Just a thought before I go.

    I was watching The Song of Bernadette recently. They used a phrase that I thought was very interesting. To those who believe no explanation is necessary and for those who do not believe no explanation will do. It is a neat phrase but it seems to refer to faith and completely excludes critical thought and logic from faith. What it seems to do, in my estimation is to divide the argument into those who blindly accept and those who absolutely reject the validity of a point outright without evidence to support their stand. I reject any such mode of thought. I accept the rule of The Church without argument, based on the fact that her rule stems from the personal teachings of My Master given to the apostles and kept by her and based also on her 2000+ years of eperience giving wisdom far in excess of mine. I however hold no such position on anything else.    All things other than the magesterium of Holy Church are up for debate. In fact I believe that my views can be supported by critical thought based on the certain evidence. Not merely philosophy.
    All to often today the idea of critical thought is tossed out of the window and actions and philosophies are based entirely on feelings or on ones personal thought no matter how lacking in merit. We started this, to the extent it has risen to, in the seventies.
    People have always been prone to base their choices on emotion or "feeling over substance". One only has to look at the division in the Christian church to see the rise of the idea that an individual has greater wisdom than a Church founded by God that has been around for millenia. But in the past speaking against the insanity of "feeling over substance" was allowed. People used to be looked down upon for being ruled by emotion and not by logic. Today we reward errant illogical and biased thought, so long as it is biased the right way. We are so concerned about peoples feelings that we will not offend the poor dears by stating flatly that they are behaving like idiots. Furthermore we call them progressive and reward them. There is a use for people of this sort. In a Democracy a demaogogue will easily prey on the weak minded by a passionate plea to their base desires or at least to  their emotions and steer them into voting for a certain policy based entirely on the emtional content of the issue. Whole world views and life choices of great consequence are decided on mere gut reactions. This fact is why we were given a Republic in the begining, with a constitution that set the rules of how the Republic was to be run and how the power was to be divided. Most of all to limit the power of the government so that the people always had enough purchase on the political power of the nation to limit the abusive nature of the government without using force of arms.