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The Pope reiterated a plea, made in many speeches since he was elected in 2005, for mankind to be “respected as the centre of creation” and not relegated by more short-term interests.
But the conservative German-born Pope’s public stand on issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research lead critics to accuse him of holding antiquated views on science.
Why lend credence to an ideology which approaches reality as a myth – and myth as reality.
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In context, as that is the only thing available, it seems the good pope defines religion as “anything that is not religion.”
Bad Pope.
He needs to go. I am not a “believer” and I am against the constitution church, but what he does is just putting himself on the same level as that “thing” he calls “God”.
The deceased Pope did a lot for people of different religions to come together. This one here is reversing all that. The Catholic Church is the only true church… yeah right.
Get over it, people finally start to use their brains and find out you are out for money and power, a tyranny that is ruled by some “thing” that is supposed to be good but still rules over people by trying to keep them living in fear. My religion is wrong? Tells me who again? An old German man who doesn’t have anything to lose anymore? I am German…but sorry, folks, this is the worst they could have done…making that old (excuse the expression) Nazi the Pope.
Amen.
2–Deehexi==good post and accurate I think, but not fairly raised by this statement from the pope? Still, he, the Catholic Religion, and religion in general deserve all the criticism they get.
Re reading my post (#1)–the first use of the word “religion” should have been “science.” How does the brain work that way? Usually my brain farts are limited to single letters and I can blame my keyboard. No excuse for entire words!
His comment is right – science has nothing to do with ethics, and ethics should lead. Don’t people understand that?
And why should the pope try to “bring people of different religions together?” That’s about the silliest thing I’ve ever heard (except “Reagan showed us that deficits don’t matter”). They can’t both be right.
Mankind is rapidly entering into a new dark age. Hopefully someone will soon push the button and nukes the entire human race out of it’s miserable and stupid existence. Human beings have been a blight on this planet long enough.
#4–Janky==right you are. And when ethics leads, religion is “OUT OF HERE.” ie–religion is religion, ethics is ethics, and they overlap only by coincidence.
And thats why the pope is ludicrous and irrelevant. It is indeed only the truth finding process of science that will ever bring man together–with good ethics.
Time to hit the pedal to the metal and vaporize this stupid fuckin’ planet!
Way to misunderstand again. The pope has been pro-science, just look at their statements released on evolution. He is saying that science needs to be guided by morality, not just the potential benefits. You should have understood, since you just posted about should companies to drug trials in third world countries, ut hey anytime it’s the Catholics you guys lose all objectivity and just spew hate.
Caption: Pay no attention to the Pasta behind the curtain.
I agree ethics and that ‘ol time religion have little to do with each other.
Go for it, MikeN.
And don’t forget, Mussolini made the trains run on time.
#4, Janky-o
what does religion have to do with ethics?
The bible can justify any kind of behaviour and indeed christianity has promoted all kinds of negative ethics we can think of for most of it’s existence (including racism, murder, denial of women’s rights etc. etc. etc.)
The ethics we live by today, the human rights, have their roots in the same geographic region as the word ethics itself: ancient Greece.
Towards the end of the christian dominated medieval times, enlightened people have fought with their lives for those ideas *against* the christian church. How come this same church today can claim to be a source of ethics? How come people do actually believe that?
If religion has it’s way, we won’t have a society goverend by freedom within ethical borders but a society in repression.
That’s what Ben(edict) and Bin (Ladin) stand or. Only the former has more powers.
pj
#4 Since when has religion been ethical. I seem to remember the Catholic church had the Cathars burned at the stake, among many other atrocities. Treating ethics as philosophy works better.
#8: MikeN
no, that’s not it, it’s just when someone puts on a coat that is not his.
The leader of the Roman Catholic church has no business at all to talk about ethics. His organization has only adopted ethics about 50 years ago, before that, it has been opposing any kind of modern human rights, and if you look closely, they still do today where they can.
What are the chances for a woman to become a priest, let alone to become pope?
This organization has always been a major road block for human rights and social progress and they continue to be so to this day.
pj
#8–MikeN===I really don’t like this piling on you are getting. I would defend you in any way I could, unfortunately, don’t see how that is possible.
