Benedict XVI is an enemy of science and reason

John Allen Jr. reports on Benedict XVI�s appearance at Rome�s La Sapienza this coming Thursday and a letter from 63 professors and students, including the entire physics faculty, demanding that the invitation be withdrawn.

 ...Their charge? That Benedict XVI is an enemy of science and reason.

Specifically, the letter points to a speech given on March 15, 1990, by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Parma, Italy, in which he addressed the notorious Galileo case. On that occasion, Ratzinger quoted Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend that �the church�s verdict against Gaileo was rational and just.�

The physics professors described themselves as �indignant as scientists faithful to reason, and as teachers who dedicate our lives to the advancement and diffusion of knowledge. These words offend and humiliate us. In the name of the secularity of science, we hope that this incongruous event can still be cancelled.�

In media interviews, the professors have also cited Benedict�s recent encyclical, Spe Salvi, as hostile to modern science.

...The 18-year-old speech cited by the pope�s critics, for example, offered a reflection by Ratzinger on what he saw as a change in the secular intellectual climate, re-evaluating Galileo as part of a growing awareness of the ambivalence of scientific progress -- especially under the shadow of the bomb. In that context, Benedict quoted the judgment of Feyerabend, an agnostic and skeptic, on Galileo, along with similar statements from Ernst Bloch and C.F. Von Weizsacker.

Here's what Feyerabend wrote, as quoted by Ratzinger: "�The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo�s doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.�

Ratzinger actually called the statement �drastic" -- upon reflection, a fairly striking term from a figure who, at the time, headed the historical successor to the Inquisition.

Ratzinger concluded the speech by saying, �It would be absurd, on the basis of these affirmations, to construct a hurried apologetics. The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.�

In a nutshell, therefore, Benedict is being faulted by the physics professors for quoting somebody else�s words, which his full text suggests he does not completely share. (Readers who remember Regensburg can be forgiven a sense of d�j�-vu.)

Mr. Allen nailed that one since once again the Pope is taken to task for quoting someone else with much less than full agreement.   The part in Spe Salvi that they object to is:

�Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity that he inspired were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed through science. Such an expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive. Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it.�

The objection to this is hard to fathom unless they really do see science as replacing redemption.

The reason modern scientists chaff is the same reason that Galileo did and both display the same arrogance.  Galileo got in trouble for leaving the sphere of science and entering the sphere of theology with his interpretation of scripture.  He also left the sphere of science by teaching as fact what would not be proven to way over a hundred years after his death.  Many modern scientists so much of the same by entering the sphere of theology and trying to define what is ethical and what is not.  To demand the ability to experiment without moral restraint is not science, but scientism.  The truth is that it is the scientist who would define theological truths and not the Church wanting to define scientific truths.

Posted by Jeff Miller at January 14, 2008 12:58 PM