If I recall Methodist are Christians who's faith does require non believers to spend eternity in eternal torment.

My point being that he can't be both sensible and Methodist.

He can't be reasonable and have faith in God.


He must choose reason or faith (or compartmentalise, so that at different times of the day he actually believes different things.)

Why? You state these things as fact but provide no reasoning.

I'm genuinuely interested to see your reasoning here.

My imaginary Methodist is not convinced by the tradition of Hell, he thinks it all sounds a bit unreasonable. He is a reasonable man who applies reason to faith. Can the same be said for you?

Have you noticed that your definitions of reason seem to be weakening. Your initial question only worked with a tight definition of the concept as a person who believes in things based only on evidential input, now you are admitting reason as a mere synonym for moderate, fair and so on. Admittedly I played fast and loose with that in my post, but my argument allowed it. You should bear in mind that yours didn't, so in this quote, you are not actually defending your original position (perhaps you had no intention to, I couldn't say).

Also you have started to allow your claims to drift and weaken. You started off with a skeptical position targeting all religions at once on a logical point of order that would, if successfully defended, apply universally. You cannot rationally hope to back up such an argument with a piecemeal assault on contingent factors of individual religions - especially since your target isn't the religion itself but each individual practitioner. You would have to find one 'unreasonable' thing about every religious person who ever has or ever will live - and of course you won't resort to saying "well they are all religious so that makes them unreasonable" because that would be a viciously circular argument and no reasonable (in either sense) man would ever shame himself by knowingly using one of those.

I may not be making myself clear (I often fail in this respect) and maybe it is because my thoughts are not yet fully formed into a reasoned stance.

In this case I am trying to articulate the idea that the whole concept of the Christian god is, well, not reasonable.

Sure bits of the concept make some sort of sense but it does not seem to stand up to any reasonable scrutiny. There are several memes out there that make this point (at least from the Christian god point) Here is one such.



I know that this is worded in a somewhat offensive way but it's message is true enough. Does such a faith whether true or not sound at all 'reasonable'?

I very very much hope so.



Though a bright enough cat, I am not as articulate as your good self. I don't think that my reasoning is fully formed. I would sort of like to believe in some sort of god but my reason keeps rebelling. So I am wondering if it is possible to believe and keep my reasoning skills intact.

Does that help?



Not really, I am looking more for a religious belief that is reasonable. Not just an idea like "stealing is bad" as that is a no brainer. Rather a core religious belief that stands up to scrutiny.


Out of interest, do you have any religious convictions?

I think I have that covered. But it depends entirely on what we mean by reasonable. We cannot start with one meaning and then allow it to change as we meander through a set of extra arguments - that's how people end up extra confused.

So, are we looking for a religious belief that is not based on any unsupported element of faith at all?

Or are we looking for a religion that is suitable for reasonable belief? One that works for moderate, inquisitive, independently minded folk or something.

Or is there something in between that we need to aim for?


None whatsoever. I'm an atheist by belief, but strictly agnostic in rational terms.

I do not think there is a religion that is completely reasonable, as in can be reasonably and logically argued to be true.

However, I think it's possible to have a religion that is not unreasonable, as in you can't reasonably and logically prove it to be wrong.

I do not see why a reasonable man can't have faith in a benign or good religion which is not unreasonable. Such faith is likely to be highly personal and only loosely based on established religions. It's also likely to be quite vague and wishy-washy, possibly with just one or two core strong elements that help direct that persons life.

This is my thinking.

My "reasonable man" may well have some kind of faith but it would indeed be "wishy washy" because as soon as you dig deeper it becomes… well, unreasonable.

In other words he has to surrender some of his reason to let the faith have any value.

:-/

Not sure I have expressed that as well as I could have.

Fair comment




I am struggling to answer you.

I know a fair bit about Christianity and a little about the other major religions.

I used to be evangelical as a Christian.

