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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 understand. I vehemently defend my position, which is that the religions should be buried under the global scream of "ENOUGH!"... and no religion has any right whatsoever to peaceful dialogue, with THEIR track records!
When did any religion ever turn peaceful?
They're all
1/an excuse for the regime they serve
2/a set of fairytales that explains how the world came to be (not, but it took us a while to find out)
3/a set of answers to the Eternal Questions
4/a social bonding thing
5/an excuse to go kill the neighbours in the name of God, but our real need is to either conquer their place so as to use their resources, or get all killed so that our genes will replicate when their men will have captured our women. (Capture-bonding is a survival trait coming directly from this causal loop btw.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Ex Hitler Youth Pope disagrees with the exoneration of the Jews!
In other news, bears shit in the woods, and the Pope wears a dress!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Just as The Church was guilty of censorship when it was in power, now we having these scientists refusing to listen to another side of the issue.
I agree with whomever it is that said "The answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship".
If these scientists had asked for the right to speak in answer to the Pope, I would have been all for it. Demanding that the Pope not speak, on the other hand just smacks of censorship. It's not just the pope who might be . "accusing us of refusing dialog." -- It's just about anybody who believes in free speech and open dialog.
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