Comments on: The Faith of Reason http://clemsonforum.com/2007/02/03/the-faith-of-reason/ Clemson University's Progressive News and Opinion Source Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:36:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Thomas Oberdan http://clemsonforum.com/2007/02/03/the-faith-of-reason/#comment-12948 Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:45:21 +0000 http://clemsonforum.com/2007/02/03/the-faith-of-reason/#comment-12948 Any intellectual history which justifies the Church's treatment of Galileo is a bit skewed, most importantly because it overlooks the fact that the Church was going through an extremely reactionary stage (the Counter-Reformation) which drove it to absurd -one might say 'fundamentalist'- extremes. But perhaps the most important lacuna in the re-telling of Western Civ concerns the lacuna, arguably the era in which religion and reason conflicted most. But even Voltaire was not, in principle, opposed to religion. Indeed, it wasn't religion, but superstition, which he regarded as the bane of reason. Unfortunately, most of the religions popular in America -especially the South!!!- today are dominated by superstition founded on a gross misreading of Scripture. But all in all, I enjoyed the article immensely! Any intellectual history which justifies the Church’s treatment of Galileo is a bit skewed, most importantly because it overlooks the fact that the Church was going through an extremely reactionary stage (the Counter-Reformation) which drove it to absurd -one might say ‘fundamentalist’- extremes. But perhaps the most important lacuna in the re-telling of Western Civ concerns the lacuna, arguably the era in which religion and reason conflicted most. But even Voltaire was not, in principle, opposed to religion. Indeed, it wasn’t religion, but superstition, which he regarded as the bane of reason. Unfortunately, most of the religions popular in America -especially the South!!!- today are dominated by superstition founded on a gross misreading of Scripture.

But all in all, I enjoyed the article immensely!

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