Now none of it seems to make any sense. Believing in magic (by any name you choose) just seems unreasonable.

You are still using the weak version of reasonable (a value judgment about the character of a man) but presenting it as if you were using the strong version (a logical assessment of an idea based on the quality of evidence that supports it).

If your question was: Is it possible for a reasonable (weak) man to believe in God or indeed gods without suspending his (weak) reason?
Then the question is too shallow, any conclusion can never amount to more than a bitchy piece of personal opinion under any circumstances. And using your limited evangelical experience to arrive at such a universal judgment is of course preposterous. So win or lose, nothing can ever be riding on that question.

If your question was: Is it possible for a reasonable (perhaps rational would be better here) man to believe in God or indeed gods without suspending his (strong) reason?
Then there is at least some meat on the bone.

How about religions that don't believe in a "Deity"?

Is it more reasonable (using the loose, wooly definition) to observe the natural changes of the world around us? To have ceremonies steeped in traditional events like the turning of the year, staying up to see the sun rise on the shortest day...just to make sure it does, celebrating the successful harvest, the change of the seasons? I say this about my Paganism (using the all-encompassing umbrella term) because I don't believe in a God or a Devil, no Heaven or Hell. I call my religion reasonable because I can prove it exists, but it's still a form of religious observance.

Humans aren't rationality machines by any stretch of the imagination - humans tend to be emotion-driven and place importance in things that (at least to a non-human) wouldn't even exist.

I don't think this is a bad thing.

The point isn't therefore about working out what is and isn't "rational". The argument/debate is only relevant when you choose a battleground, a point, say "education of 12 year olds" and you say "there's too much irrationality here, it would be better to strip this irrationality away for the following reasons...."

The reasons would probably include such things as clarity of teaching, too much confusion, social benefits etc.

In that way it is always a judgement call based on the presiding moral aggregate of society. It's the tweak of a rationality dial, it's not an on or off switch.


There will always be people (like me) who don't place a very large amount of importance on religious belief (because I have not one iota of one) but there are others who do, and you can't control their thoughts without removing freedom of self-expression.

And freedom of self-expression as a concept, is perhaps the most accurate indicator of the quality of a human society; where freedom to "be yourself" is restricted, we, generally, don't want to live there (Iran).

But isn't it ironic/telling/significant that in order to maximise freedom of self-expression (for all) you have to usually limit religious laws...

When children are taught science they should be taught within the appropriate methodology at all times. That means using scientific method to investigate questions of science, historical method to investigate questions of history and so on.

If there is confusion between a religious and a historical answer to a question, there is no point trying to compare the rationality quotients of two fundamentally dissimilar subjects. They are different because they are for different things, so we only need to decide whether we are investigating a matter of history or religion and we know immediately which is the appropriate investigative method.

If any group or individual cannot cope with this separation of subjects, they are to be considered irrational in that regard. This need not be prejudicial, the fact that some religionists can't see beyond the bible when discussing science indicates that they have a problem reconising inquisitive boundaries, but that doesn't imply that they have any other deficiencies. In other words, to know what else is wrong with them we would need to know more about them than this single fact. Similarly, if for instance a scientist were to make the reverse category error and attempt to answer religious questions with scientific method, that wouldn't make him an evil man, or a bad zoologist (to pick a scientific category completely at random).

And this question of what should be taught is not a problem particular to religions either. Daily Mail readers are no doubt well aware of the continuing scandal in historical teaching. Apparently our students don't know enough about who our national heroes are, and which battles they fought in 1746. Ask any historian and they will tell you it is far worse that they are arriving at university knowing ephemera like that but nothing about how to critically assess historical documents. At least in the sciences it is generally quite clear when interlopers are interfering. In history and philosophy it's a war against incursions from pub quiz teams, auto-didactic newspaper proprietors and self-help book authors. And sometimes religion.

Hmmmm.... Should I watch Life Of Brian tonight?

Yes unless you are the messiah or a very naughty boy