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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.'"
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?
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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?!
I agree. I'm a Catholic and I think it's safe to say that the current papacy is an absolute joke. If it was just this issue, maybe we could give ol' Benedict a pass. But it seems like every month he says something ridiculous, ignorant, or backwards. It's like he just stepped out of the 17c.
with almost no relevance to Slashdot as there isn't even a specific technology in question here.
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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).
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.
He's a German theologian.
I think that says it all.
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he is the catholic pope. the 17 century would be an improvement. Pope John Paul at least publicly forgave Galileo though. Benndict seems to be on a mission from god to undo everything that Pope John paul did.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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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.
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
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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.
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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Well, considering these scientists were protesting the Pope giving a speech without knowing what he was even going to say (as far as I could glean from TFA), I'd say that makes them irrational nutcases (or at least, assholes). So, really, you need to look in another direction than the pope for irrationality here.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Pope John Paul forgave Galileo for what exactly? Forgave him for being unjustly persecuted and placed under arrest by the Catholic Church?
It would seem to me it is the Church that needs to ask for forgiveness from Galileo, not give it.
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...
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.
Bloch, in a way, was not entirely wrong. Claiming that there's no way to falsify the claim that the other planets move around the earth, he's right in a relativistic point of view. Of course, the describing the paths that these planets follow if earth is the center of the coordinate system would be anything but trivial.
Georg
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
Freedom of religion does not prevent my right to mock it.
No, they are not, except when explicitly claiming that particular power. And this has apparently been done exactly once since that particular dogma was instated in 1870.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
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.
And civil rights do not prevent your "right" to use racial slurs.
It just means your are an ignorant bigot... in both cases.
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.
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...
Then those conclusions weren't rational. They might have been correct, but they weren't rational.
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.
1. The establishment clause only applies in the USA.
2. The establishment clause only prohibits the government from opposing religion. As long as their actions are otherwise legal, people can criticize the Church all they want.
3. If someone says grass is blue, it is within societal norms to laugh at them. But mysteriously it's not okay to do so if they say the world is 6000 years old.
Saying "Black people are inferior" is bigoted. Saying "Statistically, black people in the USA are more likely to commit robbery" isn't, since it's a statement of fact.
Saying that the Bible is two-thousand year old fiction produced by goat herders is a statement of fact. It is verifiably not true.
Define "ultraconservative". JPII was as liberal as a Catholic could be without being a heretic. Ratzinger was considered a liberal in his day as well.
If by "ultraconservative", you mean he took the line that EVERY pope in history took that Catholic dogma cannot change, maybe you're right.
I don't expect you to subscribe to Catholic beliefs, but this idea the the church should "change with the times" is silly, at best.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
This is extremely misunderstood. Gallileo was told not to teach his theories as fact until they could be proven, and to not contradict the church in theological matters, not matters of science.
One also forgets that the Church was Gallileo's employer (he taught at a Catholic university.)
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
congrats on the +5 mod up and another proof of Godwin's Law.
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.
Pope John Paul forgave Galileo for what exactly?
He didn't forgive him, he said that Galileo was right. Which seems a little odd, since so far as I can work out, Galileo's last stated position was in support of geocentrism.
Forgave him for being unjustly persecuted and placed under arrest by the Catholic Church?
He was arrested for breaking the law. Maybe you don't believe that heresy should be illegal (I certainly don't), but his arrest was no more unjust than say someone being arrested today for smoking cannabis.
It would seem to me it is the Church that needs to ask for forgiveness from Galileo, not give it.
I think you'll find that's exactly what JPII did. Maybe you shouldn't go off the rails at a third party just because a poster you are responding to has poor expression?
"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.
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?
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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__()
Q: Why would the pope speak at such a university? A: Well, the Catholic Church... specifically founded the institution in the 1300's. (Many might be surprised to find out how our glorious university systems as we know them today came to be.) As for all the comments on Galileo: The guy got himself into trouble... not because of his studies in science... but because of his attempts at theology. Hardly a person seems to realize that Copernicus was a Catholic Priest... and did not stir up the trouble that Galileo did.
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
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.
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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.
The pope is only infallible when he speaks on matters of faith. Defiling Galileo is not a "matter of faith".
