Intentional Irrationality

The vast majority of people I have met in my life are, when it comes to matters of importance, at best sheep--not only sheep, but also, in their own ways, social lemmings and intellectual insects.  But a lion has no reason to care about the petty concerns of sheep.  Likewise, a thorough rationalist has no reason to concern himself or herself with appeasing those who choose to remain in stupidity.

On the Christian worldview exercise of rationality is an objective moral obligation (Proverbs 19:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, 1 Peter 3:15), and people who intentionally refuse to do good are necessarily inferior beings to those who do intentionally do the right thing.  "If people act in a morally wrong way without concern for their errors, then they choose to pursue a path that is morally inferior to the alternative pathway towards moral correctness . . . But if some courses of action and motivations are better than others, then it follows that those who actively seek the morally lesser ones are inferior to those who seek the opposite, since they intentionally choose the actions that are inferior" [1].  It follows, then, that on the Christian worldview those who refuse to exercise reason--instead clinging to errors, assumptions, and fallacies--have a lesser value than those who earnestly pursue reason and righteousness.  They have chosen to align themselves with what is morally lesser and thus they themselves are lesser.

The belief of some that all ignorant people should be corrected gently is an asinine one.  Some ignorance is self-imposed, and some ignorance is the result of other factors (geographical or technological limitations).  There is no sin in the latter, yet the former is Biblically inexcusable, and yet so many Christians choose to live in an intellectual stupor, exchanging knowledge for assumptions, truth for error, and verification for ignorance.

A lion does not need to tread lightly lest it offend lambs, and rationalists need not worry themselves with the lesser concerns of the intellectually and morally inferior, for truth, and not other people, is the great prize of discovering reality.  Though sadism and malice are inherently wrong, rational people are not Biblically obligated to treat the morally inferior as complete equals, which would be an inherently unjust thing.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/people-are-not-morally-equal.html