Denken vs. Glauben?

Wer nicht denken kann, glaubt. Wer Angst vor dem Denken hat, glaubt. Wer glaubt, denken zu können, glaubt. Und das glauben fast alle.
Karlheinz Deschner

Ein Wortspiel mit recht amüsanter Pointe. Freilich geht der militante Atheist Deschner hier vor die Kantsche Kritik bezüglich des Denkens und des Fürwahrhaltens zurück.

»Wahrheit ist objektive Eigenschaft der Erkenntnis; das Urteil, wodurch... etwas als wahr vorgestellt wird — die Beziehung auf einen Verstand und also auf ein besonderes Subjekt — ist subjektiv das Fürwahrhalten. [...]
Das Glauben oder das Fürwahrhalten aus einem Grunde, der zwar objektiv unzureichend, aber subjektiv zureichend ist, bezieht sich auf Gegenstände, in Ansehung deren man nicht allein nichts wissen, sondern auch nichts meinen, ja auch nicht einmal Wahrscheinlichkeit vorwenden, sondern bloß gewiß sein kann, daß es nicht widersprechend ist, sich dergleichen Gegenstände so zu denken, wie man sie sich denkt. Das übrige hierbei ist ein freies Fürwahrhalten, welches nur in praktischer a priori gegebener Absicht nötig ist, — also ein Fürwahrhalten dessen, was ich aus moralischen Gründen annehme und zwar so, daß ich gewiß bin, das Gegenteil könne nie bewiesen werden.
Sachen des Glaubens sind also
I) keine Gegenstände des empirischen Erkenntnisses.[...]
II) auch keine Objekte des Vernunfterkenntnisses (Erkenntnisses a priori), weder des theoretischen, z. B. in der Mathematik und Metaphysik; noch des praktischen in der Moral. [...]
III) Nur solche Gegenstände sind Sachen des Glaubens, bei denen das Fürwahrhalten notwendig frei, d. h. nicht durch objektive, von der Natur und dem Interesse des Subjekts unabhängige, Gründe der Wahrheit bestimmt ist.«
I. Kant: Logik (1800)

Ohne Glauben - als "objektiv unzureichendes, aber subjektiv zureichendes Fürwahrhalten" - , wäre das Denken (und Erleben und Handeln) des Menschen ohne Bezug zu seinem (immer subjektiven) Selbst, das sich mit Vertrauen, Zuversicht und Hoffnungen in der Welt zu verankern sucht.
Dass mich mein Schatz (der mich vor einem Jahrzehnt hier zurückgelassen hat) liebte, stand für mich nicht auf Grund von Denkprozessen fest, auch nicht auf Grund von Erfahrenem, sondern auf Grund meines Glaubens an ihn.

Zur Rede des Bundespräsidenten: Der Islam gehört nicht zu Deutschland - Glaube und Unglaube - Kultur - Tagesspiegel

Zur Rede des Bundespräsidenten: Der Islam gehört nicht zu Deutschland - Glaube und Unglaube - Kultur - Tagesspiegel

Dieter Nuhr: Versetzt der Glaube Berge? WDR 2 Kabarett (Sendung vom 16.09.10)

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/ger/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

About this talk

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins has helped steer evolutionary science into the 21st century, and his concept of the "meme" contextualized the spread of ideas in the information age.

That splendid music, the coming-in music -- "The Elephant March" from Aida -- is the music I've chosen for my funeral -- (Laughter) -- and you can see why. It's triumphal. I will -- I won't feel anything, but if I could, I would feel triumphal at having lived at all, and at having lived on this splendid planet, and having been given the opportunity to understand something about why I was here in the first place, before not being here.

Can you understand my quaint English accent? Like everybody else, I was entranced yesterday by the animal session. Robert Full and Frans Lanting and others -- the beauty of the things they showed. The only slight jarring note was when Jeffrey Katzenberg said of the mustang, "the most splendid creatures that God put on this earth." Now of course, we know that he didn't really mean that, but in this country at the moment, you can't be too careful. (Laughter)

I'm a biologist, and the central theorem of our subject: the theory of design, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. In professional circles everywhere, it's of course universally accepted. In non-professional circles outside America, it's largely ignored. But in non-professional circles within America, it arouses so much hostility -- (Laughter) -- that it's fair to say that American biologists are in a state of war. The war is so worrying at present, with court cases coming up in one state after another, that I felt I had to say something about it.

If you want to know what I have to say about Darwinism itself, I'm afraid you're going to have to look at my books, which you won't find in the bookstore outside. (Laughter) Contemporary court cases often concern an allegedly new version of creationism, called intelligent design or ID. Don't be fooled. There's nothing new about ID. It's just creationism under another name. Rechristened -- I choose the word advisedly -- (Laughter) -- for tactical, political reasons.

The arguments of so-called ID theorists are the same old arguments that had been refuted again and again, since Darwin down to the present day. There is an effective evolution lobby coordinating the fight on behalf of science, and I try to do all I can to help them, but they get quite upset when people like me dare to mention that we happen to be atheists as well as evolutionists. They see us as rocking the boat, and you can understand why. Creationists lacking any coherent scientific argument for their case fall back on the popular phobia against atheism. Teach your children evolution in biology class, and they'll soon move on to drugs, grand larceny and sexual pre-version. (Laughter)

In fact, of course, educated theologians from the Pope down are firm in their support of evolution. This book, "Finding Darwin's God," by Kenneth Miller, is one of the most effective attacks on Intelligent Design that I know, and it's all the more effective because it's written by a devout Christian. People like Kenneth Miller could be called a Godsend to the evolution lobby -- (Laughter) -- because they expose the lie that evolutionism is, as a matter of fact, tantamount to atheism. People like me, on the other hand, rock the boat.

But here, I want to say something nice about creationists. It's not a thing I often do, so listen carefully. (Laughter) I think they're right about one thing. I think they're right that evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion.

