Confessional Christianity with Rev. Charles St-Onge

On Thursday, I Will Pray for Reason


It makes perfect sense, if you don’t think about it too much.  On Thursday, May 3, while many Americans will be wallowing in the superstitions of the past by praying to their god or gods, the clear-thinking rationalists among us will gather to recognize the National Day of Reason.  Attendees will gather “to celebrate Reason as the guiding principle of our secular democracy.”  Eventually science will defeat religious superstition and replace it with a wonderful utopia in which observation will trump faith, logic will triumph over irrationality, and the world will be at peace, freed from religiously-induced violence and vindictive.

Not so fast.

Is this belief (ahem) in the promise of Reason reasonable?  What if these supposedly rational opinions are actually irrational?  What if the most reasonable thing we could do this Thursday is to pray for those attending the National Day of Reason?

Consider first the cornerstone of skepticism about religion in general, the fact that so many religious beliefs cannot be “observed.”  Skeptic Michael Shermer claims that he can no more disprove the existence of the Christian God than he can disprove the existence of a “flying spaghetti monster.”  Why?  Because such things are outside of the realm of observation, and reasonable people know that what can’t be observed is unworthy of acceptance as truth.  Let us leave aside for the moment the Christian claim that God has in fact been observed.  Is it reasonable to believe that we can only truly know that which we can “see,” directly or indirectly?  If so, then that statement itself must be “observable,” provable without any recourse to laws of logic or reason.  The truth is that empiricism rests on an a priori (before the fact) belief that only what I can directly or indirectly observe myself is real.  Empiricism can only lead us to doubt all things; it is not a path to greater knowledge but a superhighway away from it.

Then there is a second cornerstone of skepticism about religion, that all religions are “illogical.”  Presumably, then, all religions violate known laws of logic.  Let us leave aside for the moment the possibility that some religions are, indeed, illogical, and that one or more may not be.  The existence of these very laws of logic begs the question that atheists claim to have answered: that the universe we observe is “all there is, all there ever was, all there ever will be.”  One will search in vain within the quantum structure of the universe or the most distant galaxies for the “laws of logic.”  They exist, we acknowledge them, we use them.  But why should they be?  From the perspective of an atheist rationalist, there is no reason for the laws of logic to hold in all circumstances, for all time.   To hold that one should be logical, without giving a reason why laws of logic must hold always and in all circumstances, is an illogical position.

Which brings us to the final hope and dream of the champions of Reason, that ridding the world of religion will make this tired old earth a better place.  I am assuming, here, that making things better is their genuine hope.   Otherwise I’d have to believe they are wicked, and I’d rather not consider that.  This would seem to be a belief flatly contradicted by the facts on the ground.  What do Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, and the current regime of China have in common?  The repression one can trace back to them was not religiously motivated, at least in the way most rationalists seem to talk about religion.  In Hitler’s case, one history professor has described the vision of the Nazis this way:


If that doesn’t sound familiar, consider this quote:


To judge something as innately “good” (Reason) and something else as innately “evil” (religion) requires some external standard of “goodness.”  Otherwise it’s just your word and actions against my word and actions.  In other words, a moral stalemate.  What if the Nazis had it right?  Who are we to judge?  If there are no “unalienable rights,” who is to say that Church and State melded into one is not a better state of affairs than their separation?  Why should we be a secular democracy, if the majority of Americans decide they’d rather give theocracy a try?

Those who will commemorate the National Day of Reason are, I surmise, convinced that they are rational, logical, moral people.  But their insistence that knowledge be limited to what is empirically verifiable requires an empirically non-verifiable appeal to reason.  The high-value they place on logic (which, as a Christian, I share) is not logically sustainable within their own worldview.  Their hope that by destroying all belief in any absolute moral value system will somehow, perversely, make for a more moral world makes no sense, either.  One might as well believe in a flying spaghetti monster.  One can one do for such people?  Perhaps in their honor we could hold a National Day of Prayer.

