Friday, August 16, 2013

On the Overratedness of Being Rational

Here's a paragraph from Stanley Hauerwas defending the irrationality of faith in God.  He's not claiming that Christianity will make sense to everyone.  He's also not claiming that it will always make the world run more smoothly.  He is claiming Christianity is true...and, that there's a bit of arrogance to believing that we can discover on our own power what is right or wrong or true about the world. 

"An ethic claiming to be 'rational' and universally valid for all thinking people everywhere is incipiently demonic because it has no means of explaining why there are still people who disagree with its prescriptions of behavior, except that these people must be 'irrational' and, therefore (since 'rationality' is said to be our most important human characteristic), subhuman."  - Resident Aliens, 101

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