ULTIMATELY THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AS IF AND DOES:

Reason, Science, and the Future of Civilization (Camillo Ruini, March 7, 2007, Chiesa)

Habermas pursues with personal and intellectual sincerity an alliance between secularized and "enlightened" reason and theological reason, but in reality he conceives this alliance on starkly unequal bases.

In fact, Habermas maintains that while theological reason must accept the authority of post-metaphysical secular reason, this latter, while not setting itself up as judge of religious truths "ultimately" accepts as "reasonable" only that which shows that it can be translated into its own terms, and thus, in the end, it does not accept religious truths themselves on the basis of their transcendent principle (the God who reveals himself) and in their substantial and characteristic content.

In the same vein, "Jerusalem" is accepted alongside "Athens" as part of the historical genesis of secular reason, but not as reasonable any longer. In the final analysis, Habermas does not break out from that "closing off" upon itself which Joseph Ratzinger sees as the limitation of a merely empirical and calculating form of reason.

But the perspective of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is, by contrast, much more open. In fact, in Regensburg and more broadly in other texts he maintains decisively that the origin of the universe is the creating Lógos, on the basis of examining the structures and presuppositions of scientific knowledge, and in particular of the correspondence that cannot help but exist between mathematics - which is a creation of our intelligence - and the real structures of the universe, given that, if this correspondence did not exist, our mathematical forecasts and our technologies could not function. Such a correspondence implies that the universe itself is structured in a rational manner, and poses the great question of whether there must not exist an original intelligence, the common source of this "rational" reality and our reason. [...]

But he is fully aware not only of the fact that these kinds of considerations and arguments go beyond the realm of scientific knowledge and are placed at the level of philosophical inquiry, but also of the fact that on the same philosophical level, the creating Lógos is not the object of an apodictic demonstration, but remains "the best hypothesis," an hypothesis that demands on the part of man and his reason "that he renounce a position of dominion, and take the risk of listening humbly."

In concrete terms, especially in the current cultural climate, man is not able by his own power to make completely his own this "best hypothesis": he remains, in fact, the prisoner of a "strange penumbra" and of the urge to live according to his own interests, leaving God and ethics aside. It is only revelation, the initiative of God who in Christ manifests himself to man and calls him to himself, that makes us truly capable of overcoming this penumbra.

Precisely the perception of such a "strange penumbra" makes it such that the most widespread attitude among nonbelievers today is not exactly atheism - perceived as something that exceeds the limits of our reason no less than faith in God does - but agnosticism, which suspends judgment about God inasmuch as He is not rationally knowable.

THE BEST HYPOTHESIS: TO LIVE AS IF GOD EXISTS

The reply that Joseph Ratzinger gives to this problem brings us back toward the reality of life: in his judgment, in fact, agnosticism cannot actually be lived out in practice; it is an impracticable program for human life. The reason for this is that the question of God is not only theoretical, but is eminently practical, impacting all areas of life.

In practice, I am, in fact, forced to choose between two alternatives, already identified by Pascal: either to live as if God did not exist, or to live as if God did exist and were the most decisive reality of my existence. This is because God, if He does exist, cannot be an accessory to be removed or added without changing anything, but is instead the origin, meaning and end of the universe, and of man within it.

If I act according to the first alternative, I adopt a de facto position of atheism, and not only of agnosticism; if I decide in favor of the second alternative, I adopt the position of a believer. The question of God is, therefore, unavoidable. It is interesting to note the profound similarity that exists in this regard between the question of man and the question of God: both, because of their supreme importance, must be faced with all the rigor and commitment of our intelligence, but both are always eminently practical questions as well, inevitably connected to our concrete decisions in life.

Precisely in considering the believer's perspective as both the best hypothesis and one that implies a free choice and does not exclude the rational possibility of different hypotheses, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI shows himself as substantially more open than Jürgen Habermas and the "secular reason" that Habermas claims to represent: this form of reason, in fact, accepts as "reasonable" only that which shows that it can be translated into its own terms.

In this "absolutization" of secular reason, we have a sort of counterpart, on the theoretical level, to the "dictatorship" or absolutization of relativism that is displayed when individual freedom, according to which everything is in the end relative to the subject, is set up as the ultimate criterion to which every other position must be subject.