The value of an open mind

Critical thinking. Secular progressives are critical, alright, but their thinking doesn’t generally fit the great intellectual tradition of classical critical inquiry. So, with all due respect, I disagree with this USA Today columnist’s premise.

Critical thinking might be to secularism what faith is to devout religious believers.

There’s a false dichotomy, right up front. Devout people of faith can excel at critical thinking, in…say…the great Catholic intellectual tradition, among others. Think Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman…

But continuing on in this piece…

Thinking rationally, questioning assumptions, embracing complexity and eschewing the black-and-white — these habits of mind are, to the champions of non-belief, a keystone of the secular worldview and a crucial part of what separates them from religious people.

Again, as if the two were mutually exclusive (rational, complex thinkers on the one hand, religious people on the other).

So why, when it comes to matters of religion, do secularists so frequently leave their critical thinking at the door?

They leave it at the door on a multiplicity of issues, not just religion. Like…abortion being about ‘choice’ while they’re adamantly opposed to ‘informed consent’. Just to name one.

But couldn’t they engage with religious moderates and progressives, who tend to approach their faith in non-literal ways that do not require the suspension of rational thought, and who frequently lean in the same political direction as secularists do on the big issues of the day? Do secularists really want to antagonize these potential allies by sneering at their faith?

Yes. They abhor the presence of faith in the fabric of American life as it informs some leaders and activates some movements toward social reform in a dialogue of morality instead of consensus.

Secularism’s clear thinking has much to offer a world riven by unthinking ideologies and hatreds. And even though it defines itself in opposition to religion, surely secularism is capable of understanding that religion is more — at least capable of more — than irrational indulgence in supernatural fantasies. Learning more about religion would be a good start.

It sure would. Then, let the dialogue, the debate, evolve.

That’s what I take issue with in this kind of thinking, it’s premise. It sets up unnecessary tension between faith and reason. Pope John Paul II eloquently explained their natural unity, and his Apostolic Letter on the subject is as good a place as any to start that learning.

In both East and West, we may trace a journey which has led humanity down the centuries to meet and engage truth more and more deeply. It is a journey which has unfolded—as it must—within the horizon of personal self-consciousness: the more human beings know reality and the world, the more they know themselves in their uniqueness, with the question of the meaning of things and of their very existence becoming ever more pressing. This is why all that is the object of our knowledge becomes a part of our life. The admonition Know yourself was carved on the temple portal at Delphi, as testimony to a basic truth to be adopted as a minimal norm by those who seek to set themselves apart from the rest of creation as “human beings”, that is as those who “know themselves”.

And that’s only the opening paragraph.

Moreover, a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? These are the questions which we find in the sacred writings of Israel, as also in the Veda and the Avesta; we find them in the writings of Confucius and Lao-Tze, and in the preaching of Tirthankara and Buddha; they appear in the poetry of Homer and in the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, as they do in the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle. They are questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart. In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives.

The Church is no stranger to this journey of discovery, nor could she ever be…It is her duty to serve humanity in different ways, but one way in particular imposes a responsibility of a quite special kind: the diakonia of the truth.