“I am satisfied the good sense of the people is the strongest army our government can ever have, and that it will not fail them.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1786. ME 6:31

“We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed than with minds nourished in error and vitiated and debased… by ignorance, indigence and oppression.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:441

“This blessed country of free inquiry and belief has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests.” –Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, 1822. ME 15:385

“Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.” –Thomas Jefferson to Rev. Samuel Knox, 1810. ME 12:360

“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822. ME 15:409

“I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.” –Thomas Jefferson to Comte Diodati, 1789. Papers 15:326

Flash forward

However, religious entities have historically fought vigorously against reason. To succeed they developed many direct and indirect tactics to discredit reason.

Blogger Ebon Musings writes how religion fights rational thought:

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
–Proverbs 3:5 (KJV)

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ…”
–2 Corinthians 10:5 (KJV)

“The Bible is preserved, reliable, and true because of the nature of its Author. It should be believed over observation and evidence.”
–Kurt Wise, Faith, Form, and Time, p.26. Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, TN, 2002.

“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”
–William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, p. 36. Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL, 1994 (revised edition).

“If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.”
–Tom Porch and Brad Batdorf, Biology for Christian Schools (3rd edition). BJU Press, 2004. Available online at BJU Press.

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.”
–From Answers in Genesis’ “Statement of Faith” (available online at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp)

“To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it…”
–Ignatius of Loyola, “Spiritual Exercises” (available online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ignatius/exercises.html)

“After ten years (in prison in Siberia), [Dostoevsky] emerged from exile with unshakable Christian convictions, as expressed in one famous passage, ‘If anyone proved to me that Christ was outside the truth… then I would prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.’”
–Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 141. Zondervan Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1995.

The last, most pernicious and most powerful meme used by religions to control the thoughts of their followers is the belief that a person’s faith takes priority over the facts of the external world when it comes to deciding what is true. This belief lies at the heart of most religions and could justifiably be considered the defining characteristic that sets them apart from all other systems of thought. And although not all religious individuals or groups would state this as plainly as the above quotes illuminate, it is present nevertheless.

Consider the message that these statements convey. The first three, from Christian apologists Kurt Wise and William Lane Craig and a biology textbook used in some Christian schools, state that the authors’ version of Christianity should be believed over any evidence a believer might see or any arguments they might hear – in short, that facts, reason and logic are ultimately unimportant when it comes to deciding what is true. The fourth quote, from the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, declares that any evidence that contradicts their interpretation of the Bible is by definition invalid – as if the very concept of truth, in these creationists’ minds, was redefined to read, “Truth, noun: See ‘Bible’”. And the last two excerpts go even farther: the quote from Ignatius of Loyola instructs believers to disregard even the evidence of their own eyes if it contradicts what they have been taught to believe, while the one from Dostoevsky states that he would not give up his religious beliefs even if they could be shown to be false. This message is cleverly reinforced in the Bible and other holy books by stories such as Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, Daniel in the lion’s den, or David and Goliath – all of which convey the message that the impossible can and will happen if only one keeps the faith and does not doubt God.

And this distorted dogmatic way of slavish thinking is dutifully passed from parent to child down through the generations. Should there be any doubt that this is the source of so much bigotry, stupidity, and ignorance in our society? Imagine any other group of people deliberately disabusing children from using evidence and logic in their lives. There would be loud protests and demands that it stop. But religion, that is different. Almost any harmful practice the clerics care to foist on children gets a pass.

We are a country ruled by citizens that the founders envisioned as educated and engaged. Is that what we see now when kids cannot identify the three branches of our government, but can name the judges on American Idol? Why did civics get cut from the curriculum in so many schools? Who allowed unregulated sham home schools to sequester one million kids and subject them to lies about our history and gross distortions of science, principally evolution, but geology, anthropology and many others.

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