Faith and Reason

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I can only commend the Pope’s latest homily on the great philosophical question of our day: the relationship between faith and reason, as it has unfolded in human history. I need more time to digest it, but its clarity and openness are welcome. I just finished reading "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, and found much in it that stimulated and engaged and even inspired. On the dangers of an anti-rational fundamentalism in religion, I recommend the book heartily. But it is, I’m afraid, too glibly dismissive of "the whole" to be persuasive, too deaf to the myriad ways in which faith can interact and be strengthened by what the Pope calls "logos", the word, reason itself. This reasoned faith, in order to exist, must include doubt and skepticism and the earnest search for truth, which, in turn, must necessarily never conflict with God. Doubt is not an obstacle to faith; it is necessary for faith to exist at all.

Benedict’s message about faith and reason is a deep and complicated one, and necessarily compressed in the homily. But this passage struck me as particularly profound, and it concerns Benedict’s deep distrust of the Enlightenment:

[T]he fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: We are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.

The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them.

I wish Benedict spoke in this conciliatory and open tone more often. And that he would concede that on some deep issues, like end- and beginning-of-life debates, other voices than the absolutist one he has embraced have things to contribute. The same, of course, with human sexuality.

But Benedict is pointing the way to a more positive dialogue between the reason of science and the reason of faith:

We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

The rationality of faith: now there’s a concept we need to breathe new life into in a world where religion is too often described as an irrational leap or "submisson" to an illogical God.

Benedict and Islam

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And it’s on this insistence that Benedict is saying something quite striking about Islam. Benedict insists on the Greek "logos" as inherent in the Christian tradition, and "logos" demands a freely chosen faith, and certainly not a faith imposed by violence. What’s striking to me about Benedict’s account of Islam is his suggestion that compulsion and violence are not extrinsic to Islam but intrinsic to its vision of humankind’s relationship with the divine. He began his homily by referring to a "dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." At the core of the divide is the role of logos – reason – in faith. If reason is not intrinsic to faith, then violent imposition of religion is possible, even mandatory:

In the seventh conversation ("di√°lesis" – controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion." It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats … To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…."

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

Benedict’s answer is that it is always and instrinsically true. Which means that, without fundamental reform, without a Muslim reformation, a central part of Islam is always and intrinsically false. And it is this divide that lies at the heart of our current civilizational conflict. This seems to me to be the Pope’s message. In the current climate, it is an inflammatory but courageous one.

(Photo: Andrew Medicini/AP.)

The Continuing Struggle

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A group of retired military generals is lobbying to prevent a War Crimes Act that would reject the baseline standards for detainee treatment under Geneva:

"There is nothing good about it," John Hutson, former judge advocate general of the Navy, said about the authority to conduct harsh interrogations codified in the Bush plan. "It is not effective in terms of gaining good intelligence. It is not good for the U.S. in terms of being a world leader. And it is not good for U.S. troops in terms of being the victims of it or perpetrating it."

I agree with Senator McCain, a former military detainee himself and subjected to torture by the enemy:

"On the detainee-treatment issue. Senator Warner and I and Senator Graham and others are not going to agree to changes in the definitions in Common Article 3, because that then sends the message to the world that we are not going to adhere fully to the Geneva Conventions. And we worry about, in the future, other nations maybe deciding to interpret Common Article 3 to their own purposes."

Nevertheless, the analyst whose judgment I’ve come to trust best on this issue is deeply worried about the Graham-McCain bill in parts. Marty Lederman’s must-read plea to McCain and Graham can be read here. His concern is how the Bush administration has said it will interpret the plain meaning of Article 3 – and the evidence suggests they will interpret it to allow Bush’s favorite euphemism: "alternative methods." Money quote:

If this is not what Senator McCain intends – and it appears from his public statements that it is not – then he should do one of two things: Either (i) retain Common Article 3’s basic ban on all "cruel treatment and torture" as a subset of crimes under the War Crimes Act; or (ii) amend the legislation to specify that the McCain Amendment itself categorically prohibits such "alternative" techniques.

