Any freethinker who thinks he's rational is crazy!

Lets take a closer look at this idea of 'free thinker'. Most often used by atheists,
secularists and those who describe themselves as humanist; they all hold to a
common illusion, that they represent a more 'rational' group then those outside their
own conception of what rationality is. If one takes the expression literally, then it's
necessary to ask a couple questions: free from what or for what? In contemporary
usage, this usually means anti-religious or free from religious influence or ideas. But
as those ideas have been, throughout history, so well woven into the culture fabric,
even as one no longer supports or participates, escape from their indirect influence
is never really possible.

Any one who really thinks he/she is a rational being should take a harder look in the
mirror. If human nature were fully rational the world would be a very different place
and those who describe themselves as ' free thinkers' are only free to deceive
themselves. Why, all other concerns aside, because as a humanity, we remain
somewhere on the learning curve of knowledge, both of ourselves and our natural
world. All human perception exists within this incomplete paradigm of understanding.
And however it may appear, at any period of time, from within any cultural construct,
our 'cutting edge' is pretty dull and only an unknown portion of a greater and as yet
undiscovered whole. Of course what is rational is the aspiration to advance towards
that whole, sometimes called progress, unfortunately without a very clear road map?

Whatever this self selected group of free thinkers wish to believe, their rationality
simply isn't all it's cracked up to be. One of their common attributes is an almost
fetishistic belief in science and technology. In the pursuit of new insight, this may
appear be the only serious game in town, but there is hardly a discovery or
technology one can name, that hasn't over time exposed its limitations, as an often
dangerous, unexpected downside or side effect, reflecting the partial nature of
understanding. Who for example would have suggested, just into the twentieth
century when Henry Ford rolled his first car off the assembly line, that he was
opening the flood gates to a technology so damaging to the environment, a mere
hundred years later, it would be seen as a primary contributor and threat to the
sustainability of our species. Or think asbestos, thalidomide or DDT. Nuclear waste
will be around to damage or haunt generations to come. Or consider
microelectronics. The computer I'm typing on is just the latest of several I've owned,
but the obsolesence of so much redundant technology creates massive
environmental problems all is own.The downside list is a very long, growing and
costly one, and the bill is the environmental crisis that is now overtaking us.

The search for new practical understanding is a hard taskmaster requiring both
imagination and great discipline. One reason science is held in such high cultural
esteem. But even scientific method doesn't guarantee results. There is no
predefined rational path of 'pure reason' leading to discovery or understanding. If that
were so, humanity would hold the key to all understanding but self evidently does
not. Consider the search for an AIDs vaccine. Twenty years on and billions of dollars
spent, a recent report underlines the problem; that those involved in this research
are no closer to a working vaccine today then when they started. Such limitations
means that millions of individuals must continue to shoulder the burden of fear. The
war against cancer that started with a grandiose speech by a then president Nixon
has hardly been won. Current controversy over 'assisted suicide' while appearing to
be a moral/religious question, wouldn't even exist except for the limitations of
medical knowledge.

The great strength of scientific method, if not always in the pursuit of, is certainly in
the scrutiny of new claims of understanding. But even this enlightened scrutiny
intrinsic to the method and necessary to keep the snake oil dealers at bay, is too
often corrupted and subverted by competition, intellectual vanity, official inertia or
administrative convenience. And particularly when financial interests are at stake,
which they almost always are, the entire system becomes ever more stressed. All
these conflicting and colliding forces are at play in the climate change debate,
between those who now accept the growing evidence that a human presence is
severely damaging the planet and the deniers. One represents necessary change,
the other defends the existing status quo. This inertia to change so well
demonstrated in the climate debate was even recognized by our forefathers within
the Declaration of Independence.... "and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves".

And this brings us to the most contentious element of rationality. To be truly rational
must also mean being truly moral. Lets start with a definition. 'To both know what's
right and have the will to do what's right for its own sake. Sounds simple enough. Yet
the difficulty of finding moral consensus, consider abortion for example, makes this
impossible as our understanding of ourselves is as limited as that outside ourselves.
To believe our species is moral by nature would be a grave error of presumption.
That is not to deny moral progress, but whatever this potential, is surely not enough.
What other species destroys it own environment and so many other species on the
alter of a gross consumer materialism? What ever technological achievement
nuclear power may be, the bomb came first. One doesn't need a degree in history to
see how war and weapons development have driven the changing political fortunes
of nation states, not unlike the effect porn has had on web development. That war
and rape are longtime bedfellows is unquestionable.

