CATHOLICISM and its crafty plan to overthrow and manipulate reason
Catholic doctrine is that faith and reason come together and compliment each other. When it sees the trouble caused by some religion in the world, it warns how faith without reason or correct reason can be dangerous. Faith and non-thinking or half-thinking can be very dangerous. And you never know if such faith is dangerous until it is too late. If what a religion says you must believe is false or suspect then any faith cannot really fit reason. Reason only fits faith that is true or obviously probably true. So faith and reason is a bad combination if the faith rests on dubious evidence or is man-made or false. A faith that is truly interested in getting the best out of faith and reason and uniting them in a wholesome way will be evidence focused. That sadly describes none of the faiths that exist on the planet right now.
The number of people who are intelligent in religious matters is rather small. The number that use their intelligence is small too. And most of these may be intelligent in one thing and not another. For example, the useless writer may be a genius-level mathematician. Religion though it may extol reason thrives on the fact that most people don't know how to think, think wrongly, or are too lazy or busy to think.
To be healthy persons, we must try to use our reason for it is a part of us and given so that we may protect ourselves from danger and error. No genuinely good person disparages reason, regardless of charm.
The Roman Catholic Church says that it is the only reasonable religion. It says however that reason on its own is not enough and reason needs to be supplemented by faith. It is not true that we need faith and reason. We need belief and reason. We cannot live without belief. But we can live without faith. You need to believe your doctor will do a good job or you will not go near her. As for faith in her, you cannot have that for you don't know her. Faith has connotations of a personal relationship. Your life might be unpleasant without faith but it is livable.
Suppose you do need faith. Then this faith need not be Catholic or even religious. You can make faith and reason compatible but though there may be no way of finding any contradiction between them that does not mean they are really compatible. We make mistakes in reasoning. We may use reason carefully and we may work out a faith and get the two to agree. But the faith is based on our perception. Reason is said to be based on our perception too. It can be a little if we don’t understand or apply its principles. But faith is not as mathematical or structured or disciplined as reason is so it will totally depend on perception. If you get faith and reason to agree it does not follow that the faith is really reasonable. You cannot say, “My faith is reasonable.” You can only say, “I hope my faith is reasonable. I intend it to be.” Christian apologetics then is definitively refuted because it claims that Christian faith is reasonable.
The Church of Rome says that faith is a gift from God and though its good to use reason to show that the faith is credible and correct, nobody can be argued into the Christian religion and only divine influence can effect that. Having faith is a miracle.
The Church of Rome claims to believe that human reason when correctly used is to be seen as inspired by God. But inspiration is not reason and reason is not inspiration. If God puts thoughts in your head that means you are not reasoning then. The Church is trying to cover up its opposition to reason. Its devotion to reason is lip-service.
To say reason is divinely inspired is to argue, "My reasoning has passed all the logical tests so it is correct. It is correct for God helped me." This is irrational for there is no need to bring God into it. If you pass the logical tests, then it's not God that makes you right but the tests and the facts. And to say you are right for God helped you is to deny the value of the tests and facts. They are only window dressing. You might as well not bother with the logical tests.
The Catholic Church says we have a duty to let God help us reason and it is a sin not to. The regard for reason in the Church's attitude is superficial and cosmetic. It is a hidden way of opposing free thinking and reason.
Most people are irrational. This causes problems for the right of freedom of speech. In principle, we should be allowed to say what we want, even if it is hate speech, as long as the other side can be presented. But too many people will not think rationally about it. Religion does not emphasise reason which means it encourages this problem. It does not help people to reason.
Where did reason come from? Christians say it comes from God. It is obvious that even if there is no God, that the sun cannot rise in a non-existence universe. It is obvious that if there is no God, it is still true that kicking a baby will hurt it and cuddling it will not. So reason does not come from God. Reason is reason regardless of whether there is a God or not. To say it comes from him is absurd. He might be rational but reason is not his creation. It is abstract - it does not need creation. You don't need God to justify reason. If you say you do, you are re-inventing reason. The end result is not reason even if it acts like it. Christians object that if reason does not come from God and if he does not put it in us, then we are just here by chance or evolution or both. Evolution is concerned with survival of the fittest. The Christians say our brains then are not developed to help us find truth but just for survival if evolution and natural selection are true. So they say that you need to believe in God to really respect human logic and reason. But this is irrational. We cannot believe in God as a prop in order to believe in reason. If reason needs a prop then it is not reason. Reason needs to work out if God exists so we need to presuppose reason is correct whether there is a God or not. If we treat reason as a prop then it just a methodical structure we have invented. It is not reason. Also, if our brains are about survival that does not mean they are not about truth. Survival is impossible without an ability to perceive truth. Truth and survival go together. You cannot run away from the crocodile unless your reason tells you its teeth can rip you apart and that you must therefore run.
Religion may say it encourages reasoning but it does tell you that you need to hear God in your heart telling you he is there. So reason is just a tool to get to the place where you think God is communicating his existence to you. The trouble is that people who think they are guided by God end up more or less immune to reason.
Reason says that pain is to be avoided. Reason tells you not to torture the baby for it will be better off left alone. Thus our sense of right and wrong comes from reason. It has nothing to do with God because reason has nothing to do with God.
Reason comes down to one rule: the law of non-contradiction. A thing cannot be a and not a in the same way at the same time. Christians sometimes criticise intellectuals and people who find errors in their religion but that must be recognised for what it is: opposition to truth and obscurantism.
The Church says that though we have rational grounds for belief in divine revelation, reason cannot tell us everything. There are things that we cannot submit our reason to but only our ignorance. Thus to expect reason to give us all the answers is to abuse reason. Real reason is grounded in what is realistic. We can be grateful for those teachings for they are correct. But the Church does not take them as seriously as it would have you believe.
Take miracles. If we should not submit our ignorance to irrefutable and convincing miracle claims, then we should submit it to nothing! Yet the Church tells us to have faith that the events really are supernatural miracles. We should submit our ignorance to the origin of all things but the Church says no and that we must accept the notion that the answer is that God made all things from nothing. Creation is a miracle and like all miracles, we should submit our ignorance if there is no evidence of fraud or error. By the way, there are no totally convincing miracles. Each miracle claim leaves room for doubting that it really was magical or supernatural. You cannot have evidence that a miracle happened. You can only have evidence that there was no fraud or error. That does not prove that the miracle happened. The Catholic claim that miracles show it is the true Church is a shameless untruth.
Everybody who wants to manipulate you hopes that if your reason warns you that something is not correct or right that you will dismiss it or try to reason it away. They hope you will remember that reason is sometimes wrong. But even if reason is wrong, it is still the right method for it is the best method we have even if it is not perfect. So if there is a God who gives us reason, then it is a gift from God. Everything has to be assessed by it – even your feelings are looked at through your thinking. You are assessing anyway so be sure you are doing it correctly!!
The reality is that reason can and could oppose truth and tell us to adhere to truth that may in fact not really be the truth. The reason it should is because it will still be mostly right and still be the best method we have. So we have to be cautious and realise we may not be as rational as we think we are. Anything that looks irrational or possibly irrational needs examination and should demand it.
The Church is against reason it is against truth and should not be supported. It knows it should embrace reason but it distorts it at every turn. You hear some assertions. Logic cannot tell if they are true. It only tells you what follows from them. Logic only shows an argument is valid not that it is true. Arguments from logic that God must exist are fraudulent same as arguments that anything must exist. Logic is tautological. Logic is able to show that if religion claims to be logical if it is or is not. So logic can refute a religion that is based on false claims about logic or on the abuse of logic. And logic refutes Catholicism.
