Reason and Religion

From my earliest years, I understood that God gave me a mind to reason with. And as I would not voluntarily give up my sight or hearing, so I would not voluntarily surrender my reason to anyone or for any purpose. If someone gave me a crockpot as a gift, I wouldn't just shove it in a corner and never use it. But that is what many people do with a gift from God -- their brain. At best, they may store things in it, but they don't use the brain to process those things as it was designed to do. That is the difference between rote learning and problem solving.

One example is a young man I knew back in the Seventies. We'll call him "D." D. was an engineering school graduate serving time in the army at Picatinny Arsenal, a DOD installation in New Jersey, where I was a civilian consultant. When my wife and I were awaiting the birth of her child, determined to do the best job of parenting I could, I researched books on the subject of child-rearing, and ended up selecting a half dozen books by Lee Salk. I had worked for his brother, Jonas Salk, in Pittsburgh some years earlier, and had great respect for the intelligence and education of both men.

Some time after my wife's baby was born, David D. announced that his wife was pregnant. In an effort to be helpful, I presented him with copies of the same books I found so helpful. And about a year later, when he was nearing the end of his enlistment, I asked him if he found those books helpful. He responded that he hadn't read any of them. When I asked him why not, he told me that his minister had said that Lee Salk was a communist. He also added that his minister said the same thing about the producers of Sesame Street. I don't know about the producers of Sesame Street, but I know absolutely that Lee Salk was no communist.

Thinking I would change the subject entirely, I asked him what his future plans were. He told me that he was going to enter seminary and become a minister! Oh, the irony! Here was a fellow who had gone through twelve years of grade school, spent four additional years in college, and still was not capable of reading a book and deciding whether its contents were acceptable or not. But after another year or two in seminary, he would be in the position of advising similar "sheep" about what they should or should not read.