Ascribing “fundamental human rights” to chimpanzees, just because we are some “advanced and civilized monkeys” has become one of the main arguments of the culture of human reductionism. Unfortunately, a wrong ideological approach to biological evolution and the extremisation of the fair and reasonable worries about the health of animals and about the ethical treatment of creation, has led some people to invoke “human rights” for non-human species.

Right from the beginning, this degeneration has been used by the antitheist propaganda: reducing man, denying his uniqueness and his huge difference from the rest of creation, one evidently reduces the importance of the human creature, so as to deny his divine origine. No wonder that these days Margherita Hack, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins and Umberto Veronesi (five well-known convinced atheists), have largely promoted the “animals rights” in modern times, an initiative started in the rationalist Enlightenment by David Hume, Voltaire, Jeremy Bentham, and then by Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry Stephens Salt etc. The previous Prime Minister of Spain, Luis Zapatero, has even suggested adopting these rights in the Spanish law code.

In these days, however, the New York Court of Appeals  ruled that Tommy, a 26-year-old chimpanzee kept by an upstate New York couple, cannot be considered a “person” and therefore does not need to be freed from the cage in which he is kept. The judgment rejected the efforts made by a group of animal rights activists curating the “Nonhuman Rights Project” to extend human rights to animals, too. The motivation of this case comes however from a fair and understandable worry, that is the bad conditions in which the chimpanzee was kept. The request for “human rights”, though, is unacceptable and the Court ruled that it would not be possible to concede rights, duties and obligations that chimpanzees will never be able to accomplish.

The project leaders answered by supporting the idea that chimpanzees are «a complex autonomous legal person and had presented testimony from experts that chimpanzees exhibit traits such as self-awareness and self-determination that should prevent their unlawful detention». The self-awareness argument is usually supported by the famous “mirror test”, invented by Gordon Gallup to verify whether chimpanzees recognize themselves when looking at the mirror. The reaction is indeed positive and that means automatically, for many people, that chimpanzees do have self-awareness. Besides having a reductive concept of consciousness, as explained by professor Clive Wynne, «the problem with the mirror test for self-recognition is not the result of it, since it is certain that some non-human monkeys can recognize themselves in the mirrors, but in its interpretation. Why is this self-recognition equated with self-awareness?». Many autistic people, he explained, do not recognise themselves in the mirror, but does that mean they are not consciuous or self-conscious beings? «These self-identification tests with the mirror are interesting and undoubtedly tell us something about how animals see their own bodies, but they tell us nothing about the question of the deeper self-awareness».

In fact it’s strongly questionable that recognizing your own mirrored image implies being aware of yourself. One of the majour critics of Gallup’s thesis is even an ex student of his’, Daniel Povinelli: today Daniel is a physical anthropologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he showed that a chimpanzee does not need at all self-consciousness to pass the mirror test (it probably uses a much easier brain function) and he defines those theories as “popular phsychology”. Professor L. Syd M Johnson, teaching Philosophy, Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology at the Michigan Technological University  invited to «abandon the MSR [mirror self-recognition] test as a valid, universal test of self-awareness» C. M. Heyes, from the Psychology department of the University College of London concluded in his turn that «no convincing evidence exists for animal self-consciousness and self-awareness».

As far as the alleged skills of “self-determination” of chimpanzees are concerned, we need to remember that it is all about recognizing their ability in taking an autonomous and independent choice. It is quite curious that science is looking for evidence for it in animals, while in the mean time some neuroscientists and also Peter Singer want to deny that ability to the human being, saying that the latter would lack free will. The chimpanzee would be a free human being, while the human being would not be recognized as such. We find it obvious that this thesis, contrary to the self-awareness one, is supported by science fiction activists and not by scientists; it is also as obvious to reply that no animal can free itself from its genetic and evolutionary instincts, which influence all its behaviours.

Clearly, all this does not authorize anyone to mistreat and abuse animals. Pope Francis has recently shown the true ecologism which, especially Christians, are called to pursue: «Our earth needs constant concern and attention. Each of us has a personal responsibility to care for creation, this precious gift which God has entrusted to us. This means, on the one hand, that nature is at our disposal, to enjoy and use properly. Yet it also means that we are not its masters. Stewards, but not masters. We need to love and respect nature, but “instead we are often guided by the pride of dominating, possessing, manipulating, exploiting; we do not ‘preserve’ the earth, we do not respect it, we do not consider it as a freely-given gift to look after».

