posted
I asked this question in the Pat Robertson thread, but decided that I'd make it into its own thread. I am here going to tentatively describe Reason as the ability of ratiocination, and Christianity as synonymous with 'your church', or your belief system.
I don't want to get bogged down in a semantics battle. If you don't like my definitions, write your own.(Edit: As in, write your own and use them in your reply. I didn't mean to imply that you had to use mine. )
I'm not going to give my own thoughts yet because I don't want to prejudice the responses.
posted
I'm not all that sure that there's any role for reasoning in religions.
The original premise of Christianity alone requires that you deny reason and believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing deity that created the universe is invisible and unrecordable except in the mind's eye. Not to mention, following certain dogma of the various forms of Christianity -- such as the baffling assertion that homosexuality is a sin, for example -- is almost impossible to justify except by claiming that it's a part of your belief system.
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posted
Eddie perpetuates the Twilight Zone-like feeling that every thread on religion is exactly the same.
Stormy - I've come to the theological conclusions I have based on the fact that they seemed reasonable to me. It's like those branching tests.
1) Does it seem reasonable to you that there is a Intelligent Deity/Creator?
Yes No
2) If yes, does it seem reasonable that He would be interested in His creation?
Yes No
3) If yes, does it seem reasonable that He would communicate with His creation?
Yes No
4) If yes, do you think the Bible could possibly be that form of communication?
And so on and so forth. I think everyone has a foundation of belief based on what they believe makes the most sense. Then, they build on top of it. Of course, once you figure out what makes the most sense to you, a healthy amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism are also reasonable.
Nobody creates thier beliefs in a vaccuum of unreasonableness. Even if what they end up thinking makes absolutely no sense to spectators.
posted
Well, that's a not-at-all-prejudiced perspective, Lalo, thank you
While individuals of all stripes (religions, political parties, support groups, etc) are very often unreasonable about their beliefs, I don't think that you can say Christianity is wholly unreasonable. It does demand some departure from the scientific method, and not all of its moral tenets are universally agreed upon ... but if they were, what would be the point of making a religion out of them? I think that reason plays a huge part in most Christians' lives, particularly in their understanding and interpretation of their beliefs. This might be difficult for your average closed-minded, anti-religious bigot to recognize, but it's there Posts: 2048 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Then you take a different branch of the questionaire.
Ultimately, though, if people put sincere thought into their beliefs (no matter what they are), they will be built on reason - even if someone else does not see the same reasonableness in them.
Am I missing the purpose of your thread, Stormy? I may be. I'm sorry.
posted
I think that if there's something that is completely logical aside from the fact that my religion says its wrong, I amend my religion. Its impossible for me to completely believe someone else's philosophy, which is what an organized religion always seemed like to me.
I'm a christian, and I say I'm a Lutheran, but really I'm something completely different. I'm my own island of spirituality/religion.
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posted
Some departure from the scientific method, Geoff? That's rather like saying my belief in pink-spandex-wearing, spear-wielding leprechauns is somewhat unorthodox.
Out of interest, could you put the beliefs of your religion in some kind of logical progression? I.e., Jesus must have been God's offspring because... Despite God's apparent deep relationship with each and every person who believes in one, we can't find where or how that god exists because... I believe the Bible isn't as inaccurate as it seems because... Etcetera.
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posted
Those interested in this question would benefit from reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Lewis was a dedicated Athiest until he reasoned himself out of that mindset. It's interesting to see his take on the whole thing. I enjoyed reading it TONS, and saw a new perspective on many things. His candid way of speaking (and complete intolerence of those with 'holier-than-thou attitudes) is very refreshing
posted
I think that it is mistake to talk about Reason as fitting INSIDE Christianity in any way. Reason is something larger and more fundamental than Christianity, and it would be much more accurate to say Christianity fits into reason - or even better, Christianity guides reason.
I think it's a bit vague to describe Reason as the ability of ratiocination. I would go ahead and add that it is (more specifically) the ability of ours to draw conclusions and beliefs about the world through mental processes. I believe any religion fits INTO this ability called reason because a religion tells us the proper way to use it. It tells us which assumptions are valid ones to make, what things we should take as given (since reason without fundamentals ends in endless regress), and generally what sorts of reasoning we should use to draw conclusions. To put it more bluntly, Christianity tells us how to reason, what to reason about, and what foundations we should base our reasoning upon. One imperfect analogy might be saying reason is like a computer with its built-in ability to do things, but religion is the operating system that allows it to operate.