I've already said that many individual evolutionists, like the Pope, are also religious, but I think they're deluding themselves. I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith. Now, it may sound as though I'm about to preach atheism, and I want to reassure that that's not what I'm going to do. In an audience as sophisticated as that -- as this one -- that would be preaching to the choir.

No, what I want to urge upon you -- (Laughter) -- instead what I want to urge upon you is militant atheism. (Laughter) (Applause) But that's putting it too negatively. If I wanted to -- if I was a person who were interested in preserving religious faith, I would be very afraid of the positive power of evolutionary science, and any science generally, but evolution in particular, to inspire and enthrall, precisely because it is atheistic.

Now, the difficult problem for any theory of biological design is to explain the massive statistical improbability of living things. Statistical improbability in the direction of good design -- complexity is another word for this. The standard creationist argument -- there is only one, they all reduce to this one -- takes off from a statistical improbability. Living creatures are too complex to have come about by chance; therefore they must have had a designer. This argument of course, shoots itself in the foot. Any designer capable of designing something really complex has to be even more complex himself, and that's before we even start on the other things he's expected to do, like forgive sins, bless marriages, listen to prayers -- -- favor our side in a war -- (Laughter) -- disapprove of our sex lives and so on. (Laughter)

Complexity is the problem that any theory of biology has to solve, and you can't solve it by postulating an agent that is even more complex, thereby simply compounding the problem. Darwinian natural selection is so stunningly elegant because it solves the problem of explaining complexity in terms of nothing but simplicity. Essentially, it does it by providing a smooth ramp of gradual step-by-step increment. But here, I only want to make the point that the elegance of Darwinism is corrosive to religion precisely because it is so elegant, so parsimonious, so powerful, so economically powerful. It has the sinewy economy of a beautiful suspension bridge.

The God theory is not just a bad theory. It turns out to be, in principle, incapable of doing the job required of it.

So, returning to tactics and the evolution lobby, I want to argue that rocking the boat may be just the right thing to do. My approach to attacking creationism is unlike the evolution lobby. My approach to attacking creationism is to attack religion as a whole, and at this point I need to acknowledge the remarkable taboo against speaking ill of religion, and I'm going to do so in the words of the late Douglas Adams, a dear friend who, if he never came to TED, certainly should have been invited.

(Richard Saul Wurman: He was.)

Richard Dawkins: He was. Good. I thought he must have been.

He begins this speech which was tape-recorded in Cambridge shortly before he died. He begins by explaining how science works through the testing of hypotheses that are framed to be vulnerable to disproof, and then he goes on. I quote, "Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it, which we call sacred or holy. What it means is here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about. You're just not. Why not? Because you're not. (Laughter) Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the universe began, about who created the universe -- no, that's holy. So, we're used to not challenging religious ideas and it's very interesting how much of a furor Richard creates when he does it." He meant me, not that one.

"Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it, because you're not allowed to say these things, yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we've agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be," and that's the end of the quote from Douglas.

In my view, not only is science corrosive to religion, religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp. It teaches them to accept authority, revelation and faith instead of always insisting on evidence.

There's Douglas Adams, magnificent picture from his book, "Last Chance to See." Now, there's a typical scientific journal, the Quarterly Review of Biology. And I'm going to put together, as guest editor, a special issue on the question, "Did an asteroid kill the dinosaurs?" And the first paper is a standard scientific paper presenting evidence, "Iridium Layer at the K-T Boundary, Potassium-Argon Dated Crater in Yucatan, Indicate That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." Perfectly ordinary scientific paper. Now, the next one, "The President of The Royal Society Has Been Vouchsafed a Strong Inner Conviction" -- (Laughter) -- "... That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." (Laughter) "It Has Been Privately Revealed to Professor Huxtane That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." (Laughter) "Professor Hordley Was Brought Up to Have Total and Unquestioning Faith" -- (Laughter) "... That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." "Professor Hawkins Has Promulgated an Official Dogma Binding on All Loyal Hawkinsians That an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs." (Laughter) That's inconceivable of course.

But suppose -- (Applause) -- in 1987, a reporter asked George Bush, Sr. whether he recognized the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists. Mr. Bush's reply has become infamous. "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

Bush's bigotry was not an isolated mistake, blurted out in the heat of the moment, and later retracted. He stood by it in the face of repeated calls for clarification or withdrawal. He really meant it. More to the point, he knew it posed no threat to his election, quite the contrary. Democrats as well as Republicans parade their religiousness if they want to get elected. Both parties invoke one nation under God. What would Thomas Jefferson have said? Incidentally, I'm not usually very proud of being British, but you can't help making the comparison. (Applause)

In practice, what is an atheist? An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. (Laughter) (Applause)

And however we define atheism, it's surely the kind of academic belief that a person is entitled to hold without being vilified as an unpatriotic, unelectable non-citizen. Nevertheless, it's an undeniable fact that to own up to being an atheist is tantamount to introducing yourself as Mr. Hitler or Miss Beelzebub. And that all stems from the perception of atheists as some kind of weird, way-out minority.

Natalie Angier wrote a rather sad piece in the New Yorker, saying how lonely she felt as an atheist. She clearly feels in a beleaguered minority, but actually, how do American atheists stack up numerically? The latest survey makes surprisingly encouraging reading. Christianity, of course, takes a massive lion's share of the population, with nearly 160 million. But what would you think was the second largest group, convincingly outnumbering Jews with 2.8 million, Muslims at 1.1 million, and Hindus, Buddhists and all other religions put together? The second largest group, of nearly 30 million, is the one described as non-religious or secular.

You can't help wondering why vote-seeking politicians are so proverbially overawed by the power of, for example, the Jewish lobby. The state of Israel seems to owe its very existence to the American Jewish vote, while at the same time consigning the non-religious to political oblivion. This secular non-religious vote, if properly mobilized, is nine times as numerous as the Jewish vote. Why does this far more substantial minority not make a move to exercise its political muscle?

