Faith And Reason

Are those who lack faith thereby intelligent?
Are those who possess faith thereby unintelligent?

Vic Biorseth, http://www.Thinking-Catholic-Strategic-Center.com

We just returned from an all too brief little mini-vacation, and that vacation is what prompted these thoughts. It was long overdue; we needed some down time. And, rather than musky fishing in Michigan's Lake St. Clair, or a retreat to any of many monasteries or shrines, this time we took a mini-vacation that was a combination of worldly entertainment, and witnessing the natural glorification of God, through the beauty of His creation. Among our favorite activities are long drives in scenic country, and so the drive was for us a major part of the vacation. Luckily, I love to drive, and Marcie loves to ride, and that makes a lot of our little get-aways cheap and easy.

We took a leisurely and quite scenic seven or so hour drive, including food stops, to the Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg area, to spend a few days in a totally different environment. It's an area I highly recommend, for couples, for singles, for families. It's a place you would be quite comfortable taking your children, your parents, your pastor, your church group, your fellow workers or your neighbors. The major industry in the area is - entertainment, of all things. And the area is enhanced by the natural beauty and majesty of the Great Smoky Mountains, which is, quite simply, breathtaking.

But, perhaps, the most important thing about this area is the culture. Visiting such an area is like taking several large steps back in time, through our own Western cultural history. In our normal, work-a-day American world, and in most of our local cultural sub-systems and institutions, from entertainment to news media to political Parties to sitting government to education, expressions of Christian faith are hushed and hidden, where not openly censored, and not only in the public square. It is safe to say that, in all likelihood, in your place of work, in your children's place of education (unless it's a religious school) and in your local restaurants or shopping places, the holy name of Jesus Christ, spoken out loud, is so rare as to be shocking. In our major American TV entertainment, if Christianity is treated at all, it is trivialized, where it is not directly blasphemed.

Not so in the Smokies. There, I can testify, open Christianity predominates. You see lots of little signals, from bumper stickers to T-shirts, to little crosses or medals or religious objects adorning necks and ears and wrists and fingers. And, the spoken holy name of Jesus Christ is regularly, even commonly heard, off the lips of people on the street, hotel and restaurant workers, fellow vacationers, and - most significantly of all - entertainers. I would almost be willing to wager that you could not find, in this area, an entertainer or entertainment group whose performance did not include, somewhere within it, a positive reference to Christ or to His promise. The culture is steeped in open Christianity. Any singing star or group will include, somewhere in the performance, some Gospel music, or some deeply religious message. The whole population seems to ache with the need to give at least some small public testimony to His holy name. And most, or, at least, half of the entertainment in the area is, in and of itself, of a deeply religious nature.

I can't tell you how refreshing that is. Some Protestant ladies we met while hiking up Clingman's Dome told us that the Branson MO area is quite similar in that regard; we stored that away for future reference. This was not our first trip to Dollywood and the surrounding area, and the Smokies, but it was our first since I started this WebSite. We went to see Louise Mandrel again, but her theater had been sold; what we saw instead was a show called The Miracle. It was the whole life of Christ, done in a musical form, and it was great. The guy who played Lucifer was particularly good, both in the part of Satan, and in his outstanding singing voice. If you get the chance, go and see this musical.

It was a stark reminder that Satan is not in Hell - yet. He fell, not to Hell, but to Earth. He is here. He is of the world; indeed, he rules the world; he holds dominion over the world, until the end of the age. It is here, in the world, that the Church does battle with evil; it is here that the world does battle against the Church. Christ Himself repeatedly referred to these factions as the spirit, meaning His Gospel and His Church, in communion with Him, and the flesh, meaning the world, not in communion with Him, but standing in opposition to Him. [See Matt 26:14; Mark 14:38; John 1:12-13; 3:5-6;8;37; 4:24; 6:63; 14:17; Acts 2:38; 20:28; Rom 7:5-6;14;18;25; 8:6 and many, many more.]

So, what does all of this have to do with reason? Would not a well educated, rational, reasonable man reject all of this as superstitious nonsense? Are all of these Appalachian natives irrational people, or semi-literate back-woods bumpkins? Well, none of them that we met were. But, in the eyes of the worldly, super-rational, intellectual elite - or, another way of saying it might be, in the eyes of the flesh and of the world - there is no such thing as the Spirit and no such thing as God and so, yes, these people are all hopelessly irrational. All who are so irrational are incapable of properly taking care of themselves, and so, eventually, they must be taken care of by the Leviathan State. Meaning, precisely, The World.

