The conversation usually goes something like this:

“I think religion is a backwards idea, and it poisons the mind and society.”

“Well, how do you define religion?”

“It’s just, like, predefined set of rituals designed to make people feel better about themselves.”

“That’s nice.” I say, and usually leave or drop into silence, out of politeness.

And how the conversation goes on in my head is…

“So, what do you believe in?”

“Science. Facts, evidence, logic.”

“So, where did you get that definition of religion?”

“Um…”

“Because I can’t think of a single religion in which its followers would not be completely offended if you were to say that to them. As a matter of fact, I don’t think any religion that could be said to fit that definition is by any means the major religions of which you are obviously lumping together. So, by your own standard of evaluation, I would have to reject your definition of religion. The evidence is overwhelmingly against it.”

“Um…oh.”

“And further more, what you yourself have said is by definition of what religion REALLY is, a religious statement. It is a belief, from which your draw moral conclusions. Those things that you do as a result of those moral conclusions? Those are what the ancient philosophers would refer to as your “true religion. So either the whole religious world and all its theological history is fundamentally wrong about itself, or you just have an ignorant, and actually offensive, view of most people and their beliefs which you simply don’t like, much less understand. It sounds to me like the only person going around here doing and believing things in order to make themselves feel better is you, and I would hazard a guess you probably owe someone very close to you an apology.”

Person looks down.

“That’s repentance. Something religious people believe in. My friend, you stake your claim on a philosophy, like everyone else, only the difference is, you have used your supposedly perfect philosophy to deligitimize, and disrespect, and disinform yourself of others’. Of course, to you, it seems like knowledge. It’s not.”

There may be some offense to certain people in the truth, but the offense of ignorance is much greater, and willful ignorance the greatest. When religious people are openly insulted, as if it is okay to be hateful to them but no other group of people, as if we were even the minority, most are quiet about it. It’s not because the opposition is right, though; it’s because we take responsibility for ourselves. It’s because we know that we need to do that.

Because we know that while there have been people who make religion look bad, the real historical truth is that it works. It has a tendency to create communities, while the ignorance of rationalism has slowly torn us as a nation apart. There might be a populace in our media who like to denigrate the constructive and ongoing process of religious development, but we know what the truth is.

The truth is that when man makes himself out to be God, and starts determining truth to satisfy his own limited perspective, that is when mankind most greatly suffers.

It’s kind of like American economics. Most Americans will gladly pay for a lower priced product even if it comes from another country. Why? Because when all you see is two stickers, one that says “Made in America,” and the other says,”50% percent off,” the logical American will help themselves out, and not worry about consequences off somewhere in some country they’ve never heard of. But if companies were to have written a little more of the truth on their labels, it might have a different outcome: “Made in America, because we have found a way to walk all over employees here while saving on the logistics, because we don’t have the same buying power to move.” OR, “50% off, because we built a factory in a country deeply enslaved in debt to America, so they let us pay them pennies for their labor, and say nothing.” When people know a little bit more of the truth, companies out to make money tend to lose, because they weren’t being honest in the first place. Likewise, some people have a rational self-interest in  trying to escape from the sometimes negative consequences of taking a harder look at what they believe, by holding to a sticker with less content; “No philosophy or religion here, just science.”  They don’t know, nor want to know, that even some of their hardest doctrines do not hold up to the rigors with which they reject other views. They take the cheap sticker, because it presents an easy, supposedly consequence-free conclusion.

We have done with philosophy and faith, the same thing that we have done with our economy, we take the cheap sticker, the short answer, in whatever we want to hear, no matter how insensitive it is to those whom we turn a blind eye. We have thought for a long time that we can just keep exporting reality, and never have to pay.

Well, the short story will be what is already happening. American rationalism has so silenced all dissenting voice, and has become so illiterate, that it can hardly even operate any more under its own presumptions without extreme, highly violent, and highly IRrational reaction from the public. That’s what ignorance does, and the best way to make people ignorant is to give them a short list of facts and tell them they cannot dispute them.  It’s not that logic is not logical, that facts are not factual, it’s that the short list is NEVER all the facts, not in America. Because our brand of rationalism is not about finding the truth. It’s about power.

