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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.'"
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.
No he doesn't have any expertise, no he doesn't have any degrees in sciences - yet millions of people still think he knows more about science than the greatest experts in the various fields of science
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
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.
In any case, there is currently no unified theory that explains the connection of the spiritual realm ("soul") and physical world.
Here, let me fix that for you: In any case, there is currently no evidence of the spiritual realm ("soul")...
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
"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__()
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.
Not that this is unique to Christians, of course: most people are like that. Well, most people I know, anyway.
"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.