My Christian friend claimed that atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).
So I wanted to counterargue reasonably, and my statement above seems to me a relatively reasonable and relevant. And I don’t know whether it would convince my Christian friend, but it is convincing at least me :) .
atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason
Well, I don’t. But at the end of the day, some choices need to be made, and following my own reason seems better than… well, what is the alternative here… following someone else’s reason, which is just as untrustworthy.
Figuring out the truth for myself, and convincing other people are two different tasks. In general, truth should be communicable (believing something for mysterious inexplicable reasons is suspicious); the problem is rather that the other people cannot be trusted to be in a figuring-out-the-truth mode (and can be in defending-my-tribe or trying-to-score-cheap-debate-points mode instead).
Part of being a good skeptic is being skeptical of one’s own reasoning. You need to be skeptical of your own thinking to be able to catch errrors in your own thinking.
Consider how justified trust can come into existence.
You’re traveling through the forest. You come to moldy looking bridge over a ravine. It looks a little sketchy. So naturally you feel distrustful of the bridge at first. So you look at it from different angles, and shake it a bit. And put a bit of weight on it. And eventually, some deep unconscious part of you will decide that it’s either untrustworthy and you’ll find another route, or it will decide its trustworthy and you’ll cross the bridge.
We don’t understand that process, but its reliable anyway.
Yes, but it can happen that in the time course of our individual existence two “justified opinions” inconsistent with each other can occur in our minds. (And if they didn’t, we would be doomed to believe all flawed opinions from our childhood without possibility to update them because of rejecting new inconsistent opinions, etc.)
And morover, we are born with some “priors” which are not completely true but relatively useful.
And there are some perceptual illusions.
And prof. Richard Dawkins claims that there are relatively very frequent hallucinations that could make us think that a miracle is happenning (if I understood him correctly). By relatively frequent I mean that probably any of the healthy people could experience a hallucination at least once in a lifetime (often without realizing it).
And of course, there are mental fallacies and biases.
And if the process is reliable, why different people do have different opinions and inconsistent “truths”?
Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.
PS: I am relatively new here. So hopefully, my tone is not agressively persuasive. If any of you have a serious problem with my approach, please, criticize me.
>Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.
Absolutely. That’s exactly right.
>My Christian friend claimed that atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).
It sounds like there’s a conflation between ‘trust’ and ‘absolute trust’. Clearly we have some useful notion of trust because we can navigate potentially dangerous situations relatively safely. So using plain language its false to say that atheists can’t trust their own judgement. Clearly they can in some situations. Are you saying atheists can’t climb a ladder safely?
It sounds like he wants something to trust in absolutely. Has he faced the possibility that that might just not exist?
Ok, I will put it a little bit straightforward.
My Christian friend claimed that atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).
So I wanted to counterargue reasonably, and my statement above seems to me a relatively reasonable and relevant. And I don’t know whether it would convince my Christian friend, but it is convincing at least me :) .
Thanks in advance for your opinions, etc.
Well, I don’t. But at the end of the day, some choices need to be made, and following my own reason seems better than… well, what is the alternative here… following someone else’s reason, which is just as untrustworthy.
Figuring out the truth for myself, and convincing other people are two different tasks. In general, truth should be communicable (believing something for mysterious inexplicable reasons is suspicious); the problem is rather that the other people cannot be trusted to be in a figuring-out-the-truth mode (and can be in defending-my-tribe or trying-to-score-cheap-debate-points mode instead).
Part of being a good skeptic is being skeptical of one’s own reasoning. You need to be skeptical of your own thinking to be able to catch errrors in your own thinking.
Consider how justified trust can come into existence.
You’re traveling through the forest. You come to moldy looking bridge over a ravine. It looks a little sketchy. So naturally you feel distrustful of the bridge at first. So you look at it from different angles, and shake it a bit. And put a bit of weight on it. And eventually, some deep unconscious part of you will decide that it’s either untrustworthy and you’ll find another route, or it will decide its trustworthy and you’ll cross the bridge.
We don’t understand that process, but its reliable anyway.
Yes, but it can happen that in the time course of our individual existence two “justified opinions” inconsistent with each other can occur in our minds. (And if they didn’t, we would be doomed to believe all flawed opinions from our childhood without possibility to update them because of rejecting new inconsistent opinions, etc.)
And morover, we are born with some “priors” which are not completely true but relatively useful.
And there are some perceptual illusions.
And prof. Richard Dawkins claims that there are relatively very frequent hallucinations that could make us think that a miracle is happenning (if I understood him correctly). By relatively frequent I mean that probably any of the healthy people could experience a hallucination at least once in a lifetime (often without realizing it).
And of course, there are mental fallacies and biases.
And if the process is reliable, why different people do have different opinions and inconsistent “truths”?
Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.
PS: I am relatively new here. So hopefully, my tone is not agressively persuasive. If any of you have a serious problem with my approach, please, criticize me.
>Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.
Absolutely. That’s exactly right.
>My Christian friend claimed that atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).
It sounds like there’s a conflation between ‘trust’ and ‘absolute trust’. Clearly we have some useful notion of trust because we can navigate potentially dangerous situations relatively safely. So using plain language its false to say that atheists can’t trust their own judgement. Clearly they can in some situations. Are you saying atheists can’t climb a ladder safely?
It sounds like he wants something to trust in absolutely. Has he faced the possibility that that might just not exist?