In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot

This is nicely written, but I don’t quite understand some of examples to be honest. What is being lumped in as part of the Rationalist World and why? Are we talking post Renaissance? Post Enlightenment? Contemporary? The Greeks were not reasoning people? Of the architecture that is praised here, what makes those pieces so irrational, and what makes the critiqued pieces rational? When were those quaint Parisian apartments built? We could talk about the literal 18th century Age of “Reason“ to start, but the art there was quite Neoclassical actually (and grand and aesthetic per the criteria of this essay I suppose). In fact, it was followed by an era of greater expression and imagination. Le Corbusier and the modernists responded with some peculiar ideas against decoration yes, but surely we’re about a century past that now? On the contrary, so much of the postmodern world has been criticized as shallow and image obsessed and post-truth. What happened to the arguably recent developments that are in between the extremes of modern Brutalism and say, the tedium of Medieval religious art (if we really want some sort of reference point for pre-reason): art for art’s sake, beauty is truth, pure formalism? There has always been a back and forth dialogue between aesceticism and aestheticism, minimalism and maximalism. Beauty and wonder did not suddenly die when reason was “discovered” (whenever that was). Let’s not romanticize ye olden days.

To me this seems to fall into an age-old flaw of presuming rationality means lack of wonderment.

There's no need to invoke the supernatural to feel wonder. While, sure, there are things a religious person feel wonder over that I as an atheist won't, there is so much to be excited about in knowledge and rationality itself. But also, knowing the sun is "just" a fairly unremarkable star does not mean being unable to appreciate the feelings a sunset brings, either.

Le Corbusier is a poor example to attempt to push this idea of rationality as cold, because you find that kind of worship of austerity and purity all over religious history too, and Corbusier faced rejection from a whole lot of people you might expect would embrace the austerity of his ideas (most notably, perhaps, Stalin, who opted for a far more conservative approach full of emotionally driven symbolism for both his changes to Moscow and e.g. the (never finished) Palace of the Soviets).

There is a lot of irony and fallacy here. But the worst part is the level of hypocrisy, in using what they believe to be a rational argument... to promote irrationality.

Anyone who can't rely solely on rational thought is not actually thinking rationally. This whole thing is absurd and bad for society. The more people think rationally, the better off we all are.

This author walks his talk. He is not a fan of rationality and it shows in his writing.

Where others might construct arguments grounded in fact or logic, the author argues by assertion, with gems such as:

    Alchemy was the last honest science

    Penthouse decorations are a poverty compared to a peasant walking daily under the stone arcades to the marketplace, or children witnessing daily the blacksmith work magic with iron and flame.

    To sustain the amount of experience needed to develop intuition, you must consume stories, take in all manner of literature, myths, and fables.

    Modern social sciences are so filled with fraudulent studies that a book of fables or a good history book will teach volumes more about psychology than any psychology textbook printed today, and it will do so with fewer delusions.

Are any of the above supportable?

   Almost no new cities match the beauty of the few remaining medieval city centers, which themselves are so cherished that people will spend thousands to fly there, just to see them in person for a few days. But tourists fly home, and never think of creating a new place, of creating something that constitutes an artistic endeavor beyond themselves.

Tourists leave the medieval city centers and fly home to flushing toilets. In the modern day, Cholera (caused by bad sanitation) kills 21,000 to 143,000 people a year, so let's not glorify medieval living too much. And they do create new places. They create dream homes, and even film the process. But we have such an abundity of art in the modern world that we tune out that reality TV crap and enjoy something better.

    Rationality has so thoroughly soaked the earth that even those who call themselves religious have persuaded themselves to experience religion through a purely rationalist lens.

I wish. The Roman Catholic Church is still against condoms. There's more than enough irrationality to go around.

    There is even the paradox of those who consider themselves the most religious, yet appear to be among the most rationalist, spending great energy on proof. 

That is not a paradox. Here's an actual paradox: A man ought to reject rationalism and trust his intuition, even though his intuition tells him to trust rationality and reject his intuition.

It's difficult to be critical of the main idea of this piece, largely because it's so all over the place. I can't tell if he's for or against modern science. Rationalism is forgivable as youthful stupor... but children intuitively know what to value? Science is bad because it's argument-by-authority, you need to actually do the experiment yourself ... but experiments aren't to be trusted, you need experience instead? It seems all I can do is take potshots.

If I think for a minute about the greatest technological advancement we've made, I'd say the it's the computer. But someone smarter than me will say it's the written word, and I'd grudgingly agree. Having read this piece I need to change my answer again - to rational thought. Like the written word, it's so valuable and taken for granted that I'm gobsmacked to see someone diminish it in any way.

In the end, when you fight for intuition over rationality, it doesn't matter what you write, because your reader is emboldened to trust their gut instead.