I think, as I did before you stripped out a few of the quotations, that all this shows is that some eminent Christians (or pre-Christian authors regarded as authoritative by many Christians) had some badly broken ideas about curiosity. That’s not terribly surprising. But it doesn’t give much support for your claim that using reason to gain converts is as unappealing and dangerous to Christians as using “marketing” to gain converts is to rationalists. Most Christians now don’t feel any particular obligation to agree with everything said by Spurgeon or Aquinas. Many Christians now don’t feel any particular obligation to agree with everything allegedly said by Paul or Moses.
You have a good point. I still believe that reason is dangerous to Christianity. If I wanted to make a good argument, I would summarize the responses of the Catholic church to the upstart Enlightenment during roughly 1500-1800. I’m not going to do that. I had this list of quotes handy.
Modern Christianity has accommodated itself to reason; but it had to, and it damaged Christianity. Church attendance figures since 1900 (do not prove, but) support this view.
Someday, I’d like to describe how the Catholic Church has very sophisticated epistemological arguments for its beliefs. It rejects rationality, accepting that rationality can be used to sow significant doubt. However, the Catholic Church still uses arguments that would be compelling to a rationalist to defend its rejection of rationality.
I’m not sure I have the time or talent to prepare the argument, but I am curious if, as another Catholic-school alum, you would agree to any extent with the overall impression that the Catholic Church is a rational religion in the sense that it is actually concerned that it is epistemologically well-founded and dogmatically self-consistent?
It’s my opinion, but I believe the church is sincerely motivated to be epistemologically well-founded: Catholics really do believe in truth and the application of logic and reason. On the one hand, this can make it easy to convert Catholics with a compelling rationalist argument. (I notice lots of converted Catholics on this site actually.) On the other hand, it may be still difficult to sway Catholics on particular views because they have built rationally compelling defenses for those views. Well, I guess that’s not really a problem, since you can then just argue as two rationalists?
I should say here that by compelling I do not mean correct, but just that it is much more difficult to identify errors there than in, say, Creationism.
the thing that really truly differentiates all these arguments from anything we would call rationality is that all the effort takes place afterthe bottom line has been written. There’s already been a decision that God exists, that the pope is infallible, etc. The arguments written above the line are chosen based on whether or not they support the bottom line. That is the mark of rationalization, and not rationality.
This criticism would be valid if they were using evidence to argue above the line that god exists (the bottom line). However, the Catholic Church would not use evidence to assert that God exists, as the dogma is that the existence of God cannot be proven or demonstrated.
I’m not sure I have the time or talent to prepare the argument, but I am curious if, as another Catholic-school alum, you would agree to any extent with the overall impression that the Catholic Church is a rational religion in the sense that it is actually concerned that it is epistemologically well-founded and dogmatically self-consistent?
Obviously I don’t have time to prepare the argument now, but would you agree to any extent with the overall impression that the Catholic Church is a rational religion in the sense that it is actually concerned that it is epistemologically well-founded and dogmatically self-consistent?
Oh, I quite agree that reason is dangerous to Christianity, as it is dangerous to all wrong things. What I’m not convinced of is (1) that Christians in general think reason is dangerous to Christianity, or (2) that using reason to gain converts involves any sort of corruption of Christianity, as using unreason to gain converts might involve a corruption of rationalism, or (3) that using reason to gain converts would have as strong a tendency to undermine Christianity as using unreason to gain converts would have for rationalism.
As I said in the comments to your post on marketing rationalism: almost everyone agrees, most of the time, that reason, most of the the time, is mostly a good thing. This is a profound asymmetry between defending rationalism with reason and defending Christianity with the Bible.
You have a good point. I still believe that reason is dangerous to Christianity. If I wanted to make a good argument, I would summarize the responses of the Catholic church to the upstart Enlightenment during roughly 1500-1800. I’m not going to do that. I had this list of quotes handy.
Modern Christianity has accommodated itself to reason; but it had to, and it damaged Christianity. Church attendance figures since 1900 (do not prove, but) support this view.
The pope decided that reason is dangerous to Christianity. In the Syllabus of Errors Pope Pius IX condemns the isolated application of rationalism.
Let’s not forget, reason is dangerous—all great and useful things are. Freedom is more dangerous still.
That’s much better evidence than my list.
Someday, I’d like to describe how the Catholic Church has very sophisticated epistemological arguments for its beliefs. It rejects rationality, accepting that rationality can be used to sow significant doubt. However, the Catholic Church still uses arguments that would be compelling to a rationalist to defend its rejection of rationality.
I’m not sure I have the time or talent to prepare the argument, but I am curious if, as another Catholic-school alum, you would agree to any extent with the overall impression that the Catholic Church is a rational religion in the sense that it is actually concerned that it is epistemologically well-founded and dogmatically self-consistent?
It’s my opinion, but I believe the church is sincerely motivated to be epistemologically well-founded: Catholics really do believe in truth and the application of logic and reason. On the one hand, this can make it easy to convert Catholics with a compelling rationalist argument. (I notice lots of converted Catholics on this site actually.) On the other hand, it may be still difficult to sway Catholics on particular views because they have built rationally compelling defenses for those views. Well, I guess that’s not really a problem, since you can then just argue as two rationalists?
I should say here that by compelling I do not mean correct, but just that it is much more difficult to identify errors there than in, say, Creationism.
the thing that really truly differentiates all these arguments from anything we would call rationality is that all the effort takes place after the bottom line has been written. There’s already been a decision that God exists, that the pope is infallible, etc. The arguments written above the line are chosen based on whether or not they support the bottom line. That is the mark of rationalization, and not rationality.
This criticism would be valid if they were using evidence to argue above the line that god exists (the bottom line). However, the Catholic Church would not use evidence to assert that God exists, as the dogma is that the existence of God cannot be proven or demonstrated.
Hell yes.
Yes.
Oh, I quite agree that reason is dangerous to Christianity, as it is dangerous to all wrong things. What I’m not convinced of is (1) that Christians in general think reason is dangerous to Christianity, or (2) that using reason to gain converts involves any sort of corruption of Christianity, as using unreason to gain converts might involve a corruption of rationalism, or (3) that using reason to gain converts would have as strong a tendency to undermine Christianity as using unreason to gain converts would have for rationalism.
As I said in the comments to your post on marketing rationalism: almost everyone agrees, most of the time, that reason, most of the the time, is mostly a good thing. This is a profound asymmetry between defending rationalism with reason and defending Christianity with the Bible.
Okay. I concede the asymmetry. Still a qualitative similarity.