And I think to talk ever about religion without reason is a mistake.
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quote: Then you take a different branch of the questionaire.
I don't understand what this means.
quote:
Ultimately, though, if people put sincere thought into their beliefs (no matter what they are), they will be built on reason
So, would it be correct to say that you believe that belief procedes ratiocination, then? And that all beliefs are built on reason?
quote: - even if someone else does not see the same reasonableness in them.
But that, to the individual, some beliefs are better than others?
What if a person does not have a particular belief? Is it necessary to find belief(God?) first before trying to reach understanding through reason? And if reason procedes after belief, then what need for reason?
If I have misunderstood what you are saying, then please let me know.
posted
Ralphie, you've misunderstood what was meant by reason. You have laid out a series of steps that seem reasonable to you: that is not related at all to the process of reasoning (also called ratiocination, as noted).
Ratiocination means steps of logical deduction. Unfortunately, any logical deduction requires premises (and any deduction not about logic requires additional premises), and getting people to agree on premises is extraordinarily hard. There have been attempts, such as by Kant, Spinoza, and numerous others, to prove the existence of God using minimal, generally accepted premises. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that any of them are right, as they all take some rather large steps, and it is absolutely certain that not all of them are correct in their deductions, as each philosopher's attempt generally contradicts at one or more points the attempts of most of the other philosophers.
Can reason enter into a discussion of God? Well, it has already, numerous times. Can reasoning suggest there is a God? I've never seen it do that excepting situations where the suggestion of God is implied in the premises (this is not a condemnation, but just a note that in such a case reason had nothing to do with the suggestion). Can reasoning prove (or disprove) the existence of God? Almost certainly not, in the sense of God as meant by almost all religions. In fact, many modern religions explicitly assume that God transcends human reason.
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quote: Reason is something larger and more fundamental than Christianity, and it would be much more accurate to say Christianity fits into reason - or even better, Christianity guides reason.
quote: One imperfect analogy might be saying reason is like a computer with its built-in ability to do things, but religion is the operating system that allows it to operate.
So, would it be reasonable ( ) to say that reason has no role inside religion but to justify that religion?
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quote: Ralphie, you've misunderstood what was meant by reason. You have laid out a series of steps that seem reasonable to you: that is not related at all to the process of reasoning (also called ratiocination, as noted).
Right, and that was almost my point. I was looking at ratiocination as methodical and logical steps. What is reasonable to me are the steps I indicated, because my beliefs are built from the answers I determined from those questions. I'm not sure how that could not be considered somewhat methodical, but at the same time I'm learning more and more how vastly undereducated I am.
Stormy - I'm saying all beliefs are reasonable to the person that has them. If not, they get discarded. But then, who makes the ultimate decision on what is reasonable? So, I can't see how the original question could possibly be answered to everyone's satisfaction. Someone is always going to say there is something unprovable, and someone else is always going to say that unprovable doesn't equate "not soundness of mind."
Which means, I guess, I should have realized that before I made my first post and not posted at all, since I can think of nothing satisfying to myself or you. My apologies. I always seem to do that. :/
I'm going to go back to my next Chick parody. Posts: 72 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I'd say it's much simpler than everyone's making it. Religion is what gives logic it's postulates and then your choices through-out life can be made using reason based on those postulates.
I also think that within a religion you can use logic to determine if it could be true. By which I mean that if you take the premise of a given religion you can determine if anay of the other premises (or other doctrine of that religion) condridict. However, the postulates themselves are either accepted or not, they can not be proved or disproved logically. At least not to more than one person at a time.
posted
In the "classical" understanding of my faith (which is not shared by every member of the churches of Christ, and is in fact becoming increasingly rare, but which I hold to), reason is vitally important to a Christian life. While it is surely possible to act in a reasonable fashion and still believe falsehoods or be a bad person, the opposite is not true.
However, a chain of reasoning is only as good as the evidence it is based on. If you saw a man come back from the dead--or for that matter, if an angel gave you some engraved golden plates--it does no good to argue that such an occurrence is unreasonable. It happened, and further reasoning must be based around the fact that it happened.
