It’s tough being a scholar sometimes. Just ask Pope Benedict. In the course of a long speech, he took the time to tell a little story about a 600-year-old meeting between two educated thinkers, one Christian and one Muslim. And now he has the whole Islamic world angry at him. His story went something like this:
The Pope’s speech quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and an educated Persian on the truths of Christianity and Islam.
“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the Pope said.
“He said, I quote, ‘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’.”
Benedict described the phrases on Islam as “brusque”, while neither explicitly agreeing with nor repudiating them.
Hey, this is a popular blogging technique! Just link to a story somewhere else, without giving any explicit endorsement. I wonder if Benedict has been reading Instapundit, or Little Green Footballs?
So now apparently Muslims are upset, as they don’t appreciate the linkage between Islam and violence. Personally, I find it unpersuasive to claim that the two are unconnected when so many people persist in connecting them. Also, if your goal is to insist that your religion is one of peace and tolerance? Probably burning the Pope in effigy is not the best way to get that message across.
The real problem with the Pope’s speech was his claim that violence had no place in true religion (you know, like Christianity).
“Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” the Pope said.
We all know that most big-time religions have many examples of terrible violence in their past, and Christianity is certainly no exception. Even putting aside the many recent incidents, it’s interesting to consider the record that is part of official Church doctrine, as recorded in Scripture. Steve Wells has done the hard work of going through the Old Testament and counting up the death toll for both God and Satan, taking care not to exaggerate by only including those examples for which specific figures are given. (Via Cynical-C.) The final tally:
- God: 2,270,365.
- Satan: 10.
This doesn’t include stuff like the Flood, for which reliable figures are unavailable. If violence is incompatible with the nature of God, He sure has a funny way of showing it.
To be serious for a second: my thing about religion is generally not that it’s bad, but that it’s false. The history of religion is far too complex to be summed up as “good” or “bad,” and there are obviously components of both. The Salvation Army, odious discrimination policies notwithstanding, does a tremendous amount of good. Religious people are generally better at donating to charity than non-religious ones (last I heard; I don’t have specific figures, so this could be wrong). And I like a lot of the art and architecture.
The overall effect of religion may be good or bad, I don’t know how to judge. But if you’re going to talk about it (which the Pope is definitely going to do, given his job description), you should at least be honest, including all the ugly parts. Pretending that either Islam or Christianity is all about non-violence and peaceful dialogue is patently false. You can try to say that the episodes of violence are aberrations, not reflective of the “real” religion, but that’s just the No True Scotsman fallacy. What a religion is, for all important purposes, is revealed by what its adherents actually do, for better or for worse. If Pope Benedict had said “We are all fallible human beings, and people of our faiths do not always act wisely, but we should all strive to promote peace over violence within our churches,” perhaps there would have been fewer effigies.
Sean wrote:
Sean,
The Pope made no such claim. Please read his address. The quote that you and your source attribute to him is actually his summary of the reasoning of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus. Here’s the relevant excerpt:
BEGIN EXCERPT
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.
END EXCERPT
Here’s my summary of the Pope’s (unadvisedly professorial) speech:
1) Non-Western cultures are offended by the West’s current dismissal of religion as incompatible with reason.
2) As evidenced by a 600-year-old dialog between a Christian and a Muslim, Christianity was once understood to be compatible with reason, and this perceived compatibility distinguished it from non-Western beliefs such as Islam.
3) If the West revives its belief in the compatibility with reason of Christianity in particular and religion in general, non-Western believers will cease to view the West as inimical to and dismissive of their core (i.e. religious) beliefs.
4) A revived Western view of the reasonableness of religion can form the basis of a dialog between the West and other cultures.
Generally, your text is not bad but I miss some basics of good judgement:
1) If judging the popes speech: You have to read the original, not a 2nd or 3rd party information source that takes a quote out of the speech puts it into a wrong context.
2) I miss CLEAR words, that dark ages of the Christian religion were 500 years ago. Do you want to wait another 500 years?
Not all muslims are terrorists, but a high portion of all terrorists are muslims. Sad but true.
Religion of Peace? I dont think so.
2) I miss CLEAR words, that dark ages of the Christian religion were 500 years ago. Do you want to wait another 500 years?
