Today is apparently the National Day of Reason. (who knew?) So Id like to speak for a moment about Richard Dawkins whos involved in it. Ive been harsh on him in some of my past comments, for a specific reason. Ill get to that in a minute. First, I would like to say some positive things about who he is and what he does, and make it clear that I think SOME of what he does is very worthwhile. I very much support his mission to end intolerance of all sorts. I also laud him for working to keep religions from imposing their views upon the rest of us. I strongly believe that thats for each one of us to sort out ourselves, not for it to be imposed by government or by any other means. I support his mission of promoting science to better understand our world and our place in it. I even mostly support his mission to end superstition and its effect on peoples lives. This is not 100% agreement because theres a fine line between science and superstition on the leading edge of thought - and nobody can distinguish that in advance, only in retrospect. These are all things that he and I have in common, and I appreciate him for the efforts he makes on behalf of these. Where he and I diverge is on the topic of reason. He attempts to use reason to prove a particular world view - in his case that we live in a materialist world with nothing deeper to it than what can currently be seen and measured by our instruments. (i.e. Atheist) Yet our instruments - advanced as they are - are extremely limited. A large amount of science is still, at the end of the day, educated guesswork when it comes to interpreting data from biological or physics experiments. Different belief systems result in different guesses as to the meaning of data, and within science there is always great debate about how to interpret things. Not only that, new data come along to challenge old paradigms all the time - but often it takes decades (or longer) for those new data to become accepted as the truth by the broader science community. There is no such thing as REASON in isolation from ASSUMPTIONS and BELIEFS that you plug into your reasoning process. (Gödels incompleteness theorem). You can reason and then see if the data you have available fits your reasoning, but that is NOT proof that you are correct. It is at best weak support for your argument. I adopted a similar materialist world view to Dawkins for much of my life, and I was able to REASON my way to fitting most of the data into that belief system. Yet, as I studied problems that have vexed science for decades or longer (such as artificial intelligence, the observer phenomenon in quantum mechanics, the phenomenon of gravity, the Princeton PEAR experiments, etc), I came to find there were some problematic inconsistencies that I couldnt reconcile with the data. Once I shifted my assumptions, then REASON led me to a whole different set of conclusions that explained these phenomena far better. I, like Dawkins stand for REASON. However, I choose to plug a different set of assumptions into my reasoning, and because of that, I come to a different set of conclusions. Neither of us is wrong. Ive been harsh on him in the past is because he uses the term REASON to describe his belief system and assumptions, which is not REASON. REASON is a process of using logical statements that flow from premises to conclusions. Nothing more, nothing less. I think theres a bit of arrogance in claiming the term REASON for ones own side of the argument, and thereby implying that any other side is non-reason. I can see why he does that as a rhetorical tactic, but unfortunately it lumps everyone who doesnt agree into a category of basically being unreasonable. I strongly support the right of Dawkins and everyone to believe whatever the hell they want to believe. I stand for his right to express his view and argue it. I even support his right to claim the term reason as though it somehow proves the correctness of his assumptions. I, however, also support my own right to call him a blowhard from time to time because hes claimed the term Reason in such a way. --- end rant ----
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 15:58:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015