The Editorial Staff 
(translated by Valentina Barbieri)

Jean  Paul Sartre was one of the last important atheist intellectuals; later (Bobbio and Cioran are exceptions) there were just shallow and quite superficial (often vulgar) personalities, such as Singer, Ayer, Onfray Scalfari and A.C.Grayling. Not even close to the depth of thought of the French philosopher.

Sartre has been maybe the one that most of all has tried to find the foundations of an atheist moral code (or whithout God). But it was not triumphant, glorious or proud, like his modern supporters are trying to convince people of (an example here in Italy is Umberto Veronesi). His atheism brought literally to the anguish/distress, to the insecurity, because –he said- the human reason is essentially theological, it means that it works as if the human horizon were a divine horizon.

“The atheism is the persuasion that the man is the creator, and that he’s abandoned, alone, on the world. The atheism is not a happy optimism, but, in his deepest sense, a desperation” he said in 1946 during his famous interview for the “Il Politecnico” of Elio Vittorini. “L’Être et le Néant” (1943) is the manifesto of his philosophical atheism, that in any case, he will officially write in “Cahiers pour une morale”, written 4 years after and that remains an act of faith: ”the decisive absence of faith is the abiding faith”.

Right in that period, in the early Fifties, when the Cold War was at his best, herealized he was “living a neurosis”: even if his philosophy was an ‘active’ one, so far he’d just been a bourgeois writer, like Flaubert. Then his interest for Marxism woke up siding with the Communist Party. Still, as the American philosopher Jim Holt explained, in those years Stalin crimes were beginning to be largely documented, so much that other intellectuals were abandoning the party. “The ex-philosopher of freedom transformed into the totalitarian Sartre”. Raymond Rosenthal talked about him as a “solid Stalinist”.

Indeed begins here the beginning of the shameful past of the highest supporter and theorizer of the atheist moral. The rupture with Camus happened right because Camus decided to denounce the totalitarianism, while Sartre kept  quiet in front of the French gulags (“it wasn’t up to us to write about the soviets force labor camps”, he then justified). He excused Stalin’s purges and Mao’s ones, and he described the deserter Victor Kravchenko, who was the first to throw light on the horrors of the Stalinism, as a CIA creation. He espoused the pacifism  and, in opposition to the Vietnam war, he encouraged  the Soviet Union to fight the Americans, even risking a nuclear war, and defending the Algerian independence, in the preface of Franz Fanon’s book (“The Wretched of the Earth”) he wrote that for an African “shooting to an European is like killing two bird with one stone, it’s like destroying an oppressor and the man he’s oppressing at the same time”. In 1977, on the occasion of the arrest of 3 men charged of pedophilia, Sartre (together with Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucaul and several others) signed a “petition” to ask the sexual liberation (or sexual revolution) for teenagers.

Still, even for the most important atheist in twentieth century, God remained a constant interest through all of his life, like an horizon, like a transcendental illusion, like a known but irremovable mistake. He declared without hesitation that he still had residuals of faith in God who has been the strong aim of his intellectual programme. In particular we’re referring to something that completely changed his last years.

In 1980, few months before his death, when he still was fully conscious (even if his physical abilities were limited), in an interview with a friend of his, the ex-Maoist Pierre Victor (aka Benny Levy), he explained his conversion with a scandalous affirmation, several people consider it a retraction of his philosophical work (he confirmed the authenticity of the interview with Levy): “I don’t feel I am the product of the Chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. Shortly, a being that could be here thanks only to a Creator. And this idea about a creator is referring to God” (by “Nouvel Observateur”, 1980). His conversion was a gradual one to the “Messianic Judaism”.

Among other things, Sartre repulsed his most intimate friends, included his feminist lover Simone de Beauvoir. She was the most shocked and horrified of them all in front of this, she said, shameful conversion: “how could I explain this senile act of turncoat? All of my friends, all of the “Sartreans”, and the editorial staff of “Les Temps Modernes” have supported me in my dismay”.  (National Review 11.06.1982, pg.677)

INDEX
Church, Pius XII, Jewish, nazism and fascism| |Christian roots|
|Crusaders||The Galileo case||Giordano Bruno||The Middle Ages, the dark ages?|
|Inquisition||Colonialism||Church and Francoism|
|Cristianity, motor behind civilisation|
|Ipazia||Myths about Christianity||Other religions|

—————–

CRUSADERS

Crusaders saved Europe from Islamic invasion (4/3/18)
Major historians explain that the crusades and the intervent of Urban II were fortuitous.

