On the Infirmity of Reason

Weak in leading us to truth, reason is also weak in the correction of bad behavior. Reason in us waxes strong, however, in finding excuses for our weakness. Cigarette smokers, for example, typically claim to be 'addicted' to nicotine. They misuse the word 'addiction' to cover their refusal to exercise their will power. Unexercised, it atrophies.  A will atrophied unto extinction then validates the claim of 'addiction.'

Weak in determining behavior, reason is strong in rationalizing its weakness.  Why is reason in us so miserably weak? Is this weakness a noetic consequence of the Fall? If it is, then the weakness is not essential to it, but accidental. The Fall, after all, was a contingent event: there was no necessity that it occur. Man might have remained in his prelapsarian state. In that state, man's reason was strong and healthy not like it is now suborned by its lust and greed and envy, and all the rest of the deadly adjuncts of the Initial Moral Collapse.