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Question: Is rationality based on faith!?
Many rationalists tell me that they come to their conclusions based on empirical evidence and this means their beliefs are more valuable than those based on faith alone!.
Are rationalists actually contradicting themselves by saying that they do not come to their conclusions using faith!?
Are atheists/ logicians/ rationalists just doing what all religious followers did!? They put their faith in a concept and allowed themselves to be ruled by it!. This concept is sensory perception!.
Was "The Enlightenment" just giving God a human face, declaring that our five senses are the things which we must obey!. Where is the evidence that our senses tell us the truth!?
Are the five senses just the rationalists 10 commandments that they accept without question, based on faith alone!?
I understand that this is a skeptics premis and that Descartes and Kant have argued this but I feel this debate needs to happen now before the rationalists judge people of faith as being somehow inferior!.
Isn't our very own existence based on faith!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Rationalism carries the fundamental error that our senses are sufficient to determine the nature of the universe!. They are designed for hunting and gathering!. We form an image of our environment in our minds and test whatever comes to us through our senses against this image!. My image is likely to be very different to your image!.
Our senses do not tell us what electricity is!. We can see what it does in light and lightning, but electricity is not light - that's just radiation caused by electricity exciting matter!. We can hear electrically generated sounds, but they are not electricity!. We can feel electromotive force, but that's a property of electromagnetism - or of our muscles reacting to electric shock!. If you're daft enough to put a 9 volt battery on your tongue you can taste the salt produced by electrolysis!. However, we accept that electricity exists and we rely on it!. It's no good telling your energy company that you're not going to pay for the stuff because you can't sense it directly!.
There are many things we accept on faith!. Other people have spent years and even centuries studying various aspects of the universe!. We can't hope to explore from first principles the whole of human knowledge!. There are some subjects where we've got to assume that the "experts" know what they are talking about!.
When it comes to God, many people have gone down the route ahead of us!. There is scope for all of us to make the journey seeking God and to come to the conclusion that he exists or that there is no God!. If we choose not to dedicate our lives to that journey, we have to take a pre-packaged version and that's what religion is about!.
Now here is an example of irrational thought: Religion teaches that we should respect one another and not be self-indulgent!. I want to be self-indulgent and not respect the rest of humanity!. So I've decided to abolish God and from now on I'm an atheist!.
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I don't believe so no, does Descartes not argue that we can gain a prosteriori knowlege through a priori reasoning alone!? meaning that this concept is simply not a sensory perception!.
as for your points bout Descartes unrelenting faith towards God, i completly agree with you!. How is it he is able to rely on reason to gain truths of God, and yet uses God to verify the truths he claims to be knowledge!?
I think your ideas and arguments follow more closely those of Kant,who combined rationalism with empiricism!. rather than of Descartes!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Religion-
Decide on the answer & stick to it regardless of any evidence that later appears to disprove it (this is faith)
Science-
Come up with a hypothesis, test it!.
If it fails- discard it!.
If it works- adopt it as the answer!.
UNTIL someone comes up with a hypothesis that disproves it!.!.!. (this is rational)Www@QuestionHome@Com
Rational thoughts/experiances etc should be based on your own personal experiances rather than faith!. Faith is an entirely differnt area apart from rationale!. We let faith dictate it then it gets unclear and confusing for us!. We need to step outside of our comfort zone and rely on us and only us!. Hope that makes sense!Www@QuestionHome@Com
Rationality is the expression of logic!.
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i have never come across a rational being ( even when i gaze into the mirror )Www@QuestionHome@Com
Philosophy aside; neuroscience has something to say too!. You might find this book interesting: http://www!.nobeliefs!.com/Ramachandran!.ht!.!.!.
"A few quotes from the book:
A piece of your brain the size of a grain of sand would contain one hundred thousand neurons, two million axons and one billion synapses, all "talking to" each other!.
Pain is an opinion on the organism's state of health rather than a mere reflective response to an injury!. There is no direct hotline from pain receptors to "pain centers" in the brain!.
Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience!.
The mechanisms of perception are mainly involved in extracting statistical correlations from the world to create a model that is temporarily useful!.
One could argue that the term consciousness doesn't mean anything unless you recognise the emotional significance and semantic associations of what you are looking at!.
We have given up the idea that there is a soul separate from our minds and bodies!."
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I wouldn't call it faith, but empiricism does have an inherent assumption at its core, albeit a fairly reasonable one!. Science, and any sort of materialistic discipline demand evidence and reason to support any sort of assertion that one might make!. Faith systems, on the other hand, do not!. I maintain that the use of reason and evidence is the best way to establish the truth of a proposition, and science is all the stronger because of it!. However, it is true that one cannot demonstrate the efficacy of reason and evidence within the framework of science without relying on reason and evidence!. Science can't operate without them, and thus cannot show that they work independently from them!.
But again, I wouldn't call it faith!. Direct sensory evidence and logical argument are not weird abstract concepts, like the ones that religion offers, and even most religious folk tend to have some amount of confidence in their efficacy; they just tend to assume that reason and evidence is on their side!. I saw one that didn't though; a Muslim theologian who refused to believe the Earth was round because that was demonstrated through methodological naturalism, which he dismissed categorically!.
It's not faith - it's a contradiction: Evidence works because the evidence demonstrates that evidence works!. Seems a tad unreasonable perhaps, but I think dismissing evidence would be far worse!. Good luck driving when you're unwilling to accept the empirical evidence that the traffic light is red (because you dismiss that type of knowledge categorically)!. But, then again, when you get creamed by driving into oncoming traffic I'll be unable to demonstrate that it actually happened without reliance on sensory evidence!.
As for the other parts of your question:
If you have some special way of detecting things other than your five senses, I'd like to know about it, and I know a man who will give you a million dollars for demonstrating it!.
No, the enlightenment didn't give God a human face!. The enlightenment made God one of two things, depending on the person!. It made him either nonexistent or completely impersonal!.
The human face came from the bible, when it said we were made in his image and said that he had to actually *go* to Sodom before he'd know whether there were any good people there!.Www@QuestionHome@Com