—————–

THE MIDDLE AGES, THE DARK AGES?

Flat Earth? Ius primae noctis? Falsity against Middle Ages (3/11/14)

Slowly all the lies about the so-called “dark ages”, or rather the Middle Ages, are collapsing thanks to the intellectual honesty of many historians. For istance regarding the “Medieval Inquisition”, it has been proved that actually the phenomenon spread during the Renaissance and mainly in the Protestant environment; indeed historian Christopher Black has observed that the Roman Inquisition was definitely “less dark than one thinks”, rather it was more humane and with few condemnations.

In these days historian Alessandro Barbero, full professor of Medieval History at the University of Eastern Piedmont, has once more demolished the legend about the “dark ages”. He wrote on “La Stampa” and observed, by alluding to Orwell: «People are taught that in the ugly, remote past evil creatures existed who were called capitalists and who oppressed people with the most infamous demands. The method Orwell imagined, to create a sinister image of the past in order to exalt the present, has been really put in practice in Europe, from the Renaissance till the Nineteenth Century: the targeted victim, the Middle Ages. Humanists and artists of the Renaissance proud of their new culture, reformers of the XVIIIth Century fighting against feudalism, positivists of the Nineteenth Century willing to celebrate progress and fight superstition, all agreed on painting the medieval millennium with the darkest dyes. In this way some “snap-shots”, as it were, which we all can easily visualise, were born and they are inseparable by now from the popular image of the Middle Ages».

Many are these legends and professor Barbero faces and debunks them: «The terrorised crowds that fill up the churchs during last days before the year 1000, absolutely certain that the world is going to end; the erudites, actually very ignorant, who believe the Earth is flat, or in any cases who do not dare to teach the opposite because they are scared they will be punished by the Church; and obviously the Jus primae noctis Orwell recalled, the infamous law that estabilished the lord of the village has the right to all the young women’s virginity, and meanly obtains what is owed to him the very night of every wedding ceremony». None of this is true and historians know it. Actually the historian, explains Barbero, «feels like a little bit of a killjoy when, after long and accurate verifications, has to conclude that all these quaint images are false, and none of these has ever really happened. Yet it is really so: if one goes and checks, he learns, with great surprise, that during the Middle Ages no-one talked about such things and that they were all fabricated later».

About the alleged fear of the end of the world in the year One Thousand, theorised by the Church according to someone, it is necessary to stress that «on December 31, 999 A.D. Pope Sylvester II confirmed the privileges of a monastery for many years to come on condition that in the future all the abbots, once elected by the monks, be consecrated by the Pope». This can be deduced from the Apocalypse of Saint-Sever, an eleventh-Century French manuscript… it is clear that the Pope was not even thinking that the world was going to end. 

Shall we talk about the flat Earth? According to not-so-scientific Alessandro Cecchi Paone it was Galileo Galilei who demonstrated its spherical shape, so as to encounter the Church’s wrath. Yet anyone during the Middle Ages took for granted that the Earth was spherical, just like today, so much so that «each medieval emperor had himself portrayed with the symbol of his power over the world in his hand: a globe with a cross on its top», the historian has commented.

And finally, one last example: the lie of the  “jus primae noctis” (right to the first night), the law according to which every feudal lord, on occasion of one of his own serves’ marriage, had the right to spend the first wedding night with the bride. Yet there are no testimonies to its diffusion in medieval Europe and the historical sources do not record any directives either on the part of secular authorities (kings, emperors) or on the part of the ecclesiastical ones. That is why, Barbero said, «we never come across it, even if we check where we would expect to find it. The Middle Ages have left us with a lot of novelle like Boccaccio’s, wherein sex is talked about very frankly»;yet «not even a single medieval author thought of profitting from such an attractive source of inspiration as the jus primae noctis, while nowadays movie scriptwriters and historical novel authors avail themselves of it». This started being talked about after the sixteenth Century, right in the Renaissance, «according to a precise strategy which is always the same: as something that happened during the old ugly times […] in the imagination of erudite credulous people, who describe a legendary past, this incredible story begins to circulate: that past was so barbaric that lords even demanded to enjoy their serves’ brides during the first wedding night».

It is hard to get rid of these legends, «it does not matter if for a century no professional historian repeats them any longer, and if great academics such as Jacques Le Goff insisted their whole life talking about the light of the Middle Ages», Barbero laconically conluded. «In our collettive imagination, too great is the pleasure to believe that there was an obscure era in the past, but that now we have grown out of it and we are better than those who lived at that time».