It is true that no one alive today witnessed the resurrection (for instance). However, we have no reason to believe that those who claimed to have witnessed it were unreliable, let alone irrational. Their claims have as much value as any other human being's, and unless they can be demonstrated unreliable it is at least not irrational to think they were telling the truth. To dismiss belief in a miraculous event as "irrational" is nearly always the consequence of mistaking data (no one I know has ever seen one) for a process of ratiocination (miracle necessarily involves a contradiction).
{Edit: I am trying to give examples--not to start a debate on the existence of miracles or about the resurrection.}
posted
In my tradition (UMC) reason is one side of what we refer to as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral – Scripture, Tradition, Experience, Reason. Decisions are to be based on all four. Ideally, all four will agree, or at least balance, but no decision should be made without taking all four into account.
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By logical steps it is literally meant, having logic. Merely saying that something seems logical is not at all logical.
The steps you laid out are steps that seem reasonable/logical to you, but that does not make them logical. A set of logical steps as meant strictly would be a series of steps, arguing from a set of premises, that makes conclusions that are absolutely true, provided the premises are true.
Your steps were certainly methodical, but they were not logical, in the strict sense meant.
An example of logic would be the classic polar bear situation: GIVEN that all bears found within 50 miles of the North Pole are polar bears, and GIVEN that all polar bears have white fur, and GIVEN that a bear is found within 50 miles of the North Pole, the bear is THEREFORE a polar bear, and it is THEREFORE white.
If the two premises are accepted, the conclusion (that the bear is white, though that the bear is a polar bear was also a conclusion, albeit intermediary and trivial) is necessarily true.
The general form of the problem just given is: GIVEN if a then b, and GIVEN if b then c, THERFORE if a, b and THEREFORE c.
On a side note, while any (truely) logical conclusion is absolutely true given the premises, it is not necessarily absolute. Logic may make statistical conclusions, for instance.
I hope that clears up somewhat the meanings of reasona nd logic in the strict sense.
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posted
Thank you, fugu. You're right - but I figured out that's what Stormy wanted after I made the post. I simply misunderstood what he was asking for, most likely because I'm dangerously unqualified for conversations like this.
I'm sticking to fluff. It's where I excel. Posts: 72 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote: Stormy - I'm saying all beliefs are reasonable to the person that has them. If not, they get discarded. But then, who makes the ultimate decision on what is reasonable? So, I can't see how the original question could possibly be answered to everyone's satisfaction. Someone is always going to say there is something unprovable, and someone else is always going to say that unprovable doesn't equate "not soundness of mind."
Ralphie, I'm not out to get you. Your answers are fine. This isn't about making your answer satisfactory to everyone.
My main reason for this post is because I've been thinking a lot about social change within the context of what OSC wrote regarding a populace weighing an idea and then putting it into law. I had thought this thread might give me some insight.
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posted
The unspecified one just above is for Ralphie.
*looks at Hobbes' post*
There's no particular reason premises must come from religion, though it's a reasonable enough way of reconciling premises with religion.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Fugu> I could dispute whether we do or not...but the issues we're already discussing are a bit more foundational...
I think you are making a mistake in confining logic to the use of syllogisms, and within those syllogisms, definite absolute statements. There is nothing irrational about probabilistic reasoning (Given that 95% of cats have only four back toes, those tracks probably do not belong to a cat), or induction, especially in statistical form (although induction can be more easily misused).
Moreover, at least some of the Enlightenment philosophers from whom we moderns derive our respect for reasoning were convinced that formal logic was a tool that, like a telescope or microscope, only gave us a sharper view of things we could already sense. I believe it is a mistake to dismiss certain kinds of arguments as necessarily fallacious simply because they do not correspond to strict procedure and do not produce absolute results.
For instance, it is true that one cannot reason, strictly speaking, "If A then B. Not A. Therefore not B." But when an actual human being states "If A then B", the circumstances of the statement nearly always make "If not A then not B" highly probable. "If you wash my car for me, I will pay you." "I will not wash your car." Strictly speaking, one cannot conclude that I will not pay you. But if I were going to pay you anyway, I would not have made the statement in the first place; I would simply have handed you the money. Or to put it in syllogistic form: Given that people do not set conditions on actions they will perform whether or not those conditions are fulfilled, and Given that I have set conditions on an action, Then it is true that I will not perform that action unless they are fulfilled. (This kind of reasoning has been at the heart of, for instance, many arguments about the necessity of baptism.)
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posted
And, to state my post above without the use of the wonderfully loaded word reason except in the strict context . . .
