Rationing Rationality

I'm celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday in my typical way—quietly, at home, trying to be rational. I strive to be rational the way a poor person will work and work and become rich—being rational doesn't come naturally to me, see, so I work and work at it all the time and never feel entirely confident that I really, truly have a lock on it.

So. Anyway. I admit—actually, I'm a little proud of it—that I've poked a little fun over the years at people who believe in the literal truth of the Bible or any other holy book. In Catch-22, the chaplain would agonize in low moods over just this question: "Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once heard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?" But to many people—more than 40 percent—it evidently does seem probable. People arrived on earth all set to go, no evolution about it. The overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Why, it was put there to test our faith.

I used to think that people who thought that way were blithering idiots who couldn't get through the day without a trip to the emergency room because they were forever cutting or burning themselves or drinking antifreeze or whatever. But today I suddenly got a different take on it—for the most part, these are folks who are nutso on one subject but more or less sensible about whether they should get the car fixed, or get a new one, that kind of thing. They put aside rationality when it suits them, for emotional purposes or whatever. And now I understand. I'm not religious, but taking an occasional vacation from being rational is something I can very much relate to.