Your statement strikes me as quite silly. I don't believe that any member of any religion believes everything that religion teaches 100% and without question. In fact, if someone did hold this view that their religion was perfect, I'd argue that he still had some way to go on his religious journey.
Obviously, you've got to make up your own mind to some extent. In Catholicism, that process is called discernment.
I disagree with your first statement; I believe that Galileo had more proof than the church had. Of course, I can't understand how the model of the solar system is a theological issue either..
I completely agree with your second statement. And that's many years of Catholic school talking. Generally speaking, Catholics don't believe in creationism or its variants. They don't believe in literal interpretation of the bible either.
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.
This phenomenon is hardly unique to Christianity. I would say two key ingredients almost inevitably guarantee a flamewar:
1. Commonality of strong personal beliefs
2. Lack or widespread obfuscation of concrete empirical data or evidence to support a position
I think you'll find at least one of these two things to be common to nearly every flamewar on Slashdot (and in the world at large). It certainly explains what happens to nearly every article regarding politics, religion, climatology (i.e. global warming), evolution, console wars, etc.
Not that this is unique to Christians, of course: most people are like that. Well, most people I know, anyway.
And what, he let the sailors swing from them?
That Galileo was one virile fellow, for sure, but...jeez!
blah blah blah
your calm and peaceful dialogue clearly indicates that athiest are much more peaceful then those with religion.
I'd say you've already shown yourself to be significantly inferior to him, simply by virtue of your attitude.
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
Are you sure his employer wasn't a Kansas schoolboard?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
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 have part of it.
What problem does religion (and belief in general) solve?
Bonus: Can you formulate an answer that does not make you inherently superior to religions people? See this as a challenge befitting your superior intellect. (Then once seen, unsee.)
I can't... I've just used my brain, seen that comparing religion to science rationally makes science stand out as the superior tool, and feel pity and contempt for the myriads of people who live their whole lives believing those delusions and living in accordance to them.
It is an waste of effort of apocalyptic proportions and infinite stupidity; I can't see it any other way. Even if I try to imagine "all the good religions have done", I view it as an oasis in the midst of the pile of all corpses, all the witches and the dead in the religious wars... Religions are only peaceful when the people are. If they need a reason for war, they'll listen to the priest telling them to go die for God.
All those conditions, environmental switches, species-specific behaviors, is a sort of social game that us primates play unconsciously and collectively.
Million of years of evolution can't be changed, but, just suppress the environmental conditions that flip the behavioral switch to "war mode", and the dire consequences of religions will all be avoided : they won't be the xenophobic meme that mediates the dehumanization of the people's perception of their neighbours, if the conditions in which xenophobic memes thrive (impending lack of resources) just never happens anymore.
See? No flames
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Galileo's falling out with the Catholic Church may have been vital - but it sure wasn't about the church accepting a proven point of heliocentricism.
Corpenicus' work proposing the heliocentric hypothesis was after all church sponsored (as was Galileo) and indeed inscribed, IIRC, to the pope of the time.
Galileo had been wrong before, apparently he believed comets to be an atmospheric phenomenon and the great _scientific_ minds of the time were as yet unconvinced. The church was leaving the question of geo- and heliocentricism open rather than making a decree as to the truth of one or other. Galileo by all accounts didn't like that. Despite being called in to the vatican he went ahead and published non-latin work to tell the masses that his theory was the truth - this shows he wasn't trying to convince the learned scholars, incidentally. Kepler had already published on much of the stuff Galileo worked on anyway so the papacy was hardly keeping things in the bag. Possibly the church was wary of following Kepler's hypotheses which appear to have been founded on a sort of Platonic helio-mysticism (eg http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/kepler.html).
Fine, the papacy over-reacted to Galileo. We got it.
Incidentally - was Galileo right? Is the sun "fixed". I don't think so. Indeed I'm happy with both geocentric and heliocentric descriptions; but in a "sol" centred frame of reference I'm happier with heliocentric maths (though one of the problems with heliocentricism apparently was that it failed to be as accurate as Ptolemy's tables).
---
Some comparative sources:
http://galileo.rice.edu/bio/narrative_7.html
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm
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..
Yes, but the "priests can't marry" rule came about in the middle ages. It was never part of divinity or dogma and still isn't.
I'm not arguing dogma -- I'm saying that the non-dogmatic rules that are part of the church's tradition must change with the times.