Premises, being premises, may be whatever one wishes, perhaps even ones that mutually contradict one another (this is a hotly debated item among logicians). This being so, religion may or may not be, arbitrarily, part of one's premises, regardless of whether or not one is religious.
The use of religious beliefs as logical premises is a perfectly acceptable way (in the generates-no-logical-problems kind of way) to reconcile religious beliefs with logic; by assuming them true, one need not provide proof.
And to add to the post: there is one major flaw in taking this avenue. It removes a major persuasive tool from one's arsenal, because when religious conclusions are assumed, there is no logical reason to switch to that religion (at least, for purposes of believing the correct thing; it has long been a tradition to switch religions for reasons of community and power, which may still follow logically).
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posted
In questioning my faith, I went back to the original premise. Is there, or is there not a God?
I realized that the setting down of this particular premise WAS the act of faith that defies reason, because there could be no reasoning about it. There was no scientific data on the matter. There was only my experience, which I realized was not duplicated with everyone.
But I could not deny my own experience, or my gut feeling that there was a God. So I reasoned that since this was a premise that could not be logically deduced by anyone, at all, I decided that I would embrace my experience and feelings, whether scientifically based or not.
I generally don't like to decide on something that I haven't gathered enough information on. I'm open ended about a lot of things. But this was not a subject I felt like I could hold off my opinion about, since it requires action one way or the other. This required a leap of faith.
Have to go now, to sing about said leap of faith, but I don't mind discussing the further reasoning of my religious belief.
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Okay, let me say it this way without fear I'll be fishing for compliments or otherwise disrupting your thread any more: I'm not SMRT enough to be in this thread, so I'm going to go where I can play with the kids and still seem intelligent enough to remember to wear my medical alert bracelet and get on the short bus.
posted
I think that "reason" is a part of religion. Not in the sense that we change our ideas based on the philosophies of men, as opposed to God's. But in the sense that we acknowledge that there are answers based on logic and actual observable truth out there for our really tough religious questions. Some of the answers may come to us before we die, in personal ways.
Other answers may only come after we die. At that point, most religions claim that knowledge and understanding will come to us. Then you can look back and see all of the commandments etc in a "duh" fashion.
But yeah, for now, I accept the idea that God is wiser than me, and that some questions will never be answered by reason during this life.
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posted
we shall let the witnesses question lie, I think.
On the other points: I did not confine myself to the use of syllogisms at all. I did choose syllogisms as my method of example. Luckily, all logical methods are equivalent to syllogisms, so one could confine one's self to syllogisms.
Since you mention induction, I should note that induction has been proven by syllogism (as in fact must be possible), and may therefore be considered an intermediary conclusion which enables later conclusions.
Syllogisms include statements on probability as I allued to in my side note, it's just that mathematical premises then become inducted into the set of premises. Nothing asyllogistic about it.
And no, you're quite wrong about your assertion regarding that particular logical statement. By direct counterexample: if I flip this switch, the light in the room will go on. This is no way means that if one does not flip the switch the light in the room will not go on; perhaps it also has a hanging chain, or there is another switch on the other side of the room that someone else will flip.
By demolishing your example: it is not at all uncommon for a person to employ his children in car washing. Those children often have a general set of chores for which they get paid, and will continue to get paid regardless of whether or not they wash the car. If you wish to modify your example to include "for washing the car", feel free, but that is in fact a disguised iff statement, not a real if statement, and you no longer have an example of the type you were trying to give.
I suggest reading a few good books on logic.
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posted
O.K. Let us say that there is a particular article, or belief, of a religious faith that I want to change. I have reason to believe that ratiocination probably isn't going to work on most of the members because this particular article is in THE BOOK/interpreted to be true. How do I go about changing those members' opinion? Is destruction of that religion the only answer?
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posted
I know, but that's about your only hope. If you feel that someones assumptions are condridictory then you should point it out to them. If they refuse to listen that's their choice. I'm not sure destroying religions should be done too often...
Out of curosity, is there something specific here you feel is condridictory or just for future use?
posted
Fugu> I suppose it is only marginally worthwhile to acknowledge what you said about my example and agree--I suppose the point I was trying to make, phrased in different terms, was that most such claims are disguised iff statements or they would not be made. I was not aware of any attempts to prove the validity of induction by syllogism, therefore cannot comment.
