehow failed to make you less of an asshole.
Actually, I feel that one should mock everything and everyone. People who are serious and things that `are to be taken seriously' are the only things and people that make me really scared.
Not that this is unique to Christians, of course: most people are like that. Well, most people I know, anyway.
Sure the tone is a little abrasive.. But doesn't this situation warrant some passion? Indoctrination of un-thinking is a very serious issue.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic
is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man
is happier than a sober one"
-George Bernard Shaw
-amen
the pontiff looks at questions that have no place in reality or in rational discussion.
I'm sorry, but questions like "where did we come from," "why are we here," and "what is my moral duty to others" are important questions that have been part of rational discussion for literally thousands of years. Most of the great Western philosophers--people who perhaps define "rational"--have spent time thinking about those questions. For example Plato, Descartes ("I think, therefore I am"), Epictetus, Nietzsche, just to name a few. Each of those philosophers has thought about why we are here and what duty we owe to others--questions that the Pope also seeks to answer. He uses a different method to reach his answers, but the question is shared between secular and religious philosophers.
You might agree with the Pope's answers, but the questions are certainly important and deserve rational treatment.
Great! Where's your counter-argument? If it's so thoroughly "disproven", this should be easy...
See, the problem is that there is no one definition of God. There are plenty I can disprove out of hand as internally inconsistent, but most people do not have a clearly defined God that they believe in.
You must be very lonely.
Science absolutely does not solve everything.
Of course, having fun and falling in love don't require religion, or any particular belief.
That's all you've got?
Just look up the Laws, in particular what it says about rape. I'll admit there are a lot of morons out there who claim to believe the entire Bible, yet obviously have not read it.
You know, the Koran goes on for pages and pages about how merciful Allah is. Jesus says "love your neighbor as yourself". At a certain point, it is hard to say whether the Jihadist or the pacifist is a perversion of their religion, but both are founded in Scripture.
There are some religious people who do horrible things because of their religion -- the Crusades, terrorism, etc. And there are some good people who do good things because of their religion -- Martin Luther King, Gandhi, etc. And there are atheists who do horrible things anyway -- Stalin, China, etc.
All of which makes it very hard to argue for or against religion based on what the religious do.
Science can control people just as easily.
You could say that's bad science, sure. And I can say that anyone using God to tell other people what to do is practicing bad religion. The only difference is that science is defined clearly enough that your claim is actually true.
Haven't seen either of those. There's your possibly-accurate description of the origin of war, but no mention of how that's at all relevant to religion.
Now, as to why there should be dialog with religious figures?
Because as long as the scientists don't put an asshat like you up there, we should be able to show, calmly and rationally, why science deserves to be taken seriously, and why the Pope does not (if, indeed, he does not).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You haven't invited me into your house or your workplace, either.
Is that also censorship?
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Risking coming across as a flame, the point here is that their notion of suppression was "agree with us or we'll suppress your life", a position Pope Benedict has (reportedly) implicitly defended, and which is the cause of the "we really don't you preaching your religion in our campus" reaction (which, let's face it, is a fair bit milder take on the whole suppression thing).
Sure, but there are degrees of coherence here. Just because no one has a completely consistent and coherent set of beliefs does not mean all sets of personal beliefs are equally coherent. For example, someone who believes in a virgin birth and a resurrection, but who is also a engineer or scientist trained to look at evidence, probably has a lot more cognitive dissonance and partitioning going on in their brain than the typical person. Similarly, a scientist who at least attempts to adopt only beliefs which can be supported directly with physical evidence may not totally succeed because non-evidence-based beliefs are often required in daily life to simply function. Nevertheless, they probably have a reasonably consistent world view with a lot less superlative fluff to fill in their knowledge gaps.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
The first second and third commandments.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
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.
Beware you Dawkins types, South Park did a great job of taking up Nietzsche's reins and showing just how evil anti-religious types are and their satire of the future involving war is not far off at all, evil has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with being human (regardless of whether you take it as a metaphysical entity or not; Nietzsche did not, but knew evil couldn't be blamed on religion). Nietzsche warned of an all pervading trust in science by pale atheists. Why, because essentially he realized, science is based on faith just as much any religion. To claim that science is the sole purveyor of truth would, by scientific standards, require some kind of empirical confirmation/experiment of just that claim, but 1) no such experiment exists because 2) it'd be arguing in a vicious circle because it'd be claiming something epistemic that cannot be verified empirically. Science is treated as a holy grail just as much as religion, and it takes just as much faith to make an epistemic exclusivity claim for science just as much religion.
Ok, I'll answer and go for the bonus.
You see, not everybody in the world has the blazing logical clarity that Slashdotters typically have which enables them to see that mass murder is inherently illogical. When this happens, it is the function of the religious people to assert that there is a powerful (almighty) deity who does not approve of mass murder. If the illogical would-be mass murderers pay attention to the religious people, then they refrain from commiting mass-murder.
That's the way it's supposed to work. The system isn't perfect. Sometimes religious people forget that the deity is against mass-murder and when that happens you get abberations such as crusades, jihads, the Spanish Inquisition, and so forth. Sometimes the illogical would-be mass murderers reject the religious people and then you have mass-murdering athiests such as Stalin and Pol Pot.
As I said, the system isn't perfect, but it is one layer of protection for society. Think of computer security: your system is more secure with multiple layers (anti-virus plus firewall) because each layer is itself somewhat permeable. In this case, religion serves as a kind of firewall.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini