Putting Faith Before Fact: two articles in the New York Times
Regarding these two recent articles:
The Awesome Importance of Imagination by David Brooks from Nov 11, 2021
How Covid Raised the Stakes of the War Between Faith and Science by Tish Harrison Warren, Nov 7, 2021
Religion has nothing to do with being good or smart, you can be both all by yourself.
David Brooks is considered a smart man but he could be a lot smarter if he did not surrender his imagination to religion. Suspending disbelief is a private folly and not a mandate to pontificate. How can anyone give credence to eyes too bashful to face the full-frontal nudity of Truth unveiled?
Of all the wars, atrocities and book-burnings waged by religion throughout history, the worst is the assault on the imagination. That unique facility is precisely what makes us human. Putting faith before fact is declaring yourself less than human.
The greatest moment in life is summoning the courage to think for yourself and not be afraid of burning in hell.
Imagine if you could zombify people to suspend their imagination and police themselves without a uniformed presence. That would be a very valuable asset to a State that could in turn grant tax-free status to your commercial enterprise. Of course, education would be punishable by death for it to work. Christianity did exactly that to create the world’s greatest business plan.
Critical thinking is a civic duty. Throughout time, the wisdom of luminaries is compromised by subscription to blind faith and bigotry. Metaphysics is not physics. Contrary to Tish Harrison Warren, religion and science are in no way compatible: one is fanciful, the other demands proof. You can be sure every innocent person wants a scientific jury and the guilty will always chose a jury of faith.
Science allows the infertile to give birth and vaccines to keep us from dying. The Bible Belt will take one but not the other. The self-righteous are free to kill themselves but not to take the rest of us with them. They are bullies that will nail you to a cross for acting Christlike. The greatest moment in life is summoning the courage to think for yourself and not be afraid of burning in a make-believe hell.