The Editorial Staff
translation by Salvatore Faliero.

Why is Christianity full of noteworthy women, many of them martyrs for their faith, as Agnes, Thecla, Cecilia, Margaret, Blandina, Pulcheria, Eudoxia, Galla Placidia, Olympia, Melanie, Clotilde, Theodolinda, Berta Of Kent, Olga Of Kiev etc.?

Because, as explained by the great sociologist Rodney Stark, Christianity took to heart the esteem, the respect and the protection of women from its very beginning. In fact thanks to Christianity, women enjoyed a higher status than in the Greek-Roman world or than during the pagan world: Christians promoted marriage, fought polygamy, slavery and sexual exploitation, and forbade the practice of infanticide and abortion (which was often practiced against female newborns).

Many Fathers of the Church have spoken about respect toward women and of their equality to man, for example St. Augustine (354-430 AD). He underlined the equal dignity of man and woman, recalling the importance of loyalty, to which both men and women are called alike, remembering that the woman has the right to choose her husband by herself. In particular he reminded that “According to the Genesis it is human nature itself which was made in the image of God, and that nature is composed of both sexes and therefore does not exclude the woman, if we want to understand the image of God [ . ..]. The woman is, together with her husband, the image of God, in a way that the union of the couple forms a single image”.

Another great saint very attentive to the dignity of women was St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444), a famous Franciscan preacher at the end of the Middle Ages. Bernardino also explained that the husband has no right to demand from his wife virtue that he does not possess himself and he has a duty to help his wife with the housework, especially if she is already at an advanced stage of pregnancy, or has too many children to provide for. “This whole work, as you can see, is only done by the woman, while the man idles away… Therefore you, husband, make sure you help her out with her duties”.

This son of the Church of the Middle Ages depicted with care and tenderness the daily life of women, of a mother tending her child: “She swaddles him and cleans him, and washes him when needed; she soothes him when he cries; she plays with him and shows him a cherry to call him to her”. He understood how difficult it was to be a mother and respected them, with admiration. In his sermons he often spoke in favor of the education of women, especially young ones, that needed to be “educated, even if it was only to read the Bible”. The Church itself already educated all of its many religious women so that Bernardino even emphasized how “some of them are more learned than any man”.

“Do you want your women to be fair?” he asked to the family men “Then let them learn how to read, because I warn you, they can not live without education, and if you will allow them to study it will be good for you”. As for the wives, Bernardino railed against corporal punishment, a legal practice sometimes even recommended by local sumptuary laws of the time, that neither the Church nor Bernardino ever acknowledged. The monk complained that there are husbands treating their wives worse than their hens, warning that the abused woman will only do the opposite of what they wanted them to, “Some fools will take better care of their hen, to receive a daily fresh egg, than their woman … as soon as she tells him a word he does not like, they will immediately seize the stick and beat her up, although no punishment ever did any good with women. But instead they are patient with their chicken, which annoys them all day, just for a miserable egg … So I am telling you, husband, stop beating your wife, as it will only cause grief. You’d better use kind words … and tell her if she did something wrong”.

The woman should be loved, not beaten, “between the woman and her husband there must be a unique friendships indeed … if one is lazy and the other is virtuous they will never agree together, but if both are virtuous and love each other with genuine feelings a true relationship is born, that will bring paradise on earth”. Like Augustine, he based his sermon in favor of respect for women on the Genesis: “God did not make the woman from the man’s foot, so that he’d subdue her under it. And He did not make her from the man’s skull, so that she may submit him instead. He made her from his chest, close to his heart … to make him understand that he needs to love her as his other self”.

The Church certainly did not have to wait feminism to advance certain demands on anybody’s “dignity”, and women in particular.

The editorial  staff

We exploit Pope Francis’s letter to the founder of “La Repubblica”, Eugenio Scalfari, to deal with a specific issue. In particular, we pay attention to Scalfari’s response when he defines himself as a “non-believer who has been interested and fascinated for many years by the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth“.

Even secular Umberto Veronesi wrote: “We as secular people admire the human teaching of Jesus, and are close to him because he creates a favourable ground for a shared ethics, based on love, solidarity and peace. However we cannot accept his divine dimension, which is what matters most for the faith“. We could report many similar examples of non-believers who are fascinated by Jesus and full of respect and admiration for his person and message, but who have chosen not to believe in his divinity.

