Pope spooked by reason

by Scoop Shachtman, 1 December 2007

The Guardian:

The Pope’s second encyclical dealt primarily with the Christian understanding of hope. But some passages appeared to be directed at the readers of such bestsellers as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great. Benedict acknowledged that atheism had begun as a “type of moralism”, rooted in the idea that a good God could not have made such an unjust world. But he said a “world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope”.

Er, no it isn’t.

Comments

  1. Will

    Sunday 2 December 2007 at 0:06

    Good point - well made.

    I bet there’s some daft bastard who has a 3000 word post at CIF trying to either argue for or against the proposition.

    Waste of skin twats.

  2. Will

    Sunday 2 December 2007 at 2:38

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfV3y6T-X0

    At the moment we are moving backward — I think The forces of theocracy are growing faster — and with more confidence, and with more violence, with greater numbers, than the forces of reason are doing. I think the period of human Enlightenment may look in retrospect like a very brief, very small fraction of a second in human evolution. Between about 1680 and about now - and about maybe going into eclipse.

  3. hakmao

    Sunday 2 December 2007 at 13:17

    But he said a “world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope”.

    This sort of idiocy echoes the there is no law but god’s law idiocies of those Protestant sects which uphold the inerrancy of scripture, and their Koran and Torah literalist counterparts in the other Abrahamic delusions.

  4. hakmao

    Sunday 2 December 2007 at 13:24

    Dawkins quoting Luther:

    ‘Reason is the greatest enemy faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.’

    ‘Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.’

    ‘Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.’

  5. dirigible

    Monday 3 December 2007 at 15:30

    Even dsqaured kno that Dawkins has read no theology and therefore cannot quote it, never mind argue against it.

    There are truly marvelous proofs of the existence of God contained in theology that you haven’t read. No, I’m not giving the references. Faith should be enough.