Pope claims Christian God is linked to reason while Allah is not

[helemon]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1534640-1,00.html
His discourse Tuesday sought to delineate what he sees as a fundamental difference between Christianity's view that God is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek concept of logos) and Islam´s view that "God is absolutely transcendent." Benedict said that Islam teaches that God's "will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." The risk he sees implicit in this concept of the divine is that the irrationality of violence can potentially be justified if someone believes it is God's will.
This from a church that teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation and believes in miracles?
"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."
Huh? God is intrinsically linked to reason but we don't want to tie ourselves to empirically verifiable evidence.:duh

[papa]

for real brah, this Benedict seems to be a walking talking contradiction, and his religion too. :lftl:

This is a comment about Benedict, not the RCC. :)

[helemon]

for real brah, this Benedict seems to be a walking talking contradiction, and his religion too. :lftl:

This is a comment about Benedict, not the RCC. :)

I think the Catholic church is trying very hard to remain relevant in an increasingly secular and rational world.

If the Pope wants to make headway with Islam and violence perhaps he should start by addressing the role of the Catholic church in the Crusades. On what rational basis does he justify that?

[skeptic]

helemon,

Thanks for a great post! The fray reminded me of some of Sam Harris’s choice quotes below.

SoUtSkeptic



Sam Harris 'End of Faith'
-Epilogue-

While religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction, it is still sheltered from criticism in every corner of our culture.

Many are still eager to sacrifice happiness, compassion, and justice in this world, for fantasy of a world to come.

If our tribalism is ever to give away to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the very basis of human cooperation. People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our society, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.

Nothing is more sacred than the facts. No one, therefore, should win any points in our discourse for deluding himself. The litmus test for reasonableness should be obvious: anyone who wants to know how the world is, whether in physical or spiritual terms, will be open to new evidence. We should take comfort in the fact that people tend to conform themselves to this principle whenever they are obliged to. This will remain a problem for religion. The very hands that prop up our faith will be the ones to shake it.

It is as yet undetermined what it means to be human, because every facet of our culture—and even our biology itself—remains open to innovation and insight.

The only angles we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil’s masterpiece.

The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call “spiritual”. No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation.

[peter_mary]

No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation.
In fact, I think God always gets in the WAY of living in awe of the beauty and immensity of creation.

Loved the insights in that piece, skeptic...

[mike thomas]

I love how people use logic to analyze other religions but never their own.
:slap: