Pro-Bush Pope Attacks Science & Islam

POPE BENEDICT XVI (aka Joseph Ratzinger, former Nazi German soldier in World War 2 and the Head of the Vatican Inquisition for a quarter century under Pope John Paul II)  (see:  here  and here ) made a carefully constructed address at the University of Regensburg that was about 2 things: (1) the importance of faith and Biblical literalism in the academic search for truth i.e. Science being mistaken and irrational by excluding Religion from its consideration; and (2) an attack on Islam as being violent and irrational. The Pope was WRONG on both counts.

Read the Pope’s lecture on Catholic World News and you will see these 2 FALSEHOODS -  that religion is crucial for rational inquiry and that Islam is violent and irrational - REPEATEDLY revealed. So much for Papal infallibility.

Falsehood #1, that religion is crucial for rational inquiry, arose from the Pope’s demand that Science should include religion in its search for truth. In his lecture the Pope was addressing academics of the University of Regensburg which has 2 theology schools. His lecture discussed  the role of religion in rational inquiry, addressed Science versus Religion in such processes and made the claim that Science is deficient in  the search for Truth if it ignores the contribution that can be made by “Religion” (and by what he calls “philosophy” which he deceptively conflates with “religion”); thus  Papal QUOTE: “The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.”

Science is about the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses. Religion is about “faith” and people accepting a “framework” to help them through Life. The notion of “God” is clearly of great value to billions of people in their lives but is not a “critically testable potentially falsifiable hypothesis” and hence is not useful in scientific inquiry into the nature of reality. The Pope’s assertion that Science is somehow irrational or deficient by excluding religion from its search for truth is utter nonsense.

Falsehood #2 was the claim that Islam is about violent conversion and is accordingly violent and irrational. This is contradicted immediately by the Holy Qur’an which states that “There is no compulsion in religion” (Holy Qur’an, Surah 2, 256). However the Pope countermands the explicit directive of the Holy Qur’an (a directive used extensively by thoughtful Islamic scholars in relation to religion co-existence) by quoting an Islamophobic 14th century  Byzantine Emperor Manuel II.

Papal QUOTE: “In the seventh conversation [between Emperor Manuel II and a Persian Islamic scholar] edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels,” he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words:

“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

“God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...”.

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." END QUOTE.

The Pope is wrong on several counts here to the point of blasphemy. “Jihad” is not about “holy war” as repeatedly asserted by the well-known Genius Islamic Scholar George W. Bush. In fact “jihad” is about “struggle” against evil and loss of faith when beset by temptation, oppression and persecution (it can include violent struggle in certain contexts). The Pope – a person intimately involved with spirituality - knows this all too well but dishonestly chooses the definition of “holy war” quite deliberately. Even Agnostic Humanists such as myself appreciate the (unprovable) Theist Idea of a Perfect God and accordingly  the Pope’s attribution of “irrationality” to the God of Islam is profoundly nasty, offending and blasphemously offensive.   The explicit message of the Qur’an cannot be plausibly countermanded by the words of a 14th century  Islamophobic Christian Emperor engaged in war with Muslim Turks (Constantinople finally fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453) – the Pope is simply and deliberately using the kind of “spin” beloved of Bush-ite neo-cons and Zionists but in the context of an ostensibly serious, academic address.