Vatican reaches out to atheists – but not you, Richard Dawkins

[Habesha]

The Vatican is planning a new initiative to reach out to atheists and agnostics in an attempt to improve the church’s relationship with non-believers. Pope Benedict XVI has ordered officials to create a new foundation where atheists will be encouraged to meet and debate with some of the Catholic Church’s top theologians.

The Vatican hopes to stage a series of debates in Paris next year. But militant non-believers hoping for a chance to set senior church figures straight about the existence of God are set to be disappointed: the church has warned that atheists with high public profiles such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens will not be invited.

The “Courtyard of the Gentiles”, as the foundation is known, is being set up by the Pontifical Council for Culture, the influential Vatican department that is charged with fostering better relations with non-Catholics. It was founded by Pope John Paul II in 1982 to spearhead his attempts to create a better dialogue with other cultures and faith, including those with no religion at all.

More:

The foundation, he said, would only be interested in “noble atheism or agnosticism, not the polemical kind – so not those atheists such as [Piergiorgio] Odifreddi in Italy, [Michel] Onfray in France, [Christopher] Hitchens and [Richard] Dawkins”.

Such atheists, he added, only view the truth with “irony and sarcasm” and tend to “read religious texts like fundamentalists”.

independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-reaches-out-to-atheists-ndash-but-not-you-richard-dawkins-1987518.html

 

[Dale_M]

Its a reasonable stance. The evangelical atheists such as Dawkins or Hitchens aren’t likely to change their mind, seeing the dialogue as an opportunity for championing their cause and winning cheers from their supporters.

But I am concerned if the dialogue is actually framed as debates. In such contests, both sides try to “beat” the other. In the more heated style, rhetoric is preferred over logic and facts. Truth is often a casualty. I’m not sure if a debate format is quite the thing to advance the appeal of Christianity.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

Its a reasonable stance. The evangelical atheists such as Dawkins or Hitchens aren’t likely to change their mind, seeing the dialogue as an opportunity for championing their cause and winning cheers from their supporters.

But I am concerned if the dialogue is actually framed as debates. In such contests, both sides try to “beat” the other. In the more heated style, rhetoric is preferred over logic and facts. Truth is often a casualty. I’m not sure if a debate format is quite the thing to advance the appeal of Christianity.

I wouldn’t see what the Vatican is trying to organize as a legitimate debate. It seems to me that they plan to pit a career theologian against an intellectual lightweight off the street who happens to be an Athiest. The point of a debate is not to convince those debating to change their minds; it’s to give the audience the opportunity to hear both sides, consider the arguments, and reach their own conclusions.

 

[jdnation]

Dawkins and others have been taken to task plenty of times, often by Protestant Evangelicals and Born Agains who do a superb job, yet men like Dawkins are back the following week peddling the same points they have been refuted on many many many times over. These men will not change, they cannot be convinced because they’ve shut their minds off. They are not worth bringing into the picture. It’s better to talk with more open minded atheists or agnostics who are more honest about questioning their beliefs.

Besides which if the Church is serious about approaching these people, it better realize that Darwinian Evolution and Science will be major portions, and taking compromise positions on evolution and the Book of Genesis are likely to only hinder what they’re trying to do. Proofs for Intelligent design are nice but it should be Creationism and Biblical inerrancy with a thorough defense of Genesis and the nature of origins science that are bulletproof for laying the foundation for the Gospels and the Church’s authority.

 

[kingal86]

‘The “Courtyard of the Gentiles”, as the foundation is known, is being set up by the Pontifical Council for Culture’,]

I thought Gentile meant non-Jew, and pagan meant someone who doesn’t belong to a monotheistic Abrahamic faith. Or does “Gentile” have a different meaning in Vatican usage?

 

[OriginalJS]

I agree that the purpose is to pit a heavyweight intellectual against lightweights. The heavyweight will win debates every time. William Buckley used to win arguments just because of his formidable knowledge and skill. Whether this is effective in matters of faith, I’m not sure.

 

[Ahimsa]

I thought Gentile meant non-Jew, and pagan meant someone who doesn’t belong to a monotheistic Abrahamic faith. Or does “Gentile” have a different meaning in Vatican usage?

Don’t interpret “gentile” literally.

 

[Religion_Ninja]

I wouldn’t see what the Vatican is trying to organize as a legitimate debate. It seems to me that they plan to pit a career theologian against an intellectual lightweight off the street who happens to be an Athiest. The point of a debate is not to convince those debating to change their minds; it’s to give the audience the opportunity to hear both sides, consider the arguments, and reach their own conclusions.

What makes you say they are going to pick a lightweight atheist? Why because they wouldn’t pick Dawkins? Maybe they want to keep the debate civil and don’t want to have turn into an ad hominem circus, which it most certainly would if an attention seeker like Dawkins showed up. Good debates should be reasonable, respectful, and civil.

BTW, there are many better atheists than Dawkins out their.

 

[Ahimsa]

What makes you say they are going to pick a lightweight atheist? Why because they wouldn’t pick Dawkins? Maybe they want to keep the debate civil and don’t want to have turn into an ad hominem circus, which it most certainly would if an attention seeker like Dawkins showed up. Good debates should be reasonable, respectful, and civil.

BTW, there are many better atheists than Dawkins out their.

I agree. Dawkins knows abysmally little about theology or religious history. Any dialogue between him and a Catholic philosopher would be a massacre, especially if they don’t limit themselves to biological evolution, a topic with which the Church has no scientific problem, any way.

 

[Dale_M]

I think Pope Benedict’s 2009 Christmas speech to the Curia may explain the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” name.

We must make sure that they are open to this question and to the yearning concealed within it. Here I think naturally of the words which Jesus quoted from the Prophet Isaiah, namely that the Temple must be a house of prayer for all the nations (cf. Is 56: 7; Mk 11: 17). Jesus was thinking of the so-called “Court of the Gentiles” which he cleared of extraneous affairs so that it could be a free space for the Gentiles who wished to pray there to the one God, even if they could not take part in the mystery for whose service the inner part of the Temple was reserved. A place of prayer for all the peoples by this he was thinking of people who know God, so to speak, only from afar; who are dissatisfied with their own gods, rites and myths; who desire the Pure and the Great, even if God remains for them the “unknown God” (cf. Acts 17: 23). They had to pray to the unknown God, yet in this way they were somehow in touch with the true God, albeit amid all kinds of obscurity. I think that today too the Church should open a sort of “Court of the Gentiles” in which people might in some way latch on to God, without knowing him and before gaining access to his mystery, at whose service the inner life of the Church stands. Today, in addition to interreligious dialogue, there should be a dialogue with those to whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown and who nevertheless do not want to be left merely Godless, but rather to draw near to him, albeit as the Unknown.

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2009/december/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20091221_curia-auguri_en.html

 

[kingal86]

I think Pope Benedict’s 2009 Christmas speech to the Curia may explain the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” name.

Thanks I wondered where the terminology came from. Seemingly Isiah and the Gospels. I like the concept of the Courtyard as the Pope describes it in that speech.

 

[OriginalJS]

I agree. Dawkins knows abysmally little about theology or religious history. Any dialogue between him and a Catholic philosopher would be a massacre, especially if they don’t limit themselves to biological evolution, a topic with which the Church has no scientific problem, any way.

If the atheist were of the stature of the late Bertrand Russell, it wouldn’t necessarily be a massacre because a person of that type can’t be lured into the old traps as are lightweights who quickly get confused about what to accept or deny. I still don’t know how effective it would be to improve relations between the Church and non-catholics. Catejan, as I recall, ‘massacred’ Luther in debate.