What Did the Pope Think He Was Doing?

[urban-hermit]

…The New York Times in a news story this [last] week (to give credit where it is due) tried to point out that the pope’s point was not attacking Islam at all: “The speech was largely a scholarly address criticizing the West for submitting itself too much to reason.”

Oh, dear. Wrong again. What Pope Benedict was trying to say was the exact opposite thought: that in restricting reason to “science” (or that which can be empirically verified through the scientific method), the West risks reducing the “radius of reason” in ways that are dangerous. Why? Because (among other things) we risk relegating almost all the great important questions about human beings to the realm of unreason:

"If science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for … CONTINUED …