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Friday, April 06, 2007

Analytic rigor?

In the April 2, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, I ran across the following remarkable analysis in "The Pope and Islam" by Jane Kramer (emphasis mine):
Benedict . . . maintained that "the rational or ethical or religious formula that would embrace the whole world and unite all persons does not exist; or, at least, it is unattainable at the present moment." By that definition, almost any dialogue that does not include a shared definition of the rational, the ethical or the religious becomes impossible. And it precludes any attempt at theological dialogue with Islam.
Is this really what passes for analytic rigor in The New Yorker these days? I realize that parsing theology for too long must create very skewed notions of what analytic rigor even is, but isn't Benedict's statement obviously true, and the conclusions Kramer draws from it just as obviously false?

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of a "theological dialogue" between two religions (any) whose views are mutually exclusive, equally impossible to prove, and include the view that all other religions are false. Like most other theological undertakings, it sounds like a colossal waste of human brainpower.


posted at 4:50 PM

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