Sectarian violence between different sects of the same religion — all over the place with Islam in Iraq right now. Not so very long ago, the Christian version of the same thing was tearing Northern Ireland apart.
Many if not most or all large religions have people doing awful (as well as good) things in its name right now.
-Rob
so much here to munch on. “A high portion of all terrorists are muslims” for example denotes a difference between acts of terror (as perpetrated by a massive military state) versus terrorist acts (as carried out by those who are incapable of conceiving of other ways to express their “issues”). Someone up there (Arun or Robb) dropped a line about morality and virtue not stemming from rationality, yet that was the essential discourse of the enlightenment philosophers, freeing humans from the dependency upon religion as the arbiter of virture. Science is amoral, reason provides opportunities to know and choose what is moral and virtuous.
serial catowner said Charity is religious in nature. Now, not mentioning the history of evolutionary biological study, i can offer that there is an honor’s thesis paper sitting on my desktop from a former student who graduated recently from Stanford and is now in the MS/MA (?) philosophy program studying computational hermeneutics. The title of this paper is: Radical Interpretability and Parasitism: Justifying the Principle of Charity. There is not a mention of religion in it.
and finally someone else above suggested that part of the multitude of commentary in this thread stems from the religious nature of the topic as being emotional?? I think it has much more to do with so many people feeling competent to discuss religion without really understanding it at all, especially as an academic discipline, much like they do discussing education and art. I suspect it is one of the reasons that when one drifts over to religion blogs, one finds so much use of arcana and specific nomenclature offered to constrict the discourse.
ps. Belizean, you need to read Gary Leupp’s essay: The Crusade of Pope Rat!
Belizean,
Your link to “his address” in 76. doesn’t work. Was it supposed to be a link?
The GZK cutoff has finally been observed:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609453
Meanwhile, this blog degenerates into another boring discussion of religion or politics or some other bullshit…
So go visit another one. Maybe start your own. Sounds like you have a command of the language that would make it an instant hit.
spyder, yes let’s look at terrorism as critically as we look at war, and vice versa.
Belizean,
You write:
“…Christianity was once understood to be compatible with reason, and this perceived compatibility distinguished it from non-Western beliefs such as Islam.”
My reaction: May I suggest that you read the Koran (if you have not done so already), as well as Islamic history; I assume that you have read the Bible and Church history and would we willing to defend this specific “assessment” (the summary remark) made by Pope Benedict XVI.
Furthermore: What the Pope was doing was not really trying to initiate a healthy “intellectual” discourse; his views of other world-faiths was unambiguously stated weeks after he assumed Papal discharge: he views all other faiths as “deficient”: but in exactly what specific way – in relation to Catholocism – still remains vague, unspecific, and inarticulated…
It just so happened that his speech on Religion and Reason coincidentally included a quote from an “obscure” medieval Byzantine Christian emperor who lived shortly after the failed Third Crusade, and immediately before the period of the downfall of Constantinople. I guess one cannot get more “obscure” than that…
Vince,
Here’s the link to the “Pope’s Speech at the University of Regensburg (full text)”.
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46474
If it still doesn’t work, just copy the URL into your browser.
Sumit,
To be clear, I was attempting to summarize the Pope’s speech, not give my own opinion.
Please read his speech to understand what I’m referring to with the phrase “compatible with reason”. Incompatibility in this sense does not imply that Muslims are psychologically irrational. Rather, it means that they believe their god to be so powerful that he even transcends the restrictions of reason.
Belizean,
Thank you for the clarification.
Comments by the Pope:
The Pope suggestively expresses the view that Christian scripture and doctrines (or it core “essence” anyhow) is somehow rational – as early Christianity was influenced by Hellenistic thinking (using principles of reasoning and logic at its bedrock). This may have been the case (I don’t specifically know, aside from some patches of information by historians of Early Christianity who claim that Early Christian doctrines were fundamentally different in philosophical and theological perspective from the Christianity of today, and were more akin to Jewish belief systems; incidentally, the Koran states that over the generations – the Gospel and message of Jesus (of Nazareth) had fallen to “corruption” trough human intervention – i.e. additions / deletions, editing, etc.) so that the original message had become distorted: it also states that Jesus had a wife named ‘Mariam’? – but back to the original point…)).
