Time Immortal

My only question is: who the hell suggested we needed to apologize to Darwin in the first place?

The Vatican said on Tuesday the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species“.

Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation.

Earlier this week a leading Anglican churchman, Rev. Malcolm Brown, said the Church of England owed Darwin an apology for the way his ideas were received by Anglicans in Britain.

Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and [Pope John Paul II] reiterated that in 1996. But Ravasi said the Vatican had no intention of apologizing for earlier negative views.

The apology to Galileo, I can see some justification for. I’m becoming less convinced, as time rolls on, that it was really necessary — a simple admission that “those who came before us were in error” would have sufficed, I think — but I can understand the intent behind it. The reaction of the Church to Galileo was not just cold, but actively hostile.

Darwin’s theories did receive a colder reception…but I suspect that was as much because the Church wanted time to evaluate his theories in order to see if there was anything in them which was not compatible with the extant theology concerning creation as it was because the theories themselves were new and somewhat controversial. Never in my experience of Catholicism have I discerned anything other than general acceptance of the theory of evolution — most Catholics that I have known have no problem reconciling their faith with the discoveries of the scientific community.

The Church herself has no fixed opinion or doctrines concerning evolutionary theory, however. It is left to each Catholic to decide, for him/herself, what to believe and accept about human origins.

Also, and on another topic, I like how Archbishop Ravasi thinks. More like him, please:

“Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session,” he said, adding that Darwin’s theories were “never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned”.

Amen!

Religious groups have demanded the resignation of the Bishop of Rochester after he claimed that Islamic radicals had turned parts of Britain into “no-go” areas for non-Muslims.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that fundamentalism had made some communities hostile to Christians and those from other faiths.

But Mohammed Shafiq, from the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “Mr Nazir-Ali is promoting hatred towards Muslims and should resign.”

Ajmal Masroor, of the Islamic Society of Great Britain, said: “It’s a distortion of reality. Our communities are far more integrated than they were 10 years ago.

“If the Church of England had an iota of fairness they would take serious action.”

But senior figures from the Church of England have backed the Bishop of Rochester’s remarks about faith and said Christians in predominantly Muslim areas could feel isolated and nervous about how to express their belief.

Related:

“It is Muslims who need to be told, or need to be shown, that this lost-dog sign, while hardly a brilliant sally of wit, is neither prosecutable as a crime nor, in the civil law, actionable. And that the hysteria that they are showing is designed of course to force everyone to go after anyone who dares to display an attitude other than one of respect, or even reverence. It is designed, that is, to force non-Muslims in a non-Muslim land to behave as circumspectly, or deferentially, toward Islam in all of its aspects, as possible. Yet when such deference and such circumspection is not demanded of us, we do not demand it of ourselves, in regard to any non-Muslim faith.

“The transparent attempt to manipulate non-Muslims is aided and abetted by the moral-preeners who choose never to quite come to grips with the collectivism and the aggressive nature of Islam.

The Reverend isn’t the only man currently in trouble in England for speaking out against the many and varied injustices that are taking place in Islamic immigrant communities in England at the moment. One blogger has even been told that he will be arrested for “stirring up racial hatred” when he returns home to Britain.

It’s sad that it has come to this, but in a way it isn’t exactly surprising. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but many Muslim immigrants — especially to European nations — come from nations that do not have the same concepts of human rights and freedoms that most Western nations do. Moreover, they come from nations where Islam is not only the majority demographic group, but is also very often the mode of governance. In “the old country”, any affront to Islam — even an imagined affront — would be met not only with the outrage of the populace, but with the full power of the law. The person giving the affront could expect to be harshly fined, whipped, or killed for the affront given.

And it would seem that many of these Muslim immigrants to Western nations come here expecting that the government will act in the same way as the one “back home” would when a perceived affront to Islam emerges from the (non-Muslim) people of the nation these immigrants have come to. Unfortunately, more often than not, Britain’s police and courts are only too happy to treat every perceived slight against Islam as a hate crime, probably because they fear the loss of their right to speak their mind freely less than they fear the murderous outcomes of protests and riots by enraged members of the immigrant communities.

In reality, the opposite approach needs to be taken, with that stereotypical British “stiff upper lip” firmly fixed in place. Every Western government must stand ready to tell those people who immigrate to a Western nation from some backwards little hellhole of a country that Western society very rightly neither recognizes nor practices government crackdowns on free speech, even free speech which is either truly insulting to some people, or else is deemed as insulting by some people (whether it actually is or not). If any immigrants to any Western nation demand that the government of that Western nation step in and control the speech of its population and regulate the open exchange of ideas, the only acceptable response by that Western government is to offer to buy the complaining immigrants plane tickets back to where they came from; such attitudes, and the people who articulate them, have no place in Western society, and quite frankly should not be allowed to remain in Western society.

What’s really tragic is that — just as is the case with Mark Steyn — the Bishop of Rochester didn’t actually say anything hateful. He did not promote hatred against Muslims. He did not demean Muslims. He simply pointed out that Muslim immigrants to Britain have created several communities which are, in essence, closed-off and unsafe for non-Muslims to enter. This is a truthful statement.

But to such people as are complaining against the Bishop, truth is itself a forbidden thing; it is the enemy of their system of power and control, and the enemy of the system of power and control under which they lived before moving to Britain. And so it is their enemy, and they decry it when they hear it.

That’s not something that can be tolerated.

Speaking of tolerance…the news article about the Bishop has some very excellent comments, including:

Along with the other atheists who have commented on this story, I stand full square with bishop.
Irrespective of any belief in a God we can have respect for the humanitarian value of the church. The relationship between church and state was settled hundreds of years ago, which is what defines this as a “Christian” country.
Newcomers may be tolerated today but they can’t expect to rewrite history.

And as refreshing as that was, here’s one better:

Well done the Bishop of Rochester for daring to put your head above the parapet. You are spot on in what you say, & it should have been said long ago. Now perhaps the No Go areas can be dealt with.
And if the Muslims who live there don’t like it they have the option of leaving the country which they so obviously despise.
It is obvious and has been for a long time that Islam & democracy are not comfortable bedfellows.

But I think Kathy found the best one (speaking of tolerance and all):

My tolerance of Islam is proportional to the number of Christian churches in Saudi Arabia.

I can get behind that kind of attitude.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: SDA)