Gore’s Cult of Reason
Al Gore’s latest book is called “The Assault on Reason“, and he makes the case that “Reason” alone is worthy of our praise and adulation, and furthermore is under assault by bad people who worship foreign Jewish gods. Amazon sells it in a bundle with “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”.
This kind of moronic thinking is epidemic in society today. Leaders proclaim that some conceptual label like “religion” or “reason” is innately good or bad, and attract large followings of militant people who are smug in their belief that they are “above” the ignorant superstitions of the past. It’s exactly what Yeats meant when he said “the worst are full of passionate intensity”.
If you believe that reason is under assault by religion, do not read on. Passionate intensity requires conviction that you are correcting a past of dark errors, not repeating the tired old mistakes of thousands of years. A careful look at history may shake your faith in the god of reason.
The deification of “reason” is at least 2,000 years old. Plutarch is one of the most famous essayists in western culture. He was one of the first to advance the arguments that religion is a result of superstitious people trying to explain things that they can’t understand. As incomplete and unimaginative as this is (I could likewise argue that “reason” was invented by people trying to rationalize things that they knew they shouldn’t be doing), it’s been taught to elementary schoolkids ever since.
But at least Plutarch was more honest than today’s militant atheists. For starters, he acknowledged several other factors in the formation of religion. And most importantly, he didn’t argue that reason was somehow different from other things people believe in. He was a high priest of Apollo, and Apollo was essentially intellect deified. The ancient Greeks were smart enough to realize that *anything* you place faith in is a god.
At the end of the French revolution, when the French set out to “de-Christianize” France, they decided to worship “reason”. Again, they set a standard of honesty that would put today’s atheists to shame. They explicitly declared a “Cult of Reason“. If you are going to run around saying that something is by it’s very nature good, deserving of your sacrifice and praise — at least have the honesty to admit you’re making a god of it. Especially when you are going to elevate it above other gods, as the French did, don’t pretend it’s not a god.
Now, I am not saying that reason is a bad thing. Reason can be used for both bad and good, just as religion can. But elevating reason to the status of something infallible is pretty superstitious and ignorant even by ancient standards. Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali made this case quite lucidly 1,000 years ago. Reason is limited and fallible, just like religion is.
Proving that reason is not infallible doesn’t even require faith. You can prove it with reason, as many throughout history have done. Like Plutarch, Ghazali realized that life is full of uncertainty, and that the real enemy was “passionate intensity”. Both Plutarch and Ghazali recognized the limitations of reason, and were happy to coexist with faith. After Ghazali died, the “Cult of Reason” people in the Islamic world provoked an escalation that sounds a lot like Al Gore today:
“Soon the Islamic rationalists were hard at work exterminating all traces of revealed authority by making faith subordinate to reason, while the blind faithful attacked the very core of this new threat by attempting to exterminate reason.”
Today’s misguided cult of Apollo meditate on the supremecy of their god, “reason”, and fill themselves with a righteous indignation. They set off with passionate intensity to rid the world of dangerous unbelievers. Since such blind faith in reason is unreasonable, it’s no mistake that the passionate intensity is coming mostly from demagogues, actors, washed-up molecular biologists, and others with no credentials in either reason or faith.
It says something about our culture, that so many rush to the bookstores to read this superstition, yet nobody has time today to read Al-Ghazali, Plutarch, or Petrarch. Wisdom is the true scorned artifact of the past; today we prefer passionate intensity!
July 7th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Funny how I surfed onto this blog purely by chance, because it is certainly one of the more interesting ones. This post I agree with 100%, its not only religious people who can be fanatical.
July 7th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
I’ll be honest. I have to admire Al Gore for working to fix what he perceives to be the greatest problem of his day. His labor to propagandize the American public seems sincere enough. And, I cannot fault him for championing the cause of reason over ignorance. When there is a problem, somebody has to lead, and Al Gore is both a leader and a public servant.
OK, I wish he had gone further with the “Parental Advisory” label and completely banned that crap music from being sold to kids at all. Moral pollution is a more serious problem facing the world than green house gas pollution.
I can complain about moral pollution, but I’m not doing much about it. Gore complains about greenhouse gasses, but he is doing something about it. I envy him.
Back to your point. Human reason cannot be trusted. Human reason is always built on incomplete and flawed information.
Only one God has all the correct information. So I think the real concern for this nation, and the for the world, is moral pollution, not greenhouse gas pollution. I’m pretty sure it was LBJ who often quoted Isaiah 1:18:
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
July 8th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I can’t decide if Gore is really doing something great, or ignoring real social problems in favor of grandiose posturing and medieval indulgence-seeking. I wonder, how many books about reason and gaia must one write to be absolved of guilt for letting New Orleans go underwater? If Gore can claim that he “raised awareness” about global warming, does he get a discount on the carbon credits he buys to offset his massive consumption?
July 9th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
How dare you fight reason with reason!
No really…well said!
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Good article. I am going to assume here that by reason you mean rational deduction. I do in fact believe that religion is assaulting reason; I read on, contrary to your cautions. There are aspects of this article that I agree with. It is most definitely possible to imbue reason with an ideology akin to religion, as well as the dangers and inaccuracies inherent in many radical religions. I do not believe this to be true reason, in much the same way that most Christians do not believe that David Karesh practiced true Christianity. In fact, reason is unfit for arriving at solutions for any moral or spiritual dilemmas, in that by definition (rational deduction) it is simply a process by which a phenomena becomes predictable through consistent reproduction. Reason itself is not inherently flawed; the limitations of reason are no greater than the sum of evidence unavailable to human perception. Reason and theism are mutually exclusive only in that, given the evidence available to human perception, assuming the existence of a deity is unreasonable.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Eric; yes — I agree almost entirely with you. I have always had a beef with “apologists” who try to use pure logic and reason to “prove” God. They ruin both reason and faith.
I do object somewhat to the statement, “assuming the existence of a deity is unreasonable.” Not on fact, but because the statement gives the impression of being a lot more profound than it actually is. In fact, assuming almost anything is unreasonable. I first learned this reading Mandelbrot. I recommend reading either of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s current books (”Fooled by Randomness” or “The Black Swan”) to understand why “fear of the never before observed is the beginning of wisdom”.
July 24th, 2007 at 5:18 am
Allenjs; I will look into Nassim Nicholas books, I appreciate the recommendation. I agree that assumption and reason are mutually exclusive in most cases. My intention was not to attack faith, but only to demonstrate that reason and faith are like oil and water. Granted, that last sentence was a bit more provocative than I intended.