Necessary Conditions for Reason

[ Author’s note: This is the third is a series on the process of reason and rational thought.]

Truth vs. Empiricism
The Atheist position frequently is that science is the one true path to truth. This is an enlightenment article of faith of that came to full fruition under Ayer’s Logical Positivism. Along with other variants such as Naturalism and Philosophical Materialism, the idea is that only physically provable facts can be believed. And since physical facts are proven true through empiricism, then empiricism is the one and only path to that truth.

Empiricism has adopted a form of voluntary materialism out of necessity, the necessity to be able to observe and repeat physical phenomena in order to understand their behaviors and the causes of their behaviors. This is a self limiting of the area of investigation, and is a valid approach to studying the natural world. But empiricism declares non-material entities to be outside the purview of its capabilities. Empiricism does not support the idea that all truth is material, nor that there is only one true path to truth. In fact, empiricism generates conditional “facts”, not truth.

Atheism is of necessity attached to Philosophical Materialism. The outright rejection – without proof – of the existence of a first cause is based on the stated “need” for empirical proof in order to believe a thing (a la Russell). Since the presence or non-presence of a “first cause” for the universe is not observable or provable empirically, this is not empiricism. It is seen to be Materialism, as a philosophy… and as a worldview.

The point of this is that there is choice to be made. If one cherishes truth, then one must abdicate false worldviews. And Materialism is false, being a self-contradictory entity.

Integrity as a Virtue

We have already established that the idea of ethics and ethical virtues are a sliding scale for Atheists. This is because the Atheist, having rejected all absolutes, is free to design, and redesign, his own personal set of ethics. So the Atheist is likely to have a changeable ethic and is also likely not to match up ethically with the ethics of any or all other Atheists at any given time. So virtue, as an absolute moral concept, is hollow and meaningless for the Atheist.

If virtue is not a virtue for atheism, then how do the intellectual virtues of integrity and rigor hold up? If these intellectual values of rigor and integrity are called virtues by the virtue-less, what value can be placed upon such an assertion?

Yet for reason to be consistent and meaningful, there needs to be at least one virtue that is striven for: intellectual integrity. Integrity, as a virtue, means total intellectual honesty in the approach to every issue, rigorously assessing the truth values of all premises, and the resulting truth value of the conclusion, as based on those premises.

But Atheists have pre-concluded their rejection of the possible existence of the first cause. Their rejection is not based on empirical data. So the approach is to rationalize reasons (not causes) for not accepting the possibility. This is an acceptance of irrationality as an intellectual tool.

It is not necessary to argue whether there actually is or is not such a first cause for the universe in order to understand the need for intellectual integrity. We only need to consider whether the rejection of the possibility is based on honest, valid premises. And that is the basis for rational assessment: preconceptions are not made into false axioms or false first principles.

It boils down to a contest between intellectual rigor and integrity on the one hand, and intellectual self-indulgence on the other hand. Rigor and integrity are lost when the emotional desire for a certain conclusion to be true outweighs and suppresses the desire for truth over all falseness.

While it can be argued that much of religion in general is encumbered by the same defect, even if true that has no bearing on the defect embedded within the main precept of Atheism. A Tu Quoque Fallacy is not an argument that succeeds in defending a fatally flawed philosophy.