Evolutionary theorists want to present evolution as a theory of everything. Benedict XVI (Truth and Tolerance, 180-1) doesn't buy it. Philosophically, the question is "whether reason, or rationality, stands at the beginning of all things and is grounded in the basis of all things or not. The question is whether reality originated on the basis of chance and necessity . . . and, thus, from what is irrational; that is, whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless" (181). Evolution, in short, absorbs reason into unreason. Christianity by contrast proclaims that "at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason (taking the Verbum of John 1:1 as both word and reason). Thus, "Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality." Benedict admits that "there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic choice involved in Christianity is correct." But he poses a pointed question to evolutionary ontology: "can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?" Even today, when religion is widely disparaged as irrational fanaticism, "by reasons of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains 'enlightened.'"