Reply #42: Yadda, yadda, yadda....

[TreasonousBastard]

Been reading a bit of Locke lately, for some reason, and he talks a lot about rationality and religion-- putting religion to the test of reason. Haven't read Kant in a while, but he had a lot to say about this, too. As have philosophers for at least 2,000 years.

The Pope is exploring this a lot lately, too, and getting too much heat on particualar paragraphs and phrases for anyone to bother whether or not they agree with his primary theses. Or to care.

One fundamental problem I have with most of these arguments and discourses is that there seems to be some assumption that human reason is just the bees knees and as good as it gets.

Which is not necessarily true.

Human reason and perception are what we have to work with, and assuming that there are no other perceptions and forms of reason out there is just silly, and not very scientific. Stuck with our limited abilities means we can only know "truth" from our own limited observations and reasoning. We cannot observe some quantum phenomena or higher dimensions and probably never will. We can't even observe or fully identify our own thinking processes. Maybe there are some out there who can. Maybe they are "gods."

Anuyway, we're left with "what works for us," and that includes both faith and reason. Revelation, inspiration, and other forms of non-rational (not to be confused with irrational) knowledge have been accepted for all recorded history. Art, religion and even, yes, science have come from non-rational processes, and rather than appy strict standards of systems of logic it's probably better to apply standards of what works in our limited universe.

So, Dawkins can preach his own "truth" as much as he wants, but he's still as full of shit as Dobson, because his "truth" just doesn't work.