by George Sibley As birds have flight, our special gift is reason. … Should we choose, we could exercise our reason to what no other animal can do: we could limit ourselves voluntarily, choose to remain God’s creatures instead of making ourselves gods. – Bill McKibben, The End of Nature Reason is just not as powerful as some like to give it credit for. The truth is closer to the way Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume put it: ‘Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to ...