And The Ticking Intellectual Bomb

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? In other words, Paleologos was arguing that if the Koran commanded men to spread God by the sword then the Koran perforce did not come from God, or Allah if you prefer. Benedict's little talk in Regensberg contained a ticking intellectual bomb.

I've linked to the Pope's Regensberg lecture before, and it still ticks loudly for those for those not deafened by their closely held explosions of nihilism...