I will never forget the thunderstrike when, while reading Garrigou-Lagrange’s God, His Existence and Nature: A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, the brilliant Thomist wrote that rejection of God – atheism – is irrational. Note, he was not saying merely that rejection of God leads to irrationality in the sense that one can rationally reject God and over the course of time just wind up in irrationality. (I should note that rejection of God does lead to ever more and bizarre irrationalities.) No, he was meaning the the rejection of God just is irrational, a denial ultimately of the law of non-contradiction which destroys reason. The thunderstrike bolted upon me again when I read Kai Nielsen’s famous debate at Ole Miss regarding the existence of God. Nielsen casually stated that he took it for granted that “since the time of Hume and Kant” traditional proofs for God had been refuted. I could see Garrigou-Lagrange smiling and winking from heaven.
Modernity is a mess of horribly deluded people taking for granted “since the time of” whatever freakish irrationalities which serve as fundamental premises. Political liberty and freedom, horror of authority and ”authoritarianism,” equal rights, sex as a playground under the watchful eye of the storm troopers, and on and on and on. As an aside it is remarkable that all of the above are modernity’s attempts at happiness given what passes as daily life for most moderns.
I do not write much about COVID because I find the topic mostly boring or despicable. That said I am very concerned that irrationalities were massively accepted for foundational premises in March 2020. Barring a civilizational wide bolt from the Lord, I see much sadness and dread as moderns feverishly seek happiness in these plague times.
Wood Faileth 
The interesting question for me is why irrationalities become so easily accepted? Maybe confirmation bias is the answer, but a part of me thinks that people just don’t think about these things. It’s the dual vices of modernity: Irrationality and distraction.
I was thinking about it this morning in this way: Conversion is a definite moment where a person decides, with finality, what is true. Most people behave the way they behave because they always have. This is how we get “Catholics in Name Only”. It takes a positive decision to accept and internalize some premise to have a conversion.
This is why Atheists are the bane of Evangelists–someone who has made a positive decision against God butting heads against someone who has made a positive decision for God. A lot of fruitful evangelical territory is in the people who are unconverted, living an unexamined life. How do you encourage them to examine their life? Well, you shake things up a bit.
I sincerely hope that one of the unintended consequences of COVID is a lot of shaken-up lives leading to Christ on examination. I think we’ll need a decade at least to start seeing that if theory bears fruit.
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