Secularism Weakens Religious Belief
My headline is a bit of hyperbole, but not too far off target.
In an outdoor Mass before 250,000 in Munich, Germany, His Holiness said that science and rational thought weakens our ability to accept the religious message. "Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God, there are too many frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited for our age.”
“People in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality that totally excludes God from man’s vision,” he said.
“They do not see the real threat to their identity in the Christian faith,” he said, “but in the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and that holds up utility as the supreme moral criterion for the future of scientific research.”
The Pope did not offer what should instead be the criterion for scientific research. Gospel text, perhaps? Don't pursue any line of research, no matter the potential benefits, if it might contradict church teachings?
I can certainly understand the Pope's position. It must have been awfully to convenient to be able to threaten scientists with excommunication or burning at the stake if they disagreed with you. Like that Galileo fellow who had the audacity to say that the Earth moves around the Sun, despite what the Bible says.
And would giving up the benefits of modern medicine, for example, be too great a sacrifice to hear only one message? It would save us the trouble of having to make up our own minds.
It is also worthy of note that the Pope referenced Africa and Asia, areas where Islam is making significant converts. Wouldn't it be great if the Pope could just declare a Fatwa against anyone with the audacity to offer scientific proof that contradicts the Bible?
The thing is that religion cannot compete against science, not for rational minds. The stories of Creation, of the Garden of Eden, of Noah's Ark, make no sense in the modern world."