Goring Reason

Now, I'm about to break a cardinal rule of research: Never trust the other guy.
That being said, I have no desire to read through Al Gore's Assault on Reason. Thus, I offer you this excerpt from the book which is itself excerpted from an article by Jack Beatty.

Gore weaves science, history, and philosophy into his assault on Bush’s assault on reason. Fresh insights result. For example: "Bush’s view of policies in the context of a fateful spiritual conflict between good and evil does not really represent Christian doctrine," he notes. " It actually more closely resembles an ancient Christian heresy called Manichaeism—rejected by Christianity more than a thousand years ago—that sought to divide all of reality into …absolute good and absolute evil."

Of course, the problem with "absolute good vs. absolute evil" in Manichaeism is that it is essentially Zoroastrian, from my humble understanding at least. The issue here is that it suggests that good and evil are ultimately balanced in the cosmos, and we just pick a side. In a way, I suppose he's right to say there is no "absolute evil," but only insofar as all things were created good before they became evil. He says there is no war between absolute good and absolute evil without seeming to concede that the war is really between an absolute good and an inferior evil.

Ironically, Gore's own profession that the salvation of this country depends solely on our use of knowledge and reason actually sounds far more like Manichaeism than Bush's belief that the world struggles between forces of good and evil...at least according to the following (excerpted from the Catholic Encyclopedia):

The key to Mani's system is his cosmogony. Once this is known there is little else to learn. In this sense Mani was a true Gnostic, as he brought salvation by knowledge. Manichæism professed to be a religion of pure reason as opposed to Christian credulity; it professed to explain the origin, the composition, and the future of the universe; it had an answer for everything and despised Christianity, which was full of mysteries. It was utterly unconscious that its every answer was a mystification or a whimsical invention; in fact, it gained mastery over men's minds by the astonishing completeness, minuteness, and consistency of its assertions.

 Kind of sounds like a plot summary of An Inconvenient Truth...

Comments

[Al T]

With respect to Gore I say we play the game Chesterton describes in Everlasting man:"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun."