(September 22, 2012 at 2:56 am)apophenia Wrote: Actually, you are allowed to define your own logic. In another thread here there was a discussion about just that topic. One of the things I find sometimes disconcerting (massive generalization alert) is the tendency of atheists, skeptics, humanists and the like is to simplify things down until they fit their model which makes them feel good about their choices and bad about everybody else's. (A quick example, I just had my first meeting with a "heathen bible study" group, and the organizer right out of the gate wanted to interpret every passage as hand-crafted as a tool for the elite to manipulate and control the sheep. We eventually got onto other theories about the nature of religion but her control theory, but this person had great difficulty seeing any turn of phrase as anything but a dastardly, finely crafted tool for depriving the masses of their freedom.) Unfortunately, when the world gets simplified to that extent, it often becomes untrue. I've lost whatever point I originally had, but I think part of being a skeptic or free thinker is being open to the world telling you things that differ from what you want to say. And I'm sure I'm equally guilty in my own way, it's just rather strange to see people who despise dogma trying to codify the world into dogmatic and well behaved little bits. The world is messy, complicated and deep. And to steal from that expression that "Evolution is smarter than you," it's good to keep in mind that Nature is often smarter than you as well. A billion neurons in the brain and that's the substance out of which your world models come. If it sounds to good to be true (too obvious, self-evident, too clean, well-behaved, whatever), then it probably is.
By logic, I mean nothing more than the standard rules of logic. For instance, a statement that is a logical fallacy won't be taken seriously because it is logically flawed. How people use logic to interpret things however, can indeed change. I admit that logically sound arguments can be invalid, but we can't just throw out the rulebook. It's like when someone teaches you how to think critically, but not what to think. Even using the same rules, people can reach varying conclusions, but there are still some things that cannot ever be accepted as logically valid regardless of interpretation, like circular reasoning, for example. I understand what you mean, but I am only referring to logic on the most basic level.
John Adams Wrote:The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
