The Folly of Reason 

by Paul Hein

Hank Parnell has made it very clear that he is fed up with “religious believers of all stripes;” all of which he lumps together, despite their obvious differences. He thoughtfully describes them (us!) as desiring to put our “dirty, nose-picking, crotch-scratching, earwaxing-gouging--,” fingers on another person’s soul, and declares, enigmatically, that if believers wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t have a religion at all, only a morality. It is strange to hear a non-believer refer to morality, although it seems a common enough thing for them to do. What is meant, of course, is not morality, but personal preference.

For instance, Mr. Parnell is horrified that the Inquisition executed heretic Giordano Bruno as a heretic, because Mr. Parnell is horrified that there is such a thing as heresy. All opinions are equal—unless they’re the opinions of an Inquisitor! In Bruno’s day, religion was taken seriously, as sex is today, and the punishment for heresy was burning at the stake, and indeed, a handful of heretics suffered that fate. It was probably as bad as electrocution, or the gas chamber. Mr. Parnell refers to TRUE morality (emphasis his) as one in which “one sets standards for oneself and tries to live up to them.” Well, that is precisely what the Inquisitors did. That is what Christians do. Of course, the standards which they try to live up to are those which they have accepted as being relevant and true. If morality is living up to one’s own standards, clearly there can be many moralities, many of which, if Mr. Parnell is to believed, are immoral moralities. We could, of course, observe his—Parnell’s--own, correct, morality, but if it were not truly OUR morality, it would be immoral. We have to take that on faith.

It really seems to bother Mr. Parnell that there is evil in the world. It bothers everybody. Is that a reflection upon theism? Expressing his contempt for the axiom “There are no atheists in foxholes,” Parnell quotes Wylie as saying that there can be nothing but atheists in foxholes, since a battlefield is the last place one would expect to find evidence of God and “His love, mercy compassion, brotherhood, and all that other gushy-gushy, gooey-gooey religion stuff.” There were cases in the civil war of brother fighting against brother. Did their father not love them both? Wars, as well as other evils, are caused by men; usually men in government. Would universal atheism prevent war? I guess that would depend upon one’s personal morality. (I keep forgetting how wonderfully subjective morality is!)

Heaven holds no promise of delight, nor Hell of misery, for Mr. Parnell, who declares that he wouldn’t expect to find a person of “authentic morality” in heaven, whereas in Hell “everyone worth knowing” will be found. Thus, he doesn’t fear death, though he has faced the likelihood of it four times without having any impulse whatever to call upon God for help. That, he says, would make him “either lying or insane, possibly both,” in the opinion of the religious believer. No, not at all. It would only make him reasonable. We can learn much, some of it even true, from reason, but most of what we know we know from faith: how to get home after school, what our name is, that we live in America, that Enron has failed, that the Rams have won ten straight games, etc. Reason is always there, in the background, but it plays little part in our day-to-day existence. We did not employ reason is choosing one person or another as spouse, nor in picking a job, or moving to Florida, or Arizona. But once we acted upon our desires, we could always use reason to justify it—at least in our own minds.

The gist of Mr. Parnell’s complaint is that the believer is a “self-deluded hypocrite, attempting to sugarcoat and/or deny the very horrors and uncertainties I try to come to grips with by facing them honestly.” Yes, we’re all fools and dupes (except Mr. Parnell), but it’s hard to believe that the martyrs—and there have been more of them in the 20^th century than in all others combined—were denying the horrors and uncertainties of life, or trying to sugarcoat the fact of their immanent executions. Believers are acutely aware of the evil present in the world. How many charitable organizations, or hospitals, have been built by atheists?

The Christian message is simple: repent of your sins, and love God, and your neighbor, as yourself. If that were a delusion, those deluded by it would form a society superior to those holding their own “morality” as guiding principle—at least until a better “morality” came along. God-fearing men and women may fail, and may do terrible things to one another, perhaps even in the name of God. But at least they, and certainly their fellow believers, recognize that they have sinned. They don’t excuse it as evidence of greater wisdom, sophistication, or the possession of a personal, superior, “morality.”

January 25, 2002