How exactly DOES one Rally for Reason anyway?

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 6, 2012

Atheism, Culture, News}

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Here at “Ah, tolerance!: “You have betrayed Atheism. Go over to the other side and die.”Ah, tolerance!:, commenter bornagain notes the irony of the title of an upcoming atheist convention – Rally for Reason.

We really do drink too much coffee around here, and that may be one reason we cannot remember the name of the scholar who suggested that Ralliers for Reason might indulge themselves in chants like

Yay! Yay! Major Premise!
Yay! Yay! Minor Premise!

Or how about:

Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!
Contradiction gotta go!

Rallying for reason is like letting all one’s feelings hang out in a poker game or losing one’s temper with an inanimate object: Feel good, think bad.

Any other ideas for chants for a rally for reason?

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Comments

The bosses here are funny! How indeed to rally for reason!? Is this really a rally for reason or rather a implicit accusation that reason is not being down by someone else? Therefore its really a rally for accusation of unreason ism going on! Its not a rally for reason therefore and so must be breaking rules of reasoning. If one reasons this carefully through.Robert Byers_{March 7, 2012
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Kind of hate to steal your thunder, but I was asking that very question a couple weeks ago: "Are You Ready For the Reason Rally?. My thought was it might go like this:
Three cheers for Reason! Hip! Hip! True Major Premise! Hip! Hip! True Minor Premise! Hip! Hip! Valid inference to a sound conclusion! Now everybody go give your all for objectively and dispassionately examining evidences, and reasoning through appropriate logic rather than being led by emotion! Let’s go, Go, GO!!
It doesn't scan so well, but then, what are we gonna expect from this crowd? By the way, if you want to join with some Christians who are going there to represent true reason, check out www.truereason.org.TomG_{March 6, 2012
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And when we allow that God may actually have become incarnate in Christ, as has been resolutely claimed by Christianity since its explosive emergence 2000 years ago, we find that God, as the person of Christ, brings a satisfactory 'completeness' to the much sought after unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into a 'theory of everything':
Centrality of Each Individual Observer In The Universe and Christ’s Very Credible Reconciliation Of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics https://docs.google.com/document/d/17SDgYPHPcrl1XX39EXhaQzk7M0zmANKdYIetpZ-WB5Y/edit?hl=en_US General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy, and The Shroud Of Turin - updated video http://vimeo.com/34084462
Personally, I think Godel would be very pleased by this development in science. Music and Verse:
Empty (Empty Cross Empty Tomb) with Dan Haseltine Matt Hammitt (Music Inspired by The Story) http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=F22MCCNU Luke 24:1-6 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!
bornagain77_{March 6, 2012
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Of related note:
"nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific" - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture Science and Pseudoscience - Imre Lakatos - exposing Darwinism as a ‘degenerate science program’, as a pseudoscience, using Lakatos's rigid criteria https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LpGd3smTV1RwmEXC25IAEKMjiypBl5VJq9ssfv4JgeM/edit
Quotes of note:
“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...” CS Lewis – Mere Christianity "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" - Charles Darwin - Letter To William Graham - July 3, 1881 “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J. B. S. Haldane ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. The ultimate irony is that this philosophy implies that Darwinism itself is just another meme, competing in the infectivity sweepstakes by attaching itself to that seductive word “science.” Dawkins ceaselessly urges us to be rational, but he does so in the name of a philosophy that implies that no such thing as rationality exists because our thoughts are at the mercy of our genes and memes. The proper conclusion is that the Dawkins poor brain has been infected by the Darwin meme, a virus of the mind if ever there was one, and we wonder if he will ever be able to find the cure. ~ Phillip Johnson
In fact, as hard as it may be for someone of the atheistic persuasion to believe, modern Science (and even advanced engineering) was uniquely brought to a sustainable level of maturity in ONLY the Judeo-Christian worldview. This is because it is only through a thorough going Theistic worldview that humans presuppose that we can understand the universe to a very deep level, in the first place, since Theism presupposes we were made in the image of God:
Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Be Able To Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer - video – (Notes in description) http://vimeo.com/32145998 Why should the human mind be able to comprehend reality so deeply? - referenced article https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qGvbg_212biTtvMschSGZ_9kYSqhooRN4OUW_Pw-w0E/edit
Further notes:
THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS - DAVID P. GOLDMAN - August 2010 Excerpt: we cannot construct an ontology that makes God dispensable. Secularists can dismiss this as a mere exercise within predefined rules of the game of mathematical logic, but that is sour grapes, for it was the secular side that hoped to substitute logic for God in the first place. Gödel's critique of the continuum hypothesis has the same implication as his incompleteness theorems: Mathematics never will create the sort of closed system that sorts reality into neat boxes. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/07/the-god-of-the-mathematicians Taking God Out of the Equation - Biblical Worldview - by Ron Tagliapietra - January 1, 2012 Excerpt: Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) proved that no logical systems (if they include the counting numbers) can have all three of the following properties. 1. Validity . . . all conclusions are reached by valid reasoning. 2. Consistency . . . no conclusions contradict any other conclusions. 3. Completeness . . . all statements made in the system are either true or false. The details filled a book, but the basic concept was simple and elegant. He summed it up this way: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove.” For this reason, his proof is also called the Incompleteness Theorem. Kurt Gödel had dropped a bomb on the foundations of mathematics. Math could not play the role of God as infinite and autonomous. It was shocking, though, that logic could prove that mathematics could not be its own ultimate foundation. Christians should not have been surprised. The first two conditions are true about math: it is valid and consistent. But only God fulfills the third condition. Only He is complete and therefore self-dependent (autonomous). God alone is “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), “the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). God is the ultimate authority (Hebrews 6:13), and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v7/n1/equation#
This following video is very interesting in laying the background of Godel's work:
Georg Cantor - The Mathematics Of Infinity - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4572335 entire video: BBC-Dangerous Knowledge (Part 1-10) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-zNRNcF90
Godel's story on the incompleteness theorem can be picked up here in part 7 of the preceding video:
BBC-Dangerous Knowledge (Part 7-10) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldUAw2Aux0
As you can see, somewhat from the preceding video, mathematics cannot be held to be 'true' unless an assumption for a highest transcendent infinity is held to be true. A highest infinity which Cantor, and even Godel, held to be God. Godel also had this to very interesting thing to say:
The God of the Mathematicians - Goldman Excerpt: As Gödel told Hao Wang, “Einstein’s religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza’s god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person.” - Kurt Gödel - (Gödel is considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century) http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/07/the-god-of-the-mathematicians
bornagain77_{March 6, 2012
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I guess it bears worth laying out, again, since a few people of atheistic leaning might take the time read this 'Rally for Reason' post that News has posted and ponder the implications, but, to state the obvious, it is completely impossible for atheists to ground the transcendent virtue of 'reason' within their 'random' materialistic worldview in the first place; This following site is a easy to use, and understand, interactive website that takes the user through what is termed 'Presuppositional apologetics'. The website clearly shows that our use of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality cannot be accounted for unless we believe in a God who guarantees our perceptions and reasoning are trustworthy in the first place.
Presuppositional Apologetics - easy to use interactive website http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/index.php Random Chaos vs. Uniformity Of Nature - Presuppositional Apologetics - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/6853139
Materialism simply dissolves into absurdity when pushed to extremes and certainly offers no guarantee to us for believing our perceptions and reasoning within science are trustworthy in the first place:
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse - where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause - produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the "Boltzmann Brain" problem: In the most "reasonable" models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory & The Multiverse - Dr. Bruce Gordon - video http://vimeo.com/34468027 Is Randomness really the rational alternative to the ‘First Mover’ of Theists? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pSSfbR2QFZ5JAJTOsrEXQDqkJ_6zPTvYNGwcI4YDvRY/edit
This 'lack of a guarantee', for trusting our perceptions and reasoning in science to be trustworthy in the first place, even extends into the dreaded neo-Darwinian citadel of evolutionary naturalism itself;
Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind What is the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism? ('inconsistent identity' of cause leads to failure of absolute truth claims for materialists) (Alvin Plantinga) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNg4MJgTFw Philosopher Sticks Up for God Excerpt: Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he (Plantinga) writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/books/alvin-plantingas-new-book-on-god-and-science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all Modern science was conceived, and born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism. Only liberal doses of self-deception and double-think, I believe, will permit it to flourish in the context of Darwinian naturalism. ~ Alvin Plantinga
The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html
bornagain77_{March 6, 2012
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A Monty Python "How to do it" answer: Get a candidate, and instead of "Mitt" you call him "Reason"- and then hold a rally for him. And that is how you do itJoe_{March 6, 2012
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Oh, there are ways. Rally for "Reason", anyway.nullasalus_{March 6, 2012
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