Quote:
Originally Posted by Vulcan
...I agree that matters of the heart override the intellect, but you just don't throw your intellect out the window as some of these people do. They become pawns ready to be filled up with just some horrible ideas. God gave us a brain, it's up to us to use it with some truly independent thought.
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I'm not certain that I agree with the first sentence.
Should matters of the heart override the intellect? I think part of the problem one finds in Evangelicalism is this false dichotomy that is drawn between the two that artificially renders them opposite to one another.
Are the "heart" and the "brain" really embroiled in some irreconcilable age-old conflict?
This is perhaps yet another self-perpetuatiing myth that modernity has maintained—in large part through the impact of 19th cent. romanticism that followed the Enlightenment—that "instinct" and emotion somehow knows better than calculation and rational thought. One is seen as cold and sterile while the other is most often viewed sympathetically, as the wizened, true sense of things. Just think about how often this is part of a Hollywood movie plot: in which the fruits of rationalism are dangerous and evil, only to be thwarted and quashed by the triumph of "human spirit", which is usually expressed within the character who brazenly —and independently!—"goes with his gut". Its fascinating, but I think that this is yet another example of how culturally conditioned we have become through the complex developments in the intersections between politics, philosophy, and religion: "Heart" has become virtuous and "mind" has become dangerous.