When the brain functions as a simulator of reality, it tries to determine the way the world actually works, in order to accurately predict the future. Language gave us the ability to pass these simulation models down from generation to generation–the “second replicator,” which allowed a new type of evolution (cultural/intellectual) to begin.

So while our genetic models are very similar to primitive humans and prehumans, our mental (linguistic) models have advanced exponentially. The rational/irrational distinction is the distinction between mental simulation and genetic instinct. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, is non-instinctual–ie, it doesn’t “make sense” to our mammalian brains–but it is rational, because it is a mental model which can accurately predict the workings of the universe system.

Your claim assumes that the evolved biology of the human brain is the full expression of the closed system of the universe. Because it is an infinitesimal subset of that system, and because it is still evolving through the new vehicle of language as well as the old vehicle of genetics, the rational/irrational distinction becomes possible. It is useful (if not entirely accurate) to think of it as the difference between evolved and less-evolved modes of thought.

Humans are as much part of this universe as everything else in it, and I would be very surprised if we possess anything that is beyond it.

Honestly though, is that such a bad thing?

Namely, that I think the scapegoat effect appears most often when we fail to achieve mastery over our own fate. It takes strength to control the path of one’s own life, and those who achieve it often give credit to a higher power of some sort, however mistakenly.

Those who fail to achieve that mastery need someone to blame, for, being too weak to master themselves, they are often enough too weak to accept their weakness. Thus, the devil made me do it.

As to the last paragraph, it’s an interesting point, and one I believed myself for a number of years–and I like how you defined “political” as a different event from “rational”. This seems accurate enough, given the way large herds of humans tend to operate.

To be serious, though, I no longer believe there is any human experience to be had beyond the realms of reason (ie, the operation of this universe-system). I haven’t quite figured out what this means for morality yet, but I intend to write something on it soon.

In Genesis, God permits the temptation of our first parents, judging both them and the Serpent but intimating that the judgment of the Serpent would not come from him directly but through the Woman’s offspring. In Job, possibly the earliest written of any book in Scripture, the devil is evil to be sure, but completely limited by God’s will. Ultimately in the narrative, he slides out of the picture. God seems to be using him merely as the setup for a teachable moment between him, Job, and Job’s friends. Again we see God placing human beings at a high value, but the narrative does not support the kind of Manichean duality into which we human beings so readily assign God and the Devil.

This duality you describe (and wisely disparage) is perhaps a manifestation of our own bid as human beings to achieve mastery of our own fate–by playing off God and the Devil against each other for our own ends. We think that by managing them in this way, we can carve out a domain of autonomy or self-rule within the universe.

It is just this tendency of ours which is the concern of Scripture. In reproving Job’s friends, God is reacting against the notion that man can live comfortably in his own closed ethical universe. He confounds their assumptions about natural justice.

Thus, moral philosophy, though able to reach a certain level of correctness within its own rational boundaries, isolates itself by definition from revelation and is thus without insight into those things that occur outside of rational and political experience.

(your comment was a bit too short. please try again. I’m back making this comment longer.)