Life, the Universe, and Stuff

A student recently told me that the philosophy course he had to take in order to fulfill his humanities requirement was completely useless. In response to his statement, I said that maybe in a several years he would come to appreciate what the course discussed because it probably would have taught him to think organizedly about life, the universe, and everything. He then countered with an argument along the lines of "who needs philosophy when one has scripture." Oh, brother. Is this reflective of the majority of the religious population? Do people really give up thinking because they believe they can rely on literal interpretations of scripture? I'm Christian (of Catholic flavour) and I have read plenty of the canon in the Bible to realize that there are plenty of inconsistencies throughout. My version, a Brazilian edition with the imprimatur of the Catholic Church, is rife with statements that while sounding cathegorical in one passage or book are contradicted in another place. Then what?

I can't understand how one is expected to be able to reconcile all these divergent points and find in them alone some kind of moral, ethical, or code for "upright living". Is thinking sinful, or arrogant, or defiant in the eyes of God? (Wonder if it was just thinking that put Lucifer and the hosts of fallen angels in trouble.) Scriptures, as we have them, to the best of my knowledge, were written by men, the fallible, the corruptible, the arrogant men of the kind with whom we live side by side. Men, with agendas social, political, or religious some open, other not. Even if possessed by divine inspiration, men are noisy channels and the message you receive from them will always have some degree of distortion. It is our duty to be able to recognize what is good in the message before we commit our lives to it. It is imperative that we reason through the message and confront it with reason so that when we give it faith, this faith will have a foundation to stand upon.