I just like the implicit assertion
I just like the implicit assertion that reason has failed. Consider the litany of pundits talking about the state of education in the US. As the average education of Americans falls, I expect religious need to rise. History has shown that things generally work that way.
Essentially, all this article tells me is what I already knew:
-
The American people have become so poorly educated that they are simply incapable of understanding the full implications of cooperative society.
And one of the quotes of the year:
They haven't learned anything about religion, at home or abroad. They don't know who Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are, even though those co-authors have sold 42 million copies of their books.
Okay, okay, okay ... story time. I'll keep it short.
So I'm flying from New Orleans to Seattle on Southwest Airlines, via Houston, Salt Lake, and Spokane. In the seat beside me flying from New Orleans to Houston is a very professor-like gentleman with bad teeth and glasses, reading a copy of Boorstein's
The Americans. Beside him sits his wife, reading a LaHaye novel. As the plane approaches Houston, the woman puts down the book and stares off into space until the stewardess comes along to take the empty cups and so forth. The gentleman beside me, emerging from his studious isolation, turns to his wife and says, "How was your book?" She turns to him, eyes alight and says, "It was really good. And the whole time, I didn't know how it would end!"
Okay ... so ... God versus the Devil, and she doesn't know how it ends? God versus the Devil according to a two-bit Christian propagandist and
she doesn't know how it ends?
Seriously, the LaHaye phenomenon is perfect evidence of
why people are freaking out, of
why people, as I would assert, are so poorly educated as to be unable to cope with reality. And I've actually tried to read one of those things before; it was marginally less subtle than a William Shatner
Tek novel.
So he has a point:
During the centuries when secularism seemed the wave of the future, Western intellectuals developed social-science models of extraordinary persuasiveness. Marx explained history through class struggle, other economists explained it through profit maximization. Professors of international affairs used conflict-of-interest doctrines and game theory to predict the dynamics between nation-states.
All these models are seductive and partly true. This country has built powerful institutions, such as the State Department and the CIA, that use them to try to develop sound policies. But none of the models can adequately account for religious ideas, impulses, and actions, because religious fervor can't be quantified and standardized. Religious motivations can't be explained by cost-benefit analysis.
It's true. You cannot figure religious fervor objectively. Since the diversity of any religious congregation means that each person will individually believe themselves correct, there is no conventional base from which to begin collecting data. Applying any model is difficult enough in the case of a social science, but in terms of religion, it is unwise. One must invoke certain mental health ideas when dealing with religions.
But if anyone has ever followed Sciforums debates on God, the Devil, Heaven and Hell, or Redemption in general, they've probably noticed that one of the chief reasons that questions still persist is that the faithful even disagree about these things to the point of making any attempted examination of the issue pointless. One can only build statistical reflections. Trying to predict arbitrary disagreement with reality is a little like trying to put out a fire with a cup of gasoline--it really shouldn't be done at peril to the self.
However, I disagree with the article author that we should simply roll over and quit trying. Being human is a lot of things; people are so desperate to understand what being human means that they will invent detailed myths and then kill each other over those myths in order to pretend they know what it is to be human. I will know what it means to be human if only for a second and it kills me to do so. That's a little bit like promising to bring you God before I die; unwise, but in the case of being human, I think it's worth the effort. So naturally the one thing I'm not going to do is just shrug, pretend I'm too stupid, and give up. I don't understand why religious advocates--specifically, Christian advocates--generally want people to simply give up on the human endeavor and undertake mere existence. What a waste of brain and thought and passion and humanity!
Reason has not failed; people just haven't gotten used to the idea that reasonable processes can be larger than their understanding. Life is a learning process, and when I see something that confuses me, I would rather learn what it is. Reason has not failed. The people giving up on reason have failed. They have failed themselves first and foremost, and tread back to God like puppies with tails between legs. And after that long hard confusion, it's always nice to hear a preacher wax philosophical about the Prodigal Son, or the Wheel of the Year, or the Cycle of the Hunter. Anything that welcomes them home to surrender.
The saying goes that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Likewise with reason: in order to be reasonable, you must pay the toll of knowng enough to be reasonable. The price of reason is eternal learning, ceaseless curiosity, and comfort enough with yourself to not sign it over to someone else's responsibility.
thanx,
Tiassa