But you are right. My posts are consistent. I would NEVER abuse people simply because I had the power of a medical protocol over them==nor would I do with the power of religion==nor would I if I were god himself.
God stands outside of ethics as he does with time and space. That makes him unethical as well as unnatural.
What is often misunderstood by the anti-science religious crowd is that scientific understanding is itself very spiritual. Those of us that have pursued science all of our lives understand this very well.
Ethics is something both religion and science (and politics for that matter) need to always keep in mind.
Science, at the bottom of it all, is about reality, no more, no less.
So His Poposity is saying, no surprise there, “Don’t let reality interfere with what we want you to believe.”
[deleted – duplicate post]
““In an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer…”
Do not be seduced by the dar-er-science side. Easy the path is to the science side.
(/Bad Yoda Impersonation)
I used to think that religion and science can reach a balance – such as the golden ages of Egyptian and Chinese civilization. Now I’m not so sure it’s possible.
Historically:
Science = If you claim it, you gotta prove it and it’s gotta stand up to peer review.
Religion = If I claim it, you gotta believe it b/c the Pasta-Deity told me so. “Peer Review?” Burn the heretics at the stake.
More and more I think it was more a balance of philosophy (reason/logic rather than blind faith) and science. That’s why the Greeks were so influential on western civ, more for their science and philosophy than their religion – otherwise we’d be sacrificing to Zeus.
Regardless of this Pope’s views (which seem to totter between dark age and progressive), the Catholic church has a LONG history of suppressing science with extreme prejudice. Pro-Intelligent Designers (like the film being made with Ben Stein) like to claim that they’re being persecuted by “Neo-Darwinists”. ND’s have nothing on the Anti-Darwin/Science set historically speaking.
Mods: Apologies for the double-post. I tried to stop the first one when I realized the link was typed wrong, and then resent. Please delete the first one if so inclined. Thanks.
Whether or not religion has anything to with ethics is irrelevant to the pope’s comments.
Science is as happy with eugenics as it is with curing disease, or with vivisection as it is with education. It’s empiric and therefore has nothing to say about ethics. The pope seems to be saying: don’t just go where your science leads. Honor people first. Even a non-religious person should know to do so.
Science may indeed be “spiritual,” whatever that means. But it’s not a guide to ethics.
#20–Janky==right again, and your point is clearly obvious.
An expert in living/preaching what is not ethical is warning us about science that is also not ethical.
Who would know better? Probably some scientist I think.
Truth is best seen as a dialectic between interim truths. Not between near truths and not truths.
#20-Janky-o
you’re right, science is not intrinsically ethical, but so is religion. Science requires ethical guidance but so does religion. However, I’m not aware of any scientist that has ever burned another scientist at the stake for coming up with an opposing world view.
Religions, and specifically catholizism, are quick with brushing away their own cruelties as being “long in the past” and then telling others about ethics. Ethics is a foreing concept for a religion. The human rights are a foreign concept for a religion. The human rights deem all humans equal, a religion thinks all of it’s believers are more equal than the rest (and especially so, for the first time in a long time, this pope, Ben).
If Ben is saying (or even implying) that ethics had any connection to religion, he’s plainly lying and that needs to be said for people tend to believe such lies if they’re only repeated often enough – and we’re hearing exactly this quite often these days, from Ben or from Bin, it doesn’t matter, they’re the same.
pj
and actually, as an afterthought, science can be a very good guide to ethics, for it has taught us that humans, black, white, yellow or red are far more equal than meets the eye. Unlike Religion which has always supported the notion of a superior race/religion/group. It has humbled our world view by removing us from the center and giving us something to look at in awe. And it is teaching us, how fragile the world is and how careful we should treat it.
All things that religion has never tried to do and surely never done. Religion was always about one specific in group being masters of the world (which was synonymous for the universe).
pj
This Pope is a tremendous idiot and is setting back the advancement toward truth that the Catholic Church has made in the past few years.