Well, so much for quantity. How about quality? Is there any correlation, positive or negative, between intelligence and tendency to be religious? (Laughter)

The survey that I quoted, which is the ARIS survey, didn't break down its data by socio-economic class or education, IQ or anything else. But a recent article by Paul G. Bell in the Mensa magazine provides some straws in the wind. Mensa, as you know, is an international organization for people with very high IQ. And from a meta-analysis of the literature, Bell concludes that, I quote, "Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one's intelligence or educational level, the less one is likely to be religious." Well, I haven't seen the original 42 studies and I can't comment on that meta-anaysis but I would like to see more studies done along those lines. And I know that there are, if I could put a little plug here, there are people in this audience easily capable of financing a massive research survey to settle the question, and I put the suggestion up -- for what it's worth.

But let me know show you some data that have been properly published and analyzed on one special group, namely, top scientists In 1998, Larson and Witham polled the cream of American scientists, those who'd been honored by election to the National Academy of Sciences. and among this select group, belief in a personal God dropped to a shattering seven percent. About 20 percent are agnostic, and the rest could fairly be called atheists. Similar figures obtained for belief in personal immortality. Among biological scientists, the figures are even lower, 5.5 percent only, believe in God. Physical scientists: it's 7.5 percent. I've not seen corresponding figures for elite scholars in other fields, such history or philosophy, but I'd be surprised if they were different.

So, we've reached a truly remarkable situation, a grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe, which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorrent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. If I'm right, this means that high office in the greatest country in the world is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it, the intelligentsia, unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly, American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest. (Applause)

I'm not a citizen of this country, so I hope it won't be thought unbecoming if I suggest that something needs to be done. (Laughter) And I've already hinted what that something is. From what I've seen of TED, I think this may be the ideal place to launch it. Again, I fear it will cost money. We need a consciousness-raising, coming-out campaign for American atheists. (Laughter) This could be similar to the campaign organized by homosexuals a few years ago, although heaven forbid that we should stoop to public outing of people against their will. In most cases, people who out themselves will help to destroy the myth that there is something wrong with atheists.

On the contrary, they'll demonstrate that atheists are often the kinds of people that could serve as decent role models for your children The kinds of people an advertising agent could use to recommend a product. The kinds of people who are sitting in this room. There should be a snowball effect, a positive feedback, such that the more names we have, the more we get. There could be non-linearities, threshold effects. When a critical mass has been attained, there's an abrupt acceleration in recruitment. And again, it will need money.

I suspect that the word "atheist" itself contains or remains a stumbling block far out of proportion to what it actually means, and a stumbling block to people who otherwise might be happy to out themselves. So, what other words might be used to smooth the path, oil the wheels, sugar the pill? Darwin himself preferred agnostic -- and not only out of loyalty to his friend Huxley, who coined the term.

Darwin said, "I have never been an atheist in the same sense as denying the existence of a God. I think that generally an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."

He even became uncharacteristically tetchy with Edward Aveling. Aveling was a militant atheist who failed to persuade Darwin to accept the dedication of his book on atheism -- incidentally, giving rise to a fascinating myth that Karl Marx tried to dedicate "Das Kapital" to Darwin, which he didn't. It was actually Edward Aveling. What happened was that Aveling's mistress was Marx's daughter, and when both Darwin and Marx were dead, Marx's papers became muddled up with Aveling's papers and a letter from Darwin saying, "My dear sir, thank you very much but I don't want you to dedicate your book to me," was mistakenly supposed to be addressed to Marx, and that gave rise to this whole myth, which you've probably heard. It's a sort of urban myth, that Marx tried to dedicate Kapital to Darwin.

Anyway, it was Aveling, and when they met, Darwin challenged Aveling, "Why do you call yourselves atheists?" "Agnostic," retorted Aveling, "was simply atheist writ respectable, and atheist was simply agnostic writ aggressive." Darwin complained, "But why should you be so aggressive?" Darwin thought that atheism might be well and good for the intelligentsia, but that ordinary people were not, quote, "ripe for it." Which is, of course, our old friend, the "don't rock the boat" argument. It's not recorded whether Aveling told Darwin to come down off his high horse. (Laughter)

But in any case, that was more than 100 years ago. You think we might have grown up since then. Now, a friend, an intelligent lapsed Jew, who incidentally observed the Sabbath for reasons of cultural solidarity, describes himself as a "tooth fairy agnostic." He won't call himself an atheist because it's, in principle, impossible to prove a negative, but agnostic on its own might suggest that God's existence was therefore on equal terms of likelihood as his non-existence.

So, my friend is strictly agnostic about the tooth fairy, but it isn't very likely, is it? Like God. Hence the phrase, "tooth fairy agnostic," but Bertrand Russell made the same point using a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars. You would strictly have to be agnostic about whether there is a teapot in orbit about Mars, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as on all fours with its non-existence.

The list of things which we strictly have to be agnostic about doesn't stop at tooth fairies and teapots. It's infinite. if you want to believe one particular one of them, unicorns or tooth fairies or teapots or Yahweh, the onus is on you to say why. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why not. We, who are atheists, are also a-fairiests and a-teapotists. (Laughter)

But we don't bother to say so, and this is why my friend uses tooth fairy agnostic as a label for what most people would call atheist. Nonetheless, if we want to attract deep down atheists to come out publicly, we're going to have find something better to stick on our banner than tooth fairy or teapot agnostic.

So, how about humanist? This has the advantage of a worldwide network of well-organized associations and journals and things already in place. My problem with it only is its apparent anthropocentrism. One of the things we've learned from Darwin is that the human species is only one among millions of cousins, some close, some distant.