It is certainly good to know how much this Man is still the ethical reference even in the secularized Western societies. However there is something wrong and we feel compelled to highlight that. It was explained by great French philosopher Jean Guitton : “In the question concerning Jesus we are forced between two possibilities: he is either really a divine man or a crazy man. There are no intermediate solutions. In the “Jesus” problem you reach a point where you must choose: between zero and infinity” (Guitton, “Ogni giorno che Dio manda in terra ” [Every day that God sends to earth], Mondadori 1997 , page 159 ). In other words, how can secular people, who do not believe in his divinity, be fascinated and admired by Jesus Christ, without taking into account what He said about himself, namely that He was the Son of God? One who says that about himself is either a “crazy man” or a man who tells the truth. However, if you deny that he is telling the truth, one who claims to be the Son of God is either a “crazy man” or, alternatively, a sadistic deceiver. In both cases, none of his words, even less his message, can ever be taken seriously.

Secular people learn Jesus’s message through the Gospels, but those texts claim that Jesus Christ presented himself to the world as the son of God, sent by His Father. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 18:10 ). Or, again Matthew (12:50): “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother“. And, even more shockingly, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 15:6).

There are not many options before a man who says this, as explained by Guitton: either Jesus is completely crazy or he is really the One he claims to be. The evangelist Mark (14, 61-64 ) reports: “Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of man, seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” And the high priest tore his garments, and said, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death“. Jesus was sent to Pilate precisely because he had blasphemed by calling himself the Son of God. How can secular people who are fascinated by Jesus explain that, as they do not believe in his divinity? John (18:33-37) describes the encounter with Pilate, when Jesus says about himself: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over  to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world’“.

Jesus says he is the Messiah, the Son of God, he speaks about his Kingdom of heaven, mentions his resurrection (“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise again“, Mk 9, 31) and so on. If you don’t want to believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, you must also refuse what he says about himself and you cannot select his statements (as they were recommendations for goodness) without looking at his whole person. Yet the message of this crazy man has revolutionized human history, civilization, science, charity, culture, art, music …, it has incredibly changed the lives of billions of people, many of whom devoted and decide to devote their entire lives to follow Him. Inexplicably, His message has always had the strength and freshness to be topical and to speak to the conscience of every man, of whatever creed, origin or ethnicity. And it will be for eternity.

Many secular people and non-believers refer to Jesus Christ as a moral authority, but they should reflect also on this: how could a crazy man or a deceiver have been the source of all that was born out of Him? It takes a lot more of faith to believe this than is needed to believe that Jesus Christ is telling the truth about himself and his origin. Similarly, as explained by secular Umberto Eco, “Even if Jesus were – absurdly – a character invented by men, the fact that he may have been imagined by us, unfledged bipeds, would be per se just as miraculous (miraculously mysterious) as the fact that the son of a God had really incarnated himself.  This natural and worldly mystery would not cease to upset and ennoble the hearts of those who do not believe“. (Eco, “Cinque scritti morali” [Five Moral Writings], Bombiani 1997).

The Editorial Staff, translated by Vito

Several scholars of Early Christianity abroad, especially in the United States, have their own personal blog, in which they publish documents, reflections, they answer questions and talk to each other. Historians, theologians, biblical scholars, New Testament scholars of different faith: Catholics, agnostics, protestants, Jews.

It’s really interesting to follow the debate, in particular recently on the blog of Larry W. Hurtado, known professor of the New Testament at Edinburgh University, is appeared an epistolary exchange between him and Richard Bauckham, one of the best American biblical scholars, professor at St Andrew university and member of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Bauckham, discussing with Hurtado on the role of eyewitnesses in Gospels development, explained that he’s working on a sequel of his lucky book “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony” (2008), and that, in this new book, he’ll show new evidences on the fact that the Gospel of Mark is largely based on the eyewitness of the Apostle Peter (just like Papia affirmed).

Actually this is not a proper news, it’s been a long time since the scientific community assured this fact. According to a great number of scholars, Mark would have composed his gospel around the 70 AD, although he used material who had been edited several years before, transcribing  pre-synoptic sources who were spread since the years right after Jesus’ death: for example according to Barth Ehrman everything concerning the Passion. Rudolp Pesch calls them “pre-Marcan” sources, written one-two years after Jesus’ death. Willibald Bosen, for example, has pointed out that Mark doesn’t quote the high priest Caiaphas, as though he were still operant (he stayed till 37 AD).

