Thursday, September 25, 2014

"Faith and Reason," an irrelevant topic

Catholics love bringing up the question of the relationship between "Faith and reason." Today I heard a Catholic lecture on how rational "scientism" was threatening to take over the world. It would remove aesthetics, and render values of all types as arbitrary and meaningless. I sat there thinking to myself that this is clearly not true.  All you have to do is read the news and look at what people are spending money on.  Aesthetics are taking a much bigger role in life. Google just bought an eye-pleasing thermostat company for billions of dollars.  The supposedly superior design of Apple products is what allows them to charge what they do.  Alot of work goes into interface design and marketing.    People pay extra for organic food. The reality is a rational-philosophy was tried by secular society during The Enlightenment and ultimately there was a backlash resulting in the Romantic period. It seems secular society learned it's lesson.   Time has shown that human nature will not tolerate a purely rational society.  There must be a blending of some kind with human emotional requirements.  Secular society has embraced this lesson.  It is clear to me there is no danger that art, music, culture, vegetarianism, architecture, sports and dance will not be leaving us anytime soon.  Our secular society today has converged on a rational/romantic hybrid philosophy where empathy is being used as a fill-in for virtue. The question of Faith and reason is kind of outdated.  To even discuss the question of Faith and reason at this point seems to ignore the state of society as it is and to disregard natural human experience. Any informed secular thought leader today knows that life is bigger than rational concerns - and they have been learning how to address these concerns.  This can clearly be seen in product design.  To be relevant the contemporary question of decision-making integration needs to at a minmum also address emotional needs of humans.  But even this is just reactionary - We can do better.