However, his thesis (based on the “obscure” quote from the 14th century Christian emperor) that Islam’s primary theological foundation is built on an essentially irrational worldview, which contradicts human rationality – since it permits violence in the name of God – is somewhat misinformed: jihad in the context of *self-defense against unwarranted aggression* is permitted within Islam, not exactly because God wants Muslims to convert others to the ‘faith’ through violence. [Here a reading of the Koran is essential to carry on a meaningful and healthy discussion]. (Incidentally, as many commentators have pointed out – Mahatir Mohammad being one among many – the Pope keeps missing references to own faith when presenting his academic discourse on the topic).
Topic of Jihad:
Global jihad – if one studies the empirical data with some measure of objectivity – is by-and-large a reaction to US aggression against the perpetual killing of Muslim civilans throughout the Middle East and surrounding regions (which, by the way, is from where most jihadis come from). The Administration wants us to think something else: and it hasn’t been working…
maybe mr Sumit could also explain to us why there are no democracies in the Muslim world, with the exception of Turkey ?
Constantin, you suggest that christianity is somehow more condusive to democracy, but may I remind you that proper modern democracy did not start until the English Bill of Rights in 1689. Considering that islam started some 600 years after christianity, it is too early to tell which religion fares best with respect to democracy.. 😉
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/18/85254/3270
Worth a read, IMO.
Concludes with this:
“What is really unfortunate isn’t that Pope Benedict reached back to a flawed and bigoted 12th century conversation in order to have a context for speaking about religious violence today.  What is unfortunate is that he had to.  For centuries, the West refused to talk to Islam at all, because we didn’t share the same faith.  Now, we’ve lost even the ability to talk to Islam, and we’ve lost that ability because we don’t share a belief in faith itself — a belief that is central to Islamic culture.  Unless we reclaim the ability to talk about faith without sneering, we will insult Muslims at the very core of their culture, at the very core of their existence.  In that state of insult, there can be no peace.
What Pope Benedict is saying, is this: It is the insistence that faith has no part in a modern and rational world, that is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
– For that matter, we’ve lost the ability to talk to about a third of the American electorate. 🙂 Further, unless Muslims get the ability to talk about politics and governance and law without bringing faith into the picture, are able to talk about secularism without sneering, they will insult us at the very core of our culture, and in that state of insult there can be no peace.
“Furthermore: What the Pope was doing was not really trying to initiate a healthy “intellectual” discourse; his views of other world-faiths was unambiguously stated weeks after he assumed Papal discharge: he views all other faiths as “deficient”: but in exactly what specific way – in relation to Catholocism – still remains vague, unspecific, and inarticulated…”
Well, if you belong to a religion which follows the words of Jesus and claims that Jesus redeemed us and reconciled us back to God, that, in fact, he is God incarnated, and that he rose from the dead, then you have to say that religions which don’t teach the same thing are deficient. I mean, assuming Jesus is all those things, then all other religions are deficient.
but not what I meant – I’m very weary of these “spontaneous” demonstrations of indignation. Why would 1.2 billion Muslims care about what the Pope says or thinks, as if most Catholics – let alone Christians – do.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. That’s 400 million people right there.
If you want to count the Moslem minority in India, that’s another 150 million moslems living in a liberal democracy.
I could go on but, somehow, I don’t think Mr Constantin cares …
While in most cases a topical debate would – probably (?) – not have lasted this long (except ofcourse on ST ;-)), on this specific issue it was very much needed, and maybe – hopefully – helpful to all:
The Pope has, without much excuse to justify his action, blatantly (and perhaps even purposefully… one only wonders…) over-stepped his jurisdiction: and he should be held to task for this.
“A person’s right to breathe in public does not give him the right to sneeze on everyone else’s faces.”
(This someone said on CNN after the Mohammed cartoons.)
Pope, instead of maintaining due respectibility on behalf of the 1.2 billion Catholics, you have lowered yourself to the position of just another run-of-the-mill political figure – maybe with some axe to grind against Islam (I don’t really know). I guess John Paul would have wanted it that way…
If Pope Benedict had said “We are all fallible human beings, and people of our faiths do not always act wisely, but we should all strive to promote peace over violence within our churches,” perhaps there would have been fewer effigies.
