Let us speak of Faith and Reason

Come in; sit here; let me get you some refreshment.

Once, quite some time back, one of my neighbors clued me into how he had "saved" me from the torments of some of these potentially forceful evangelizers. When they rang his doorbell, he got rid of them quickly, and while he was at it, pointed out my house and advised them to avoid it, because it was occupied by devout Catholics who would not like to hear what they had to say. So they never even rang my bell. When I tried to gently explain that I don't mind these visits, in fact, I enjoy them, his changing facial expression indicated that he was taking a different meaning than I was trying to communicate. He was now seeing me as the spider, and the door-to-door evangelists as flies. From then on, he would encourage them to go to my house, anticipating that I might convert them.

Heavy sigh. Well, however they come to my door, I will talk to them. But it is extremely unlikely that any of them will be converted to Catholicism. They are already exceptionally strong in their faith, which is why they proactively knock on other people's doors to pass it on. None that I've ever talked to appeared ready to give up their faith, although many if not most were somewhat shaken to meet a Catholic with a Bible and a Concordance and a solid theological background. The most I've been able to do is plant some seeds in some reasonable minds; the Holy Ghost takes it from there.

All that being said, it must be recognized that there are no absolutes regarding the relationship between faith and reason as applied to individual minds, and collective faith-minds, if I may use that term and apply it to any given religion. I'm sure that on any given day you may find an unreasonable Catholic, or an unreasonable Jew, or an unreasonable Lutheran. You may even be able to point out an unreasonable rabbi or preacher or priest or bishop. Still, the statement may be made correctly that, in general, Jews and Christians are reasonable people who are tolerant enough to listen to another view. Some, perhaps, out of mere politeness, but more out of their human nature, which draws them to reason.

Discounting light acquaintances and those known only in fairly formal business relationships, I have known very few people of "non-American" faiths. I've known one Hindu, who seemed a quite reasonable woman. Most of the Vietnamese I've known were Catholics; a few were Buddhist; all were reasonable. But Jews and Christians share a special bond stemming from the Old Testament that makes us more at home in each other's company than that of others. Once, we were all as One, but then, Jesus came to Earth. As we read in Luke, beginning in 12:49,

"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

And yet, we are called to follow Him, regardless of resistance by friends, relatives, parents, even spouses. And, responding to His call, possessing faith, many who answer the call are still impelled to try and reason with others, out of love. Some will not hear; some will become increasingly belligerent and less reasonable on the matter. Nobody likes a Jesus freak. Thus are we seemingly destined to be divided into two folds, one against the other. Some are better persuaders than others; some are better listeners than others; many will not speak; many will not hear.

In general, even after two thousand years, we can still sit down and talk about it, or, even if the topic is off limits, we can at least be polite to each other when we meet. So it is between Christians and Jews; so it is between Protestants and Catholics; so it is between members of houses divided by faith differences. We share in common some very important things, chief among them, faith, although it may vary in it's expression, and tradition, and a common guiding moral ethos.

Faithlessness Versus Reason

As we move away from the faith community and into the realm of the SLIMC, and of general Secularism, dialectic materialism, Marxism and other forms of radical atheism, we see reason increasingly overshadowed by intense ideology. You will find few more faithful devotees of their faith-belief belief system than confirmed atheists.

Believing Christians and Jews can discuss and consider Aquinas' Five Proofs of God, but a confirmed atheist will not even listen to Aquinas' good and sound arguments. They know that God does not exist; the fact that they cannot prove that He does not exist does not faze them in the least. They are quite certain, by faith alone, in the absolute absence of any proof, that God does not exist. I think we will all agree that this is a quite unreasonable position, and that these people, having no real argument at all, appear to lack reason.

Which partially explains their obvious intolerance and insensitivity to the faith-systems of the majority. They speak of us as if they fear us; they refer to us as the Religious Right Wing when what we are is an overwhelming majority of the population. To them, any believer is suspect, and not to be trusted, due solely to having faith. Only the faithless are to be trusted. (They do not see atheism as a faith system, or themselves as faithful people.) In open defiance of our First Amendment Constitutional right to freedom of religious expression, they seek to legally religiously cleanse the American public square of any and all Christian expression. And they do so while demonizing us as some kind of tiny minority radical fringe group, like them.