And there are other possibilities like naturalist. But that also has problems of confusion, because Darwin would have thought naturalist, naturalist means, of course, as opposed to supernaturalist. And it is used sometimes. Darwin would have been confused by the other sense of naturalist, which he was, of course, and I suppose there might be others who would confuse it with nudism. (Laughter) Such people might be those belonging to the British lynch mob which last year attacked a pediatrician in mistake for a pedophile. (Laughter)

I think the best of the available alternatives for atheist is simply non-theist. It lacks the strong connotation that there's definitely no God, and it could therefore easily be embraced by teapot or tooth fairy agnostics. It's completely compatible with the God of the physicists. When people like -- when atheists like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein use the word "God," they use it of course as a metaphorical shorthand for that deep, mysterious part of physics which we don't yet understand. Non-theist will do for all that, yet unlike atheist, it doesn't have the same phobic, hysterical responses. But I think, actually, the alternative is to grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve with the word atheist than with the word non-theist, or some other non-confrontational word. But if we did achieve it with that dread word, atheist, itself, the political impact would be even greater.

Now, I said that if I were religious, I'd be very afraid of evolution. I'd go further. I would fear science in general if properly understood. And this is because the scientific worldview is so much more exciting, more poetic, more filled with sheer wonder than anything in the poverty-stricken arsenals of the religious imagination. As Carl Sagan, another recently dead hero, put it, "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophet said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."

Now, this is an elite audience, and I would therefore expect about 10 percent of you to be religious. Many of you probably subscribe to our polite cultural belief that we should respect religion, but I also suspect that a fair number of those secretly despise religion as much as I do. (Laughter) If you're one of them, and of course many of you may not be, but if you are one of them, I'm asking you to stop being polite, come out and say so, and if you happen to be rich, give some thought to ways in which you might make a difference. The religious lobby in this country is massively financed by foundations,to say nothing of all the tax benefits, by foundations such as the Templeton Foundation and the Discovery Institute. We need an anti-Templeton to step forward. If my books sold as well as Stephen Hawking's books, instead of only as well as Richard Dawkins' books, I'd do it myself.

People are always going on about, "How did September the 11th change you?" Well, here's how it changed me. Let's all stop being so damned respectful.

Thank you very much. (Applause)

American Islamophobia … the Cartoon!

Pat Condell: "The faith of idiots"

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

See more at www.youtube.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/8gvd

Ethics - Kant

YouTube playlist, consisting of five parts.

Amplify’d from johammonia2.blogspot.com

By YouTube user PhilosopherDena. Her comment: "This series of short clips is an introduction to Kants moral philosophy, and particularly the categorical imperative. As I am by no means an expert on Kant, these lectures are based on notes Ive taken from reading Kants various works supplemented by outside sources, namely A History of Philosophy, Vol. VI, by Frederic Copleston, and articles in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy."

Evolution vs. Creationism: Listen to the Scientists

The Objective of Morality

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

I find the concept of "subjective morality" to be one of the most obnoxious around. If moral values are not based on facts and observation but just on personal opinion, there is no reason to hold on to them.

Alle Kommentare (1.426) Read more at www.youtube.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/8c98

Nachruf auf Professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid

Amplify’d from www.hagalil.com

Abu Zaid

war

ein wahrhaft gläubiger Mensch, der das geistige und spirituelle Leben des klassisch-islamischen ālim (Plural: ulamā’), des archetypischen muslimischen Gelehrten, verkörperte. Ein solcher ālim kombiniert seine Expertise in Jurisprudenz mit Philosophie, Rhetorik, Theologie und Qur’ān-Hermeneutik. Wie Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) und Averroes (Ibn Ruschd) sowie deren Zeitgenossen Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon), der Jude, und Thomas von Aquin (Thomas Aquinas), der Christ, bestand Abu Zaid darauf, kritisches Denken einerseits auf die Theologie und andererseits sogar auf dasjenige Gebiet anzuwenden, auf dem sich gläubige Menschen schwer tun, es in diesem Licht zu sehen: die göttliche Offenbarung.

Die Zahl muslimischer Gelehrter, die den Islam, einschließlich des Qur’ān, kritisieren, hat in den letzten Jahren sehr zugenommen.

Leider durchläuft ein Großteil der muslimischen Welt zurzeit eine Phase, in welcher Gelehrsamkeit und Kreativität

durch autoritäre Regierungen unterdrückt werden.Read more at www.hagalil.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/876f

Ein Nachruf auf Professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid

Tod eines Muslims

Auf der Suche nach Lebenszeichen aus dem Vatikan

Neue Videos von vaticande

• Papst Benedikt XVI. empfing Großmeister Bruder Matthew Festing
• Friede und Gerechtigkeit für den Mittleren Osten
• „Maria erfüllt alle mit dem Wunsch nach dem Himmel"
• Papst: Das Herz des Menschen hört niemals auf sich nach Gott zu sehnen
• Benedikt XVI: Treue zum Herrn von Christus offenbart

---

Wieso nur habe ich den Eindruck, die Stellvertretung Christi versinke in Erstarrung?

A Statement by David G. Littman at UNHRC Concerning Womens Rights

Why does Evil Exist

clipped from www.gnmagazine.org Skeptics ask a valid question of believers: How can a loving God allow evil to exist? The believer in turn asks a valid question of moral relativists: How can you say something is evil when you deny absolute good or evil, arguing that good and evil can be defined only by what each person thinks? Philosophers, religious thinkers and criminologists have long sought rational explanations to these important questions. What is evil? From where did it come? The Bible clears up these mysteries for us and provides a solution for the evil that is so widespread and entrenched in the world. Did God create evil? The Bible consistently explains evil as rebellion against God and His way of selfless, outflowing love for others-His way of giving. Evil is self-absorbed and uncaring of others, the way of getting and taking. Free moral choice Origin of evil Man embraces evil Dealing with the cause

Does evil exist?
1) Does darkness exist? No; it is the absence of light.
2) Does a quality exist? No; it is not an object but the attribution of an immaterial property to objects or processes.

