O Ye of Little Faith

The discovery of ancient "Holy Family" ossuaries in Jerusalem tombs recently has unleashed the predictable "told 'ya so" from the humanist atheists, and tonight's ABC News had them parading around Washington and calling for the end of all religion and a new age of reason.

The world's religions, they said, have in their fanatic fighting against each other, caused the fracturing of the world, pitting Jews against Muslims, Catholics against Protestants, and Hindu against Buddhist. All human misery would vanish if only men would embrace modern knowledge and science, use their own human reason, and eschew ancient religious "superstitions."

What these rationalists may be forgetting is that such a world as they are promoting was tried, before, and it didn't work very well. It was called the Age of Reason, and ironically came to fullness at the time of the founding of America, at the end of the Eighteenth Century.

The Christian Church was at its lowest ebb of influence since its formation. In France, following the French Revolution, Napoleon, having been elected by plebiscite, seized Notre Dame Cathedral from the Church, threatened clergy with torture and death, and rededicated the famous structure to "the Goddess of Reason." He then forced the Pope to crown him within its walls, which he had ordered redecorated as a Roman temple with round arches rather than the pointed vaults of the Gothic age, Emperor of the French Empire (modeled after ancient Rome). He built the Arc de Triomph atop the Etoile and the Vendome Column on the site that had recently guillotined nearly the entire French aristocracy in the Reign of Terror, forced the citizens of the new Age of Reason to wear Roman togas and refurnish their homes with torchiere lamps and chaise lounges as had the Romans, and enjoy the fruits of liberte, egalite, and fraternite, the same ideals the French had supported in our own revolution a decade or so earlier.

When things didn't work, he reverted to type, invaded most of the rest of Europe, and caused quite a ruckus until stopped, finally, at Waterloo by sea and Moscow by land. So much for the "Age of Reason."

But most Americans today believe, mistakenly, that America was founded by Christians persecuted in Europe and driven to the New World by religious intolerance. The pilgrims of Plymouth and Jamestown colonies came for many reasons, but they weren't necessarily Christians, and some century and a half later, when the signers of the Declaration of Independence met in 1776, after the fullness of the Enlightenment had produced some of the finest thought since the Classical philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had argued by dialectic in the Greek Academy and Lyceum, there was hardly a Christian to be found among them. As were most men of the Enlightenment, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Monroe and others were Deists, not Christians. They placed their faith in reason, not religion. And they had the wisdom to keep religion separate from matters of the state.

Notice I did not say keep religion out of the social order, but separate from matters of government. Freedom of the faith and practice of one's religion was, in fact, guaranteed by the Constitution by these same founding fathers, these Deists. And one must ask why.

I believe that those men of reason, unlike Napoleon, must have recognized that religion is based not upon physical realities but upon the reality of the spiritual that infuses with meaning the physical existence we are so much more aware of, that spirit is the essential force that has inspired man since the dawn of time to struggle, to persevere, to tolerate, to love, to forgive, to endure, to continue forward against a flood of scorn and doubt by others, and ultimately to triumph over a purely evidentiary physical environment. And from religion, if we are extremely fortunate, we might even learn to love others we might otherwise hate. There is nothing in reason to account for that. Love our enemies? Preposterous! Do good to those that seek to harm me? Ridiculous!

The tomb discoveries mean much to those who have no belief in spirit, for it proves to them, logically, that the Resurrection never happened. There are the bones, they say. Jesus lived, married Mary Magdalene, had children, died, and here he is; here, in fact, they all are. They are the same thinkers who dispute the divine creation of the world, the existence of God, the Ark of the Covenant, the Flood of Noah, the raising of Lazurus, the healing of the blind, the parting of the Red Sea and all the miracles of both Testaments, on the basis of only physical laws, historical records, archeological remains and reason. Holy objects can't kill by touch, the Earth has never flooded entirely, the dead can't be raised, the blind made to see, nor the seas to part. It is just not reasonable.

These people completely ignore the reality of spirit, which by definition cannot be apprehended by reason nor proven by science. I happen to be a Christian, but not because I know the historical proofs of the miracles. My faith doesn't hinge on the physical truth of the Resurrection or whether or not Jesus's life according to the gospels was accurately remembered. My faith is based not upon what Jesus did but upon what he preached: love, forgive, and always have faith. Be kind, be giving, be helpful, be patient, be humble, be respectful, be slow to anger and be tolerant, for no one is perfect. Admit your shortcomings and try not to repeat them.

Show me how a world that would reject such things as these in favor of a code of conduct based purely on human reason and natural laws, without any measure of right or wrong, and stripped of any divine authority or purpose for human life beyond survival at any cost could create a better world, and then we'll talk.