Having returned home, to where The World and its message prevails in public and on local TV, and people tend to keep the message of The Spirit to themselves, I determined to look a little more deeply into the supposed rationality and superior intellectualism and cognitive abilities of those who most openly profess the message of The World and denigrate the message of The Spirit. Perhaps I can shed a little light on their positions. They keep these positions in the dark, by obfuscation and trickery; they describe their philosophical positions using Orwellian Newspeak in which they say one thing, but mean another. The real reason for this was explained long ago, in John 3:19-21:

And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

As I have said before, I am a grunt, not a diplomat, and I believe in direct, plain English. Which means that I oppose political correctness, wishy-washy language and making something bad look good. You may call me judgmental if it pleases you to do so. Use of good judgment, after all, is what differentiates adults from children and incompetents. What we all should be seeking, rather than a worldly and elitist intellectualism, is wisdom. Believers know that proper fear of God is just the very beginning point of wisdom, from Job 28:28; PS 11:10; Prov 9:10; Mic 6:9; and from a thousands of years old tradition of Judao-Christian teaching. The World rejects this teaching, because it rejects God. So The World, proud in its conceit, defines another, Godless, form of wisdom for itself, and claims it, exclusively, and calls itself wise.

And what, exactly, are these purely worldly, wise, intelligent and intellectual positions?

The SLIMC puts forward the silly-assed notion of the Human Population Problem, supports the unlimited abortion in America movement, scaremongers straw-villain eco-doom and promotes Leftist eco-hero politicians to-the-rescue, as seen in the Eco-Nazism page, and works for the defeat of American troops on the field of battle, as seen in the Vietnam War page.

Most of TTRSTF of the so-called scientific community embrace such clearly unscientific and empirically discredited theories as Darwinism, Freudianism and even Marxism as being, somehow, rationally and scientifically supported. To say nothing of their ongoing support and preaching of their totally invented HIV=AIDS=DEATH Hoax.

The United Nations, the World Bank, past American administrations, and private yet tax sponsored organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights League not only promote abortion, but seek to impose Artificial Contraception upon other foreign peoples as a prerequisite for them to gain international credit, economic benefits and aid. They seek to revive the horrors of Nazi eugenics, and the Nazi notion of "Life Unworthy of Continued Life", with individual continued life or "compassionate" death judgments to be left in the hands of government petty bureaucrats.

And it goes downhill from there. Where to begin? Well, let's look at the absolutely brilliant idiots who make decisions for the National Endowment for the Arts, or, NEA. You might remember their use of your Christian tax dollars to the profits of "artists" who put a crucifix in a jar of urine, titled it "Piss Christ" and called it art. Or the similar situation with the dung-covered Madonna. This in a nation of over 86% professed Christians, with a supposedly representative government, showing the absolute, unlimited power of the unelected bureaucrats. But, that was just for openers, for the filthy pigs of the NEA. Now, some might contend, filthy pigs might be a little strong. But I use the term, with apologies to real pigs everywhere, in the context of all the places in this WebSite that I refer to the cultural standards, sexual proclivities, discernment, discrimination and health practices of BMDFP and The World.

You might remember when the filthy pigs of the NEA spent your and my tax dollars for the profits of the "artist" and publicly displayed, for profit, photographs of homosexual perverted acts, including photographs of someone urinating into the open mouth of someone else. As the name filthy pigs is applied herein, the NEA has amply demonstrated that they are, just like the filthy pig, completely incapable of discerning the difference between a human mouth and a toilet. And, we can examine their supposed field of expertise, which is supposed to be art. With the Oglethorpe display insult on our national pride, the NEA proved conclusively that they consider photographic records of sick, demented, perverted acts to be, not only art, but high level art, worthy of National display and support.

You can look at the Homo-Nazism page to see the horrible health ramifications related to sexual perversions that are openly defended by the SLIMC and the rest of show-biz, most all of the Democratic Party, not a few of the Republican Party, academia, and even, believe it or not, much of the medical profession. Some of these horrible health issues are brought about by the perverted acts themselves, but most are brought about by the absolutely filthiness of the practices, including the ingestion of filth, and the introduction of filth in places it does not belong. These acts, and those who perform them, are filthy. Here I'm not talking solely about spiritual or moral filthiness; I'm speaking here mainly about actual, physical and hygienic filthiness.