22 Responses

  1. madman says:

    A Christian praying for reason?! Wait a second, pastor. Didn’t St Paul write (1 Cor 1:23) that “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”? And later in that epistle (4:10) didn’t he write that “we are fools for the sake of Christ”?

    Faith is entirely incompatible with reason and science. Faith requires adherence to things in spite of evidence to the contrary — foolishness and the rejection of evidence and reason. St Paul was right.

    Acceptance of reason and science, as Dawkins says, dispels the ignorance required by and embraced in the name of religion. Most openly religious people are already on the fence when it comes to such things, teetering between their religious baggage and the enlightenment of science afforded them by living in an advanced and (well, somewhat) scientifically-minded society. Most seem to hold fast only to the outward forms of religious expression but they ultimately embrace what science has to offer over and above the superstition religion offers them.

    That includes many of you in the clergy. No? If someone in your congregation experiences hallucinations or demonstrates some other form of mental illness in your presence, are you going to engage in laying on hands or quickly call for an ambulance to have that person secured (to protect himself/herself) and most likely treated by a psychiatrist? The Bible says such things are caused by demons, not by chemical imbalances. Science says those things are caused by imbalances (and various factors related to stress, unresolved issues, etc.), not demons. You deal in the fantasy — in which there’s a demonic realm — while the psychiatrist deals with reality, evidence, reason, science.

    More than likely, you’re going to be a responsible citizen and call 911 in such an emergency. Whatever prayers you offer for the person are really of no use — even you know this — compared to the medication the psychiatrist can dispense to even things out in the hypothetical congregant’s brain so he or she can get back to a normal life.

    The same holds true for every other malady experienced in the life of your church — physical disease, injury, multiple end of life issues. You offer the futile, ineffective passivity of prayer in such cases; doctors actively treat disease to cure the patient or prolong life while offering palliative care to improve quality of life during decline. Science benefits the patient while religion serves only to (you hope) scare those who reject superstition or offers some hope of going somewhere after this life for those who accept it.

    Such medication and treatment isn’t the result of divine revelation but in spite of it. To suggest otherwise is to say that god has waited until these days to allow people chances to escape diseases that used to kill people en masse (did he hate people that much to let them die younger? or does he hate us to have a culture with a heavy emphasis on living longer even if hooked up to machines indefinitely at the request of zealous family members, e. g., Terri Schiavo). This isn’t even about complex diseases — what we consider simple infections that can be treated with inexpensive antibiotics used to ravage entire communities and thin out entire generations. Science, not god, has spared our generation(s) from that fright.

    You also seek reason and science over religion when you or your children are sick enough or injured and need a doctor. You’re probably vaccinated, as are your kids. Why? Because you’re probably reasonable enough to know that science holds answers and provides tangible benefits that your religion doesn’t and can’t.

    That includes things related to end of life issues: everyone wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die. That means you don’t rely on prayer or laying on of hands or sacrifices to settle some cosmic score between YHWH and the Devil. You don’t battle against principalities but against real flesh. You want to prolong your life as long as possible rather than see if Jesus will greet you on the other side.

    The aforementioned St Paul wrote that to die is gain. I referred to the Schiavo case above. Evidence and reason said she was in PVS (the autopsy confirmed that), and the doctors — scientists — agreed treatment wouldn’t benefit her one bit. Some of her religious family members and their religious supporters, though, resisted letting nature take its course and letting this Catholic woman “gain” heaven by dying. We were warned by a wingnut from Alaska about “death panels” that would evaluate whether various expensive treatments would be of any use to already dying patients — patients who are supposedly to “gain” heaven when they stop running up their bills for health care.

    I share your desire for reason even though you’ll never find it through meaningless activity like prayer. Try reading, learning, and studying instead, especially in the realm of reality instead of superstition.

    • A closed mind is terrible thing to behold, isn’t it?

    • madman says:

      Please entertain the hypothetical, pastor. Would you call 911, attempt to perform an exorcism to drive the demon into swine (or other ritually unclean beasts), or…? And why? It was pretty straightforward.

