Logic is Mighty – and Will Prevail, by David Carlin

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Image: Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, 1476 [The National Gallery, London]. This image is one panel in the Demidoff Altarpiece.

By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing, Feb. 3, 2023

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America and, most recently, Three Sexual Revolutions: Catholic, Protestant, Atheist.

We humans, as the old philosophers told us, are rational animals. And if rational, then logical. And if logical, then it follows that if we accept a certain premise or set of premises, we are logically bound to accept all the conclusions that follow.

We are not, however, purely rational and logical. If we were, we’d be like the angels as described by St. Thomas Aquinas: bodiless intellects. But we are less than angels. We are animals, and as such we have animal needs and desires – for food, clothing, and shelter along with that great quasi-animal need, the need for money or its equivalent.

Further, we have emotions or passions, most of these probably being a consequence of our animality. Again, we have powerful instincts pulling us in the direction of narrow egoism. In addition, because we are comfortable with our settled beliefs and prejudices, we are reluctant to give them up in exchange for what may be (though we cannot be sure) new and better beliefs. …

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