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To: Amos the Prophet

Exactly. Rationality has no meaning unless there is some ultimate source of rationality in the universe, which Christians refer to as the Logos (John 1:1).

Thomas Nagel argues this case, against his will, in "The Last Word" (Oxford, 1997). Nagel is a brilliant philosopher, considered one of the dozen most prominent philosophers living in the world today. He is by inclination an atheist, but the problem he frankly confronts in this book is that if you want to have anything like a "strong" version of rationality--something that is really there, not just an illusion, something that allows us to have a common language when talking about the nature of things--then it is very, very difficult to account for it without turning to religion, which he refuses to do.

Thus, if we are all incidental products of a purely materialistic evolution, then we are incapable of true rational thought. Rationality is merely a delusion.

A study of the history of science reveals very clearly that science and technology rose in the West as a byproduct of the rise of Christendom. Lynn Thorndyke has done some excellent work on science in the middle ages, which are far from the dark, superstitious times that people since the Renaissance have depicted. Alfred North Whitehead makes the persuasive argument that science in the Renaissance also is only explicable as a product of Christian assumptions--in particular the assumption that the universe is real and that it is rational.

Modern agnostic scientists are, in a very real sense, still parasitic on these earlier Christian assumptions, of a rational universe and of human free will that can understand things by means of rational thinking and investigation.


265 posted on 12/03/2005 8:56:03 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero

So your point is that we can't be rational unless we assume, without evidence, that there is a source of rationality in the universe. I don't quite see the logic that goes behind it. Maybe if you supported your claim with evidence rather than just asserted it you might make more sense.


274 posted on 12/03/2005 9:01:19 PM PST by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: Cicero

unless there is some ultimate source of rationality in the universe, which Christians refer to as the Logos (John 1:1).



The Word, logos, before materials, indeed. Marxists seem to have used Darwin to construct the cryptoMarxist cult of Darwinism, as in matter precedes thought or the Word.

By the way, logos means also leg, and to collect using one's legs, collecting words amongst other things, discussing, that is.

Marxists are fundamentaly contradicting the Bible and look no further beyond assertions and stiffling discussion for their biggoted end.


299 posted on 12/03/2005 9:26:33 PM PST by JudgemAll (Condemn me, make me naked and kill me, or be silent for ever on my gun ownership and law enforcement)
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