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One complaint that I often hear about Christians is that we are irrational:
- The whole concept of believing in a God who lets bad things happen for a reason
- A guy who dies and comes back to life without any medical treatment
- The entire concept of the Holy Spirit.
It doesn’t make sense all the time. I admit it. And sometimes irrationality can hurt people if given to bad situations.
However, being irrational doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong. For example, the guy who jumped on the track in New York to save a man’s life was being irrational. Half the artists, writers, and such that we admire were “irrational.” People who spend their lives in war-torn countries split up by centuries of hate, administering food and water, are “irrational” since they are more likely to lose their lives.
Martin Luther King Jr. was considered “irrational” for believing that people deserve to be treated equally.
If this is what it means to be irrational, then I’m in.
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How so? I argue he was being perfectly rational in the context of what he valued.
See the word ‘deserve’ in there? In both of these example, you’re talking about values - people’s ideas of what we ought to desire. It is very difficult if not impossible to talk about rationality in terms of what people should value. When we’re talking about irrationality, we’re primarily talking about is beliefs and not ought beliefs. The first and third examples of irrationality in Christianity that you give are both is beliefs. Maybe the second one, too, depending on what you mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
Irrationality in your picture of what is will reduce one’s ability to achieve what one values. It’s that simple. When you’re talking about what we ought to value you are pretty much leaving rationality behind.
I discussed a more apples to apples comparison previously in a long thread over here:
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=24957743
I think that you’ll see the logic in these actions if you examine them closely. The inequality of racism is not rational so it is logical to work against it, especially if you belong to an oppressed group. Saving a life is part of the social conditioning and social instinct that we all have. Art is a means to express yourself, it adds value to functional objects or makes them more attractive. An artist may improve their social status through aesthetically pleasing works or works that challenge the viewer’s perceptions.
Even going to church has a rational basis in society…with or without belief.
I think you are downlplaying what things are seen as. When saying “A guy who dies and comes back to life without any medical treatment”, one sees that for such a thing to be possible by natural means, one has to accept divine power in play, which an atheist will not.
Thus, it seems like a rather normal situation. There is a claim that requires divine power, but an atheist not beliving in divine power, won’t accept this claim and say that it’s irrational.
However, it’s usually not this which rubs the atheist the wrong way. There are tons of supernatural claims, from souls, luck, spirits, afterlife, charms, healing, etc. If an atheist was to simply react strongly to the Christian’s claim that there is a supernatural force at work, then he would pretty much have to react to the absolute majority of people in the world on diffrent things.
Rahter, I think, it’s more like this:
“God gave his son, which is also himself, down to earth, and we where so terrible that we killed him, but it was also part of a grand plan, to fix an age old problem called “sin” which is a list of a number of things you can’t do, and the son sacrafice to himself washes away these sins. Now, only by telepathically telling the son that he is your master does this effect apply however.”
It’s not the supernatural that rubs people the wrong way, I think. It’s rather just the illogical nature of the whole thing, combined with the number of things I simply have to belive without any good reason.
I have this invisible undetectable thing called a soul you say?
My soul is stained with unvisible undetectable thing called sin?
There is this powerful invisible undetectable creature up in the skies you say?
He has a son that came down to earth some 2000 years ago you say?
This person died so that the invisble thing called sin could be removed from my invisible soul?
And by removing this invisible sin, I go to an invisible place called heaven after I die?
And it doesn’t stop there. Not only does Christians put this as a thing you have to do in order to be successful in your existance, but some even suggest that everybody knows it’s true, only they lie to themselves to not be hold responsible in their life (nevermind that they tend to live perfectly good lives anyway).
It’s just a whole lone of stuff to take in all at once. If a stranger told you that there is an angry loose dog around the corner, you would most likely be careful, if you don’t outright take his word for it. If he told you that there was magical singing spirits which are constantly exploding and traveling in time, you would just think him insane. The number of unknown unprovable senseless claims in a row simply makes it too impossible to accept for a lot of people, and it has nothing to do with them being “closed” or overly sceptical.
Thank you for reading my ramble. ^_^
Religion is a difficult concept to grasp if you didnt grow up around it. I understand why people think its irrational. Just as I think the big bang theory is irrational. Or if you were to go back 300 years ago, cells would have sounded completly irrational, now its common fact. Life in general is pretty much irrational to us because our small minds cant understand half of whats going on around us, nor do we have the means to understand most of anything. Irrationality is relevant to what you grew up believing, and the world around you. So just because something sounds irrational to us doesnt mean it actaully us. We just dont know all the facts yet.
