How Did the West’s “Rational Animal” Become Incapable of Using Reason? - Revelation Movement

by Vishal Mangalwadi

Last week eight hundred Sunni Muslims attacked Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul. Thirty thousand US-trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers abandoned weaponry, stripped off their uniform, and fled. The emboldened jihadists are now marching towards the capital, “liberated” by America’s 21st-century ‘War on Terror.’
On June 29, 2011, that is, a decade after America embarked on this century’s first war, the TIME magazine reported that two dozen academics from universities such as Boston and Brown, had calculated that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq had already cost $5 Trillions – that is, $16,000 per American and $64,000 per family of four.
The estimated total human cost may be as high as 225,000 dead and 365,000 wounded. That includes 57,614 Americans (soldiers and contractors, dead and wounded). Having paid this price to bring peace of freedom, Pentagon is now preparing to return Iraq and Afghanistan back to chaos and oppression.
· Why?
The War on Terror as well as the Arab Spring failed so spectacularly, because postmodern historians and political scientists no longer know what freedom is. America gave Constitutions and democratic elections to Afghanistan and Iraq thinking that vote, not truth, is the source of freedom.
· Why couldn’t America’s elite learn anything from their own history of most magnificent freedom?
Postmodern intellectuals learn little from history because for them history is not about truth. It is simply someone’s story.
— German Fascism’s father, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is postmodern America’s grandfather. (Professor Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987).
— Nietzsche’s intellectual heir, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) taught that rational consciousness is not God’s gift. It is a product of irrational unconscious. Our reasoning is often rationalization of repressed sexuality. His dogma destroyed secular confidence in human rationality. Famous atheist, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), for example, lived through Enlightened Europe’s two World Wars and confessed, “Man is a rational animal — so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it” [The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (2009), p. 45].
— Freud’s disciple, that is, Nietzsche’s “grandson”, Joseph Campbell (1904—1987) concluded that since human reason cannot know truth, myth (story-turned-into-dogma) is our only hope of inventing and enforcing “truth.”
Because American universities have deluded themselves, its most brilliant graduates governing America had absolutely no idea of what is freedom and how to start Muslim nations on a path to liberty.
PrintThe tragedy is not that secular intellectuals have closed their minds to Truth and reason. Christian Fundamentalism’s adoption of anti-intellectualism is much worse for it pits faith against God’s gift of reason. The reality is that Revelation is the only available foundation for faith in reason—the source of truth—the ground of freedom.
An illustration is in order. A few years ago, I was talking to a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary – an expert on mission to Islam. I mentioned that I wanted to expand four of my lectures into a book, “What Ails Islam?” Horrified, the learned professor insisted, “The book you need to write is ‘What’s Good in Islam.’”
Later I heard that the Bush Administration had started funding the professor’s department to teach evangelicals the “story/myth/dogma” that Islam is a religion of peace.
The White House and neo-evangelicals can partner in telling stories because “intelligent” Americans no longer believe in “True Truth” (Francis Schaeffer).
·  Neo-evangelicalism has turned the “Gospel Truth” into “Gospel Story.”
·  All history is someone’s story.
·  Whether it is:
– Political Science (bringing democracy to Muslim nations),
– Climate Science (global warming),
– Social Science (Gay Marriage)
– Psychological Science (Psychoanalysis or Human Potential)
– Physical science (Big Bang), or
– Biological Science (Evolution)
“Doing science” increasingly means peddling  politically correct dogma – that is, stories that have evolved into myths. No one really knows if there was only one Big Bang or other bigger bangs as well; whether we live in a universe or multi-verse; whether life evolved on this planet or came from outer space . . . but if you want a tenured position in a university, and if you want your research projects funded, you have to toe politically correct storyline – champion dogma.
The serious question is not:
Why Did the Mission to Establish Freedom in Iraq Fail So Miserably?
The sobering question is:
Having Rejected Reasonable Truth, Can America Sustain its Freedom?
No_Truth-pictureAs I write this piece, The New York Times (June 10, 2014) says that the Chancellor of California State University is writing a new rule: Christian groups that do not allow idol-worshipping Hindus or practicing homosexuals to become voting members and elected leaders cannot continue as officially recognized student groups in their 23 campuses, educating 450,000 students.
“What??? Can an American university rob Christian students of their right to meet on college campuses .  . . in America . . . in a country regulated by a Constitution that guarantees religious liberty?
Vanderbilt University has already outlawed 12 groups. The Chancellor of “liberal” California believes that he can drive Christian groups underground (as in China) because San Francisco’s Hastings College of Law did it and, in 2010, won the right in the Supreme Court to ban the Christian Legal Society (CLS).
So . . . “Why Did Christianity Lose America and How Can We Return America to Freedom and Greatness?”
On Tuesday, June 17, at 7 pm, at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Fridley, MN, I will continue my answer in the sixth of nine-part lecture series. The next lecture is entitled, “Returning America to Rational Revelation,” to logo-centric worldview.
These lectures are being filmed and edited. They will be uploaded and turned into a book, tentatively called, “The Church and the Healing of the Nations.”
Tuesday night lectures and Sunday sermons are a part of the mission to equip every church to double up as college classroom Monday to Friday, offering high-quality, affordable, accredited, university education under Academic Pastors. It will re-establish VERITAS as university’s motto. One hundred thousand churches educating 15 students each is 1.5 million students. In a four-year program the American church will disciple 4–6 million students every day for four years.
To complete the initial phase of this project we need $30,000. Please pray and donate on www.RevelationMovement.com
– Vishal Mangalwadi

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