There is an establishment that tells us that if we are really being “rational, modern” people then we will reject all but the facts of science. But which facts of science? The facts that gravity is yet to bee empirically proven to exist, the facts that Jesus is the most historically corroborated individual bar none? The facts that the Big Bang theory keeps looking more and more like what it really is, a view concurrent to the Christian view of creation? Or how about the fact that Information Theory has shown traditional, multiverse view of many particle physicists to be overcomplicated, easily explains the observability breakdown problem, in support of a single-universe view using a rudimentary formula that has existed for years?  That there are more simple models, given all the facts, of the absolute mess that is the secular geological timescale? That many foundational  questions about the nature of our universe has really only been a problem of lack of diversity in the sciences, due to what? You guessed it, the silencing of opinion. Because modern science is not about truth or accountability or experimentation anymore. It’s about conformity, and it’s about power, just like postmodern American religion.

Obviously there’s a yin to every yang, as it were. There’s no shortage of churches in our country that believe themselves to be the only group of people going to Heaven. And you won’t find those denominations rejecting other ideas, that would be impolite. You just won’t find them engaging either. It’s usually on the grounds that “people shouldn’t talk about religion or politics,” because people can’t handle it. But no one in those areas of Christianity will ever really admit that it’s them that are theologically holding to traditions that are up against the wall in dealing with the scathing and often necessary skepticism of our culture and our youth. They won’t talk about it, really, because it’s them that don’t want to change; so they silence not only some opinion, but even more extreme. They silence ALL opinion, just like your traditional hard-line scientific rationalist. The effect? Both sides are now so disinformed, so disillusioned, that they no longer will take ownership of their losses. Christianity, the organization founded by the most morally good, consistent, passionate, real, and honest person who ever lived, who said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” and, “I will not lose one,” is now the organization that considers itself so rational, that it will no longer stoop from its supposed moral high road, and actually defend itself if it might save a soul. It considers itself so rational, so good, that it will no longer engage in society; and so truthful that it no longer does anything about the lost world that we are drowning in, by just saying something.

Both sides believe that if we are being real, rational people, then we will eventually all come to the same conclusion, because everyone has at some level a sense of what is true about the universe. So, they go about silencing all other opinions, oppressing all other beliefs except their own, but the only thing they really accomplish is silencing themselves, and disinforming themselves into obsolescence and eventually, a certain inability to be consistent with their own views.

As a Christian, I believe that there are some absolute realities that we have to deal with, and it is pretty easy to argue that, on the grounds that it is literally impossible to argue the opposite. I think, no, I know, that by an overwhelming majority, people believe at some level that reality cannot exist without something being true, but I think people give up. They give up on finding the truth because of the slushpile of mostly dishonest opinion, and they give up on even the very idea of truth itself, so that they can justify just making up something up for themselves, if anything so they don’t have to feel so completely lost, as anyone would in the former kind of world. We take the cheap sticker again, because who on earth would want to deal with that? Who would want to sort through all of this? Only someone who absolutely believes in absoluteness. That person can often seem like the most troubled, or the most dishonest and insensitive of all. Better just to say, “I know my own truth.” And be done with it all.

But what we are really saying is, “I know my own hope.” We make our own sticker, and embrace as a society everything that truth ultimately stands against, and even go about ethically destructive, and morally bankrupt behaviors on the justification that even that would be better than the cheap stickers anyone else has to offer. It’s obvious sophistry, and only a true fool would commit to it fully, but that is just the state people are in, where they will take the cheapest sticker of all, the handwritten philosophy, constructed of unnaccountable populism, for that is all that the individual is capable of. Anything is better than the Establishment. Both sides of faith and politics demonize one another, but what they don’t realize is that the general public views BOTH sides as the corrupt and dishonest Establishment. And, despite the mountain of foolishness in the opinions of the general, miseducated public, about that one thing they are right.

But where do we go from here? If what I am saying is true, then how can we even hope to move forward? This is what I hope to cover in my next few essays. I hope you can stay tuned, and I thank you for being willing to stick with me thus far.