Debugging Reason
Catholics insist we need both faith and reason. The problem with reason alone is it is error prone. That is pretty clear. But we think we can get around that. I have proved many times how few lines of code I can write without making an error. But that does not mean I can’t produce programs that run relatively error free. It is because I debug my programs. We test them in a variety of ways and I recode over and over again until they seem to be error free.
Now the atheist says we can do this in all areas of human reason. We can remove error through peer review and experience and get a relatively error free conclusions. Protestants are slightly different. They would say you need to scriptures and you need the Holy Spirit but, once you have those, the products human reason can become pretty much error free. So the atheist says you don’t need faith and reason but just reason. The protestant says you can limit faith propositions to just scripture and believe that God has redeemed your reason.
The trouble is empirical evidence shows this not to be the case. For the atheists you can point to Nazi Germany or communist Russia and see how they followed reason alone and got things terribly wrong. They were not able to debug their model. The problems with it were too deep and even very bright human intellects were just too darkened by sin to see the problems. Now the first objection you get is that you are comparing atheism to Nazism and that is not fair. But it is not that atheists are Nazi’s. In fact, the argument requires them to reject Nazi conclusions. What it is saying is that the process followed by the Nazi’s is the same one atheists are suggesting is the best one. That is the rejection of absolute truth in morality and the following of reason and science wherever it leads. If that road led to Nazism or communism for some then maybe we should suspect the road might be problematic.
Protestants also have an empirical problem. The scripture and reason approach has lead groups to conclusion that are, for their point of view, seriously and disastrously wrong. Now the example you cite will change depending on the flavor of protestant you are talking to. But say they are strongly pro-life, as many of them are. But not all bible Christians are pro-life. Some have by scripture and reason arrived at the position that abortion is OK. Now they might be offended and say I am accusing them of being pro-choice. No, I am showing how the process can lead solid, bible Christians to a bad place. If you were not pro-life this example would not work. It is the process that is the same. The fact that some have arrived at bad destinations leaves you with no reason to assume you have arrived at a good one. Scripture alone is not enough to overcome the intellect darkened by sin.
What goes wrong is that a whole school of thought is built up around bad assumptions. So communists became so immersed in communist thought they never question the assumptions. Same for Nazis and Calvinists and Baptists and so on. It is what is called tradition. Thought patterns get so ingrained nobody questions them. As humans we need this. We can’t question everything right down to our ability to ask the right questions. We need to have a reasonable starting point. We need tradition. Catholics believe that God knows humans and has given us what human reason needs, a trustworthy tradition. That is what Catholics call sacred tradition. It cannot steer you wrong because God’s grace keeps it true.
Only the Catholic faith stands up to scrutiny. If you do not limit faith to scripture but also embrace sacred tradition and obey the magisterium then you cannot end up affirming grave evils. At the very least the belief system is not self contradictory as we have seen both protestantism and atheism is. That does prove it is true. It does show the fundamental problem with reason being error prone has caused atheism and protestantism to go seriously awry and there is no reason to believe that problem is going away. When Catholics go awry it can clearly be seen that it is because they don’t follow their own faith. That is a matter of obedience. You will always have that hurdle as well. But teaching serious error as truth is a different problem. Protestants have it. Atheists have it. Catholics do not.
[...] Catholics insist we need both faith and reason. The problem with reason alone is it is error prone. That is pretty clear. But we think we can get around that. I have proved many times how few lines of code I can write without making an error. But that does not mean I can’t produce [...] Read more… [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am