Hypostatizing the immaterial is acceptable, if we keep the allegoric, figurative, metaphoric nature of any hypostasis in mind.

Weide meine Schafe...

Alexandra Klawitter: Weide meine Schafe (Installation im Bremer Dom)

Aus dem Buch Ezechiel, Kapitel 34:

1 Das Wort des Herrn erging an mich:
2 Menschensohn, sprich als Prophet gegen die Hirten Israels, sprich als Prophet und sag zu ihnen: So spricht Gott, der Herr: Weh den Hirten Israels, die nur sich selbst weiden. Müssen die Hirten nicht die Herde weiden?
3 Ihr trinkt die Milch, nehmt die Wolle für eure Kleidung und schlachtet die fetten Tiere; aber die Herde führt ihr nicht auf die Weide.
4 Die schwachen Tiere stärkt ihr nicht, die kranken heilt ihr nicht, die verletzten verbindet ihr nicht, die verscheuchten holt ihr nicht zurück, die verirrten sucht ihr nicht und die starken misshandelt ihr.
5 Und weil sie keinen Hirten hatten, zerstreuten sich meine Schafe und wurden eine Beute der wilden Tiere.
6 Meine Herde irrte auf allen Bergen und Höhen umher und war über das ganze Land verstreut. Doch keiner kümmerte sich um sie; niemand suchte sie.
7 Darum ihr Hirten, hört das Wort des Herrn:
8 So wahr ich lebe - Spruch Gottes, des Herrn: Weil meine Herde geraubt wurde und weil meine Schafe eine Beute der wilden Tiere wurden - denn sie hatten keinen Hirten - und weil meine Hirten nicht nach meiner Herde fragten, sondern nur sich selbst und nicht meine Herde weideten,
9 darum, ihr Hirten, hört das Wort des Herrn:
10 So spricht Gott, der Herr: Nun gehe ich gegen die Hirten vor und fordere meine Schafe von ihnen zurück. Ich setze sie ab, sie sollen nicht mehr die Hirten meiner Herde sein. Die Hirten sollen nicht länger nur sich selbst weiden: Ich reiße meine Schafe aus ihrem Rachen, sie sollen nicht länger ihr Fraß sein.

Der Friede ist des Guten Feind

Angenommen, die Geheimdienste der Regierungen G. W. Bush und T. Blair hätten sich ihre Lügen über irakische Massenvernichtungswaffen verkniffen;
angenommen, Afghanistan wäre zu Zeiten der Taliban-Herrschaft dem "Westen" nicht dadurch unangenehm aufgefallen, dass es der al-Qaida "Unterschlupf" gewährte;
angenommen, im Iran herrschten noch die Pahlavis;
angenommen, Nordkorea wäre wirtschaftlich zusammengebrochen und hätte sich mit Südkorea vereinigt -:
wen oder was hätte, um Himmels willen, das Abendland sich denn dann, nachdem der Sowjetblock auseinandergebrochen war, zum Feind erkoren?
Von welcher Angst, von welchem Dämon ist das kapitalistische Christentum besessen, dass es ohne Feindbild nicht existieren zu können scheint? Ist es der kapitalistische Globalanspruch, gepaart mit christlichem Dünkel?

Seit der Erfindung des Begriffs des Bösen im antiken Persien und seiner Ausbreitung durch Christentum und Islam kann die Welt nicht in Frieden leben. Der Friede ist des Guten Feind.

Fossiles Denken als Gottesbeweis - Allianz christlicher und muslimischer Kreationisten

clipped from de.qantara.de

Was christliche Evangelikale mit muslimischen Verfechtern des Kreationismus - wie etwa den türkischen Anti-Darwinisten Harun Yahia - verbindet, ist der gemeinsame Kampf gegen den Materialismus und die säkulare Ordnung des Staates.

"Darwin ist widerlegt. Seine Theorie von der Entstehung der Arten ist falsch. Millionen von Fossilien beweisen, dass sich weder die Tiere noch die Pflanzen seit ihrer Erschaffung durch Allah verändert haben." - Das ist die Quintessenz der Botschaft, die der türkische Anti-Darwinist Adnan Oktar in über 200 Büchern, Videos und auf Dutzenden von Webseiten verbreitet.

Unter dem Pseudonym Harun Yahya erschien 2006 der erste Band des "Atlas der Schöpfung"[...]

Das Ziel der Kreationisten, die im Moment die Speerspitze reaktionärer politischer Kräfte weltweit sind, sei vielmehr die Errichtung einer Theokratie.

[...] klare Parallelen zwischen allen Formen religiösen Fundamentalismus [...]

[...] gemeinsame[r] Kampf gegen den Materialismus und die säkulare Ordnung des Staates

Neuer Großscheich an der Azhar-Universität - gegen jede extreme Politisierung des Islam

clipped from de.qantara.de

Ahmed al-Tayeb, ehemaliger Großmufti von Ägypten, übernimmt das Amt der höchsten Autorität des Landes, die gleichzeitig auch richtungweisend für alle Sunniten (etwa 90 Prozent der insgesamt 1,5 Milliarden Muslime weltweit) ist.

Al-Tayeb [...] gilt als weltoffen und moderat. Er lehnt jede Form von Extremismus ab, gegen den er in der Vergangenheit mit mehreren Fatwas zu Felde zog. [...]

Die neue Führung der Azhar wird es nicht leicht haben, sich tatsächlich gegen die zum Teil sehr radikalen Stimmen zu behaupten. Ahmed al-Tayeb versuchte diesbezüglich schon jetzt, erste Signale zu setzen und sich zu positionieren. "Al-Azhar wird als Bastion der Toleranz und Mäßigung gegen Extremismus und Fanatismus fortgeführt", versicherte der Großscheich gleich nach seinem Amtsantritt. [..]

Besondere Maßnahmen sind gegen die seit Jahren populären Fernsehprediger geplant, die mit radikalen Sermonen das muslimische Publikum anziehen.

