Agree with Cybertronian here.
I have always appreciated the fact that in the Church, reason is extremely important.
Now please understand what I mean.
I do not mean "thinking for oneself". Thinking for oneself is highly overrated, because most people don't have the brains to do it effectively. And if every individual were honest and humble they'd realize that there is nothing new under the sun, and that whatever ideas they have are mostly borrowed.
Reason is not the same as "thinking for oneself". Reason is the process of applying logic to facts in order to discern truth.
I want to clarify: It`s not just the application of logic to facts.
It`s the application of logic to facts in order to arrive at truth.
I make that distinction because a lot of people are able to nominally sift through the facts to arrive at a valid conclusion.
But for them, an opinion is just an opinion. Reason is not the path to truth. It's a process to attain a credible opinion, not a true one.
The secular world likes to think that it upholds reason but it doesn't precisely because it does not uphold reason's raison d'être, which is truth. If nothing is truth, then reason isn't terribly useful, isn't it? One opinion is just as good as another, no matter how flawed the reasoning. No one opinion is truer than another. So why bother with reason?
What the secular world really wants is "thinking for oneself" so that it does not have to reach the truth. Very convenient for ditching responsibility and doing whatever you like.
