Pope's speech at University of Regensburg

Has anyone read this? I printed it out wondering what all the latest “Muslim rage” was about, and walk away totally astounded at something unrelated: Ratzinger's command of theology and philosophy, and above all, his reverence for reason:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=46474

I guess it's easy to sometimes fall into the trap of believing old, crotchety looking figures of the church are simplistic, defenders of church dogma, and not learned men, academics who wrestle with profound philosophical questions. In his lecture linked above, Ratzinger speaks of how reason and faith can coincide, and how reason must necessarily be extended to questions of faith and God if western culture and ethics are to avoid irreparable harm.

Wow. Maybe I need to get out more, but a reconciliation of reason and faith? Nobody it seems to me talks this way, or at least they haven’t since Isaac Newton's time. Reason and faith are two concepts commonly thought of as hopelessly irreconcilable, and should always be kept in separate corners of the ring. That really jostled me, reading that.

Also, I couldn’t help but think of Hadley Arkus and his thesis in “First Things”:

http://www.amazon.com/First-Things-Hadley-Arkes/dp/069102247X/sr=8-2/qid=1158483646/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-9934416-2102509?ie=UTF8&s=books

...and how Arkus’ rational-inquiry arguments for arriving at truths relate with the Pope’s dire observation that “reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it.”

And I believe this is true: today when people speak of truth and what is right and wrong, there is usually a general appeal to consensus, convention, or what is “practical”. Mention morality or the thought of universals as accessible through a reasoned inquiry, and people almost automatically look at you as if you must be some kind of religious nut. Such appeals to morality are supposed to be regulated to subjective private belief or the religious "fundamentalist”, but certainly not arrived at through the methods of a scientist. Reason, properly understood, is a secular tool for the improvement of society solely through science, but is not considered applicable to anything immeasurable, to metaphysics, the superstition of faith, or to knowledge not arrived at through the senses. What a silly modern you would be to do this.

When this is the case, as the Pope points out, when scientific reason “attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology” it “ends up being simply inadequate.”

Actually, I think this is an understatement. If you’re skeptical, I say simply look at what low status the concept of freewill and self-responsibility are afforded in explaining human behavior and outcomes. The social sciences would convince you that you are awash in an ocean of political, social, and economic forces in which the agency of the individual has all but disappeared. Well, I’m reasonably assured that I’m still here. Are you? Or is this all a market campaign?

Maybe I’ll write more on this later tonight when I’m done watching TV (receiving my regular dose of propaganda from the media whose function it is to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate me with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will help integrate me into the institutional structures of the larger society of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest). Pardon the Chomsky imitation: I digress.

Back to the Pope: As I mentioned, his discussion, in part, is focused on how it is “reasonable to raise the question of God through reason” and warns that to cope with the dangers that arise with modernity --such as but not limited to the violence of religious extremists—we need to “overcome the self-imposed limitations of reason to the empirically verifiable.” In other words, spreading faith through violence is unreasonable, and to not act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.

This is obviously a direct challenge in these days of suicide belts and plots to explode planes into buildings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em-MnAYiEWk&mode=related&search=

Similarly, “First Things” instructs about the possibility of necessary truths being established through reason, and illustrates how reason has come to be excluded from the inquiry into morality and law, and has instead been supplanted by a mindless relativism and legal positivism.

So why am I all excited by this you may well ask?

Whether in the evolving legislation of law and defining principles of justice, or religious law and an understanding of God, both authors have a genuine critique of the loss of the use of reason in establishing truth and understanding in either domain. That’s a specific conversation I find exceptionally relevant to the precarious state of western civilization today and well... I just get all hot and heavy under the collar when I come across someone of high profile stirring the pot, a pot of taboo discourse that needs to be stirred more frequently than it currently is.

Anyways, this was one of my “reads’ today and it had a profound impact on me. If you get the chance to digest it, tell me what you think and add some food for thought. Please contribute!