THE ENTRY “Do I Believe What I Believe?” is now very long and includes a number of interesting side issues such as whether pronouns used in reference to God should be capitalized. But the main question was:  Do I believe? And the answer is, yes. I believe because it is reasonable to believe.

Here is an apt quote, sent by reader James H., from Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies:

        The last category of fruits by which we may judge the character of the Modern Attack consists in the fruit it bears in the field of the intelligence, what it does to human reason. 

        When the Modern Attack was gathering, a couple of lifetimes ago, while it was still confined to a small number of academic men, the first assault upon reason began. It seemed to make but little progress outside a restricted circle.  The plain man and his common-sense (which are the strongholds of reason) were not affected. Today they are. 

        But reason today is everywhere decried. The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation;and almost all the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an atmosphere of contempt. 

        See what has happened for instance to the word “logic,” to the word controversy”; note such popular phrases as “No one yet was ever convinced by argument,” or again, “Anything may be proved,” or “That may be all right in logic, but in practice it is very different.” The speech of men is becoming saturated with expressions which everywhere connote contempt for the use of the intelligence. 

        But the Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is a main part – or rather the foundation – of all inquiry into the highest things. It was precisely because reason was given this divine authority that the Church proclaimed mystery – that is, admitted reason to have its limits. It had to be so, lest the absolute powers ascribed to reason should lead to the exclusion of truths which the reason might accept but could not demonstrate. Reason was limited by mystery only more to enhance the sovereignty of reason in its own sphere. 

        When reason is dethroned, not only is Faith dethroned (the two subversions go together) but every moral and legitimate activity of the human soul is dethroned at the same time. There is no God. So the words “God is Truth” which the mind of Christian Europe used as a postulate in all it did, cease to have meaning. None can analyse the rightful authority of government nor set bounds to it. In the absence of reason, political authority reposing on mere force is boundless. And reason is thus made a
victim because Humanity itself is what the Modern Attack is destroying in its false religion of humanity. Reason being the crown of man and at the same time his distinguishing mark, the Anarchs march against reason as their principle enemy.

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