Theological Talks (SSPX - Vatican) in Rome

clipped from www.dici.org Interview with the His Excellency Bernard Fellay published in Fideliter, the magazine of the Society of St. Pius X in the District of France. In your opinion, are the theologians chosen by Rome representative of mainstream theology in the Church today? Or are they closer to a particular trend? Does their way of thinking align with that of Benendict XVI? Our interlocutors seem to me to hold very closely to the Pope’s positions. They belong to what we may call the conservative line, in that they advocate the most traditional possible reading of the Council. They desire the good of the Church but at the same time wish to save the Council:  that is like trying to square the circle. And yet, the debate over Vatican II is incontrovertible. Vatican II can be discussed; it must be. Shouldn’t we fear that these talks might end in joint declarations, in which the parties agree on common points, but do not resolve the underlying debates Joint declarations are out of the question.

Necla Kelek zum Unterschied zwischen dem orientalischen und dem westlichen Freiheitsverständnis

clipped from www.faz.net „Hürriyet“ heißt auf Türkisch Freiheit. Dieses Wort stammt von dem arabischen Begriff hurriya ab, der in seiner ursprünglichen Bedeutung das Gegenteil von Sklaverei meint, und nicht das, was in der westlichen Tradition mit „libertas“ verbunden wird, die Befreiung des Einzelnen von jedweder, auch religiöser Bevormundung. Für gläubige Muslime besteht Freiheit in der bewussten Entscheidung, „den Vorschriften des Islam zu gehorchen“. So wird von den Islamvereinen auch das Grundrecht „Religionsfreiheit“ verstanden, nämlich als Recht, in diesem Land dem Islam gehorchen zu dürfen. Dass diese Auffassung so ganz anders ist als unser europäischer Begriff von Freiheit, markiert die kulturelle Differenz. Wir haben es hier mit einer muslimischen Vorstellungen folgenden Leitkultur zu tun, die als oberstes Prinzip den Gehorsam gegenüber Gott, als seine Stellvertreter aber auch den Staat, die Älteren, die Männer oder auch den Bruder kennt.

Der Islam beansprucht als Offenbarungs- und Gesetzesreligion, alle Lebensbereiche zu regeln. Er kennt nicht, wie der Historiker Dan Diner schreibt, den „Prozess ständiger Interpretation, Verhandlung und Verwandlung dessen, was entweder ins Innere der Person verlegt oder nach außen hin entlassen und durch etablierte Institutionen reguliert wird“.

Isa - ein abgespeckter Jesus

Abu Huraira, Allahs Wohlgefallen auf ihm, berichtete, dass der Prophet, Allahs Segen und Friede auf ihm, sagte:
"'Isa, Sohn der Maria, sah einen Mann beim Stehlen, worauf er zu ihm sagte: »Hast du gestohlen?« Der Mann erwiderte: »Nein, bei Allah, außer Dem kein Gott da ist!« 'Isa sagte dann: »Ich glaube an Allah, und meine Augen haben gelogen!«"

Quelle: SAHIH BUKHARI

Robert Spaemanns Antwort auf die Gretchenfrage

clipped from www.welt.de WELT ONLINE: Zurück zur Gretchenfrage. Sie haben kürzlich einmal gesagt, Ihnen wäre es lieber, Ihr Sohn würde Muslim werden als Atheist? Ist das Ihr Ernst? Spaemann: Natürlich. Denn ein Muslim glaubt an Gott, was immer er darunter versteht. Er hat ein sehr beschränktes Gottesbild. Aber er glaubt immerhin an den Schöpfer des Himmels und der Erde, der am Ende das Gute belohnt und das Böse bestraft. Er glaubt an ein ewiges Leben. Er glaubt sogar an die jungfräuliche Geburt von Jesus. Das ist mir schon lieber als der Glaube eines Atheisten. WELT ONLINE: Und wenn Ihr Sohn eine Muslima heiraten würde? Wäre Ihnen diese Schwiegertocher auch lieber als eine Atheistin? Spaemann: Ja, doch passen Sie auf. Eine muslimische Schwiegertochter vielleicht ja. Aber ein muslimischer Schwiegersohn, das wäre mir allerdings gar nicht lieb. WELT ONLINE: Warum nicht? Spaemann: Weil meine Tochter dann nichts zu lachen hätte. Philosoph Robert Spaemann

J. P. Hebel: Gutes Wort, böse Tat

In einem Dorf trifft ein Bauer den Herrn Schulmeister: „Ist`s noch Euer Ernst, Schulmeister, was Ihr gestern den Kindern gesagt habt: So dich jemand schlägt auf deinen rechten Backen, dem biete den anderen auch dar?“ Der Schulmeister sagt: „So steht es im Evangelium.“ Also gab ihm der Bauer eine Ohrfeige und die andere auch, denn er hatte schon lang einen Verdruss auf ihn.


Indem reitet in einiger Entfernung ein Edelmann vorbei und sein Jäger. „Schau doch mal, Joseph, was die zwei dort miteinander haben.“ Als der Joseph kommt, gibt der Schulmeister dem Bauern auch zwei Ohrfeigen und sagt: „Es steht auch geschrieben: Mit welcherlei Maß ihr messet, wird euch wieder gemessen werden.“ Da kam der Joseph zu seinem Herrn zurück und sagte: „Es hat nichts zu bedeuten, gnädiger Herr; sie legen einander nur die Heilige Schrift aus.“

(In: Johann Peter Hebel: Ausgewählte Werke, Essen o.J.)