      Do you suggest my mind is “closed” because I reject the premise that a deity “revealed” something science discovered, e. g., antibiotics, or even somehow that a deity works miracles through such things (BTW, during your time in ministry, have you ever provided a concoction incorporating some dust from your church to an alleged adulteress per Numbers 5:11 ff?)? What say you of those who’ve left, and even continue to leave, health to the careless whims of deities and prayer rather than medical science — “trusting god” wholly and rejecting those whose solutions are based empirically rather than on some revelation or a particular kind of blood sacrifice?

      Are you vaccinated? How about your children? If yes to either, I’ll generously say that at least you’re not (and your parents probably weren’t) closed-minded about the power of science over superstition and you’re responsible enough to not leave weighty temporal matters to the wanton caprice of ye old family idol(s). Everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die — science affords the zealous chances to live much longer than their nonchalant god would ever allow.

    • I think perhaps you have orthodox Christianity confused with Christian Science or some other aberrant “Christian” movement. When I go on a mission trip to Nicaragua to bring medicine to the communities there, I get my own vaccines before I go. As a former engineer with two degrees in science, I’ve spent years studying science and its applications. But have you ever asked yourself why science “works” at all? Why is it possible to manufacture vaccines? Why should the universe follow basic “laws” that we are able to understand and apply? Why did operational science as we know it erupt and flourish in the medieval Christian west starting in the 13th century and not, say, in China or sub-Saharan Africa? Historian Joseph Needham wrote that China did not develop science ahead of Europe because “there was no confidence that the code of nature’s laws could ever be unveiled and read, because there was no assurance that a divine being, even more rational than ourselves, had ever formulated such a code capable of being read.” As Alfred North Whitehead once concluded, “faith in the possibility of science… is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.” Science has not flourished despite Christianity, but because of it.

  2. I can pray for reason, because I have reason to believe that there was a time we used to wonder. In other words, we used to pay attention on that wonder, more and more we paid attention, more and more we went deep and found something. We call it science. Isnt it? There was a time some one wondered about moon, they dig into it and wr visited moon. They thought they unfold mystery. Scientist though science is every thing. But now they realized, there are 14 billions galaxies not starts. Scientists are freak now, because more deep they go, more deeper it gets. Where to go, which direction to go,where ever they look, it is going deeper and deeper. Just on our facial there are 18 billions organisms. What I am trying to say is, if we just look at the life itself is wonder. Wonder is became so wide. It is very hard to wonder any more, in short wonder is not gone, but too much to wonder about. Because what we call it is knowledge, conclusions about life. Today people carrying attention deficiency like qualification. Existence will heal to you, if you pay substantiation attention to something. People became so confused no more wonders, no more attention, only conclusions in our heads. No perceptions, only monologues going on our heads. If there is a perception all the thoughts in our head will stop isnt it? Why our thoughts stops when we are watching movies? Because our usual monologues are gone as soon as some thing else happening isnt it? We don’t know what is going to happen next, so no conclusion. The important thing is our attention is engage continuously that is what happening. If there is a lights on or some one is talking, we wont enjoy as much isnt it? It is attention which is making the difference. Continuous attention which is making experience being there. In other words every one has to do some thing about themselves. We must do some thing that creates an attention. It may be music, dance etc…. Just doing prayer in the morning for few minutes, will bring that attention in life.

  3. Rob says:

    You might want to read up on the “straw man” logical fallacy. Your blog post is full of them.

    • You may want to read up on the “sweeping generalization” fallacy. Your comment is one of them. In the future, give an example of something specific with which you object. “I disagree” can only lead to the response of “disagree with what?”

    • Rob says:

      For example, you write that “Eventually science will defeat religious superstition and replace it with a wonderful utopia…” Who said that? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never heard an atheist make that claim. I would characterize this as a misrepresentation of your opponent’s position.

      There are more examples in your post, but I think this is a good one to start with.