Hope that makes sense.
Jared, if we don’t know all the facts yet (which I agree with) then is it not logical to defer belief until such time as sufficient facts (evidence) make the the claims of religion reasonable?
No. Thats not what Im saying at all. Im just saying that just because it doesnt make sense now, doesnt mean it cant be true, or even logical.
Wow, the concept of rationality is getting abused in this thread. For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality
hoverfrog said:
Huh? I don’t see how racism can be rational or irrational. It’s a value. Is species-ism rational?
Jared said:
Having grown up around it, I found it easy to grasp and impossible to accept.
? It isn’t. Please tell me which step in the development of the theory you consider irrational. Plausibility and rationality are two different things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_Bang_theory
Incidentally, you might have to go back further than 300 years, since Robert Hooke discovered cells in plants in the 1660s.
What is the point of this? Are you saying that 300 years in the future, obsevational evidence and experimental data will be obtained that makes belief in Christianity rational? In the meantime, Christians of today have found some shortcut for arriving at accurate beliefs?
What are rational or irrational conclusions depends on what information is available from which to draw the conclusions. 400 years ago, we did not have the information available from which to conclude cell theories in biology. The ONLY reason we consider it a fact today is because we have that information and have drawn rational conclusions.
Premise 1: The chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 30 million
Premise 2: I have purchased one lottery ticket
Conclusion: I will win the lottery tomorrow.
Is this conclusion rational? Absolutely not. It does not follow from the premises - the information available. Is it possible for the conclusion to still turn out to be true? Yes. If we re-did the argument the following day:
Premise 1: The winning lottery numbers were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Premise 2: The numbers on the lottery ticket I purchased were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Conclusion: I did win the lottery.
Is this conclusion rational? Yes. It follows from the premises - the information available.
In this case, making decisions based on irrational thinking will result in bad decisions 29,999,999 times out of 30,000,000. If you want to make the best decisions in the light of incomplete information (which is all we ever have about anything) you rely on rational thinking. Pointing out that rational thinking can still turn out to be wrong (which is true) or that future information will change what conclusions rationally follow is meaningless.
?
as for the New York guy, if you think about it, he wasn’t being rational. If rationality is people working together to benefit society by providing assistance for their natural life. However, the likelihood of the new york guy surviving and saving both himself and the other person was slim to none. The odds were against him and if he did not survive then you lose two working members of society. Also, if you want to take cold logic to the next level (and this may contradict my last comment), if the epileptic guy was not to survive, then this would help bring other resources to other epileptic that did not get caught in this situation which benefits everyone else. For the good of society as a whole by sacrificing for everyone else.
Is this cold-hearted? Yes. But rational if we follow the definition of rationality
I just want to show that rationality is NOT all we need. A part of it but not everything and just as religion can be taken to a very dangerous degree, so can rationality. It goes both ways.
Not in his judgment, apparently.
You can break out the EV (expectation value on this.) Without doing that - or something like that - you can’t evaluate whether the action was rational in light of whatever the rescuer valued.
Let
B= chance of both living
R= chance of only rescuer living
E= chance of only epileptic living
Assuming you value both the rescuer and the epilectic equally, the EV of doing nothing would be 1 person surviving (rescuer lives, epileptic dies.) For a rescue attempt:
2B + R + E = EV
For any value over .50 (a coin toss) for the chance of saving both, the rational action to maximize EV is to attempt the rescue. That’s before taking into account the chances of a failed rescue attempt still resulting in one or the other living - you could still end up with an EV well over 1 with B well under .50.
Obviously, it gets more complicated as you throw in values for injuries, or unequal values for the individuals, etc. You also have to take into account is how much the quality of life might go down for the rescuer if he spends the rest of his life knowing that he thought he could rescue the other person but just let him die instead. Again, depending on what the person valued (which is not and cannot be rational), the rescue could very easily be the rational action.
True. You also need values, which are not rational.
Hmmm….I can agree, in a sense. Valuing rationality to the exclusion of other things can definitely go very, very bad. The Reign of Terror could be an example of this, arguably valuing rationality over human life itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
I’ll stick to valuing rationality a lot less than human life itself, thanks. A lot less. In terms of reaching conclusions from information, though, rationality can’t be beat.
But Kristina, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Do you wish to live in a cold society like that? Do you think that anybody wants that?
