Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Age of Reason in the U.S.—long gone!
According to this article, we are entering an age where irrational belief is valued and reason is not (at least in America). What do you think about this? Are the examples the author mentions convincing, or are they perhaps signs of more democratic (and diverse) thinking about these issues? Why is this occurring now? Is post-modern relativism to blame? What should be the role of reason in our lives, and what should be the role of belief? If reason is on the decline, how can we best promote it?
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Authors of this article agree that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge. They accept that the power of human intellect is more, than a combination of our personal beliefs. As far as I know, first traces of the so called rationalism are found already in the 17th century ,when Descartes claimed, that only pure rationalism can lead us to doubt. As you may know, quotations like “ I cannot doubt that I am doubting” or “I think therefore I am” are from this major philosopher. Accordingly I think, that there is hardly something more important to our society than doubt, we have to doubt in order to debate and argue, without doubting, we would constantly misuse each other. It is enough to take the example of the book Brave New World, where people don’t doubt the system at all, because it artificially predestinates them, so they practically don’t think of a world that would be truly free, just and natural. Yes, all the facts about the past were burned, but what about peoples believes, as far as I know, they didn’t have many either.
ReplyDeleteDoubting leads us to making certain assumptions that, as the article mentions, should be based on some facts. Evidently ,facts lacking assumptions are usually based on certain beliefs or prejudices , and thus may be often wrong and potentially dangerous. Furthermore, when people don’t doubt their own simplistic assumptions and vehemently stand behind them, more people may share them , or even worse, conflicts may arise. It is true that throughout history, humans have made extremely wrong decisions about subjects, based on no facts whatsoever. This is what makes education even more important. In general, when education was lacking, it was much easier for our leaders to convince us about absurd things, like Nazism. But today, people are more educated, they are able to put big pressure on everything that our leaders do, because they are able to analyze their actions. When trying to create an opinion or assumption, we may slip into a wrong conclusion, either because we didn’t look at the facts, or because we have a certain belief ,that has the power to set our mind. If we would decide to fight this problem, there are schools to help us. Schools make us think rationally and implementation of more investigative skills would make them even more effective. As mentioned, especially Americans tend to suffer from the mind-set problem. Therefore it seems to me, that ineffective education in the U.S.A can be put down to this problem.
This article addresses several issues, but it is not the contradiction of creationism and scientifical facts that impressed me outmost. I am of the opinion that as long as people will not want to provoke each other by disputing the beliefs of others, we can live in peace. In fact, what really put me in doubt, was the question whether all opinions are equal. I think that it is better to have an opinion/assumption regarding diverse issues than not to have any. Our opinion is our identity, if we had no opinions about anything, we would become characterless. Thus, having an opinion, anyhow prefect or incorrect is still better than to satisfy the mentalities of others (get easily influenced by others).
As a result, I think that it would be a bad decision to question people’s opinions, just because there is no direct proof for them. We have every right to believe in whatever we want, unless it is to harm others. This raises the question whether this article doesn’t want to achieve a society where people would have identical, fact based opinions. Would this even be possible?, no, because even when having all the facts, you will never find the absolute truth, furthermore, opinions are like our looks, they are all different, some better, some worse, but they are all to be respected.
Dominik
Firstly let me quote Mr. Trent ‘’the belief culture thrives on the false principles that all opinions are equal, even those without factual data…’’ So, belief without factual data is a false and deceiving opinion that is degrading our society? Excuse me if I am exaggerating, but I would like to stress that the author is straightforwardly demoting the beliefs which do not have paper evidence. As an example the creationism was mentioned. Creationism is surely a belief that cannot be proven wrong or right, since it is based on religious principles and these principles are often very stable and the of course the whole religion also with its stories which are often described as parables. That means that even though their exact meaning can be disproven and specified as nonsense, but its internal and allegoric inside would stay still. We can see that Christian beliefs with its parables have still big group of supporters or better word believers. They either believe in exact meaning or in metaphoric meaning of the content. But still, we cannot address to their beliefs as false and we cannot say they lack the reason. Furthermore we cannot say that the believers are blind and naïve.
ReplyDeleteSecondly I do not think that age of reason is long gone or that today situation is worse than in past. I do not see the reason why the author of this article is making so urgent call that half of America population consist of reasonless creatures. The want for reason came in hand with greater brain capacity and with greater intelligence. The human society wanted to satisfy its complex thinking with reason for particular phenomenon such as its origin or the purpose of rain and gravity. As time went on, the evolution of the human brain stressed society to produce more complex reasons not just simple ones. I do not think that the awareness of people changed to worse compared with for example hundred years ago. Hundred years ago there was a minority of intellectuals with pure factual beliefs similar to the one the author of this article is presenting and the majority which believed that earth was created in six days or other. So in my opinion there is no need to call for an urgent message as we were going back to worshiping of fireplaces.
Gossips, hoax messages and other very popular mostly false messages spread among society are also groups of wrongly used examples. Anthropologist found out that in every culture and in every historical period there were gossips and people were interested in them. Why should the last century be different? Because of industrialization or because of internet people should avert from something natural. On contrary, these are not reasons why people should not behave in natural way. Gossips are natural part of human life and being interested in something extraordinary was always present and the majority of people always lacked reasoning when heard a gossip or a hoax message. Internet is just another way how to spread such matters but that is worth another discussion.
To conclude my ideas I accredit the creation of this article to a bad mood of the author. The author was probably disgusted by the reasonless individuals in his neighborhood or by some general notion that spread around, even thought it was false. It is obvious that the minority of people who realize more and reason better would be always concerned in such topic, but this gives them no right to address to beliefs such as creationism as nonsense.
Mojmir
In my opinion, a tiny lack of reason would not ruin the world. I am not saying that irrational beliefs should be on people’s daily routine. However, I think that these irrational beliefs might be useful in some way. Well, maybe not all of them. Let’s have a statement: Wow, this world is built on a giant turtle! I think that statements like these should not be considered as serious at all. On the other hand, even some irrational beliefs might grow into a reasonable fact with clear undeniable evidence. Therefore I think that these beliefs are beneficial for the whole humanity in some way.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I think that too much reason would make the world a worse place to live in. Just imagine a world where everyone acts so reasonable that personal emotions are completely annihilated. The humans would no more exist. All that would remain would be just lifeless bodies acting like preprogrammed machines. The point I want to reach is that people should not act just reasonable, but they should listen to their heart. Just like Spock from Star Trek. He was taught to eliminate his emotions and make logical decisions. However, in the newest Star Trek movie, whenever he made a decision based on his emotions, it ended up very well. Therefore I think that people should not focus on either reason or irrational belief, but they should live a balanced life full of harmony and understanding.
Tomas Langer 3.IB