God and Rationality.

There seem to be two main types of controversies in this forum.
The first one is some of the crazier religious folks telling the non-religious they'll burn in hell if they don't stop thinking and let a preacher tell them what to believe.
The second one is impatient atheists labelling anyone with supernatural beliefs as irrational.
The first one is generally committed by those who believe reasoning to be the work of the devil so they're a bit hard to reach. The second, however, is what I'm going to have a crack at today. I think it's based on misunderstandings and mixed meanings of words and should be nice and easy clear up, and then we can all unite together against the fundies! :love:
So let's get started:

The difference between illogical and irrational.
When these guys say 'irrational' they mean 'illogical' and see it as the same thing. I think the following distinction should be made:

Illogical If there is a logical flaw in a persons reasoning then any beliefs based on it will be illogical.
Irrational If someone's beliefs are unaffected by reason then they are irrational.

So Illogical talks about the belief while Irrational talks about the believer.
This means that someone could rationally believe in a logical belief, so long as they were atleast trying to be logical. Good examples are the classical philosophers and scientists who came up with theories that have turned out to be flawed. They were still making excellent use of reason even though it turned out that there were flaws in their work.

I'm also giving the following reasons for the distinction to be made:
1) This definition of 'irrationality' is closer to the everyday use of irrational. If someone says you're being irrational then they mean you're not using reason at all. Someone who puts a lot of thought into something but makes a mathematical error is hardly the same as someone who gets the same wrong result through a random guess.
Irrational implies a lot more in it's use than illogical does and subconscious equivications are made in its use.

2) Illogical does the job of meaning illogical. There's no need for a second word. Illogical is also less insulting as people get a genuine idea of what you mean. If you say someone is being irrational then you're pretty much accusing them of not thinking at all. If you say illogical then you're just pointing out they've made a human mistake that happens to the best of us. It means you can correctly criticise without being really insulting.
"Theism is illogical" makes a lot more sense than "Theism is irrational"


So what do we call irrational? Does the word have a use?
Although it's now incorrect to make sweeping statements like "theism is irrational", this is because theism is a belief. Irrational isn't a statement about the belief itself but about the believer and their attitude towards this belief. So we call individuals irrational based on their behaviour and use of reason. If think the difference can be illustrated through this example:

Jim and Jack believe in God. Both use a form of reasoning.
Jack has currently been convinced by the cosmological and teological arguments but is open minded and will return to atheism if he was to find these arguments flawed.
Jim has always believed in God and will give reasons for it citing science, philosophies, common sense etc. However, any attempts to discredit his belief are seen as work of the devil and must be dismissed as sophistry.

I'd say that Jack is rational in his illogical theism and Jim is irrational.
Jack is using logic and reason and inevitably making honest mistakes.
Jim's theistic beliefs aren't subject to reason at all. He just uses reasonable-sounding arguments to defend them.


So... have I settled it?
I'm looking forward to what Homer, TG and Socrastein make of this.

 

I believe this is the part where TekkenGod appears

 

First of all, I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't posted on here for a while. I was suprised but touched to see my name still being dropped

Anyway, I agree with your analysis of the terms and find your suggested usage to be coherent and appropriate. However, I'm not sure if I agree that there are a lot of theists, or people with any supernatural beliefs in general, being falsely or unfairly accused of being irrational. I can count on one hand how many people I have ever known to hold theistic views who would be considered, by your definition, to be simply illogical. In so far as they actually changed their minds after having their illogical arguments/beliefs/statements shown to be illogical.

I've run into a couple thousand or more Jims... less than a dozen Jacks. Of course your portrayal of Jim is exaggerated, understandably. Many Jims might not think that opposing arguments are "work of the devil", but they will dismiss them without a reasonable cause nonetheless.

Of course it seems you feel that there are more Jacks than we realize, and a lot of atheists unfairly lump the Jims and Jacks together in one big category and call them all equally irrational. In my personal experience, this is not the case. Humans are irrational beings. Be it regarding their views on metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, or what have you, this world is full of billions of Jims.

 

Homer did this the other day!
He disappeared for aaages and then when I said:
"I wish Homer would come back and read this - I'd like to see what he thinks!"

Minutes later:
"Your wish is my command! "
Coincidences this crazy would be considered evidence for God in certain theistic circles!
(wb btw! )

Back on topic, the proportion of Jims to Jacks will likely depend on where you live.
In the UK we are definately dominated by Jacks who are open to reason but just don't know/comprehend the atheistic arguments. I think the distinction is very important in the politics of religion. I think that an important step in securing secularisation in the west is down to convincing the Jacks that they have more in common with atheists than with Jims.