I will try to locate some good books on logic; I usually devour that sort of thing when I encounter it. I must confess, though, that it sounds like you are making some kind of claim that syllogisms underlie everything we can know about reality; that sort of thing always sounded mystical to me, strangely enough.
In my studies of the history of my brotherhood, it seems that reliance on the validity of deductive logic regarding religion has been the source of a massive amount of dissension, not only as to whether it is proper but in regards to the results. I may be able to find some good books on that subject for you, if you are interested. *takes a moment to taunt some one-cuppers*
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posted
Hobbes, no specific examples because then the discussion becomes about whether or not the reasoning for that particular belief is valid.
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posted
It's not that syllogisms underlie what we can know, it's that syllogistic reasoning is equivalent to other forms of logical reasoning.
While I do rather like logical reasoning (if I'm lucky, I'll have a philosophy paper that deals fairly directly with logic, among other things, published in a few mon^H^H^H^Hyears), syllogisms can in no way explain everything (though they can explain everything that can be explained logically). At the very least, one's premises cannot be explained by syllogism, and I'm at least willing to entertain the notion that other things may be so as well (though it's possible that such things would necessarily be definitionally included under premises).
Yep, induction has been proved by syllogism. Well, mathematical induction and induction considered statistically. General induction has been disproved (as we shall do now by counterexample).
A primer on induction (and the disproof) for our listeners at home:
In induction, we take a "case" and a "result" and infer a rule. For instance, our case might be that bob is human, our result might be that bob is clothed. The inductive conclusion is that humans are clothed. Unfortunately for induction, this is not always the case. Therefore induction is not a proof (QED).
Side note: while I have proved that induction does not work in at least one case, I have not proved that induction always fails (and indeed it does not). I have, however, proved that the statement induction always works is false, which is what is commonly meant by disproving something.
Mathematical induction is rather more complicated, but is 100% sound, and proven so by deduction.
Induction considered statistically is also sound, where one qualifies (quantifiably) the rule based on the sample size of the case/result.
I always love good books on religious philosophy .
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posted
I am a very "modern" person. I am rational and logical in almost everything. I came to this conclusion. If you have felt God in your life than you cannot logically deny that to yourself. If you haven't felt him, why waste your time? I have felt God on a personal note, and that is why I believe Him.
What did Christ say...Love the Lord your God with all your mind ! That is actuall the title of an INCREDIBLE book by J.P. Moreland. If you are a Chrisitian I would definantly reccomend it.
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quote: BOHR'S CODICIL TO LOGIC: The opposite of an ordinary truth is a falsehood, But there also exist great truths -- and the opposite of a great truth is another great truth.
There are many great truths. The one that springs to mind is "Love sucks" vs "Love is the best thing in life."
Logic is only a tool of rational thought or organized decision making, not rational thought in it's entirety. Logic says nothing about premises or axioms or assumptions unless and until a contradiction is arrived at. Then, the axioms must be modified or discarded (ignoring great truths and the paradoxes and contrsdictions they contain.)
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Amka had a thoughtful post, in which she starts off with a qustion:Is there, or is there not a God? Then she decides that strict scientific proof of the existence of God is impossible, but she had a gut feeling that God does exist, as well as life experience supporting God. I hope I've summed her up well.
Then comes the key paragraph:
quote:I generally don't like to decide on something that I haven't gathered enough information on. I'm open ended about a lot of things. But this was not a subject I felt like I could hold off my opinion about, since it requires action one way or the other. This required a leap of faith.
She decides that since the premise of the existence of God is not logically decidable, but she must make a choice (or become an agnostic, I suppose), she made the leap of faith and believed in God. She'll have to relate why she picked her particular religion.
This agonizing over God and making or not making that leap of faith is an example of a "forced choice" defined by William James, an American philosopher who lived 100 years ago. I'll edit more on James here later as I can't find my James book.
quote: The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
- Will Durant. This sums up my opinion of many religious people: they have never truly examined the rationales behind their faith, unlike Amka. Instead, they seem to spring with unexamined philosophies absorbed from their families and community, like the old saying about how you make a fanatic--keep shouting in his ears until it comes out of his mouth.
posted
Sorry for coming late to the thread... a couple of quick thoughts from a Christian perspective... probably redundant, but here goes:
First the easy part: Fugu, if Kant and Spinoza are your idea of the attempts to prove the existence of God by philosophers, I suggest widening your scope significantly. Those seem to me more attempts to *replace* God than prove his existence. Tom Davidson's derision aside, Aquinas's five ways are pretty strong arguments if you take the time to understand them instead of sitting around and feeling superior to medieval wordings like "as fire is the maximum of 'hot'".