Other scholars, instead, think that the entire Gospel of Mark has to be anticipated to 44 AD, when the evangelist went with Peter to Rome. The supporters academy of José O’Callaghan affirm it too; he attributed the 7Q5 Qumran papyrus fragment (it was found in closed caves in 68 AD) to the VI chapter of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 6:52-53), a comparison who was confirmed by following studies and supported by many scholars (in Italy, for example, Orsolina Montevecchi, president of the Papyrologists International Association: “It’s nearly impossible that it could be another text, maybe an unknown one. I think it’s time to include the 7Q5 fragment in the official list of New Testament papyruses”, “Aeugyptus” 1994, p. 206-207), included several critics, like  J.M. Vernet who, during the Symposium in Rome of 2002 whom title was “Contribute of historical sciences to the study of the New Testament”, publicly decreed, together with some other scholars, that “it’s become pretty much unanimous the idea that the identification of the Catalan Jesuit about the 7Q5 is the most secure and the clearest, comparing it with many others who were presented as alternatives. The study and the scientific method of O’Callaghan and of other favourables with the identification of 7Q5  with Mark 6:52-53 are correct, serious and scientific” (signed by P. Parker, C. Roberts, C. Hemer, P. Gamet, V. Spottorno etc.). Vernet’s conclusions correspond to the ones of the international Symposium on the 7Q5 fragment in October 1991 in Eichstatt, where almost every scholar who participated agreed with O’ Callaghan opinion (Symposium acts have been published in M. Bernhard, “Christen und Christliches in Qumran?”, Eichstätt Studien XXXII, Regensburg, Verlag Friedrich Prustet 1992).

In any case the author of the Gospel of Mark is to be considered an eyewitness, according to Bauckham. He also added: “I think the ‘loved disciple’ wrote the Gospel of John, and that he was an eyewitness too. Of course his gospel is the product of his reflections and thoughts, about what he had seen during his life”. Talking about Luke, exactly like Mark did, “he took every chance to meet eyewitnesses and he interviewed them. He collected material probably from a certain number of minor eyewitnesses from whom he received stories or individual experiences”.

The editorial staff, translate by Valentina B. 

An online poll among the doctors readers of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has shown that almost 70% (67%) of american doctors are against the assisted suicide legalization. In 2011, on Palliative, a poll about english doctors had reached a similar result (80%).

The main reasons to take position against such practice were the violation of doctor oath about not murdering and not harming anyone, moreover the fact that the opening to the assisted suicide will probably lead to the legalization of euthanasia, a practice even less pleasing for the doctors. The study came after the public announcement of “World Medical Association” (WMA), which has reaffirmed its own strong opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The WMA is in good company, many other official medical associations -as we observed here in this article – have already stood opposite to any kind of modification of the law which allows assisted suicide or euthanasia: the British Medical Association (BMA), the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM), the British Geriatic Society (BGS), the American Medical Association (AMA), the German Medical Association (GMA), the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the New Zeland Medical Association, the Organizatión Médica Colegial de España, the Società di anestesia, analgesia, rianimazione e terapia intensiva (Siaarti), etc.

Sometimes it might be thounght in good faith of causing death of a suffering person intentionally in order to bring his pain (physical or psycological) to the end, but it still remains an action gravelly opposite to the human being dignity. Medical science has precisely the duty of avoiding any kind of pain and the right to interrupt medical procedures that are disproportionate compared with the expected results, instead it hasn’t the right to eliminate the sick person to eliminate the disease. Fortunately today it is possible to avail of valid palliative treatment to cancel any kind of physical pain and it is dutiful to accompany suffering people, possibly sustaining them to recover the pleasure and the sense of life, even in despair.

The editorial staff

Last November the “Huffington Post” interviewed Peter Atkins, a known English chemist from the Lincoln College, as well noted for his battles against religion and faith in God, just like his compatriot Richard Dawkins.

We took the chance  to interview the professor Vincenzo Balzani about the same topics, he’s a chemist too and a professor emeritus at the university of Bologna, with an international fame and recently awarded by the prestigious “Science” magazine by the “Nature Award for mentoring in science”. In 2011 he participated in the Cortile dei Gentili, a cultural event organized by the  Pontifical Council for Culture (Pontificio Consiglio per la Cultura).

