Quote of the Day (23)

Intellectual autonomy is a chimera, a mirage, a phantasm, a will-o’-the-wisp.

Most of us make our choices (be they heaven or hell, life or death, blessing or ruination) primarily on the basis of the testimony of others, not because of any independent intellectual exercise. Those who succeed in freeing themselves of the “outdated worldview” characterized by belief in the existence and authority of God have merely accepted the default assumptions of other, much more dubious would-be authorities.

Or put another way, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools”.

A Catholic writer of science fiction makes this trenchant observation about modern standards of certainty:

“Modern thought oddly claims to be scientific and to rely on the certainty of empiricism, but in fact takes everything on authority, and on anonymous authority at that.

Anonymous means no modern man would dream of discovering the qualifications of the members of the U.N. panel on climate change, nor has modern man any impulse to question the findings of bribed bureaucrats or political appointees drawing conclusions about the relative dangers of DDT. The modern man is ironically proud of skepticism, but has no ability to question the authority of experts utterly nameless, utterly faceless, utterly immune from question or contradiction.”

— John C. Wright, Restless Heart of Darkness

The Lord Jesus taught that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. That’s true whether we speak of sins of the body or sins of the intellect.

There are no “freethinkers”. We all serve somebody.