Of course, the elitist worldly intellectuals won't call these filthy practices that they sponsor and champion and defend by their actual English names; they prefer to use gloss-over terms like tolerance and alternative lifestyles, and gay and lesbian practices, communities and neighbors. They refer to people like me, who speak the whole truth, as being mentally ill, with the rhetorically invented mental illness of homophobia, but they do not recognize or accept the term heterophobia when I apply it to them. In fact, when they hear it, they fly into a blue snit, and won't talk any more.

But, of course, The World, and its spokesmen, is steeped in an elite intellectualism and self-perceived wisdom. These purely worldly people see themselves as sophisticated and highly educated, and, perhaps most important, adult, adult being a category or division of the population for which particular activities and entertainments are reserved. See the masturbation industry page for a detailed explanation. Adult? Sophisticated? Intelligent? Intellectual?

These people don't know their ass from their sex organs. They don't know their mouth from their sex organs. They don't know their ass from their mouth. They don't know their mouth from a toilet. Their obsessive quest for more and more pleasure for it's own sake has made them myopic, stupid and filthy. Many of the same people who most clearly recognize the health threat of a high E. coli count in water near a public beach will perform the filthy acts discussed in the Homo Nazism page, with their mouth, or with their hands, and then touch their eyes or nose or mouth. They don't know love from sex; they confuse love with lust; they really don't know what love is.

You will know them, well before they get to middle age, by their physical symptoms. Their feigned sophistication will not cover this up forever. Male and female, homosexual and heterosexual, they will be the ones suffering from repeated anal trauma and bowel infections collectively known as gay bowel syndrome that will bring on permanent incontinence and the need to wear diapers everywhere for the rest of their shortened and unnatural lives. They will be the ones suffering from parasitic invasions of amebiasis, giardiasis and others. They will be the ones suffering from shigellosis and similar infections. If they regularly see a doctor, they will be the ones, unique in all the population, who worry continuously about all those abnormal and precancerous anal cells. They will be the ones most likely to have Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B or both.

And all of this is to say nothing at all about myriad venereal infections, common to those who practice illicit sex, unheard of among those who don't. These people will be the ones who periodically drop out of sight for days or weeks on end when they break out again in vast, unsightly, open, weeping herpes sores. Every year, some large number of women will die of cervical cancer brought on by HPV virus, which she got some twenty five years earlier by doing exactly what her public school teacher taught her to do, which was practicing safe sex. It just goes on and on. This is wise? This is sophisticated? These are the ones who consider themselves to be intellectually superior to the hicks from the Smokies?

We, like the natives of Appalachia, are supposed to be a leaven in the larger society. They are doing a much better job of it than we are. If you get the chance to go there, take it. And take a good Christian lesson back home with you. Note that the lesson will be taught, predominantly, by Protestants. Now, as a Catholic, I know that I have to take the full Christian Revelation, not just a part of it. And I know that the full Christian Revelation is most fully and correctly ordered within the Roman Catholic Church. However, His grace falls on everyone, inside and outside the Church. Imperfect faith and incomplete faith is still faith. Be nice to the Protestants, because you're likely to see a whole lot of them in Heaven, if indeed you make it. The fact that we are not in full communion with all other Christians does not mean that they are not going to make it; Christ died for all. As a Catholic, I am not free to pick and choose what articles of faith I will accept or reject; it's a whole package deal. I can't choose a church based on how it accommodates me; I am called to accommodate God, as His anointed Church instructs me and hands on to me the one and only complete, original, unchanged Gospel message.

The important thing is this: a free human will is an absolutely essential component in the Justification process. We each must come to Him (or open up to Him) willingly, one step at a time, or, occasionally, in a flying leap. When a Protestant and a Catholic and a Jew sit down and speak of things spiritual, every one of them is on the right track. Each, in his own way, recognizes, to some degree, the need to turn away from the World and toward the Spiritual. Now, because I am Catholic, I cannot compromise on any of the articles of my faith. I take the whole enchilada. And so, for me, ecumenism is somewhat different than it might be for people of other faiths, who seek compromise. Yet ecumenism is still possible.

