As some of the least reasonable of the State Legislators of Pennsylvania continue to push passionately for Creationism to be taught in public schools, it becomes clearer and clearer that many people simply are unable to distinguish passion from reason. And to be honest it is not an easy distinction to make.
Pascal, urging us to faith in the face of reason tells us “the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” And indeed he is right insofar as there is certainly no logical reason to believe in a benevolent and just god. Horror abounds. It always will. We’ll never know why. So only faith is left, reason be damned. Pascal’s presumption is that the dull dispassionate head is unable to grasp the deepest beauty of our apparently brutal universe. The head is too blunt to distinguish the glory of God’s mysteries from the arrogance of humanity’s theories.
But perhaps it is otherwise. Perhaps the distinctly human mind has a passion of its own of which the passions of heart are but a shadow. Courage, Kindness, Loyalty, Respect, even Love, all depend on will directed by reason. A lion is neither kind nor unkind when it kills. Nor is it courageous or loyal when it fights to the death. A lion never loves. The passions of animals are mere instincts, barely passions at all.
It is only the human mind that allows us our human passions, and our hearts provide the surest path to our greatest human passion: reason. But the mindless reason of the heart is fickle, ambivalent, transitory. Our hearts are easily seduced by illusions our minds know to be false. Today’s love is, well, today’s love. Today’s creationism is, well, today’s creationism. So Pascal is wrong. The heart’s reasons are blind, whereas reason has its passions of which the fickle heart is unaware.
Article comments
1 - WackyPotato
Professor,
Thinking back on your last blog... I had a profound thought driving home this evening and constructed the following Hypothesis:
Ho. People who believe in Yahshua as the son of Yaweh, have probably been where the non-believer is; worse had sunk into abysmal despair and sought Yahshua, and found Him waiting to receive.
Ha. People who bash the faith of those who believe in Yahshua as the son of Yaweh, have never been where, nor experienced what made those people into the believers they are.
Therefore, when looking at the Hypothetical Analysis... those that vehemently oppose believers in Yahshua… are in essence biaed, and prejudicial. As they haven’t experienced what the believer has experienced; yet the believer was once where the non-believer is and for whatever reason, sought Yaweh, and experienced the touch or the indwelling of the paraclete.
Your last blog really brought out profound and blunt antagonism directed at another’s spiritual walk. Which by any definition is prejudicial, if those opposing had never had such an experience… rather analogous to the axiom of “walking a mile in my shoes.”
That ought to get things rolling!