Aus gegebenem Anlass: Salvum fac populum tuum

clipped from sites.google.com Aus, leider Gottes, aktuell vielfach gegebenem Anlass. Aus dem Te Deum von Anton Bruckner clipped from www.youtube.com clipped from sites.google.com Salvum fac populum tuum Domine, et benedic haereditati tuae. Et rege eos, et extolle illos usque in aeternum. Per singulos dies, benedicimus te. Et laudamus nomen tuum in saeculum, et in saeculum saeculi. Dignare Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire. Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri. Fiat misericordia tua Domine, super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te. Anton Bruckner (1824-96), Te Deum, WAB 45 Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnes Baltsa, David Rendall, José van Dam Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien Wiener Philharmoniker Herbert von Karajan Mai 1978

Texas: 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade. All religions equal under Constitution? The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.” Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.

Cohan's song, slightly modified, gets another sense:

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
[...]
You know the way to stop me,
but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
→First we take Texas, then we take ...

Religion as a Tool of Ignorance

clipped from mariopiperni.com 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children “religious or moral instruction.” The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians Two of the best-selling biology textbooks stack the deck against evolution One of the books doesn’t attempt to mask disdain for Darwin and evolutionary science. The textbook delivers a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its “History of Life” chapter that a “Christian worldview … is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.” clipped from mariopiperni.com Yes, I understand that parents are free to teach their children whatever they wish but how unfortunate that “creationist” parents end up doing more harm than good. Belief in God is well and good as long as you keep it out of the realm of science. As soon as you do, your religion becomes a tool of ignorance.

Parents who deliberately keep their children ignorant are abusive

Nick Egnatz: Leave no one behind

clipped from onlinejournal.com Socialism at its heart is simply the commitment not to leave any member of society behind. Laid bare, capitalism allows the strongest and most conniving to leave the maximum number of their fellow citizens not just behind, but battered and broken. It is cruelly ironic that a country which takes such great pride in being a predominately Christian nation has at its core an economic system which is the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus. Also ironic is the fact that a nation which revels in the belief that these same soldiers that are being sent halfway around the world to wreak the mayhem of U.S. Empire, are doing so purportedly to protect our freedoms. Yet the very freedom of speech, they are allegedly protecting, does not allow for the public airing of a rational debate on the pros and cons of socialism and capitalism. the only hopes for change are nonviolent mobilization and demands made from outside the elite-controlled electoral process.

Nick Egnatz is a Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans For Peace. He has been actively protesting our government’s crimes of empire in both person and print for some years now and was named “Citizen of the Year” for Northwest Indiana in 2006 for his peace activism by the National Association of Social Workers.

Dankbarkeit – Traurigkeit – Zuversicht. Nach dem Rücktritt von Margot Käßmann

clipped from www.ekd.de Donnerstag, 25. Februar: Der Morgen danach. Tags zuvor ist Margot Käßmann von ihrem Amt als Vorsitzende des Rates der EKD und als hannoversche Landesbischöfin zurückgetreten. Viele Menschen sind betrübt Das Echo in den Medien ist voller Respekt und Bewunderung für den Schritt von Margot Käßmann. Gradlinigkeit und das gebotene Maß an Konsequenz werden hervorgehoben, genauso wird gelobt, dass der Rat der EKD ihr zuvor deutlich den Rücken gestärkt hatte. Natürlich überwiegt die Traurigkeit, denn Margot Käßmann hat viele Menschen begeistert und berührt. Sie brachte für viele frischen Wind in die evangelische Kirche und sorgte als erste Frau im EKD-Ratsvorsitz für Aufsehen und für weltweite Bewunderung. So mischt sich einerseits in die Traurigkeit bei vielen Dankbarkeit für das, was Margot Käßmann in den über zehn Jahren als Landesbischöfin in Hannover und in den knapp vier Monaten als Vorsitzende des Rates der EKD bewirkt hat.

„Der Herr wird seinen Engel mit dir senden und Gnade zu deiner Reise geben.“ (1. Mose 24, 40)

Lamya Kaddor: "Muslimisch – Weiblich – Deutsch!" - Die Tradition hinterfragen

clipped from de.qantara.de Wenn die Welt sich verändert, der Islam aber gleich bleibt, entfernen sich Religion und Realität immer mehr voneinander. Damit der Islam für die Gegenwart seine Bedeutung bewahrt, muss man daher zu einer neuen Auslegung seiner Grundsätze kommen. Dies ist der Ausgangspunkt der Überlegungen der Religionspädagogin und Islamwissenschaftlerin Lamya Kaddor, die sie in ihrem Buch "Muslimisch – Weiblich – Deutsch!" mit dem programmatischen Untertitel "Mein Weg zu einem zeitgemäßen Islam" ausführt. Entsprechend der historisch-kritischen Analyse argumentiert sie, dass man viele der scheinbaren Widersprüche zwischen Religion und Moderne auflösen könne, indem man die entsprechenden Gebote des Korans in ihren historischen und inhaltlichen Kontext setzt und damit ihren eigentlichen Sinn aufdeckt.

Christoph Fleischmann: Die Evangelische Kirche zum Afghanistan-Krieg - Bitte wegtreten!

clipped from www.christoph-fleischmann.de »Nichts ist gut in Afghanistan.« Ein in der Tat missverständlicher Satz aus der Neujahrspredigt von Margot Käßmann hat für Wirbel gesorgt. Die einen unterstellten ihr, sie habe den sofortigen Abzug der Bundeswehr aus Afghanistan gefordert und scholten sie dafür. Das hat sie freilich nie gesagt. Die anderen freuten sich über eine Bischöfin, die endlich mal wieder klar gegen den Krieg Stellung bezieht. Allein die Bischöfin selbst war baß erstaunt über die heftigen Reaktionen, die ihre erbauliche Predigt zum neuen Jahr ausgelöst hat. Habe sie doch nichts Revolutionäres sagen wollen, sondern nur das, was die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland immer schon zu Krieg und Frieden gesagt habe. Und was ist das, die kirchliche Botschaft zu Krieg und Frieden? Nun man kann sagen, dass das ein entschiedenes Sowohl-als-Auch ist. Oder anders gesagt: Man hat große Bedenken im Generellen und noch größere Ratlosigkeit im Speziellen.