    • I am willing to concede that the word “utopia” was hyperbole. But I would ask you to consider the following quotes: “Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the small pox virus but harder to eradicate.” – Richard Dawkins. “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that… [this] I think may be the most important contribution we [scientists] can make.” – Steven Weinberg. “[The objective of science education] is not to provide the public with knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of. The problem is to get [religious people] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world… and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, science, as the only begetter of truth.” – Richard Lewontin.

      A “straw man” is using a caricature of someone’s position in order to more easily destroy it. I have proved that the first part of this statement, “Eventually science will defeat religious superstition,” is a view held by many prominent atheists. I have assumed that they are doing this because they believe it will make things better. If I had assumed they were knowingly doing this to make things worse, that would have been a real “straw man” argument and a misrepresentation of their views.

    • Rob says:

      I disagree. In your “utopia” sentence, you misrepresented their views in order to make them easier to refute. Without the utopia part, their argument changes substantially. My interpretation is that they see religion/superstition as detrimental to the advancement of human knowledge and progress. I completely agree with that, but it doesn’t mean that the elimination of religion will solve all or even most of the world’s problems. And that’s part of the problem with your statements later in the post about the “facts on the ground”.

      Also, I think a major hurdle to discussion about this issue is that we seem to be using different definitions of the word “truth”. I’m fairly certain that the people you quoted define truth as “conforming with fact or reality” as opposed to some sort of metaphysical religious truth. How do you define truth? How do you define knowledge that is not empirically verifiable?

    • As to your first question, I may still be unclear on what you’re saying. Are you suggesting that the backers of the “National Day of Reason” don’t believe the world will be a better place without all forms of religion, or that they only believe it will be a somewhat better place? Even if they believe the world will only be infinitesimally better, my arguments still stand. And if they don’t believe that advancing human knowledge and progress will make the world a better place, why bother? Why expend so much energy for no payoff, or for something that will make things worse?

      As to the second question, I affirm that God in Christ is truth. From that affirmation flow all sorts of corollaries, such as the affirmation that what we observe is trustworthy, although our reason is not always so. Another corollary is that truth does, indeed, conform with fact or reality. You may argue that I am starting from an a prior that you don’t accept. Why not? On what basis do you reject it? If you argue that you cannot accept it because it is not empirically verifiable, can you provide me with a definition of truth that is empirically verifiable?

  4. carpenter says:

    I hope that Rep. Peter Stark reciprocates and reasons for prayer. =)

  5. robert landbeck says:

    It makes no sense to pray for ‘reason’ while there is no universal agreement upon what reason is founded upon or even if our species is rational? There is certainly a struggle going on, called history, to ‘Enlighten’ and realize that end but the evidence is partial at best, reflecting the limited progress humanity has made to overcome neolithic emotions and instincts that make us such a dangerous, probably unsustainable species. If ‘prayer’ or religion as we understand it, had made any contribution to that process, it is not evident in the snails pace or even absence of moral progress.

    • I can pray for reason, because I have reason to believe the universe is reasonable and rational. The problem with marking moral progress, on the other hand, is that we cannot rewind the clock to see what things would be like under different conditions. Even so, every generation of humans, to a certain extent, restarts the clock. Since each recent generation has consisted of more humans than the last, Christian theology suggests that humanity could well appear “worse” with each successive generation. More sinful people, more sin. The fact that things don’t actually seem worse than they were when we were fewer in number suggests to me that things may actually be improving. But at the end of the day, history is not open to experimentation. We can’t go back, kill Hitler (or get rid of Christianity), and run the 20th century forward to see how things would be different.

  6. Greg in Champions says:

    When I hear someone say Christianity is illogical I immediately think of Romans ch. 1-2. God’s word could not be more clear on this. God said that since creation his invisible attributes are clearly seen. I did not quote the passage, but you know it I’m sure. What I get from these scriptures is that man knows there is a creator but we suppress that knowledge because we love our sin. Man doesn’t want to be held accountable to God for their sins. I am not a theologian or a writer but I think you might understand my point.

