Faith and Reason

One of the neat things about studying philosophy and theology formally is that you learn that there is something to the matter that you might not know before you study it.

The strange thing is that in other fields very few people think they know anything about it without having studied it but in theology and philosophy everyone thinks themselves an expert without having studied it.

For instance, I haven't ever decided to render an opinion about the relative quality of Honda and Toyota engines. Why? Because I simply haven't studied it. This seems fine to me, I honestly don't care and don't currently have any moral imperative to care.

But Theology and Philosophy are different. For Philosophy and Theology we do have a moral imperative to care, each of us, for our own souls. Yet you hear people pronouncing the vacuousness of philosophy and theology without any knowledge of the study of the matter over and over again. "Knowing" without knowing.

This "knowing unknowing" is an aspect of cognitive dissonance. We know X is important but don't want to investigate X because we're afraid of what we might find.

This is, for instance, the stance of the right-wing with regard to climate science, known as Willful Ignorance.

And like Climate science, it's easy to lob in objections from a distance "It seems cold to me, global warming is a hoax!" without investigating the matter methodically. "Nobody really knows anything" is the parallel in philosophy (but of course, we all know how to claim that nobody knows anything!).

But upon investigating the matter systematically and thoroughly facts tend to make themselves clear and demonstrable as with every other field of human study. For while Humans are imperfect, we are not so imperfect as to be unable to build a bridge or determine the meaning of the term "wrong" and finally to understand the nature of atoms and reality itself.

But this path to understanding must begin with the acknowledgement of its possibility, which turns out to be demonstrable, but again, only if someone is willing to study the matter systematically. That first step - acknowledging that Knowledge is Possible, is FAITH. I have not been "kind" in many words about the Catholic Church and this is not because I regard it as wholly evil, I do not. But like all man-made things, the Catholic Church is deeply flawed. That said, the Ecumenical and Rational period of John Paul II definitely is a step in the right direction, remembering that Reason and Faith work together to create Knowledge and Wisdom. As John Paul II points out in his essay, Faith without Reason is Superstition, and Reason without Faith is Nihilism.

https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html

Some Misunderstandings about Socialism

I hear a lot of arguments about socialism mostly based on right-wing "purposeful misunderstandings" of what is intended. These right-wing "purposeful misunderstandings" exist fundamentally to prevent rational evaluation of the value of socialism and the role it -does actually- play in the American Economy and the role it -ought- to play in said economy. Socialism has its roots in pre-marxian communal living strategies that are common to humans in reaction to the stresses of living in industrial capitalist societies, recognizing that the fundamental feature of the industrial (and now post-industrial) capitalist society is the concentration of wealth and power and the protection of the concentration of that wealth and power by the political body. So misunderstanding #1 - socialism is not marxist or communist essentially, but rather just the recognition that societies are communal living. The essential character of socialism, thus, is that it regards the function of the state finally to be the benefit of the humans that make up that state, and it is thus closely related to communal-ism in that the State is by definition an aspect of communal living. In the United States, for instance, the stated purpose of the existence of the Federal Government is written into our constitution, to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. So misunderstanding #2 - socialism is not anti-amercian. In fact, the United States of America was founded as a socialist state. What distinguishes socialism from viz. Capitalism, is that the broad class of all citizens is considered "the important class" and that laws that are made are intended to benefit that broad class of "important people" viz - everyone equally, rather than, e.g. in the case of Royalism where laws benefit primarily the Royalty or Oligarchy where laws benefit primarily the Oligarchs, or, of course, Capitalism where laws benefit primarily the rich. So misunderstanding #3 - socialism isn't opposed to freedom, but it is opposed to allowing the government to be used to benefit specific sub-groups of people, again, as the United States constitution says. In truth, then, the United States has its roots in socialism which shouldn't be any surprise to any real student of history. Our revolution overthrowing the imperialist royalist British empire with a People's revolution replacing that colonial rule with a government formed "By the People, for the people" was the quintessential People's Revolution and this should never be forgotten. In modern times one defining aspect of socialism has been the application of social science and economic science to governance. While we do this all the time in terms of safety rules, equal opportunity rules, environmental hazards and other such scientifically informed aspects of governance, application of science to Economics generally, in the United States, has been lacking because the people who are most likely to benefit from the application of economic science to governance are the poor and middle classes because the Oligarchical and Capitalist classes (that is, the people who currently control the vast proportion of money and property in the country) are currently benefiting extremely from the laws designed by them to effectively benefit them through years of propagandizing about the evils of socialism! So misunderstanding #4 - socialism is not about the redistribution of wealth. That has been done by capitalism for centuries. Socialism is about ensuring a level playing field for all citizens. Some notable exceptions to the corporate-capitalist system that is the backbone of the United States economic oligarchy come to mind, namely Social Security and Medicaid wherein the body politic takes responsibility for the ongoing well-being of our older citizens because they are to a significant extent disadvantaged by the nature of being members of a labor-class but no longer able to labor. Thus, without the benefits of property of their own and the ability to labor to gain the necessities of life, the government takes on that responsibility to ensure the well-being of those older laborers that can not any longer so labor. This method of benefiting the vast majority of people with a means of retirement at the cost of our own labor is a classical aspect of socialistic systems, that is, taking care of people. Other systems, however, that Americans have massively failed to socialize to our detriment are Food, Housing, Health Care, Education and Transportation. While we do -to some extent- offer socialized education (in fact, George Bush's "no child left behind" program is a great example of an attempt at a social program gone wrong), the fact that we only offer sufficient education for free to the public to learn to take orders and do jobs is telling as to the final beneficiary of those programs, namely Corporate America. So then, socialism, really, is the application of economic science to the job of governance in order to benefit the vast majority of people in a state. That is, socialism is -the only sensible way to govern- since science is the only systematic attempt at objective knowledge we have. Rejecting socialism, then, is like rejecting global warming, something you can do only if you have a specific personal benefit to preventing it. As such, everybody in the world should be a socialist, and every politician in the world -does- claim to be one when they talk about their campaign promises. It's only when delivering their policies that they are likely to do less than benefit the public as accurately as possible.