I think this is a little pessimistic.
People can have strong opinions that are hard to change and their scepticism to reason means that they don't instantly grasp a proof or understand the reasons why their position is wrong, but I think that such opinions are changeable over a longer time period. Sometimes the full force of an argument takes a while to sink in. When you first hear an argument you can't answer you're justified in suspecting sophistry and to look for all possibilities of a rebuttal before accepting. Once we've spent enough time looking, we gradually find that no such rebuttal is possible and are forced to change our opinion.

Another reason why I think it's a good idea to avoid calling people irrational is that if you insult them then they become more defensive against you. It makes them want you to be wrong even more and makes it even harder for them to accept the truth of what you say.

 

How can we actually know that logic is right?

 

The basics of logic are rooted in language.
If you know the meaning of the "is the same as" then you have mastered the rule of identity.
If you correctly understand the words "and" & "not" then the law of non-contradiction follows.
These two laws are the foundations of logic.

To break the rules of logic is to misuse words and for your words to mean something then words have to be used properly. I mean, what does "a married bachelor" actually refer to? The phrase just doesn't make sense in the context of assigning a status the same way "married" or "bachelor" do on their own.

So anyone who reasons in language must accord to logic.
Did that make sense?

 

But how can you know that it must be true? Can we know with any more certainty than it just seeming like it couldn't possibley be wrong?

 

The concepts 'right' and 'wrong' rely on logic.
After all, without the law of non-contradiction then something can be right and wrong at the same time. The laws of logic are so basic that we rely on them for the most basic common sense. All questions that question whether logic is absolute rely on logic to make sense, so they're basically self contradictory.

Unless you can find a counter example?

 

But surely to show that logic is true you need logic. So you're stuck either way.

 

If you understand the English language then logic naturally follows from that.
If you don't understand the English language then wtf am I supposed to make of your English-written objections?

 

You don't need to show that logic is true, that's the point. It is based on axioms, and axioms are self-evident. Logic neither can be proven nor need be proven, and that's what a lot of people get hung up on. You can't prove that A=A, but you don't need to either. By definition, A is A. It's that simple, and people try to make it more complicated and they spin circles in their heads trying to unravel the mystery of logic.

Another great example is the law of non-contradiction. For any proposition P, P can not be both true and false. You naturally would ask why? How do we know that? Can we prove it? Well, we don't need to: it's undeniable. By definition, true means not false, and false means not true. So by definition, the two words cannot apply equally and in the same way to a given statement. No proof required, and yet that doesn't make it questionable, or threaten the integrity of the law.

You don't need to prove that a triangle has 3 sides, because by definition a triangle is a 3-sided polygon.

 

So if logic is just a set of tautological definitions, can you ever discover anything about the world through them?

 

Yeah. But can you discover anything about the world purely through mathematics?

 

Many people and philosophers say no. Logic only filters our own arguments, it shows us what makes sense and what doesn't. But without some sort of empirical input, no logical argument can ever prove any synthetic statements, that is, statements about the world that could be true or false, that actually say something. Logic alone can only deal with analytic statements, statements that are true by definition.

This is one of the reasons the ontological argument for God is rejected, because it attempts to prove that a supreme being exists through logic alone; it essentially defines a god into existence.

 

i have arrived! but will return shortly.

 

Sort of...
Anything we can 'know' we can describe in language.
Logic, and other results of the rules of language allow us to determine what can and cannot be described. For instance:
"This triangle has a right-angle" is a possibility - it can be true or false.
"This square has a right-angle" is a tautology - has to be true.
"This circle has a right-angle" is a contradiction - has to be false.

We can rule out sentences that are contradictions.
We can take for granted that tautologous sentences will be true.
With a possibility, we know that the truth or falsity will depend on empirical senses.

The use of tautologies are as follows:
"If Propositions 1 and 2 are true then Proposition 3 is" is a tautology.
Now we only need to empirically verify propositions 1 and 2 in order to confirm the truth of proposition 3.
Ofcourse, this kind of knowledge still requires empirical knowledge of propositions 1 and 2 in the first place.

You're interested what can be found out from pure reasoning, without using knowledge from experience?
There's a kind of argument called transcendental.
"B is required for A to be possible - we have A so B must be true!"
We can work out what is transcendentally required for logic and reasoning.
Language is an example. So I can say:
"If I am using logic and reason then I must have mastered a language."
(incidently, some Christians try to argue that God is transcentally necessary for logic and reasoning, meaning that atheists are self-contradictory and irrational. They're wrong though! )

 

I'm not really interested with what can be discovered with pure logic per se. I'm doing a philosophy A level, so there is quite a lot of that. I am quite interested with how mathematical facts are true in the physical world. How you know which axioms to start off with and what you can apply mathematics to. Anything objective I guess.

Can language and mathematics be used in the same way if precisely defined enough? Is mathematics just precisesly defined language?