Well, yea. Being ambiguous doesn’t offend many, but it’s not worth much unless you’re writing a poem.
But if he would have said, “Catholicism and Islam have both been associated with evil at times,” he would still probably have produced a significant number of effigies. And if he would have associated Allah or Mohammed with evil in any way, regardless of anything else that he said, he would have probably gotten the same result.
You don’t seem to understand the significance of blaspheming Jesus in a society dominated by Christians versus blaspheming Allah or Mohammed in a society dominated by Muslims.
And somewhere in here there should be a statement about the millions that were killed at the hands of atheists in the last century. But I can’t figure out a smooth way to slip it in.
You could see this article by a Muslim Scholar.
http://www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3?id_article=781&lang=en
I find I must chime in here. I find the blog quite interesting in keeping up with matters of modern physics. Thank you for that! But “you” scientists are really quite full of it you know. Many of your good friends around you are Christians, or Jews, or whatever. You demean them, and yourself, by denying their world view has any validity. Practicing a strict scientific viewpoint such as you do, has obvious benefits. But evolution has not necessitated any one worldview, at least to date. One has only needed to find food, kill his enemies before they kill him, and procreate to succeed. In some sense, that is still true today, in spite of our liberal worldviews. Would it were not.
While I often bemoan my very good Christian friends’ outlook on life, I do not demean them. I look at my scientist friends’ theories and, yes faiths, and I wonder how they can be so full of it. In explaining the ultimate scheme of things, they are as clueless as their religious friends. They just have fancier theories and faiths, expressed in exact language, and, to be sure, practices that bring about technological marvels, to the benefit of the rest of us. But there is no ultimate “understanding” at the end of all their explaining.
So the point is that we have to accept all these alternative ways to live and believe. There are no solutions, there are only choices, an old truth. That is surely a liberal viewpoint, I would propose. And a liberal viewpoint I agree with.
What is running amok these days is that one of the alternative beliefs, at least in its radical interpretation definitely does NOT have a liberal mindset. It has a medieval mindset. It will have to be eliminated if the rest of us are to survive in a (liberal) connected, pluralist world. It is that simple! Our liberal friends find it hard to revert to the definitely non liberal practice of survival of the fittest. Appeasers are everywhere among us. It is 1938 all over again. We are making apologies for people who want to kill us.
I think this is what Pope Benedict sees, but not how to see it thru. I see him as suggesting the point that God and violence do not go together. Which is where I think most of the world’s religions have evolved to. They certainly didn’t start out that way!
A radical minority of the Islam religion certainly believe that (their) God and violence go hand in hand, and that their viewpoint is the “endpoint” of spiritual evolution, to be imposed on the rest of us. And this viewpoint is tolerated by much of their majority. Definitely not good for the future of our liberal, pluralistic world.
Good for the Pope for (delicately) trying to inject this into the debate.
It’s 1938 OK. The problem is, we may be the Germans.
I prefer to think of us as Brits awakened from a deep pacifist slumber after WWI. That pacifism got 100 million people killed in WWII by absolutely refusing to confront Hitler when he could have easily been toppled, no less than 4 times. I would say we are at about time 2 here. We are NOT the bad guys. With our munificent liberal spirit, as evidenced by you (america is probably the bad guy…), we are willing to live with these people, they are not willing to live with us.
J
The notion that Iraq or Iran or even North Korea are remotely analogous to Hitler’s Germany is merely stupid since none of these countries have anything like the power to present more than a regional threat. You do know that, don’t you? You know we are NOT the bad guys, at least, apparently because you’re sure that Americans are exempt from the human capacity for self-deception, cowardice, and cruelty. Either that, or like some Fox News meatheat, you’re just playing to the cheap seats. A real rhetorical coup: it takes so much courage to grudgingly admit that “we’re always right and we never lie.”
Historical analogies are always pretty dubious–I only use ’em for rhetorical effect myself—but if you’re going to talk about a new candidate for Hitler of the month, it will have to be the leader of a large, militarily powerful nation, somebody who dreams of imposing his ideology on the entire world, not some nut in Afghanistan.