Sunday, September 17, 2006

Within Reason

In the news this week, some in the secular world tut-tut over the speech made by Pope Benedict XVI this week and some Muslims burn him in effigy over comments that apparently were critical of Islam and of Mohammed in particular.

As you know some Muslims get rather excitable and are prone to demonstrations of violence when you say something bad about the Big M. Christians might get all irritated and picket but they generally "turn the other cheek".

But let's take a look at some of the key aspects of the pontiff's speech (the full text is highly recommended reading).

Benedict pointed to some of the key differences between Christianity and Islam and is summarised nicely by The Guardian.

At the heart of the matter is this:

Christianity teaches that God is logical whereas Islam teaches that God is transcendent and therefore can act illogically.

Transcendent is an adjective from the Latin that means going beyond ordinary limits; surpassing; exceeding. Superior or supreme or, in the case of theology, a diety transcending universe, time, etc.

Theoretically this is true - an omnipetent being can do whatever it wishes - and in fact a variation on this (as well as the fallibility of man) is central to the 2003 film Bruce Almighty.

But look at it this way, who is the more perfect being? The powerfully built man who lashes out and hurts things simply because his strength allows him too, or the powerfully built man who selectively uses his strength to help and restrains his stength because he know he has the power to harm?

While Judeo-Christianity acknowledges that God can do whatever He wants, it is always with the cavaet that there is a logic behind it and in many cases humanity can know what that plan is.

A Sunday school question: Would God be God if He went back on His word?

The Bible is full of instances where God has bound Himself to a promise.

The most famous of which is the vow never to create another flood like the one Noah experienced:

Then God told Noah and his sons, "I am making a covenant with you and your descendants, and with the animals you brought with you--all these birds and livestock and wild animals. I solemnly promise never to send another flood to kill all living creatures and destroy the earth." And God said, "I am giving you a sign as evidence of my eternal covenant with you and all living creatures. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my permanent promise to you and to all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with everything that lives. Never again will there be a flood that will destroy all life.
The Judeo-Christian precept that God is logical is the bedrock on which modern scientific enquiry is based - if God created it, there must be some logic in its development or function that can be understood.

While popular belief would say that the Church stifled scientific enquiry, the reverse is actually true.

Observations of the natural world in genetics, physics, biology and anatomy were all fostered by the medieval church built on the Greek enquiry of ancient times.

A discussion on this subject will inevitably lead to discussions of Galileo and the Church never pausing to reflect that the concept that the Sun moved around the Earth had been accepted as scientific fact since Aristotle posited the notion 14 centuries earlier.

The concept of logic in Christianity is very interesting indeed. We'll let Benedict take it from here:

Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. (The apostle) John (in John 1:1) thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.
Logical God or illogical Allah? I know what diety appeals to me.

-- Nora

UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham articulates this issue beautifully here.

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