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Religion And Rationality
The Supreme Court Everson ruling of 1947 established the principle that America would have no
truck with spirits. There was no mention that the previous 150 years of American judicial history
passed without any other court finding this well-hidden meaning in the Constitution. But even if
we grant the ruling is sincere, an expression of the rational principle behind modern leadership, we
would be justified in challenging Everson because of the grotesque record laid down over the past
fifty years of spiritless schooling. Dis-spirited schooling has been tested and found fully wanting. I
think that’s partially because it denies the metaphysical reality recognized by men and women
worldwide, today and in every age.
It is ironic from a contrarian viewpoint that the most prestigious scientific position in the world
today is surely heading up the human genome project, and that project, as I write, is in the hands
of a born-again Christian. Corporations are lined up all the way to China to make fortunes out of
genetic manipulation. The director of that project is a man named Dr. Francis S. Collins, who,
according to The New York Times, personally recognizes religion as the most important reality in
his life. Collins was reared in an agnostic home in western Virginia where he was homeschooled
by his outspoken, radical mother who stretched the school law in a number of ways to give him an
education. While in medical school, he came to the conclusion that he would become a born-again
Christian because the decision was "intellectually inescapable." And he has maintained that faith
energetically ever since, a decision that makes his professional colleagues very uncomfortable.
The difficulty with rational thought, however valuable a tool it certainly is, is that it misses the
deepest properties of human nature: our feelings of loneliness and incompletion, our sense of sin,
our need to love, our longing after immortality. Let me illustrate how rational thinking preempts
terrain where it has no business and makes a wretched mess of human affairs. After this, you can
tell your grandchildren that you actually heard someone at the onset of the twenty-first century
challenging Galileo’s heliocentric theory.
In materially evidentiary terms, the sun is at the center of the solar system, not the earth, and the
solar system itself is lost in the endless immensity of space. I suppose most of you believe that;
how could you not? And yet, as far as we scientifically know to date, only planet Earth looks as if
it were designed with people in mind. I know that Carl Sagan said we’ll find millions of populated
planets eventually, but right now there’s only hard evidence of one. As far as we know, you can’t
go anyplace but earth and stay alive for long. So as of 2000, earth is clearly the whole of the
human universe. I want to push this a little farther, however, so stick with me.
Planet Earth is most definitely not the center of your personal life. It’s merely a background which
floats in and out of conscious thought. The truth is that both psychologically and spiritually you
are the center of the solar system and the universe. Don’t be modest or try to hide the fact. The
minute you deny what I just said, you’re in full flight from the responsibility this personal
centrality entails: to make things better for the rest of us who are on the periphery of your
consciousness.
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