An example involves reaction to the January 1972 Roe v Wade decision. When that ruling came down, the Roman Catholic Church stood absolutely alone in the world, refusing to back down on the absolute sanctity of innocent human life. Only the Church was highly vocal and publicly challenging on the topic. Some five years later, the Baptists, and most of the Evangelical denominations joined the Pro Life cause, and it continues to grow today. If you look at the history of it, if Holy Mother Church had not taken this strong public stand - which, by the way, was not strongly supported by all of America's bishops - and not backed down, the Pro Life movement would have simply died a silent death, and the World would have won. But millions of Protestants awoke to the message, and untold thousands of Preachers changed their direction and fired up their congregations. As a result, the Culture of Life is on the rise, and the Culture of Death is on the ropes, at least here in America. That is what I call good ecumenism. If you are right, you cannot back down; others will see the rightness of the position, and join you.

The World accepts only rational, worldly proofs. The Spirit insists that we bend our will to accept what we cannot ever rationally know and understand. Pascal told us that the heart has its reasons which the mind does not know. Faith is an interior thing that cannot be understood by the World. To become worldly is to willfully reject the Spirit; to begin to become Spirit-filled is to begin to willfully reject the world, and its unnatural teachings. The fact that the world does not believe in Satan probably pleases Satan a great deal, and gives him more and more ground. Because the World, delicately and slyly lead along by Satan, rejects the Spirit and the existence of God, and the existence of Satan, it ignores what the Church has to say.

Even Catholic education, at least in the majority of American dioceses, cranks out nominal Catholics rather than thinking Catholics. Because critical thinking has been largely dropped by the entire education establishment, and students are taught what, rather than how, to think, classical empiricism and science is virtually dead, replaced by scientism, and people no longer objectively and properly inquire after truth.

The Liberal-Leftist, Worldly agenda always seems in ascendancy in politics. Why? Because those who seek office in the first place are always those who love government; those who would reduce or shrink government don't like it, and so they don't seek office. So the government lovers compete with each other for the seats of government, and the winners invariably seek to grow the government and migrate power from the people to the government. That's why even the most conservative of our seated politicians seems liberal to most of us. Wilson said that government governs best which governs the least. He was a rarity.

The Liberals are, as Ann Coulter said, Godless. I think she put it too mildly. They oppose God. To be Liberal is to be anti-Church. It is not possible to support the things they support and simultaneously entertain any notion of the existence of God. They exhibit the ethos of BMDFP, the World, and Satan. They exhibit the cultural standards and moral rules of the red assed apes, the sexual proclivities of mongrel dogs, and discernment and discrimination of filthy pigs. Their whole guiding ethos is absolutely foreign to Jews and Christians.

Note this well. The two titles that Jesus gave to Satan in John 8:44 were murderer, and liar. Any time you hear any worldly doctor or other "expert" saying that use of your mouth and or of your lower bowel as an alternative sexual organ is in any way a healthy thing to do, and not abnormal, you will be listening to a murderous liar. Practicing these absolutely filthy and perverse activities can cause you to sicken and die, and will most certainly act to shorten your life. People who practice these acts, and those who recommend them and publicly defend them have departed from the higher dignity to which they are called. We are all called to a higher dignity than this.

The call of The World is to eventually accept domination by the elite, for your own good. The World says, this is all there is, and then you die. The Siren call of The Flesh is pleasure; more pleasure; extended pleasure; enhanced pleasure; extended, enhanced and heightened pleasure. Worldly Scientism and Legalism are working hard to eliminate, at least in your imagination, and in public propaganda, the natural consequences of all that pleasure, such as pregnancy, parasites, bacterial and viral infections, venereal diseases, shotgun weddings and murders, sexual abuse and predation, and all the other things that inevitably increase as The World gains ground. In pleasure do you find fulfillment. And then you die. Try not to die before you get your fulfillment.

The call of The Spirit involves putting pleasure in its proper place. The Spirit says, this is not all there is; I set before you life everlasting. The Spirit calls for sacrifice; a sense of commitment, and of duty and responsibility. These things are associated with honor. To whatever degree is necessary, it means a turning away from The World and from worldly things, to give God His due, and to defend and minister to the needs of your family, your country, your neighbor and your culture. Pleasure comes last, not first. In honor do you find fulfillment. In faith do you find everlasting life.

What's your position? Are you capable of doing good critical thinking? If you are Catholic, are you a thinking Catholic? Can you still recognize natural bodily functions, including sexual ones, as opposed to those that directly oppose nature? Can you discern between cleanliness and filthiness?

Do you have faith?

Then get out there in the open and defend it. And if His truth is in your heart, then let His name be on your lips. In public.

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