Reason and its abuse

 Yesterday's post was on reality versus subjectivism.  Ayn Rand was an atheist, who elevated "reason" to a religious level.  But of course, reason can be abused. In today's post, featuring Anthony J. DeBlasi's article at the american Thinker entitled The Age of Reason and the Abuse of Reason, explores the abuse of reason that leads to today's errors. The idea that God intends us to use our powers of reason comes from the belief, purely by faith I might add, that God himself is reasonable. The God of reason in turn created a world that acts predictably. This belief requires faith, but when faith itself is abandoned, then tyrants and dictators, sociopaths and psychopaths can justify pretty much anything, and they have.  

God is described by DeBlasi as the Absolute. By this, he means that God is Truth with a capital 'T.' God is reality. The notion that, for instance, one can change one's gender simply by declaring it so is not reality. It is akin to witches casting spells. One can not change reality by casting a spell. It is what it is. Or, as God declares to Moses from the burning bush, "I Am That I Am." The name of the God of Creation is a statement, I Am. The great Absolute, Reality.  Today's "Progressives" have attacked reality in hopes of so demoralizing the people that they can take power and control away from the legitimate holders of it. 

Entering a college classroom in 1950, I noticed some pre-class graffiti on the chalkboard that read: “Damn the Absolute!” This cry of a soul lashing out at evil in the world struck a sympathetic chord. Alas, it also struck a false note. For how do you turn against that from which you are formed, that is larger than every self and points to the Truth that has confounded scores of souls before and since Pilate came face to face with it? How, indeed, does one separate self from the generative power of creation without condemning that self to a private limbo?

(Whoever may wonder why I bring up something out of the “dead-and-done” past, it’s because it plagues a great many in the present.)

...snip...

A mindset that disdains the real world, that can’t stand a world where justice begins with accepting human nature as is, that is, flawed, is plainly the wrong mindset for any human progress. Such is the mindset that must take down “the Absolute.” Professing an attachment to reason, those who possess a contempt for the very nature of things commonly think, speak, and act unreasonably toward the actual world. Those who remain unaffected by this disorder have, in some productive or creative way, accepted the truth that since “I did not invent me” there is no call for such a bungling creature as the human being to “reinvent me and the world.” This intimation of a Creator and acknowledgment of a transcendent Absolute is at the root of sane and fruitful human progress.

In the second decade of the 21st Century A.D., we can see that “canceling” God by “enlightenment,” however “reasoned,” was a very bad idea. It has helped trash everything held most dear to most people, generation after generation, including human life itself. No one in his or her right mind will ever accept a world that violates the laws of nature, the laws or God, and the fundamental right of people to be free and fairly treated − laws that are currently rejected by progressives infected with Marxist ideology and proud of their “wokeness” – in truth, unawake to the world around them.

I dare say that devotees of the Marxist Left despise the Christian religion because its prescription for the major ills of the world is not the reform of the world but the reform of ourselves. By dismissing “the Absolute” or, as Christians might put it, turning away from God in hope of making the world a better place to live in, they set themselves on a course toward inevitable failure.

My guitar instructor makes a great point, that in order to break the rules, you must first understand them. He is referring to jazz, which often breaks the rules of harmony to create other forms of harmony.  But it is just as true of any discipline.  One must understand in the deepest sense, the rules before one can bend them. I say bend, because one can not break the rules of Reality.  Reality may bend somewhat, but it will not break.  Trying to break it is a fools errand, and those making the attempt are the fools.