They oppose majority rule by surreptitiously commandeering and using the courts and using them to strike-down representative law and "interpret", i.e., illegally legislate, new and unrepresentative law, thus getting their minority way while avoiding the ballot box. They use the filibuster to avoid majority legislation, and when legislation passes anyway, they still have their courts, who are mandated by them to overturn it, if they don't like it. Shut up and get on the cattle car.

The politically astute politicians of the Left will pretend and play-act at religiosity for the benefit of the electorate, but for the most part they are not only atheist, but proactively secularist. Dems will demonize any sermon or statement from any pulpit that sounds the least bit political, with one and only one exception: Democratic Party candidates will enter, join in with, and hold actual political rallies in Black Protestant Churches. In puffing up their White Sugar-Daddy roles as champions of the completely disenfranchised poor, simple Black folk who, you know, just couldn't possibly make it on their own if it wasn't for the Leftie-Dems on office raising taxes, increasing welfare and paying off professional socio-political extortionists like Jackson and Sharpton.

But, they are pretending. Watch them and listen to them, and you will see that they are as phony as three dollar bills. Reason has no place here. When publicly pressed, they will go into faithful mode, invoking a strange, super-sensitive, gender-neutral, tolerant, inclusive, ecologically-aware, politically-correct, wishy-washy god that no one ever heard of before. They openly pretend - actually, I think some of them really believe - that there is something somewhere in our Constitution that makes it illegal for a politician to say an explicitly Catholic or Jewish prayer in public. But there is no such thing anywhere in our Constitution.

With the sole exception of Black Preachers, Black congregations and Black Churches, the Dems and their courts may be expected to go after any hint of politicking from any pulpit, any preacher or any Church grounds, with a meat axe, and with the IRS, and to do everything in their power to permanently shut them down and put them out of business. That's how atheism reasons. They show, again and again, that they hate us, for what we believe in. And the same goes for any American Black who doesn’t fit the mythical stereotype of disenfranchisement but is actually successful in life; if he is conservative, he will be demonized by the Left as an Uncle Tom or an Oreo Cookie, even with (shudder!) racial slurs that would never be publicly tolerated if applied to a "proper", i.e., Leftie-Dem Black.

Reason departs when atheism enters. As one becomes more atheistic, he becomes less reasonable. If confirmed atheists were reasonable, you could get them to consider the possibility of the other-worldly, but that cannot be done; they will not consider it. They know, by faith alone, in the absence of any evidence for their argument, that God does not exist. The faith of atheism precludes all critical thinking and all reason. If you dig beneath the surface, you will find that just about all very strong atheists are quite rigid ideologues of one sort or another.

Islam Versus Reason

As I said elsewhere, first, in the Islam and the Jews page, I never paid enough attention to Islam until September 11, 2001. At that point, it got my complete and undivided attention. As a thinking Catholic, I looked into it and tried to understand why anyone anywhere would hate innocent Americans so much as to be moved to randomly murder them in such a massive way. I tried to be objective about it, and to apply reason to it, but it didn't take too long to begin seeing the unreasonableness of the Islamic position. The more I looked, the less reason I found.

Fast-forward to today and we find the SLIMC and the rest of the Democrats seemingly in support of the Jihadists and against the position of America. How's that for reason. Shortly after their leakers cherry-picked one German sentence out of a scholarly papal address to German professors in order to incite Islam to violence and simultaneously trash the new Pope, some Leftie-Dem leaker cherry-picked a short paragraph out of yet another classified intelligence report, and then misrepresented the whole report to say that the world is less safe now due solely to war in Iraq.

Which is kind of like saying, during the Battle Of The Bulge, that if only we hadn't invaded Europe at Normandy, the war wouldn't have intensified to this level today. The sheer stupidity is flabbergasting. Meanwhile, all of Islam proves my point, over and over again, with all Islamic leaders calling for, if not the death of the Pope, then strong apologies, and if not strong apologies, then detailed, long, careful, and, of course, super-sensitive explanations of the history he quoted.