Das schüttere Papier vom Montag markiert aber leider nur, dass die Kirche, die seit acht Jahren mit ihren Militärgeistlichen am Krieg in Afghanistan beteiligt ist, sich bisher nicht klar darüber Rechenschaft abgelegt hat, ob dieser Einsatz nach christlichen Grundsätzen nun gerechtfertigt ist oder nicht. Zwar hat die EKD im Jahr 2007 eine 130-seitige Denkschrift verfasst mit dem Titel Gerechter Friede und dort auch Kriterien genannt, nach denen rechtserhaltende Gewalt gerechtfertigt sein kann. Diese Kriterien sind im Wesentlichen die Kriterien aus der alten Lehre vom gerechten Krieg, also wahrlich nichts Neues: Es muss einen gerechten Grund zum Krieg geben, eine legitime Autorität muss ihn führen " mit der richtigen Intention. Der Krieg darf nur als ultima ratio, als letztes Mittel, eingesetzt werden, und er muss die Verhältnismäßigkeit der Mittel und Folgen beachten " darf also nicht mehr Leid verursachen, als er zu verhindern vorgibt. So weit so gut " und so bekannt.

Margot, Margot...

clipped from www.spiegel.de clipped from www.spiegel.de "Ich bin über mich selbst erschrocken, dass ich einen so schlimmen Fehler gemacht habe", zitiert "Bild" die EKD-Ratsvorsitzende. "Mir ist bewusst, wie gefährlich und unverantwortlich Alkohol am Steuer ist. Den rechtlichen Konsequenzen werde ich mich selbstverständlich stellen." clipped from www.spiegel.de Margot Käßmann steht der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) vor. Mehr als zehn Jahre lang war sie in Hannover Bischöfin der größten Landeskirche. clipped from www.spiegel.de Seit ihrem Amtsantritt hat Käßmann mit Widerständen zu kämpfen. In ihrer Neujahrspredigt resümierte sie: "Nichts ist gut in Afghanistan" - und musste sich umgehend gegen harsche Kritik zur Wehr setzen. clipped from www.spiegel.de Patriarch Kirill I. kritisierte die Wahl von Käßmanns und warf der EKD eine Mitschuld am Werteverfall in der Gesellschaft vor. clipped from www.spiegel.de Käßmann wurde am 3. Juni 1958 in Marburg an der Lahn geboren. Sie promovierte über "Armut und Reichtum als Anfrage an die Einheit der Kirche" und wurde 1985 ins Pfarramt eingesetzt. Sie ist Mutter von vier Töchtern. clipped from www.spiegel.de clipped from www.spiegel.de clipped from www.spiegel.de

Rat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland: Die Stuttgarter Schulderklärung (1945)

clipped from www.ekd.de Mit großem Schmerz sagen wir: Durch uns ist unendliches Leid über viele Länder und Völker gebracht worden. Was wir unseren Gemeinden oft bezeugt haben, das sprechen wir jetzt im Namen der ganzen Kirche aus: Wohl haben wir lange Jahre hindurch im Namen Jesu Christi gegen den Geist gekämpft, der im nationalsozialistischen Gewaltregiment seinen furchtbaren Ausdruck gefunden hat; aber wir klagen uns an, daß wir nicht mutiger bekannt, nicht treuer gebetet, nicht fröhlicher geglaubt und nicht brennender geliebt haben. Nun soll in unseren Kirchen ein neuer Anfang gemacht werden. So bitten wir in einer Stunde, in der die ganze Welt einen neuen Anfang braucht: Veni creator spiritus! Stuttgart, den 19. Oktober 1945 Landesbischof D. Wurm      Pastor Niemöller D. D. Landesbischof D. Meiser     Landesoberkirchenrat Dr. Lilje Bischof D. Dr. Dibelius       Superintendent Held Superintendent Hahn          Pastor Lic. Niesel Pastor Asmussen D. D.       Dr. Dr. Heinemann

Mohammeds Leben

Mohammeds Leben 3 - Die Eroberung Arabiens

Bishop Fellay’s Conference at Paris, January 8-10, 2010

clipped from www.dici.org The situation in the Church is truly a nightmare, it’s truly a great tragedy The boat is sinking; humanly speaking, the Church is lost; humanly speaking, the Church is not recovering—notice that I say, humanly speaking, for we know that there are the promises of God, so that she is going to recover.

“Ignorance” the Cause of the Fear of Islam according to Cardinal Tauran

clipped from www.dici.org While several european countries are currently debating the visibility of Islam, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran declared to the press agency I.Media that for many this fear is born of “ignorance”. Questioned on the growing “fear” in Europe with respect to Islam, as seen in the reactions in the debate over the burka and the minarets, Cardinal Tauran affirmed that “the problem in these affairs” is the “ignorance of the people who are opposed to Islam”. “These are people”, laments the French cardinal, “who have never encountered Muslims and who form their opinions based on what they see and hear on television.”  Cardinal Tauran also deplores “the general lack of culture, especially of religious culture” in the political European world.  Recalling to mind that “most Muslims are not terrorists”, the president of the pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue invites us to “see them as partners”. (DICI n°209, Feb. 6, 2010 – Source: Imedia)

Beatification of Pope Pius XII provokes controversy

clipped from www.dici.org On 19 December Pope Benedict XVI authorized the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints to promulgate the decree acknowledging the “heroic virtues” of two of his predecessors, Pius XII (1939-1958) and John Paul II (1978-2005). The publication of the decree acknowledging the heroic virtues of Pius XII surprised more than one observer. Last June the postulator for the cause of the Pope of the Second World War confided to the press that the German Pope preferred not to sign the decree of beatification of his predecessor lest the relations between Jews and Catholics be “compromised. Today the question as to whether or not the project will be brought to completion has become the symbol of what Benedict XVI will do with his pontificate