Rage against absolutism: vague notions of write and rong.
eye say who cares about the conclave, the black smoke that turns white as if by some divine intervention? religion is politics and eye've yet to come across a politician who convincingly addresses the true spiritual problems of living. the best that politicians can come up with is a reliance on the market economy and the tired supplication that the material will usurp the ethereal. as for religious leaders, they have but dogma for a staff, trouble is dogma comes in different flavours, my indifference doesn’t – eye hate all myopic and misplaced deference of absolutes, for absolutes are a bluff that serve the simian mind.
benedict, you are wrong, god loves the myriad shades of twilight between night and day, else these would have no part in the creation you believe to be his. the linear abstractions of your logic shackle your soul just as straight lines are an anathema to the fractal nature of things. there may exist some debate about the interplay of science and religion but that science and scientific methodology are central to the thing eye would call physics and you would call metaphysics can not in all earnest be disputed. you decree a world of polar extremes, of binary choices, but look to that creation and know that god loves expediency.
take as an exempla the rudimentary conflicts between relativity and quantum mechanics. theories that are in conflict, unresolved, but both of which have withstood the rigours of prolonged and sustained empirical examination. eye reiterate, there are no absolutes, only guiding principles. morality is like this. no matter how quietly man treads, his presence is felt by others however imperceptibly. even the most pious can not help but pollute the air he shares with others. in doing god’s work most likely you are doing satan’s too.
morality can no more be divorced from biology that it can from humanity. oft, and this is a serious charge, dogma is confused for morality. so benedict have your guiding principles for sure; strive to live your life in accord with christ’s blueprint if that is your conviction, but for the sake of human compassion, condoms for africa now.
all words and pictures (c) 2005 stephen thomas