On the political front, I hear that the use of 9/11 families to promote the war crimes bill has been delayed a little, after worries in the White House that it might backfire so soon after the anniversary of 9/11.

Zilmer Hangs Tough

I find it quite remarkable that the Pentagon arranges a telephone news conference with the Anbar general who said we need more troops in Anbar … and he still won’t play along with the Rumsfeld line:

"For what we are trying to achieve out here I think our force levels are about right," [Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer] said. Even so, he said the training of Iraqi soldiers and police had not progressed as quickly as once expected.
"Now, if that mission statement changes — if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight — then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here," he added.

So we do not have enough troops to win against the insurgency, just to "stifle" it. Fire. Rumsfeld. Now. Although you know what’s going to happen now, don’t you? They’re probably going to fire Zilmer.

Bush and Torture

A reader writes:

Although I hesitate to read too much of a Freudian slip into what Bush says, it did seem telling when Bush said to Matt Lauer that if he had the mastermind of 9/11 in custody, the American people would say ‘Why don‚Äôt you see if you can‚Äôt get information out of him without torturing him, which is what we did.’

This statement can be read two different ways, one of  which is a plain admission of torture.

Also, when pushed on the techniques used against KSM, Bush says ‘I told our people ‘get information without torture.” What a truly bizarre thing to have claimed to have said! Can you imagine Ken Lay on the stand, testifying ‘I told my people at Enron to make the company as profitable as possible, but not to use any kind of illegal or off-balance sheet accounting.’? The courtroom would have erupted in laughter. You would only ever say something like that unless you knew that was already going on.

It seems indisuptable to me that a) Bush has authorized "water-boarding"; b) he told his lawyers to come up with a formulation declaring this was legal (they did, finding Serbian precedents); c) his public strategy is to use euphemisms and make the ludicrous argument that he cannot discuss "specifics" because it could tip off the enemy. Does he really think that al Qaeda doesn’t know KSM was waterboarded? It was in the New York Times, confirmed by his own aides. Lauer made a good start. Now we need a journalist to call the president on this guff and get him to answer simply whether he believes "water-boarding" is torture or not. A simple question in the abstract. And very simple for a Christian to answer.

A Strategy for Anbar?

According to this report in the Times of London, Sunni tribes want American arms to help fight al Qaeda jihadists, who are fast taking over Anbar province in Iraq:

Mr Samarrai said that leaders from al-Anbar had made several proposals to the Americans, including arming the tribes to fight al-Qaeda, providing teams of bodyguards for tribal leaders, clerics and politicians who opposed al-Qaeda and making an intense recruitment push to build an indigenous army and police force.

Mr Samarrai predicted that extremist groups such as al-Qaeda would be defeated in a few months if the Americans acted on any of the al-Anbar proposals. Many leaders in al-Anbar believed that the Americans wanted the chaos to continue and were deliberately helping al-Qaeda, he said.

Nah. It’s probably just incompetence, wouldn’t you say?

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Maybe that’s because right-wing, knuckle-dragging Republicans like myself took over Congress in 1994 promising to balance the budget and limit Washington‚Äôs power. We were a nasty breed and had no problem blaming Bill and Hillary Clinton for everything from the exploding federal deficit to male pattern baldness. I suspected then, as I do now, that Hillary Clinton herself had something to do with ‘Love, American Style’ and ‘Joanie Loves Chachi.’ And why not blame her? Back then, Newt Gingrich felt comfortable blaming the drowning of two little children on Democratic values. Hell. It was 1994. It just seemed like the thing to do," – Joe Scarborough, in the Washington Monthly, on the early seeds of today’s conservative implosion. Still, at least, back then, Republicans believed in balancing the budget. Since 2000, they have added over $20 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay – more than double the unfunded liabilities they inherited.