Reason was created by God along with the rest of the universe and people should excercise their reason and follow where the argument leads over and above adherence to any Dogma. Whatever God may be, if we may take the existence of God as given for the sake of argument, God must be universal truth and so finding the truth is essential to finding God.
Specifically to Eddie (Lalo), your idea that we must deny reason to be Christians is, itself, irrational on two levels.
IF there is a power that created the natural universe, it is strictly reasonable to say that power is not, itself, a part of the universe it created. Given a supernatural power (one outside of nature) it would be unobservable by our five senses and any actions taken by that power which would be observable would appear as natural events-- unexplained ones, perhaps, but natural nonetheless. This includes miracles, but that's a whole different subject and I'll spare everyone *that* lecture.
Christians, however, believe *precisely* that the Creator of the Universe *DID*, in fact, become a physical, tangible being observed personally and testified to by eyewitnesses, called apostles. The entire premise of Christianity is that God is observable in much wider space than the imagination. To what lengths this can be taken, read Jack Chick's "Death Cookie" tract and realize that the entire Roman Catholic Church and all the churches in communion with it, representing a massive portion of the earth's population, believe that God manifests Himself well outside our mind's eye on a daily, even hourly basis, as Mass is said around the world.
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posted
Was it Diogenes who went in search of an honest man? I don't think he ever found one. But that doesn't mean we should give up on honesty (at least as a goal, if never fully realized.) Similarly, a search for God, whether in the Universe at large or in our own hearts is not fruitless. Even if you never find God, you might find yourself, or other useful knowledge.
I'm sounding a lot more mawkish and sachrinne of late, I blame hatrack.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Morbo, the leap of faith was even more agonizingly outline by one Soren Kierkegaard, Danish gadfly of the Danish state church, in the mid- to late-19th century.
Macc, what you are doing in your car washing example is not attacking syllogism, but illuminating the inexactitude of language (which, incidently, has been a very fertile area of philosophy the last hundred years or so). While your car wash example looks like an a -> b statement, it is really an a <-> b statement, though language conflates it out of laziness, or efficiency, your choice.
C.S. Lewis, in Pilgrim's Regress, explains how Atheism can be asserted to spring from wish-fullfilment every bit as easily as any religion can. Speaking strictly from within *reason*, hopes, fears, and desires, are irelevant to the discussion because they are, simply, ad hominem. To say "you say that because you *want* it to be true" is to assert that the reasoning is faulty merely because of the person making the argument.
I wonder... Morbo, you are yet young, aren't you?
It just occurred to me that most people have this same perception that you do, Morbo. I, in fact, had it myself. What I have since found, though, was that the vast majority of people who have a serious, adult practice of their religion, have an excellent, extremely well-thought out understanding of their belief. I wonder if it is the mere fact that when we are younger, people talk religion to us as to children and we get a lot of "that's not important" or "that's really complicated" (both true enough when we are told that) and so we often are not exposed to a steady, adult practice of faith for quite some time.
We develop quite a prejudice, there, because this attitude towards religious people is extremely prevalent and extremely wrong. I mean, think about it. A HUGE portion of this board is religious-- maybe even a majority. Do they really seem like the kind of people that run around leading unexamined lives?
Quick answer to Scott R: anyone and everyone.
[ September 08, 2003, 10:27 AM: Message edited by: T. Analog Kid ]
Posts: 2112 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
"Tom Davidson's derision aside, Aquinas's five ways are pretty strong arguments if you take the time to understand them...."
Well, no, they're not. But I'm willing to let you try to explain why they ARE, given that they blow chunks. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
TAK, if that is your perception of Kant, then I think you are just as haughty to so-called secular philosophers as you claim others are of religious philosophers.
I'm no Kantian (I don't believe so, anyway ), but his 1st Critique is supremely important as an attempt to explain what we can and cannot know... Which is not to say that that which we cannot know is non-existant. To presume that would be a misinterpretation of Kant's thinking, I believe.
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one-cuppers*
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
Instead, they seem to spring with unexamined philosophies absorbed from their families and community, like the old saying about how you make a fanatic--keep shouting in his ears until it comes out of his mouth.