    • I corrected your reference in Romans (I hope you don’t mind). I believe Paul is arguing in that portion of his letter for the general condition of the human race, that we find ourselves in the twin position of having everything we need to confirm the existence of the God of the Christian Scriptures, yet without the ability to discern it because of our fallen nature. This suggests, theologically, that the Christian as “new creation” can perceive things that someone still in their fallen condition cannot.

  7. ghostway says:

    “… empiricism argues that all truth must be observable.”

    This again is a misreading. Empiricism limits itself to the observable universe. That is quite a different thing from claiming “all truth must be observable,” and not a claim to “monopoly on truth” at all. In fact, it is a statement as to method rather than about content, true or false. It is an approach which would be perfectly compatible with theological truth-claims in certain frames of reference, for example in panentheism, which proposes that the observable universe lies within and is contained by God.

    • “The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in any subject area or for the concepts we use in any subject area other than sense experience.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Just to make sure we’re using a shared, accepted definition of empiricism. If a truth claim is derived from some source other than observation empiricism rules that claim invalid. Even if the observation comes from someone else, if it is not “repeatable” or testable directly by me, it cannot stand. But empiricism depends on an a priori, unobserved axiom, that “there is no source of knowledge other than sense experience.” I’m not denying the usefulness of empirical observations. I’m refuting empiricism as a philosophical commitment used by some to reject all forms of religion as “irrational.”

  8. ghostway says:


    A premiss is not really a belief.

    Bear in mind that before Newton, the pope divided truth from untruth, and any who publicly disagreed, as for example Galileo who did not accept the proposition that the sun orbited the earth (based on theological a prioris) were subject to being burned at the stake. Surely we can all be grateful that the Age of Reason freed the human mind from the iron grip of controlling dogma and broke the church’s monopoly on truth.

    • A premise can be a belief if its truth cannot be demonstrated. If I argue that Benedict XVI is a tyrant because “Benedict is a pope” and “all popes are tyrants,” my first premise is a fact, while the second is a belief or opinion. I am not arguing that a great many things can be determined from observation. Scripture suggests that our senses are trustworthy and can observe a great many things. But empiricism argues that all truth must be observable. I am merely, to use your words, breaking empiricism’s false monopoly on truth.

    • M4 says:

      To ghostway, I find it interesting that you seem to suggest a positivist view that collapses even by its own standards. The experimental neurosciences strongly suggest that sensory input is extensively modified and processed by the brain before, and during, the processes of perception and recognition. For this reason, one’s “mental image” [a term I use here heuristically] of the external world is not an exact correspondence, often not even close. This should lead us to be quite careful about how we interpret our percepts; they may be reliable, but only with much care to prevent error.

      Furthermore, if you limit reality to your *personal* observations, you run the risk of solipsism, with its attendant failure to learn from others’ experience. I suggest that you also consider Wittgenstein’s work, in which he rather nicely argued that percepts were interpreted and conveyed in linguistic rather than idiosyncratic terms – another nail in the coffin of solipsistic approaches.

      As for your portrayal of history, I hope it’s not escaped your notice that a Christian movement dubbed the Protestant Reformation was contesting papal truth claims well before Isaac Newton appeared on the scene. Although it seems to have been repeated so often that it “must” be true, there is actually good evidence that Galileo’s condemnation resulted from political machinations rather than concerns about religious heresy. Finally, and most importantly, your assertion that “the Age of Reason freed the human mind from the iron grip of controlling dogma” is not supported by credible evidence – and contradicted by many counterexamples. Among these: the Terror of the French Revolution (1793-4), founded on a glorified “Reason” that quickly degenerated into mass murder; and the Communist democides of the 20th century, driven by Marxist appeals to “reason.” Another less bloody, but more pervasive, failure of “Reason” is the expansion of the modern state bureaucracies, in which a reason always seems to exist to justify any harm.

    • Charles Pustejovsky says:

      The Greek thinker Ptolemy was the proponent of Geocentrism. It was actually the Roman Catholic cleric Copernicus who overturned this idea of the universe. The Roman Church held to this idea, but it was not an inherently Christian notion.