Speaking of reason…

Seems like a good time to recall one of my favorite books by just about my favorite scholar (I’ll leave open a small window for a few others), Princeton Professor Robert George. The book is The Clash of Orthodoxies and it is compelling. Sounds like it’s about the religion and ideologies at odds between the East and West, right? But it’s not. It’s about a clash within the civilization in the West.

In the opening of the book George outlines his claim, and his intent to prove it, that “Christian moral teaching can be shown to be rationally superior to orthodox secular moral beliefs.” And he appeals, brilliantly and consistently, to reason.

“In defending the rational strength of Christian morality, I do not mean either to denigrate faith or to deny the importance — indeed, the centrality — of God’s reavealed Word in the Bible, or of sacred Christian tradition. My aim is to…put forward a challenge to the secularist worldview that has established itself as an orthodoxy in the academy and other elite sectors of Western culture.”

FIRST, says Robbie George,

let’s get clear what is at stake in the conflict between Christian (and Jewish and to a large extent Islamic) morality and the secularist orthodoxy. The issues immediately in play have mainly, though not exclusively, to do with sexuality, the transmitting and taking of human life, and the place of religion and religiously informed moral judgment in public life.

According to the secularist orthodoxy, a child prior to birth–or some other marker event sometime before or soon after birth, such as the emergence of detectable brain-wave function or the acquisition of self-awareness–has no right not to be killed at the direction of its mother, no right, at least, that the law may legitimately recognize and protect. At the other edge of life, orthodox secularists believe that every individual has a right to commit suicide and to be assisted in committing suicide, should that person, for whatever reasons, prefer death to life.

Wow. That nails it. That’s the standoff.

Now put that together with the post below on Cardinal Schonborn calling for a reasoned debate on science vs. ideology in the schools (and it probably shocks a lot of folks that the Cardinal’s argument is grounded in the science and the challenge is to the ideologues). What we have is a solid arena of ideas, and bold and brilliant minds unafraid of any provocation. They are calling for clarity and reason, and the intellectual honesty to confront them.

After Labor Day, the political election season is in full swing and the rhetoric will get mean and heated and emotional. Pay attention to the arguments, and see which ones generate more heat than light.