What better contemporary example of a cultural collapse in ethics then the implosion
of the financial system for which so many are now paying dearly. But are we not all
culpable, having bought into a corporate conception of free market spin which moves
entire industries and their jobs to third world locations where labour is cheapest and
a system of credit, interest rates and dividends, that allows banks to throw families
from their homes and close viable businesses and factories. The massive greed at
the top, both individual and institutional is just a reflection of all those little greeds at
the bottom that come from just opening a bank account, believing we'll get
something for 'free'. I once heard banking described as a 'license to steal', yet all turn
a blind eye so long as they get their share of the booty.
Whatever we may like to think about ourselves, however 'respectable' one may be,
we may abhor war and injustice, but just by being part of the existing moral and
intellectual paradigm of culture, of a nation state, we are collaborating and
subsidizing all those destructive forces, the 'side-effects' that are a part of the
system. And democracy can't even pretend to an alternative. The very divisions
among ourselves, our country and the world only reflect our inability to know,
discover or agree what morality is and where it begins. Like a ship lost at sea in a
storm, we are perpetually tossed about an ocean of subjective value judgement and
rationalization, reflecting the moral maze of existence. Peace is the port we never
truly arrive at.

Two volumes of interest, while offering little in the way of solutions, at least attempts
to confront the darker and more difficult elements of human nature most
'freethinkers' would prefer to avoid. The first is titled The Lucifer Effect ,
Understanding how good people turn evil by Philip Zimbardo of the Stanford prison
experiment notoriety. Although nothing intentionally to do with religion, it examines
the fragility of the ethical and moral construct in which we inhabit, considers
'conscience' that all to easily and selectively turns itself on and off according to its
own self interest and prejudices; and easily demonstrates that a potential for evil is
part and parcel of the human condition. If there was ever a 'Fall from grace' we're
undoubtably still down with no obvious way up?

The other book is by Cordelia Fine: A mind of it's own, how your brain distorts and
deceives. This volume attempts to illustrate with examples how our very thought
processes rarely provide us with a true view of reality, either of ourselves or the
world around us. Considering all the other things hard wired into our nature, that we
have no single conception of truth within our consciousness, to guide a 'rational'
intellectual process suggests an incomplete nature. Or how can one even presume
to be fully sovereign over our own being when there remain forces of emotion and
passion outside our control and will? It's no wonder one can feel on the 'edge of
chaos'? While many, especially the religious wish to describe themselves as
'spiritual', the growing environmental crisis created by a predominant materialism
founded within human nature is slowly putting paid to that idea. Or on the secular
side, consider those environmentalists who continue to think humanity is capable of
turning around in a few short years, a imminent crisis which required an entire
industrial history to arrive at!

However inexplicable, many 'rational' people will prefer holding tight to their ideas in
the face of growing, even overwhelming evidence to the contrary; probably because
it includes, in part, a more attractive but distorted view of ourselves we want to
believe. This attempt to avoid confronting the lesser reality and let go, defies the very
human need for a secure indentity. The holding power of any entrenched prejudice
or ideology, founded in ignorance with cultural roots, often supported by institution is
an all too potent force and continually thwarts real progressive change.

Watching the slanging match between a currently fashionable atheism and religion
provides excellent sport, if not the very best arena to observe 'distortion and
deception'. Not even out of the starting blocks on the learning curve is the God
question, for the simple reason that tradition has not provided any knowledge of that
reality upon which to draw conclusions. Contrary to the Christian/Judeo scriptural
record and the very purpose of the incarnation, existing tradition has never provided
the means to confirm that such a God reality even exists. Yet within this 'paradigm of
ignorance', they have no difficulty claiming to speak with authority and proclaiming
'truths'. While many of these claims originated in pre-medieval minds and times and
can be heavily discounted anyway, others continue to retail similar ideas on the
basis of expert 'theological study'. And this exposes an irrational, and probably
universal characteristic of the human condition: The self deception of intellectual
vanity. Believing we know when we don't.

