Catholicism for reasonably-intelligent people

Edward Dutton is not good explaining Islam and its sects. These (dozens of) pages are riddled with howlers and are very sloppy. I find more enlightening, as it were, Dutton's discussion of Islam's "pillars".

These are practices which define Islam past some Sufian "iman" into a "deen". Such practices, it turns out, are shared with Latin Catholicism and, we can assume more-so, with the various "Orthodoxies". [Disclosure: I do not scare-quote all the Orthodoxies; this blog is highly partial to the Church of the East, secondarily to much of the Greek tradition although maybe not to this jerk.]

Dutton notes a Scandal Of The Mind, applicable to Christendom as well as to Islam. Dutton asserts that prayer makes you stupid. So, to him, does fasting. These ruin sleep-cycles; the latter also deprives the brain of nutrients. Their deleterious results have knock-on effects. In adulthood, if your brain isn't prepared to engage with IQ-115s, it is going to engage with IQ-85s. We're social animals; human engagement is necessary.

I dispute that regular prayer makes you stupid. Here is a study on what late-evening meditation does for your sleep-cycle. Yes, that is different from being kept up late and awakened early by some old goat bleating through a loudspeaker. But the Muslim who is far from the minaret should do better.

Fasting is likewise questionable. Many Muslims take it too far (biologically). So do many Catholics. The Church line (today) is that Lent is for fasting and almsgiving; sometimes the Shepherd by Hermas is cited (if not it should be). Many Christians believe that when you are fasting and not at the same time helping others, your sacrifice is vanity or even hypocrisy. Such Christians don't even need Hermas for that; they can cite Mark and Luke. Also there's the notion that "fasting" should entail giving up only those consumables which are bad for you. That's mainly alcohol. Lent is also a fine time to trim carbohydrates and to correct the winter weight gain. None of these course-corrections seems (to me) to be detrimental to IQ.

All this may be "Cope", from a committed Catholic. I expect these mitigating factors are what smart people do (or at least smart-aspirant), to stay in the community without compromising the brain; a less intelligent Catholic will mess this up.

Late-Antique Catholicism, which means Dark Age Catholicism, had some other foibles, in particular cousin-marriage. The Papacy and Charles the Great between them did fix much of this mess. I do wonder if we can meaningfully talk about a brain drain over the 300s-600s AD, before Islam as we know it. To this day the Hajnal Line is a thing.