Atheists Invited to Vatican Outreach Initiative
I noticed earlier from Catholic news feeds that the Pontifical Council for Culture had announced that it is creating a foundation to focus on relations with atheists and agnostics. I didn’t report on it at the time, however, as P Z Myers has done so, I thought I’d give you his take on this:-
Where’s my invitation? – P Z Myers
Hey, I just checked my mailbox for a fancy gilt envelope, but no joy. I was hoping to hear from the Pope.
The Pontifical Council for Culture has announced that it is creating a foundation to focus on relations with atheists and agnostics.
See? They should be calling me any minute now…oh, wait.
The president of the Council announced the initiative on Wednesday as a response to Pope Benedict’s call to “renew dialogue with men and women who don’t believe but want to move towards God.“
Well, I’m out. That’s like putting out a call for healthy men and women who want to move towards degenerative neurological disease.
Maybe Chris Mooney is available?
Tags: Church Life
February 28th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I would invite you to take a peek at PJMyers’ site at the Hyperlink in the commentary above to see a range of responses from atheists. Some are really quite witty.
here’s a sample of one of the (slightly) more serious ones:
Quote:
“With this initiative, we would like to help everyone to step out of a poor conception of believing, (and) promote the understanding that theology has scientific dignity” and a founding in nature, he continued.
Unquote.
Oohh, I think I see what he’s doing here. Bait and switch from a common ground. He wants to get the atheists on board with the idea that moral values, peace, nature, art, love, philosophy, and the sense of wonder are all part of their own “spirituality” — a natural spirituality, it’s okay — and, from there, slowly move towards calling them “religious.” Or, perhaps, religious values “too.”
And faith is important to everyone, in some way. Atheists have faith in their mother’s love, or that the sun will come up tomorrow, or that if we work hard, the environment will improve. All common ground, see? Superficial resemblances linking it all together, bringing us all on the same side.
And then the stuff that makes no sense, will slip by on the back of the stuff that does make sense. Maybe they can even call God “natural.” Or Nature.
That should work. We’ll never see that one coming. Fools us every time.