This is old news, but still funny. Old Joe Ratzi managed to enrage a whole bunch of intolerant camel herders by not being careful in his utterances about Islam. Then he had to backpedal a bit, but still not enough to calm the rage. This was not helpful, of course, since all of those who pretend to be outraged were just looking for a pretext. And if I were a Catholic I’d be supremely pissed off that my shepherd had to bow to stupid intolerance from a miscreant crowd. So in the end, no one is happy.
Personally, I could be happy, were it not for the fact that said camel herders might decide to react a bit too harshly towards us who are unfortunate enough to live in the same country where Ratzi resides. Possibly they already have.
I could be happy, I was about to say, because this episode just goes to show how much better we’d be without any kind of religion. But I’m afraid this lesson is falling on dead ears.
Meanwhile, an atheist writer who wasted no occasion to lay shame on those same camel herders, just died. Many thought she was a xenophobic racist, but that’s not my opinion.
Going back to the bozo in a funny hat and a white dress (can’t you at least wear a decent clergyman and stop looking like the bozo you are?), in the same occasion he also managed to say something incredibly ignorant and stupid on the subject of evolution, and science in general:
Text Homily, Mass in Regensburg 12 September, 2006: “So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless.”
Talk about a false dichotomy! And a straw man, all in the same sentence. For one thing, many things are the result of chance, not the least of which our genetic makeup, which determines much of our individuality, without them being meaningless. So why pick on evolution specifically? And let’s not even begin talking about the mischaracterization of evolution as pure chance. You’d think a learned, old man would know better, but maybe he has an axe to grind.
Second, even if ascribing our existence to mere natural processes made it meaningless (according to which definition of “meaning”, by the way?), why should we prefer this conclusion to a lie? The fact that we don’t like an option does not automatically make the other option true.
(Via Evolving Thoughts.)
Technorati Tags: pope, ratzinger, evolution, islam, regensburg.
‘church wrong again’
Yeah, theres something ironic how its the other religions that are up in arms, given the speech was really an attack on rational thinking. I dont see the scientists burning effigies of the pope in the street.
but then again, maybe its because, as galileo said when they were persecuting him 400 years before they got around to saying sorry, “but still it moves”.
Agreed on the religion as scourge of humanity bit.
I felt good about this post. It confirmed for me some of the things I’ve been thinking about.