Monday, May 29, 2006

The mote in one's eye, and all that.


Well, now, here's some awkward introspection:

Pope Benedict XVI visited Auschwitz on Sunday, walking through the gates in the footsteps of more than a million Jews, Poles, Roma, gays and others who were killed at the Nazi concentration camp...

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Why, yes, and that's an excellent question. Given that so many Christians reject biological evolution unless you can give them an hour-by-hour, exactly-detailed report on every step in the process and show them a fossil for every single organism that ever existed throughout the history of time, it's just a little weaselly for some of those same folks to be standing there with this vacant expression on their faces, going, "Yup, that was some bad craziness, all right and don't that just beat all? Man, He sure does work in mysterious ways, don't He?"

No shit. And when those folks can produce an excruciatingly detailed, rigorous and thoroughly complete rationale for why their deity sat back on His Ass and allowed arguably the most horrific example of genocide in the history of mankind, then we can have this evolution chat again, don't you think?

5 comments:

PithLord said...

This post is really stupid. Does Ratzinger deny evolution? Is confronting the problem of evil in the context of the Holocaust an inappropriate thing for a Pope to do?

CC said...

pithlord fumed:

"Does Ratzinger deny evolution?"

Gee, I don't know ... let's see what sort of stupidity the Catholic Church has been promoting since Pope Ratzo the First took over:

"The science blogosphere's been abuzz about Cardinal Schönborn's editorial last week that appeared to embrace intelligent design, which was followed a couple of days later by a New York Times article about how this statement may mean that the Catholic Church is moving away from its long (albeit somewhat grudging) acceptance of evolution as accepted by biologists."

Continued pithlord, never having learned that, when you find yourself in a hole, the best strategy is to stop digging:

"Is confronting the problem of evil in the context of the Holocaust an inappropriate thing for a Pope to do?"

Well, when part of your shtick is papal infallibility, it's really not good PR to stand there with that "deer in the headlights" look, wondering just what the fuck that whole Holocaust thing was about and pleading for an explanation from the Almighty.

If you catch my drift.

Anonymous said...

Ratzinger never mentioned where the vatican was while all this was going on, did he?

CC said...

davie wrote:

"Ratzinger never mentioned where the vatican was while all this was going on, did he?"

Not directly as I remember, But the signs are not good that he's going to be as accommodating to biological evolution as his predecessor.

PithLord said...

CC,

Man, I thought stupid Orange bigotry like this went out of fashion in Canada half a century ago.

1. Somebody in the blogosphere thinks that something some Cardinal said might appear to embrace intelligent design, and therefore Ratzinger (who has, in fact, written on the subject) denies evolution. I see.

2. Popes do not claim to be infallible all the time, only when they speak ex cathedra on a matter of faith and morals. In any event, being infalliable is not the same as knowing everything.

I'm not a Catholic or even a Christian, but this is bullshit.