I'd also like to reiterate my first point: that there is no proof that God doesn't exist. No, I'm not going to ask you for your "disproof", because I know there can't possibly be one. God is above logic. He created logic and he can defy logic for all we know. How can you logically disprove something that logic doesn't apply to? Destroy that!
Usual and tiresome disclaimer: I'm not religious, so don't bother calling me a "lobotomised sheep", or whatever you call those effigies you made in the image of religious people.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
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).
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.
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
With that in mind, I personally have no sympathy for the "but it makes them happy" argument. There is much more at stake here than the happiness of a bunch of hoi polloi... especially when that (delusional) happiness can be more than replaced with (rational) wonder at the mystery and beauty of the natural world.
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. ****
Similar to the upcoming US election results
But I personally don't think Christianity is responsible for either one.
I don't know, what is inherent within their faith that makes them a threat to you or society? And please stick to the faith, not some interpreted interpretation of some historic event. I mean what is inherently threatening about about Gods word that you need to stop people from following it?
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.
The first second and third commandments.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
That's probably because "beliefs" don't take up much time in the day of a rational, sane scientist. Either you know something (and can "prove" it) or you don't. Everything in between is called the scientific method (and that includes mathematical reasoning from principles, such as Einsteins relativity theorems).
Making up (or "believing", or getting handed down from ancient texts) some absurd, senseless claims about the world being under effect from an unseen being who "created" a universe larger than human conception to play a sick version of SimCity with us to justify a predefined ending in which billions of people get sadistic torture in hell "for ever" because they "believe" otherwise, is just stupid. It's not just about coherence - it's way beyond that. It's comical. The whole idea of "belief" itself defies reason. And when it involves gods with the minds of six-year-olds, it really does not make sense for educated, mature people to listen to anyone trying to speak with these "beliefs" as a platform. We have better things to do, frankly. Like playing beach volleyball, and reading slashdot, and doing science. Anything that doesn't involve drama and bizarre scenarios with unseen beings and fucked up philosophy.
Plus, most deep thinkers, esp. physicists, do have a coherent view of the world, or at least SEEK, through science, a coherent view. Science aims to remove mystery. Religion thrives on mystery. The two don't mix.
What? I don't believe this.
What gods do you want to put before the Christian god for Christians to worship? What idles do you want them to worship? and why do you feel it necessary for them to take their lords name in vain?
I mean the ten commandments only apply to people of that faith. So if ti bothers you to the point you think they are a danger to you, then I have to wonder what the fuck your thinking?
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.
Some questions are simply wrong. Asking "why" presupposes a reason and in a lot of cases there isn't one (on the level people are looking for - people still don't seem to accept the possibility that humanity's whole existence did not serve a higher purpose).
Personally, I'm viewing philosophers as the stepping stone between religion and science. You see, at the dawn of human civilization humans started asking questions: the first (incredibly bad) way of answering them was religion. Some people were not satisfied with the way religion answers them, so they went into the direction of philosophy. Some people went into the direction of science to try to answer questions. Religion and philosophy are flawed ways of finding things out.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Really? Where in your pantheon do the philosophers who developed the idea of empiricism fit?
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
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.
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. 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.
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.
Asking "why" presupposes a reason and in a lot of cases there isn't one
no and yes.
Asking 'Why, or is there an answer at all' is the right statement of the question.
In mathematics, a solution of "Solution does not exist" supported by a correct proof is a perfectly satisfactory answer.
I see no reason why in philosophy a similar answer wouldn't be okay: 'There's no reason, and here's the logical proof.' A problem with no solution is still a problem, and we can cease search for the solution only when we find one, or we're positively sure none exists.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Because religious persecution is completely justifiable when it promotes your set of beliefs over those of others, especially when your beliefs are right, while theirs are so obviously wrong. The fact that this was (and in some parts of the world still is) precisely the same line of reasoning used by the followers of various religions to justify persecuting people who think differently does not of course apply, because they persecute for all the the wrong reasons, while you would of course be persecuting for all the _right_ reasons.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Of course, by this same logic, holding any position in any issue is neccessarily evil, because it fosters a culture in which it is acceptable to hold that position, and someone - an extremist - might decide to use force to force to defend that position. As a specific example, this makes Dawkins own position evil, because claiming that religion is evil fosters a culture in which extremists can justify killing religous people by claiming that they were evil - such as happened in Soviet Union.
