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Pope Benedict, the good & the bad

Since this blog has basically turned into a forum for my opinions about religion, I thought I’d offer my comments on Pope Benedict’s challenge to Islam and secularism. First, I’ll point you to John Wilkins’ deconstruction of Benedict’s misimpressions of evolutionary theory. Ah, the bad.
But what about the good? The good is that Benedict is challenging Islam and demanding that it join the civilized and castrated stable of modern organized religions. The universe is characterized by cycles, and organized religions arose first in their prototypical form with the rising priesthoods of city-states in places like Sumer, eventually attaining a philosophical patina via transcivilizational systems like Buddhism and Christianity. For a period between 300 and 1900 religion was the defining characteristic of many civilizations. The Sassanids had their state Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and Buddhism spread out from ndia to give Asia a common metaphysical lexicon, while Christianity and Islam exploded and flowered on the Western reaches of the World Island. But over the past few centuries Christendom has given way to the post-Christian West, and though organized religion remains vital and predominant numerically it no longer captures the essence of civilization, suffusing all sensibilities and demanding loyalty. Though the majority might personally be members of a religious organization, the choice is private, and even the tribal gods no longer serve to unite.
So to Benedict’s talk. He offers a contrast between the God of Islam and the Christian God, the God of reason, Logos, the God of no compulsion in religion, vs. the more transcendent and inscrutable Allah. Honestly, I think this is all poppycock, you can tell the pagan Lithuanians and Scandinavians the consequences of rejecting conversion to the Christian faith. You can tell the pagans whose temples, like the Serapeum, were torn down by the righteous with the approval of the Christian powers the be, pagans whose private worship was forbidden by the Theodosius “the Great” (so named by the Church of whom he was a benafactor). Benedict is an intelligent man, but his God is a philosophical one of his imagining, not the angry God of the Macabees who sanctioned the forced conversion of neighboring peoples, not the nasty God who commanded Olaf Trygvasson to toss unrepentant pagans into snake pits. But this is neither here nor there, the key is that Benedict’s challenge is important it serving as a gauntlet thrown out to Islam so that it rises to the occassion. I believe none of the talk of Islam being a “religion of peace” and the terrorist not being “true Muslims,” but, I think it essential that the 1 billion individuals who avow Islamic beliefs be pacified by a more quietistic faith. The gelding of Christianity occurred in a environment of competition, the denominational faction with the Roman Catholic Church suppressed whenever it was in the position to do so, but that faction between denominations allows for creative destruction and more fruitful fantasies which allow the existence of non-orthodox thought. Evangelicals proslyetizing amongst Muslims is a good thing, because how sacred is a belief which allows proselytizing of falsehoods in its midst?

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