Hi,
on http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/01/16/2010239.shtml there a
discussion about the recent pope incident. The story reads:
"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 have to press "more" in the Comments widget several times if you want to
see more than 25 high-rated comments.
A couple of choice comments from the discussion:
=========
by Scrameustache (459504)
If you actually knew religion well, you would know that its positive
effects far outweigh its negative ones.
Warm fuzzy feelings far outweigh torture and genocide?
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.
=========
by Entropius (188861)
[...] 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.
=========
by HSpirit (519997)
How about freedom from persecution?
What persecution?
Exactly. Too many relgious types seem to confuse criticism with persecution.
It's laughable for any Christian to think they are being persecuted in a
Western country, and particularly American Christians... for Christ's sake
[pun intended] your friggin' President is a Christian.
=========
by A beautiful mind (821714)
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.
=========
by dedazo (737510)
While I am the first to admit that religions have a good side, the amount of
damage (direct and indirect) that has been perpetrated on humanity in the
name of vague ethereal omnipotent beings is so stunning that very few
people even realize it. But we shouldn't be surprised at Ratzinger's
stance, even if we say to ourselves that it's the 21st century and what are
these people smoking? The catholic church is desperate to hold on to its
constituency and one of the ways to do that is to harden their stance on
issues like these. You see, the vast majority of catholics in the world are
poor, uneducated people for whom religion is a refuge from the usually
harsh reality of existence. By essentially going back in time, Ratzinger is
clinging to the good old days where the Holy Church was always right even
if it was wrong, because it derives its wisdom from divinity. This in turn
reaffirms the trust that people place in the church's judgment.
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.
=========
by MightyMartian (840721)
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.
=========
by GaryPatterson (852699)
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.
=========
by YA_Python_dev (885173)
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!*
=========
by YA_Python_dev (885173)
[...]
Have you an example verse that is not open to metaphorical interpretation
and uncontingent on present-day constructs of Geometry you'd like to
present for discussion?
You mean like this one: "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son ...
Then shall his father and his mother ... bring him out unto the elders of
his city ... And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that
he die." -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21
*Killing stubborn children is a metaphor for what exactly?* And if you think
this is funny I can find dozen more examples of this *****, in both the old
and the new testament, since I have actually read the whole bible from
cover to cover, something that most christians don't do, apparently.
=========
by Anonymous Coward
It's not as simple as that. The pope wanted to come, make a speech and
leave. No questions allowed, no debate. The physicists wanted to be able to
respond and have a proper debate on his stance on scientific issues in
general if he was to come at all. By backing off, the pope paints himself
as the victim, avoiding a debate that would make him look like the medieval
remain that he is.
This has cause a big stir because, in general, the Italian political system
is completely captive to the Vatican. Every day the media reports any move
of word of the pope no matter how minor. Any talk show always has at least
a priest as a guest. The church has huge properties and pays no taxes. The
church get 0.08% of the tax collected unless one goes to great lengths to
direct it somewhere else et.c etc.
=========
by Creedo (548980)
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")...
=========
by MightyMartian (840721)
[atheism is a religion]
Is disbelief in Zeus mean you're a Hellenic paganist? Does disbelief in
witchcraft mean you're an occultist?
Atheism is the disbelief in God. It has no meaningful tenets, no dogma, no
holy books, no ceremonies, no rites, no declarations of faith, no churches,
no temples, no leaders, no hierarchy and no common moral code. In short, it
has none of the hallmarks of a religion.
=========
by orzetto (545509)
Of course atheism is a religion, [...]
You know you have won the argument when your adversaries denigrate you by
claiming you are just like them.
=========
by nguy (1207026)
Why would anybody want to have a "dialog" with the pope? Dialog presupposes
that both sides participate honestly and with an open mind, and the
Catholic church has demonstrated over two thousand years that it is
incapable of doing that, and instead uses intimidation, violence, and
murder to get its way. I hope many more institutions will follow and
declare the pope and any other high Catholic dignitary "persona non grata".
The Catholic church is an evil institution. It is sad that so many
well-meaning Catholic believers, good people at heart, don't realize that.
.
|
