Why Head-Over-Heart, Head-Over-Hormone, Head-Over-Heaven?

When I explain to some folks the basics of being a "Militant Enlightenmentist," a few always wonder if I'm putting the scientific method on a pedestal. Does inductive reasoning itself become a religion, if you're trying to advance the Enlightenment by all means necessary?

Let's clear up a few issues here. I think that faith-based ways of knowing are entirely legitimate, and that some resonances deserve supernatural explanations. I think that sometimes, the best way to comprehend something is in love or anger or joy or fear, not in logic. I think there are times when horniness conquers all.

But there is a special reason why science, mathematics, and logic deserve a special place, besides the fact that they work the best to sort out what certainly appears to be an independent physical world out there. We live in a multicultural world. Faith-based ways of knowing like to boast of a "universal truth," but you can say "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light" until you're blue in the face to a Buddhist, and it won't mean a damned thing. You can insist others respond in anger to some outrage, but if the person you are talking to does not consider honor a trait worth honoring, your appeals will go nowhere. You can insist the time for pheromones is now, but sometimes no means no.

However, scientific and mathematical laws operate across all cultures at all times. Logic in both Boolean and abstract forms simply is. We may not agree that the eight-legged creature on the wall is called a "spider," but we agree about the characteristics we have learned through observation and experimentation. And that's why science, math, and logic hold the trump cards. Call upon authorities like God or the president or daddy all you want, get angry or funny and expect others to share your emotions, let yourself be ruled by the times you're in heat, but none of those factors operates across cultures. The Enlightenment is a trump card that holds certain truths common across all sentient beings, and that trump card beats out holy books and limbic systems and hormones.

Faith-Based Terrorism

Look, I don't hold an undue paranoia about the dangerous potential of the devout. Despite everything Chris Hedges says, I feel I can walk down the streets of Colorado Springs, even in front of Focus on the Family, and say what I want, when I want, with no fear of reprisal. In fact, the shootings at New Life Church last December show that it's often those with a grudge against religion that are the most dangerous in society.

But the latest Knoxville shootings carried out by a wacked-out avenging angel named Jim Adkisson have me thinking again about the problem of catastrophist faith-based terrorists who want to purify society. Did anyone tell Adkisson that denominations like Unitarians and Congregationalists have been around since this nation was founded, and that they thus have more legitimacy than most evangelical groups? Did anyone tell representatives of the latest salafi wackadoodle Islamic group that there is no chance of establishing a global caliphate on the blood of others, in this world or the next one? Can all the world's faiths agree on purging their adherents of the type of lone-shooter-cum-suicide-bomber who believes in a personal duty to kill the innocent? Some religious leaders within Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions have been a little bit remiss at coming down hard on the catastrophists among them. So let's make it clear, no matter what your vision of a divine God may be, there is no moral legitimacy in the avenging angel role. If you seek to purify society in the name of your religion, you are a terrorist and should be treated accordingly.