In other words, Dawkins might be a decent scientist, but he sure is a lousy philosopher, and his constant using of his reputation as a scientist to lend credence to his crusade against religion is deceptive at the very least. He's more and more starting to resemble an atheist version of Jack Chick.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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
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.
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.
You need to stop providing a straw man argument. You're assumption is false, that crack-addicts are the same as religious folks. You may believe that, but its far from being objective. Unfortunately, you provide no real basis of reasoning that you're belief is somehow better and that somehow entitles you to forcefully remove any competing argument and then have the audacity to say that if anyone else forcefully tries to keep their belief alive, that they much be terrorists. If you remove all the subjective statements from your post, you sound EXACTLY like a terrorist. You are zealous of your belief and you have no problem forcefully imposing it upon others. I have no problem with religion as long as it doesn't impose itself upon me. But it'd be hypocritical of me to than go do the exact same thing. Science zealots are nutcases just as much as religious zealots are.
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
Wow.
You have GOT to take a history course at some point in your life.
Do you 'believe' in cause & effect? it can never be proven. What about the basic postulates that ALL of mathematics are based upon... which have yet to ever be proven? Both are just things believed to be true.
The axioms in mathematics that you refer to are assumptions. No one "believes" them in any real sense - they're chosen because they are useful in some way.
And I'm not sure that scientists particularly believe in cause and effect, beyond that which is empirically tested and proven (and quantum mechanics shows that some things don't have a cause).
The OP didn't say that scientists don't have any beliefs, just that their beliefs are nothing more than those than can be proven, and everything else is the scientific method.
It's a common tactic to claim that the non-religious also hold beliefs without evidence, but I've yet to see it, and your two suggestions are not examples of this.
When scientists themselves can hold mutually exclusive theories about something, it holds to reason that science isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be
Examples? If there are mutually exclusive theories, then that's great - it means we can test it, and find out which is correct. It's not a matter of "belief" - it's not something to fight wars over, or condemn the other point of view as immoral, for example.
some people may find their assumptions about religion 'useful' for their purposes. what right do you have to say your assumptions (based solely on them 'being useful') is any better than someone else's? My whole argument is that you shouldn't discount something just because you disagree with it. If you can prove it to be false, than so be it. But, contrary to popular belief, religion has yet to be proven false. It may not have been proven true, but that doesn't mean its not. Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it not so. I agree that I think religion is mostly false, but its my belief that its false. I'd never go out and impose that belief on someone else. And religion wasn't founded to fight wars or to condemn some other point of view as immoral (though apparently science can condemn another point of view out of some sense of superiority). Religion says its true cause its stated to be so. Science says its true cause its stated to be so. They are what most of everyone's arguments boil down to. Yea, I go for science, but as an intellectual thinker, I can't say the other is absolutely wrong. I don't believe it but I won't deny them the right to believe it. Nor will I be ignorant enough to think that I have all the answers. Always be prepared to be wrong. I don't think I am, but I might be. Hell, maybe it is the right thing to go out condemning people for believing in something different than you, but thats not what I believe. So, maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but personally, I believe there's no point to be overly zealous on either side. It just makes you look as crazy as them.
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!
It's people like you that scare the crap out of me.
Science is a means of documenting observed phenomena and making predictions of future phenomena based on observed data. IF there is not repeatable, observable phenomena... then Science is mute on the subject and Philosophy exists as one means of poking at those sorts of topics. Science doesn't tell us everything about reality, it can only tell us about observable, repeatable events within reality.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
If any of you have children, perhaps you can relate to an example. You tell small children not to touch sharp knives. You might tell teenagers who are making dinner to be careful with small knives. You make no mention of being careful with knives to your spouse, because s/he knows that already. Does that make you somehow illogical or fallible or whatever to suggest one rule to your 2 year old, one rule to your 18 year old, and not mention any rules at all to your spouse? Of course not - you are giving circumstance-specific rules.
This is easy to understand - God's unchanging nature is irrelevant to the circumstance-specific rules He may choose to give to someone.
If you think I'm wrong, explain to me why God cannot give circumstance-specific rules if He so desires.