Atheism vs Reason

It is not the case that thinking equates to Reason. It is so common for those who become Atheist to believe (yes believe) that their thoughts are now Reason that some write papers claiming Reason and others choose web appellations using variants of “Reason” in the pseudonym. This position is reinforced by the legions inhabiting the ranks of Atheism who follow the evangelical intellectualists, who in turn have learned a specialized niche and now consider that specialized niche to engender reason axiomatically. The actual process of reasoning is trivialized, as factoids are stacked in certain patterns and that stack of factoids itself is believed (yes believed) to be Reason. (Note 1)

But reason is not defined by facts; it is the other way around: factoids cannot exist unless reason is properly applied to their situation first. Reason comes first, not factoids. (Note 2) This apparently is not well understood amongst the Atheisti. One reason might be that Philosophical Materialism is commonly adopted shortly after the Great Rejection which defines Atheism, and the consequence of that is the belief (yes belief) that only objective empiricism can produce knowledge; hence the misapprehension that Reason is produced by thinking about stacks of inductive factoids which are arranged this way and that to produce congenial inductive results.

This consequence of Atheist-Materialism is a general Atheist population which quite ignorant of the actual axiomatic underpinnings of the cherished belief in empiricism; it is that ignorance which allows the worship of empiricism as the sole generator of knowledge. Rarely considered is the actual necessary process of justification of empiricism as a valid source at all: rather, Atheists wish to justify it using common sense: “it works!” they cry, even though they also claim that common sense is no basis for knowledge: common sense is not empirical science. It turns out that empiricism cannot justify itself, and that the belief (yes belief) in self-justification is internally contradictory and non-coherent.

Empiricism is justifiable as a limited subset of all knowledge generation. But the justification is not attributable to common sense. The justification derives from prior knowledge which is not empirical itself, but is meta-empirical, i.e. conceptual. An example of this is the concept of contradiction, which is not present in nature as a thing but which is actually conceived not to exist in nature.

Empiricism is justifiable only through its meta-empirical axioms, those beliefs (yes beliefs) which include the idea of universal consistency of behaviors across time and space; the actuality of cause and effect; the validity of Non-Contradiction; the belief in human rational capability; the binary property of existence/non-existence; and so on.

In addition to the meta-empirical axioms, it is necessary to deduce the necessary properties and procedures of empirical knowledge generation. Deduction as a procedure itself must be in place first. This appears not to be commonly understood, because even though Atheists do use the IF/THEN words, they appear unaware of the additional necessary conditions for the IF/THEN to produce valid deductive results.

One may declare that IF [it is Tuesday], THEN [purple does not exist] and to think that one has deduced. This is why the superficial appearance of process is no guarantee of validity of outcome. It is the reason that the actual study of the actual discipline of logic, its principles, its process, and its fallacies is necessary, and that they be applied with rigorous intellectual integrity which demands subordination to the logical results of a demonstrably valid, grounded intellectual process.

That is Reason. It is not just any thought in pursuit of justifying a conclusion. It is a disciplined, learned process. And that is what is necessary for a rational worldview.

Notes
1. This is especially common and egregious in the stepchild of biology, evolution, but also exists in the stepchild of astronomy, cosmology.

2. Nor does Atheism produce Reason, or Reason produce Atheism.