Lee Harris on Benedict’s Speech on Reason
September 26, 2006 · By Tom Cerber
The always excellent Lee Harris has an excellent longish editorial on Benedict’s speech at Regensburg. It has little to do with jihad, and more to do with the “destiny of reason.” Some nuggets:
If modern reason cannot concern itself with the question of God, then it cannot argue that a God who commands jihad is better or worse than a God who commands us not to use violence to impose our religious views on others. To the modern atheist, both Gods are equally figments of the imagination, in which case it would be ludicrous to discuss their relative merits. The proponent of modern reason, therefore, could not possibly think of participating in a dialogue on whether Christianity or Islam is the more reasonable religion, since, for him, the very notion of a “reasonable religion” is a contradiction in terms.
On the quote that caused so much controversy:
Modern science cannot tell us that the emperor is right in his controversy with the learned Persian over what is or is not contrary to God’s nature. Modern reason proclaims such questions unanswerable by science–and it is right to do so. But can modern reason hope to survive as reason at all if it insists on reducing the domain of reasonable inquiry to the sphere of scientific inquiry? If modern reason cannot take the side of the emperor in this debate, if it cannot see that his religion is more reasonable than the religion of those who preach and practice jihad, if it cannot condemn as unreasonable a religion that forces atheists and unbelievers to make a choice between their intellectual integrity and death, then modern reason may be modern, but it has ceased to be reason.
But Benedict is not trying to “turn back the clock” on reason, to some pre-Enlightenment view:
It is important to stress that Ratzinger is not repudiating the critical examination of reason that was initiated by Kant. Instead, he is urging us to examine the cultural and historical conditions that made the emergence of modern reason possible. Modern reason required a preexisting community of reasonable men before it could emerge in the West; modern reason, therefore, could not create the cultural and historical condition that made its own existence possible. But in this case, modern reason must ask itself: What created the communities of reasonable men that eventually made modern reason possible?
Ultimately, Benedict defends reason because God is reasonable:
Intimately connected with the concept of God as a rational Creator who wishes for us to be able to understand the reason behind the universe is the concept of a God who will behave reasonably toward us. He will not be delighted when we grovel before him, nor will he demand that we worship him in “fear and trembling.” Instead, he will be a God who prefers for us to feel reverence and gratitude towards him.
Read the whole thing.
Yes, I read the whole thing last night and emailed it to a few friends. He really nailed it.
As I said on another thread, it’s funny how mainstream criticism of the Pope is now muted, especially from the Muslim ambassadors who he met yesterday. You can be sure they know—because it’s pretty obvious once you encounter the actual lecture—how bad this makes a large part of their constituency look, reasonably and defensibly.