Thus, you promote values like helping others, because you might one day be helped yourself. It’s true that maybe this guy dying might help society slightly, and thus by extension you. But it is far outweighted by the safety you gain by living a society that helps people instead.
So, even for a completly selfish person, living in a non-selfish society is best, so he ought to promote non-selfishness even though he is selfish (since we all help shape what society is).
@drakim I’m not saying it is a society you want to live it. I’m just saying the whole concept of using “cold logic” is not possible. Sometimes you have to go out of your way to be “illogical” to help those in need.
And I’m saying that what you are calling “illogical” isn’t illogical at all. Helping others, even at the cost of yourself, is beneficial to the human species, and yourself as an individual. If you get sick, I’ll help you, so that you may help me when I get sick. There is nothing illogical in being compassionate.
I guess it comes from the idea that logic is this cold thing which doesn’t care if others get hurts. But logic is used in more than just math-like thinking. ALL morality is based on logic as a base. Think about it. Without logic, nothing would make sense. Being nice to others because they are nice to you is an logical thought. Heck, being nice to others because it’s God’s will is also a logical thought.
and what I mean by “illogical” is “what benefits society and at what cost is it worth it?” If the risk is too great, then it’s “illogical”.
It makes me think of the movie I Robot where the robot saves Will Smith’s character at the expense of the little girl who drowned in her car.
I’m just showing that logic is not enough and that no one (Christian or not) really truly operates on “reason and logic alone.”
But not everyone has ‘benefiting society’ as the value they wish to maximize. Especially not in every situation.
Of course we do not operarate only on logic and reason, we are human after all. But, this does not lessen the value and nature of logic and reason at all. I’d even say that it strengthens it because we require it more.
Imagine if we let nothing but emotions rule our lives and society. People would be convicted of crimes not because they are guilty by the evidence, but because the jury didn’t like the defendant.
Instead, logic and reason gives us a much more unbiased view on the world around us. By examining things though reason and logic which is not so easily stained by different things like our emotions, we are able to overcome several negative aspects of ourselves. If you have never seen a black person up close your entire life, then suddenly sitting next to a black person on the bus might trigger fear on you. But you know this is irrational, because you know by logic and reason that this is just another person with another color on his skin, and not something to be feared at all.
But as Ben said, not everybody strives to make a super society as a top priority. I’d say very few in fact.
The thing about logic and reason is that it has no ultimate goal, no ultimate purpose in which it tries to strive for. It might sound like a bad thing at first, but it’s actually quite good. It’s what keeps it so unbiased and fair.
For example, you cannot always trust your emotions. Often, your emotions are geared towards survival, such as when you are afraid of the unknown. This is very clearly bias from your emotion’s side, because they operate on a “better to be safe than sorry” basis. Better to fear the unknown than to be killed, however the small chance. However, this is not the case in society today. On a general basis, you can trust people. The average person will help you instead of trick you (at least in Norway where I live ^^), just as you would help them in a time of need. If I was to have a heart attack in the middle of the street, people wouldn’t check my pockets for money, but call an ambulance. Things might have been different out in nature, without a social structure direct us, but it’s fortunately no longer the case.
So, my point is, logic and reason isn’t what would create a cold society, because they are merely tools, not motivation and causes. If something shaped society into a cold one, it would be emotions, namely greed and fear.
I find this interesting because if this is your reasoning, then the ideas that you, drakim, or hoverfrog have used haven’t fit with why people do certain good deeds. Not for the benefit of society but because it is “the right thing to do” or because they are “called by God”. No one ever seems to say “because this man will benefit society” or whatever.
People’s values are complicated. I simplified it down to show some of the conditions under which the attempted rescue was the rational decision, but no one seemed to care (comment 9.)
My values are definitely not so simple as maximizing what benefits society. When it comes to everyday decisions, I value my family higher than strangers, for example. What benefits society would be the value I would be maximizing for my input into decisions made by the society - whether to go to war, raise or lower taxes, etc. The ethic of reciprocity / golden rule guides most of my day to day actions out of long term self-interest.
Kristina, I’m not sure I see what you mean really. What doesn’t fit into the idea that people want to live in a society where people help each other, and the way to create such a society is by start helping others yourself?
I would argue that something is “the right thing to do” because it benefits society. If something benefits your ingroup (friends, family, etc., usually one’s first priority) or outgroup (greater society, secondary priority), that defines it as the right thing to do. It goes hand in hand. And what benefits society, or at the very least one’s friends and family, usually benefits oneself as well; positive feedback.