1) Prof. Balzani, in the “Huffington Post” interview, Peter Atkins strongly compares science with faith through a dualism between good and evil. Since you’re a chemist and a believer, do you agree with the accusations against religion? Do you see this huge incompatibility?

It’s known Atkins is an atheist, but he’s as well a smart person and it surprises me he gave so strict and unconditional judgments. I met him a couple of years ago in Rome, due to a conference of an international congress about teaching science, because he was scheduled to hold his conference just after mine; we said completely different things but at the end we complimented each other. No one knows the truth. One of the reasons the incompatibility between science and faith would be based on, is the presumed incongruence between the cosmic evolution, science says it brought us to the formation of the universe as we know it (the biological evolution on the earth is included), and the creation of the world and of the human being just like the Genesis description. In fact the two different “stories”, one of the science and one of the Bible, do not have to be contrasted: they can easily be put together. That’s because Genesis is not a scientific book, although this is what American creationists affirm. The first chapter of the Genesis  is not an account of God’s activities that He gave us to make things easier and to take away from us the beauty of discovering, through the science, the history of the universe. The Genesis story is symbolic, it wants to let us know and understand a truth in faith: everything has been created by God thanks for His love for men, who are image of God.

But if it’s wrong to think that creation in a material way has really happened by times and modalities like  the Genesis describes, I personally believe it’s wrong even to think that the universe tale told by the science is enough for itself and therefore, that there’s no need to the Genesis. The two stories are on different levels. The science tale is an attempt to answer to questions like: how has the universe been formed and, in it, how has the man been formed? The Bible one is the answer, by a point of view of faith, to the question: why is there the universe and what meaning has, in it, the presence of the man? As Cardinal Martini wrote, there are indeed two ‘writings’ or ‘scriptures’: there’s the man scripture, the science, who’s involved in facts, in phenomenons and in theories that explain them, and there’s God way, the Bible, where we find answers to big questions in men’s lives.

To understand what happen in the world there’s always been a need to the 2 scriptures, to the 2 different interpretations: material and spiritual. To be clearer, I’ll use an easy example, by my personal life. It happens frequently that I’m working in my study while my wife is in the kitchen. At a certain point I find myself tired, I go to the kitchen and my wife says: I’ll make you some tea. The fact of making me some tea has 2 different aspects. The first is this: she puts the teapot on the stove and has the water to boil. The science can precisely explain what happens when the teapot is on the stove. This is the material aspect. But there’s another aspect of my wife’s decision of making me some tea: she makes me some tea because she loves me. This is an aspect that science cannot understand, in the same way as my wife’s love cannot explain why the water in the teapot, on the stove, boils. The science explains how my wife makes tea; it’s a material thing; love explains why she makes me tea, it’s a spiritual thing. Material and spiritual, science and (to believers) faith are 2 different aspects, complementary, both essentials, of a single reality: the man reality.

2)Reading Peter Atkins’ answers we get a glimpse of an excessive trust in science: “there’s no issue of the being that science cannot throw light on” and more: ”science has the key for universal knowledge”. According to your scientist experience, is that true?

“There’s no issue of the being that science cannot throw light on…. Universal knowledge…”. It’s the secret ambition of certain scientists: to become like God. Stephen Hawking, a known colleague of Atkins, writes that too:” if we do discover  this complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God” (original sentence).

To explain everything. If we succeeded, it would be a disaster. Sure enough on the day the knowledge arrived to determine with surety the origin and the end of everything there would be no space left for freedom. Freedom presumes the contrast with the undetermined, with the mystery. But there’s nothing to worry about. Any scientist knows that every scientific discovery creates more questions than the ones it gives answer to. Joseph Priestley said it 2 centuries ago:” The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined”. Martin Buber wrote this in Hasidim tales: “You gained knowledge, what are you still missing?” “This is truth. If you gained knowledge, than you just know what you don’t have yet” Wittgenstein repeated it:” I went to put boundaries to my island, instead I discovered the confines of the ocean”; Science recalled it:” The highway from ignorance to knowledge runs both ways: as knowledge accumulates, diminishing the ignorance of the past, new questions arise, expanding the area of ignorance to explore”. The physics  itself teaches us that one of the things we certainly know is that we will never know everything. (Uncertainty Principle by Heisenberg). John Maddox (what remains to be discovered, Simon’s Book, 1998) explains that we still don’t know what space, time, energy and material are, and as well as how has the universe started or how has life been created, what the mind and the conscience are. Far away from knowing everything. I think scientists should just fly down. How Wittgenstein suggests, “it’s better not to talk about something we can’t discuss”.