Some of you are starting to understand what the pope is saying. Let’s go back a 100 years and take a look at an editorial from The New Republic
In the latest Unpopular Review we have encountered an extremely able and cogent article on eugenics, ” Your Blood and Mine,” which would never have appeared there if the editor were taking his gospel of reaction as seriously as do some of his contributors. Laissez-faire as a policy of population leads straight to perdition, according to this writer. The defective element in our population amounts to four per cent of the whole; it overcrowds our jails and asylums, and inflicts upon us an actual cash burden in excess of the cost of our army. Imbecility breeds imbecility as certainly as white hens breed white chickens; and under laissez-faire imbecility is given full chance to breed, and does so in fact at a rate far superior to that of able stocks. The burden is progressive. All this and much more contained in the writer’s argument is true; why is it that it does not stir the intelligent public to action ? We may suggest that a socialized policy of population cannot be built upon a laissez-faire economic policy. So long as the state neglects its good blood, it will let its bad blood alone. There is no certain way of distinguishing between defectiveness in the strain and defectiveness produced by malnutrition, neglected lesions originally curable, or overwork in childhood. When the state assumes the duty of giving a fair opportunity for development to every child, it will find unanimous support for a policy of extinction of stocks incapable of profiting from their privileges.
#25-Mike,
isn’t that *very* similar to “kill the infidels” or “he has offended the name of the lord, he must die” and the likes?
With one slight difference – the latter kills people for their ideas!
It’s a fact of life, if you start mixing religion and ethics, you have to start to close your eyes to the vary basis of any religious belief: that there are people who are more valuable (the followers of this specific belief) and others that are less valuable (everybody else). Full stop.
pj
Of course science is seductive. It actually helps people, unlike religion which does not.
If you’re reading this, you’re using a product of science. There are probably many in your life. Many of these products are in direct conflict with religion.
Consider that your computer uses semiconductors. Consider that semiconductors work because of quantum mechanics. Well, quantum mechanics is in direct conflict with religion.
By denying cause and effect and actually proving that there are effects for which there is no cause, quantum mechanics is at odds with one of the best arguments for religion. We need no prime cause for the creation of the universe if science has already proven that matter and anti-matter can and do pop in out of existence in the quantum soup all the time.
Further, genetics has shown that while there was a single female that did in fact parent our entire species (though actually it was a prior species, if I remember correctly), there was no Adam for this Eve. Or, more accurately, there were rather a lot of Adams.
And then, of course there’s always geology and paleontology to completely contradict the biblical timeline of things.
Knowledge and reason, diligently applied, provide all the ethical guidance needed. At the bottom of it all, the right thing to do always turns out to be the logical thing. Religion interferes with that process, with results that untold human suffering can attest to.
#20 – Janky-O
Science is as happy with eugenics as it is with curing disease, or with vivisection as it is with education. It’s empiric and therefore has nothing to say about ethics. The pope seems to be saying: don’t just go where your science leads. Honor people first. Even a non-religious person should know to do so.
Science may indeed be “spiritual,” whatever that means. But it’s not a guide to ethics.
Sorry, I have to disagree here. Science, both neuroscience and psychology are definitely looking into ethics. With brain scans and tests like the trolley problems, we (as if I were a scientist of any kind) are beginning to make real headway (punintentional, I assure you) into understanding the origins of our ethics and the real processing in moral problems. We are even beginning to find that the human brain has hardwired cases programmed into it such that people from a tremendous variety of cultures including modern and hunter gatherer respond very similarly to certain types of problems.
Of course there are people with defective morals processing centers. We call them sociopaths. But, for the rest of us, when the cases are not twisted by religion, our responses are similar around the world. So, science has a lot to say about morals and ethics.
Religion on the other hand twists morals and ethics beyond recognition allowing people to think that the story of Joshua at Jericho, a complete and total genocide where even the innocent animals were killed, looks moral to the properly indoctrinated.
So, science can and now does include morals. Religion kills folks dead.
Oh Scott–you came so close.
“Of course there are people with defective morals processing centers. We call them sociopaths.”
Replace sociopath with religious and you’ve got it.