Faith, Reason and Regensberg

Over at Weaselzippers you can find multiple links to stories from the Muslim world of cruelty to Christians for perceived slights and to the killing of apostates from the Muslim faith. I usually don't bring this up, not out of any political correctness, but out of the belief that my readers are already aware, and it is such an everyday occurrence. I would challenge us to think about the nature of the faith that permits or condones such excess. Defenders of Islam may say that such acts are not the product of "true Islam" whatever that would be, but I don't see widespread denunciation, so I assume there is theological justification for this. Pope Benedict asked the same question, more eloquently in Regensburg lecture in September 2006, not long after his election.

In my church, the saying I hear most often is "God is Good." With the response being "All the time." In Islam, I believe the most frequent phrase is "Allahu Akbar" meaning "God is Great." The difference in emphasis is important. The Christian sees God first and foremost as good, all powerful, but defined by goodness and reason. The start of the Gospel of John states that in the beginning the λόγος, (logos) was with God. Logos can mean either the Word or reason in the Greek. Ours is a religion of both faith and reason. We see the coming of the Messiah at a time when both a knowledge of the Jewish faith and the idea of Greek inquiry were both known throughout the Roman empire. As the Pope states:

A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

Our is a good God, who has chosen to be bound by the promises he puts in His Word, and we can therefor use reason to deduce his nature and character, even if not fully.

However, in Islam, we see reverence for the all powerful nature of Allah. The Pope states:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

I once read that this meant that in Muslim teaching Allah could even require idolatry of us. This has profound implications for a dialog with Islam, because a dialog requires that we be able to agree to points of reason (dialog comes from διά and λόγος, there's that word again words and reason).

Additionally, the belief that Allah's will is involved in everything that happens, that rationality and causality are mere figments, leads to outcomes that are themselves not reasonable. Stephen Richter, in Taki's Magazine stated this in June 2007,

This moral fatalism helps to explain why many American Muslims—even some of those who seemed genuinely horrified by what had occurred—were unable or unwilling to condemn the September 11 attacks directly. If Allah approved the actions of the hijackers by causing the towers to fall, then to condemn the September 11 attacks is essentially an act of impiety. It is one of the many ironies of Islam that the Muslim insistence on the radical freedom of the will can lead to a moral fatalism which those who wish to wage jihad against the United States can use in order to silence dissent among their fellow Muslims.

Just as Christians believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, Muslims see themselves as a reflection of Allah. And as we wish to conform our will to God’s Will, they attempt to conform their wills to Allah. But here, the similarities end. If Allah’s will, unlike God’s, is not bound up with rationality, then the discerning of that will takes a very different shape. In attempting to understand God’s Will, Christians can turn to the world around us, to natural law, to history, to tradition. We see the rationality—the consistent reasonableness—of God’s Will in the world that He created. But in Islam, the appearance of order is only that—an appearance. To the extent that the created world seems rational, it is only because Allah wishes it to appear so. His will could change at any moment, however—and the new order, or lack thereof, that he would create would be just as “right” as this one.

Hope you had a great weekend, I will return to political blogging tomorrow.

The Pope Analyzes the Market Crash

And he has a point. I have not often agreed with previous Popes' concerns with the lack of morality of free markets, but Pope Benedict, in a 1985 presentation titled "Money, Markets and Ethics" authored when he was Cardinal Ratzinger had the following to say:

But the damage caused by the lack of morality of market players could end up being fatal for the system itself. "The decline of such discipline" – the moral discipline which is the product of "strong religious convictions" – "can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse."

How prescient. All market economies are built on trust. We trust that competition causes prices for similar goods to be similar when we shop. Investors trust that published financial information of companies is more or less accurate. Lenders trust that borrowers accurately describe their ability to repay loans. Sometimes trust is aided by regulation. More often it is the product of the free market, where untrustworthy actors suffer through loss of reputation and therefor loss of business.

However, the market discipline tends to break down when transactions are one-off, i.e. not likely to be repeated. This is why garage sales have to deeply discount used goods compared to Ebay. You are probably never returning to that garage sale, but the Ebay seller has a reputation to maintain. Standard game theory tells us that there is far less incentive to be honest in transactions where there is no likelihood of repeat business. This is where a culture of honesty allows commerce to proceed with low transaction costs, because it is likely that both sides are getting fair value. Ethics and honesty have a positive network effect on the economy.

We can look at how failing ethics works in the housing market, filled with many one-off transactions. Many borrowers succumbed to greed and failed to disclose risks in their ability to repay, betting that a rising market would bail them out. Mortgage dealers set up loans without due diligence, knowing they could sell the loans to banks. Banks gave up on due diligence, knowing they could pass the loans to Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae's executives were earning fat bonuses cooking the books, and hiding loan risk while selling securitized loans to Wall Street. Wall Street was just looking at all the fat profits being made with an ever rising housing market. Greed and dishonesty work their way through this entire chain of transactions. Not by everyone, but by enough that eventually the system collapses, just as the Pope predicts.

Morality has consequences for society and nations. Many on the left decry moral judgement as judgemental, but clearly it is necessary for the good outcome of sustainable economic growth. Most Americans don't have to be told and wouldn't even be persuaded that honesty is the best policy just because of a little economics lesson. But the left seems to need object lessons like this, because they instinctively reject tradition. There is a reason for traditional morality, whether you believe it is due to God's will or natural selection, it works for both individuals and society.