"Irrational violence? What irrational violence?" < /sarc>
Posted on 09/21/2006 1:43:10 AM PDT by LibWhacker
IN A BRILLIANT lecture at the University of Regensburg last week, Pope Benedict XVI made three crucial points that are now in danger of being lost in the polemics about his supposedly offensive comments about Islam.
The pope's first point was that all the great questions of life, including social and political questions, are ultimately theological. How we think (or don't think) about God has much to do with how we judge what is good and what is wicked, and with how we think about the appropriate methods for advancing the truth in a world in which there are profound disagreements about the truth of things.
If, for example, we imagine that God is pure will, a remote majesty with whom our only possible relationship is one of unthinking submission, then we have imagined a God who can even command what seems to be irrational — like the murder of innocents. Pope Benedict reminds us, however, that mainstream Christian tradition, following its Jewish parent, has a different concept of God. The God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus is a God of reason, compassion and love, a God who comes searching for man in history, appeals to the human mind as well as the human heart and invites human beings into a dialogue of salvation.
This God cannot demand the unreasonable or the irrational. This God's revelation of himself, in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, does not cancel out or abrogate human reason. That is why mainstream Christianity has always taught that human beings can build decent societies by attending to reason.
The pope's second point, which flows from the first, was that irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children "is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
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bttt
. . . If the West's high culture keeps playing in the sandbox of postmodern irrationalism — in which there is "your truth" and "my truth" but nothing such as "the truth" — . . . a genuine dialogue of civilizations [cannot exist].
A "philosopher" is one who does not claim to be wise (which would be arrogant) but claims only to love wisdom. If everyone can have their own "truth," what can "wisdom" possibly mean? What would there be to love in such a as that?The author notes that this "third point" of Benedict XVI "has been almost entirely ignored." Which is only to be expected of the sophists whose argument begins and ends with their own claim of their own wisdom. They call it "objectivity," but they mean nothing else. Their "argument" is
Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts! </sarcasm>
- I am wise.
- You disagree with me.
- Therefore you are foolish. QED
There is journalism's "objectivity."
read later
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"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." -Manuel II Paleologus
When the LA Times agrees with the Pope, how far away can Armageddon be?
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That this appeared in the LA Times is simply remarkable.
First point is, this looks to be an editorial piece, so by definition it is not "hard news journalism".
The second point is, the author is correct. Any society which does not claim "a truth" cannot debate "the truth" with another society. The sickening brew of post-modernism and relativism is the root of Mikey Moore being able to call Iraqi terrorists "freedom fighters" on par with our mimutemen and become rich doing so, with half the country thinking he is wise.
People on this site, for the most part, have no idea how uncomfortable most people in this nation get when you actually insist that there is a clear cut right and wrong.
Good read to start the day!
. . . but they have no trouble saying that making them uncomfortable is wrong!
Excellent. Must bookmark.
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