16 January 2008

Speechless

A major Italian university has agreed with many of its academic and student protesters and barred the Pope from speaking at the opening of the academic year. Their protest stems from when Ratzinger had, 18 years ago, defended the church's prosecution of Galileo. He invoked, and I am not making this up, postmodern philosopher of epistemology Paul Feyerabend in his support of Galileo's Renaissance incarceration. Who knew that the Pope could be a fan of the iconoclastic approach of postmodern writers. Oddly enough, the Pope is crying censorship.

Would Christians allow an atheist to christen their new church? How useful would that be? Stephen Jay Gould would refuse to debate creationists arguing simply that they had nothing to bring to the table. He suffered/suffers accusations of censorship. Is it really so odd for science to refuse to spend time with kooks, no matter how organized? There are many flat-earthers out there. The Pope insists that science is subordinate to faith. This is, obviously, stupid and what I'd expect from an intellect base enough to equate atheism with evil.

Many scientists are theists. Despite the protesters' statement that Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests, there's no reason for such religious posturing--from either fear or arrogance.

[ posted by sstrader on 16 January 2008 at 1:17:29 PM in Science & Technology ]