So one could ask and I will, if such a reality called God can be understood by natural
reason, as theology supposes for itself, what need is there for religion, as we should
all be able to discern and agree God's will for ourselves? That tradition has for
thousands of years continued in dispute with itself should give one pause. The fact
that large global institutions have grown on such an unrealized and thus wasted
hope only obscures what may very well represent the greatest tragedy of our
species. I have no wish here to deny the potential for such a possibility as God, but
have no reservations stating, that existing institutional religion, has played the world
for an all too willing fool. Traditional religious ideas cannot and never will
demonstrate God as their source. Whatever faith an individual may attach to his/her
religious convictions are certainly not in God but in the intellectual pretensions and
fallibility of theology.

Religion cannot prove God because it has nothing to do with God! Religious dogma
and doctrine are in essence no more than a collection of formalized, intellectualized
prejudices, deceptively disguised in the elaborate trappings of ceremony. Nothing
but opinion pretending to be fact, simple paganism veiled in a scriptural spin.

The other side of this tangled knot are the views of the secular scientific and/or
atheist community having its moment for many good reasons. Nothing expresses the
Lucifer Effect better than the gory side of religious history, both ancient and
contemporary; what a gift to atheist adversaries of religion than a history with so
much spilling of blood in the name of 'love' or 'righteousness'. Yet a parasite of
religion, with no intellectual root of its own, the disingenuous side of this coin is using
religions own presumptions, to attack not only religion, but to declare there is no
God. They have a point. If existing tradition is the best God can offer humanity, then
the very idea lacks any true purpose and is undeserving of ones confidence or
support.

At the same time, because atheists cannot prove a negative and disprove God, they
have no constructive input on the question, and it remains unresolved. Sadly, not
content with their valid critique of religious practice and history, they begin, like
religion, to generate their own growing dogma of counter prejudices, every bit as
doctrinaire and intolerant as any religious fundamentalist. What I find personally
disappointing is that so many normally intelligent people jump on this band wagon. If
this 'fashion' is remembered for anything, it will probably be for reminding us all of
the failure of traditional religious ideas.

As a humanity, we aspire to many things, rationality among them. But like morality or
spiritually, we can't even agree how to accomplish such ends. A sure sign of our
confusion over such matters. As one of the many paradoxes of our human condition,
we are all too easily prepared to hold to what is irrational, unethical, and even
immoral, while believing with conviction we are rational, ethical and moral?

So the crux of the matter is this. Our rationality is bound up to our limitations. By
nature we're all a bit crazy, not quite the full shilling, It's just the some are better than
others at recognizing and challenging those contradictions, thanks in part to
educational systems attempting to discipline a chaotic mind. Yet all too often we
dishonestly default to the illusion rather than a less palatable reality, especially about
ourselves. And that's what makes us such a dangerous and destructive species.

So while we're waiting for either evolution or God to finish off project 'us', I can only
wonder which might get the job done more quickly. I'm not sure we have time to wait
for evolution to do its work, even if it could, as it's beginning to appear that Gaia may
be planning an 'extinction-is-us' event. But however 'religion' has failed and
discredited the very idea of God among thinking individuals, it may be time to
separate the two, as Lenny Bruce once said, "I think it's about time we gave up
religion and got back to God', This possibility, still a prisoner of intellectual and
spiritual vanity called tradition, may yet hold new potential to explore if anyone was
bothering to look? Where one chooses to invest hopes and aspirations remains a
most personal matter. Getting it right is all that counts.

In the meantime, for those enjoined in the struggle to 'see' clearly, considering the
darker spiritual and intellectual forces at work, any truly free thinker is one who
strives to be free from illusion but never from the truth, founded not in language but
in experience; is not blown with the winds of intellectual fashion or prejudice; has an
enlightened humility and holds with integrity to a single conception of knowledge and
what is true, one proven in the crucible of scrutiny that can demonstrate its own
efficacy with direct supporting evidences, and is prepared to apply these principles to
all things visible and 'invisible'. And when any new claim of insight becomes known,
with the opportunity to test it for ones self, always go for the evidence, especially
when it challenges the past and makes previous, long held theory or even cherished
beliefs redundant, for that's the price to pay for progress, another step up the
learning curve and into the future. Be prepared to accept ones own limitations and
change. The man who cannot change loves himself more than the truth. Remember
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"...........!