The Assault on Reason
by Ed Fowler

       In the aftermath, everyone agreed that the ruckus at the Faculty Club started innocently enough.  Dr. Gee had never been known as a provocateur; he was merely eccentric, if not always in the most engaging sort of way.

       “The darkest age in human history,” Dr. Gee began, “was the Enlightenment and the period that followed.”

       “Harrumph!” Dr. Haw harrumphed.  “Preposterous!  The Enlightenment was by definition . . . why, where do you suppose the name came from?  It gave birth to the Age of Reason.  Darkest age indeed!  Not one more G&T for you, Gee.”

       “Will you not subside?” said Dr. Whoa.  “We mustn’t have a ruckus here at the Faculty Club.  Now, Gee, what do you mean?  Do you seriously claim that the Enlightenment was dark?  The darkest?  My, that does seem extravagant.  How so?”
       Dr. Gee sighed.  “Darwin,” he said.

       “Darwin?” Dr. Haw hollered.

       “Yes, Haw, I said Darwin.  Calm down for a moment and I’ll lay this out for you.  Think of the delusion that began with Darwin.  The job of science is to describe effects and to seek their causes.  It was never in the realm of science to discover an ultimate cause because that existed outside the creation.  With Darwin, everything changed.

       “Think back, for example, to the early years of the 21st century.  Man was so consumed with his own cleverness that he deemed what he couldn’t know not worth knowing.”

       “Well, of course,” Haw interjected, “but that was a primitive age. You can’t judge it by our standard all these centuries later and call them backward.”

       “Oh, but I can,” Dr. Gee insisted.  “Not because of what they didn’t know but because of what they refused to know – about themselves.  A few had the humility to admit what we all concede quite readily today, but only a small remnant.  In remote outposts like this quaint place called Texas they argued to open the schools to alternative explanations to Darwin, to leave open the possibility that the cause of the world was outside the world.  And they met with hoots and jeers.  The cognoscenti called them ‘trogs’ and fretted that sophisticates in more enlightened precincts would look down their noses at all Texans because of them.  Why, the schools might lose funding if the trogs weren’t reined in.  And the trogs had it right all along.”

       “Oh, yes, yes,” Dr. Haw blustered, “they seem a rather a dull lot but I say again, you can’t condemn them for not knowing back then what we know now.  They were muddling along as best they could.  Don’t you agree, Whoa?”

       “I don’t know,” said Dr. Whoa.  “What about you, Go?”

       “All is vanity,” said Dr. Go.

       “Oh, Go,” said Dr. Whoa, “this is no time for your mossy aphorisms.  Come now, what do you think?”

       “All is vanity,” said Dr. Go.

       “Look here, Gee,” said Dr. Haw, “you haven’t made your case.  Yes, they were rather a limited lot but you can’t seriously say that rationalism produced the darkest age in history.  Darker than the Dark Ages?  Give it up, old man.  Maybe another G&T is the thing for you after all.”

       Dr. Gee adjusted his monocle and put on his most patient look.  “G&T or no,” he said, “it won’t change history.  You’re overlooking the key thing, Haw.  The Dark Ages were dark, all right, but you’re ignoring the reason.  They were contending for truth. Sin intruded, versions of truth collided, atrocities happened.  There’s no denying it.  But then came the overreaction, which was far worse because they abandoned truth in the interest of exalting self.”

       “Of course, history tells us that,” Dr. Haw cut in.  “They wanted so desperately to put man at the center of creation that they set themselves at the top of it.  They claimed the only possible rationale for it must come from inside it.  We know all that, we’ve known it for centuries.  But come now, Gee, I must insist that what you’re doing is like blaming the cave man for not having the computer.  They simply weren’t evolved.”

       “They were willfully blind,” said Dr. Gee.  “They didn’t know because they chose not to know.  Darwin himself said he had no knowledge of the origin of life.  His theory was a castle in the air and the humanists moved into it with all their furniture, taking up residence for hundreds of years.  Absent a Creator, there is no ultimate cause.  Extrapolate the most ornate theory imaginable and it’s all an illusion if at the bottom is no fact at all.”

       “Just so,” said Dr. Whoa, “but I do think Haw has found a flaw.  The darkest age?  We mustn’t forget the Inquisition, dear boy.  The Crusades, the wars of religion.  Come now, Gee, give just a little.  What about it, Go, do you agree?”

       “All is vanity,” said Dr. Go.

       But Dr. Gee wore the serene look of a true believer.  The color had continued to rise in Dr. Haw and by now his head resembled a giant cranberry with a nose.  Dr. Whoa’s fears that the argument was escalating out of control proved justified when Dr. Haw slammed his fist down on the antique coffee table, sending his G&T glass crashing to the marble floor.  Way across the room, old Dr. Old snorted awake in his overstuffed leather wing chair.  Behind the bar, young Barman’s head snapped up from his tip sheet.

       “All is vanity,” said Dr. Go.

       “Gee, this is intolerable,” bellowed Dr. Haw.  “We are all men of learning and the Faculty Club is no place for fanciful talk unworthy of sophomores.  I’m willing to concede that the Age of Reason was devoid of reason, as you suggest, but you are without warrant in calling it the darkest age.  Even if they were willfully blind, even if they were hopelessly arrogant, the humanists could not match the barbarity of the Conquistadores and the slave traders.”

       “My dear Haw,” said Dr. Gee, still unperturbed, “surely you have not forgotten that Hitler campaigned under the banner of natural selection and Stalin leaned on Marx who leaned on Darwin.  But set that aside.  Tote up the innocents slain in the womb – only those in the West which celebrated the Age of Reason with such gusto – and I think you’ll find your wars of religion and your Conquistador-driven carnage small beer.  Even with all their magnificent machinery for killing in the 20th century they didn’t slaughter as many as surgeons sworn to first do no harm, wielding only a small blade and a suction tube.”

       “Oh dear,” said Dr. Whoa, “I’m beginning to believe he has a point.  Let’s calm down, Haw, and think this through.”

       But Dr. Haw was boiling over.  As he tried to rise, his cane gave way and he landed on the floor with a thud, awaking old Dr. Young, chairman of the histrionics department, with such a start that his wattles quivered like tuning forks.  When the fussing subsided and Dr. Haw was restored to his chair, he said through clinched teeth, “My dear sir, as you know very well I am no advocate of the heinous crime of abortion, outlawed lo these many years by our more advanced civilization.  But I simply will not sit still while you link that despicable practice to Darwin’s theory.  That is a reach too far.”

       “By no means,” said Dr. Gee, unruffled.  “Look here, Haw, the connection is quite natural.  When human flesh is nothing but animal flesh in a different configuration, when it has no transcendent meaning, abortion is nothing more than a tissue evacuation.  A fetus that inconveniences a woman who had a few at a party and twisted the sheets with a stranger can be gotten rid of as casually as a leaky gall bladder.  They taught this gibberish in the schools for a few generations and the result was genocide.  It was the darkest age because they killed not in a dispute over who God is or even some corrupted notion of what he wanted from them but to prove their conviction that they were gods, each unto himself.

       “All men sin, but a world that wars in the process of advancing Christian civilization into every corner is not the same as one that kills to destroy Christian civilization and replace it with a religion that makes a god of every man.”

       “Oh my, my,” said Dr. Whoa.

       “All is vanity,” said Dr. Go.

       “Amen,” said Dr. Haw, at peace at last.