Religion and Reason
Religion is unreasonable? Muslims at least are honest about this, you do what Allah tells you. Christians and Jews claim to combine faith and reason, and Buddhism claims to be a rational faith.
Gödel's theorem - no system can be completely and logically described within itself. There have to be external axioms, which are taken as given, and the value of reason is to clarify these axioms ("faith") and follow through on their implications. At least Christians are honest about this, although what is annoying with many of them is that they will not actually debate i.e be willing to consider their own arguments, but are constantly trying to "save" the rest of us. There is also the annoying Abrahamic attitude of there being only one answer to the question - comes of having these male gods who are serial thinkers, I suppose.
Secularists are more disingenuous. Their ethical assumptions are clearly Christian, in the West (but not clear to most of them) or from the Judaic heresy of Marxism. Oh so rational Buddhists are no better - there is not a shred of scientific evidence for reincarnation or a law of karma.
If you cannot agree on axioms, then reason cannot settle the argument, only the brute force of which competing meme is more successful. The logical bases of the scientific method are decidedly dodgy- despite all the philosophers of science such as Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend we have not really got away from induction. But the thing about science is that it works, and one of its results is a history of the universe from 10^-33 seconds after the Big Bang which is far more persuasive than anything religion comes up with. It does not answer "Why?" but the mainstream religions are hardly more persuasive (Why did God decide on Creation? Why God? - infinite regress).
For several centuries now secular modernity has had the winning cards, but that may now be changing as secular society becomes more decadent and possibly more infertile as well . To change to the (possibly) winning side just because it is winning hardly seems to be ethical, however, and for being morally disreputable is roughly on a par with Pascal's wager (believe in God, just in case) . Just hope for a new synthesis which transcends all these partial answers, I suppose.
Gödel's theorem - no system can be completely and logically described within itself. There have to be external axioms, which are taken as given, and the value of reason is to clarify these axioms ("faith") and follow through on their implications. At least Christians are honest about this, although what is annoying with many of them is that they will not actually debate i.e be willing to consider their own arguments, but are constantly trying to "save" the rest of us. There is also the annoying Abrahamic attitude of there being only one answer to the question - comes of having these male gods who are serial thinkers, I suppose.
Secularists are more disingenuous. Their ethical assumptions are clearly Christian, in the West (but not clear to most of them) or from the Judaic heresy of Marxism. Oh so rational Buddhists are no better - there is not a shred of scientific evidence for reincarnation or a law of karma.
If you cannot agree on axioms, then reason cannot settle the argument, only the brute force of which competing meme is more successful. The logical bases of the scientific method are decidedly dodgy- despite all the philosophers of science such as Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend we have not really got away from induction. But the thing about science is that it works, and one of its results is a history of the universe from 10^-33 seconds after the Big Bang which is far more persuasive than anything religion comes up with. It does not answer "Why?" but the mainstream religions are hardly more persuasive (Why did God decide on Creation? Why God? - infinite regress).
For several centuries now secular modernity has had the winning cards, but that may now be changing as secular society becomes more decadent and possibly more infertile as well . To change to the (possibly) winning side just because it is winning hardly seems to be ethical, however, and for being morally disreputable is roughly on a par with Pascal's wager (believe in God, just in case) . Just hope for a new synthesis which transcends all these partial answers, I suppose.
Labels: Religion
posted by Total Issues at 10:31 pm
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