Which means, I guess, that they cannot read history, or are incapable of understanding the written word. History needs no explanation to anyone with a modicum of cognitive ability. History is history. It stands on its own. Why can't they just read it for themselves without having to have it explained to them? Are they really that dumb? Well -- it looks like the answer to that question is, yes, they are.

We have Islamic calls for Jihad against the Pope, Catholicism and all of "Crusader" Western civilization, which they declare to be fully allied and completely aligned in a well-known world-wide plot to destroy all of Islam by force. Which I found a little surprising; and if it's true, let me state here that I am deeply wounded and offended that I have be left out of this giant, world-wide alliance. Why, I haven't even been asked. How embarrassing. All of Western Civilization is ganging up on Islam, and I'm the only one left out of it, and I didn't even know about it.

A Jew once asked me what you get when you put two Jews together, and he said the answer was, an argument. I can testify to many, many hearty arguments with fellow Catholics. But then, we have all the other major divisions between denominations and so forth. It's just unreasonable to assume that you could ever get all of any population to agree on something strong enough to physically fight over it.

It is just as impossible today to rally all of Western Civilization to war against Islam as it is to rally all of Islam to war against the West, or, against anyone. It simply cannot be done. You can get lots and lots of Islamic Jihadists, who have committed their lives to external Jihad, to go to war somewhere; but, now as always, those committed external Jihadists are a small minority within Islam. And, no matter how much the majority within Islam supports the Jihadists, they will not, themselves, commit themselves to a lifetime of external Jihad.

It's been proved enough times that practically whole populations can be called out in some city or village to participate in a typical Islamic so-called peaceful riot-demonstration, and perhaps even murder someone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that multitude will only be incited for so long, and then they will go back to living a practical life, in so much as they can. Sooner or later, reason, practicality and common sense return.

But, you can see the danger to any non-Moslems of living among Moslems in an Islamic state. It must be like living in Bangladesh, and awaiting the next typhoon, or flood, or tidal wave, all of which, periodically, kill multitudes. The next time there's a "peaceful" demonstration, there is a great possibility of becoming a scapegoat for the mob. Read the signs of the "peaceful" demonstrators of Islam, whether in Tehran or in London; they speak of how they will treat us after we are forced into submission and to pay the poor tax, and how we will all be made to be very sorry for whatever they're upset about at the moment. And this is what you see in a peaceful demonstration.

There is no reasoning with the Islamic position. The devout Moslem will not entertain any possibility other than Islam. He will not even tolerate open discussion of other options, and will be infuriated, perhaps to violence, at any criticism whatsoever of Islam or of Mohammed. There is no reason here. When you sit down with a Moslem, if you sit down with a Moslem, leave reason behind, because you cannot reason with a devout Moslem.

Islam has already proved that it cannot tolerate even the existence of recorded history. The SLIMC has already proved that it cannot even address any topic at all without super-sensitivity and kowtowing to Islamic sensitivities and attempts to head-off any potential for yet another Islamic temper tantrum. Not only that, but they cannot understand the Pope, or anyone, who does not similarly Kowtow and dismiss reason in exactly the same manner as they do.

Come, let us sit and reason together is for Jews and Christians; it is not for Moslems, and it is not for secularists, nor for Marxists, nor for most big-shot Democrats, or for other varieties committed atheist ideologues.

Now, there is such a thing as an unreasonable Catholic, and an unreasonable Protestant, etc., but, I submit, they are the exception to the rule. When you cross over to the other side of the street, what you find is the opposite. The committed atheist, like the devout Moslem, who never leaves reason behind, is the exception to the rule. Islam, just like Marxism, cannot and will not tolerate any competing ideology, just as they cannot and will not tolerate any criticism whatsoever. They are, therefore, unreasonable ideologies; they are devoid of reason.

Nevertheless, external, objective Truth, which is completely independent of the mind of man, exists, is knowable, and is available to all, through the use of reason. This Truth will never change, whether anyone likes it or not.

Once you know that this Truth exists, you will seek it, and if you are open, honest and persistent in your quest, sooner or later, you will find God.

Seek the Truth; find the Way; live the Life.

May you please God, and may you live forever.

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