Myth and Superstition on the Rise

A Man Has Got to Know His Limitations

Absolute brute objectivity is a myth as far as man is concerned. Absolute rationality is an idealistic abstraction. It does not exist. Objectivity and rationality are always to be written in lower case: it is a necessary and inevitable consequence of being a creature, not the Creator.

Only the Living and Eternal God is absolutely and infinitely objective and rational. Infinite objectivity and rationality arise from God being omniscient—of His infinite knowledge of all things, including His knowledge of Himself. Being a creature, our knowledge is conditioned firstly by our constitution—by the way we are made. It is also conditioned by our finite limitations. Our knowledge, being limited, can never be absolutely objective nor rational. It will always be constrained and limited by what we do not know—and we do not know what it is we don't know.

As Job said so eloquently, when we know all that we can know of God, we have merely touched the hem of His garment, the word we hear, although true, is limited and faint. None can understand His mighty thunder. (Job 26: 14)

Human rationality and objectivity, then, is a function of conforming our truth to the Truth which God has revealed to us. As we do this, we become more reasoned, more objective, more truthful.

But mankind has a third impediment. To these limitations of being, shared with all creatures, even the angels, we must add the corruption of sin. Since the Fall, objectivity and rationality are not only limited, but they are distorted by our sinful prejudices and predispositions. The Scripture characterises the Unbeliever as blind and deaf. All the thoughts and intentions of his heart are only evil continually. He pathologically resists God at every point and seeks to exclude Him from the universe. This is such a massive distortion of the truth, such a colossal deceit, that every thought of man is twisted and distorted in some degree by this Great Lie. As Jeremiah observed: “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

The Enlightenment promoted the myth of pure Reason—of definitive rationality as the handmaiden of Truth. Yet even a brief reading of the philosophers and men of letters of the Enlightenment quickly shows them to be people of enormous prejudice, reflecting the preconditioning of their time. Who can forget, for example, Rousseau's myth of the Noble Savage. Or the appeal to the Laws of Nature and Reason to justify the Reign of Terror in France. Their much vaunted rationalism can be seen now as little more than propaganda and its apologia.

The sad reality is that every fallen Athenian culture regards as rational that which is merely widely held. The more widespread a prejudice is, the more reasoned and rational it seems to be. Each age in Athens succeeds the former, looks back and with contempt or with condescension on the ages which have gone before, and dismisses them as ignorant, prejudiced and irrational. Why? They had to be ignorant, because they believed in slavery. Or, because they were prejudiced because they thought the earth was flat, or the sun revolved around the earth. Or, they were irrational because they thought that white races were superior--and so forth.

But it turns out each of these former ages firmly believed that their positions were based on reason—profoundly so. They believed they were acting rationally—emphatically so. Just as the philosophes of the Enlightenment so believed, yet espoused so many things no longer given even a moment's credence today.

This leads to the promulgation of Tertullian's Law of Athenian rationality: in Athens, authoritative rationality is a function of social currency. In other words, the more widely held a belief, the more rational it appears.

Now, modern Athenians will be quick to claim that a belief can only achieve widespread currency if it is rational in the first place. They see this as the Great Contribution of the Enlightenment to human civilisation. Autonomous man, supposedly freed by the Enlightenment from cant, prejudice, and superstition, now is able to think truthfully, according to the facts—just the fact, baby. Thus, in such a climate, only those beliefs which are already rationally grounded, can and will win widespread currency.

Clearly, modern Athenians have not read much of the Enlightenment, otherwise they would never make such specious claims.

But consider the logical fallacy involved in this particular piece of irrational legerdemain.

If a belief is rationally grounded and proven, it will achieve widespread currency.
Therefore, all beliefs which are widely held today must be rational and proven.

The fallacy of affirming the consequent—a prime example of which is displayed above—is as irrational today as it always was.

If one were to take any dogma which has achieved widespread acceptance and currency in our day and question it, two things would almost certainly follow. Firstly, the questioner would be assailed as ignorant, irrational, unreasonable, primitive, etc. etc. Secondly, no-one would even bother to discuss the rational foundation of the popular dogma in defending it. The presumed rationality of modern dogma is beyond question, simply because it is widely held. There are some things too obvious even to bother to defend.

For example, consider the nature and tenor of the outcry if we were to make the following propositions in the public square:

The Lord created the heavens and the earth in the space of six days, by the Word of His mouth, out of nothing.

Life begins at conception: the fertilized egg is a human being.

There is but one God and the Lord Jesus Christ is His Messiah. All other religions, including secular humanism, are idolatrous and untrue.

Government enforced redistribution of private property is theft.

Of course the outcry and scandal would be prodigious. But the tenor of the objection is what interests us. Modern Athens sees such propositions as inherently ridiculous, stupid, foolish—irrational. Why? Because the opposing propositions are rationally grounded, and comprehensively argued? Not at all. They just appear more rational, by virtue of their being widely held.

Increasingly, Athenian society is becoming superstitious. It is dominated by ideas and beliefs that have little, if any, genuine rational foundation, but are believed beyond doubt, nonetheless. The ultimate proof of these propositions is a democratic one. “Everyone believes in x; no-one any longer believes y. Therefore x must be reasonable and true”

An indication of the just how superstitious and unreasoned modern society has become is provided by the febrile insistence that “the vast majority is senior and responsible scientists believe that earth's climate is getting warmer.” The polling booth has replaced reason and truth. In such a climate, to prove your case you have to have the numbers. If you have the numbers, the rationality of the case is thereby most certainly demonstrated.

Of course this is completely contrary to the logic of scientific discovery. In principle, all it takes is one accurate contrary observation to call into question an entire edifice of universally believed theories.

Ironically, it is precisely the insistence by modern Athens that autonomous Man has achieved absolute rationality and objectivity, that seduces him so crucially to the willing acceptance of superstition and myth.