3)You have wished for an alliance between believers and not believers to the eco-friendly energies, especially to the solar energy. Why is it a topic that believers should feel important?

Because, to the believer, the Earth is a gift from God, a kind of big talent that God gave, collectively, to the humanity. Our task is to take care and to give new possibilities, not to destroy, these talents. Looking  after our planet is necessary to use his resources in a eco-friendly way. The energy coming from the Sun is the only eco-friendly energy because it’s copious, inexhaustible, well shared, not dangerous, not linked to military applications, able to develop economy and to fulfill the inequalities. Obviously, not believers are interested to custody our planet too. So, the Earth is the big Cortile dei Gentili, where believers and not believers every day have to meet and discuss, because they have to live together. The Christian must bring his gospel witness, entering laically into the problems of the planet Earth, just like every man with whom he shares the destiny.

The famous physicist Albert Einstein was so enchanted by universal laws and cosmo’s order, that he caught sight of the work of an “infinitely superior Spirit”, as he liked to say. Plus he affirmed: «Considering such armony in the universe which I am able to recognise, despite my limited human mind, there still are people who affirm God doesn’t exist. But what really makes me angry is that they mention me in support of such opinions».

Einstein’s stance is surely reflected on Krysztof Meissner‘s words, he is professor of theoretical physics at Univeristy of Warsaw and one of greatest scientist of particle physics in Europe. Meissner has worked in the most important research centres of the world and at the moment he’s working at a “overstated” version of the standard model of universe, searching for a second «God particle», after Higgs Boson. In these days he has participated to “Cortile del dialogo” (Debate yard) in Warsaw, organised by the archdiocese with the Pontifical Council for Culture patronage.

In a recent interview about the difference between an atheist scientist and a believer one, the catholic Meissner hasn’t answered by denigrating those who don’t have faith, like Dawkins or Odifreddi, militant unbeliever activists who talk about science, usually do. He just explained that there are «no differences in making science, none. Both use same means, same mathematics. The difference resides in the approach to the final result. The laws which govern the universe are eventually simple, elegant, with some kind of perfection in their own essence. If someone doesn’t believe in God, he just certifies this perfection and stops right there. If someone is a believer, he can see a glare of God perfection. What really changes is basically the meaning assigned to the discovery, the perspective from which we can see them and so can appreciate them».

Meissner is now 52, he spent his entire life to study physics and he’s still enchanted by universal laws, «simply, elegant, perfect laws, which all the things respond to. A universe born by chance should be chaotic. If there were any laws, they could not be universal in time and space. It’d be a certain correlation measure between those things, but nothing more. The presence of universal laws, which is the condition of the opportunity of scientific reasearch, of laws that don’t change from time to time, is something astonishing, something that doesn’t stop to amaze me after so many years. I consider it more than a hint, almost an evidence of the presence of a trascendent  reality, a proof that there’s something bigger than the world we live in. What this trascendence is, a personal God or a pantheistic divinity, is a question we need faith to answer. But, I repeat, to me as scientist it is evident there is a dimension trascending the world».

He advises it needs to be careful to not «refer to divine intervention to fill the gap of our knowledge. It’s necessary to say that till the end of XIX century prevailed an idea of science , also originated by the influence of the French Revolution, an idea of science strongly deterministic […]. A determinism which concerned the man as well. All the phenomena were considered comprehensible and predictable. Quantum physics has broken the chains of that severe and simplicistic determinism and have made the world far more interesting. We could say it has recreated the conditions to medidate on the second great mistery which, according to me, incites to consider the existence of a trascendent reality and that escapes from determinism: the man free will».

One more advise we believers need to take to heart is the approach to the Big Bang which has not to be confused with the Genesis the Bible speaks about: «First of all because we don’t know if the Big Bang really had happened, or rather to say: our theoretical physics instruments allow us to understand the universe only up to a certain density spot, beyond that they can’t support us. It could have been a zero point, a beginning of everything, but we can rule out, going backwards, to enter in a sort of negative time, further the zero point. I’ve always considered hazardous make parallel the Big Bang and Genesis. Even the believers should never forget that the Bible is a revealed truth about the relation between man and God, and not about the relation between man and material reality».

Meissner’s considerations have been inserted in the page, here on this website, which collects the most interesting quotes about the relation between science and faith of several important modern and not modern scientists.

The editorial staff