Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy

[The Grand Nudger]

To reiterate, it is impossible to communicate a concept without reason. Not once in this thread have I stated that we should discard reason altogether; that would be absurd. I have obviously used reason in every single reply. I have been driving the point that, wait for it, "reason has limits", and requires supplementation in many areas. Below is one prime example.

Does it (require supplementation), to what end?

Supplementing rationalism with relativism. I have copied the following passage from post #130 to save time: "For example, if you and I had an interesting rational and logical conversation about a particular topic (and both you and I had an opinion about what we hold as true), how can you prove that your subjective opinion is actually true?

Not all opinions require "truth". For example, if I say chocolate and you say vanilla, both are true, both are subjective, and no supplementing of reason need be applied. We can both, likely, give reasons that we like vanilla or chocolate respectively - meanwhile, no amount of supplemenatation of anything will ever establish chocolate or vanilla as "better" in any true sense between us- because it is not really an area where we should expect, demand, or desire such "truth".

Therefore, in this type of situation relativism trumps rationalsm and empiricism for the opinion held by the individual.

Hardly, I may be willing to concede that you claim to prefer something - but I could run some experiments to see if your claim of experience matches up with demonstrable results. IOW, I could doubt the accuracy of your own perception of your own experiences.
(amusingly we've found that it is often the case that our own perceptions of our experience do not match up to the reality of our experience - insofar as it can be tested)

I also find this with scientific evidence. If two people are viewing the same peer reviewed scientific document that presents evidence to disprove a theory, each person could be interpreting the evidence completely differently from each other. I think these are good examples that show the limits of reason."

I've already responded to this bit, I've nothing to add.

Relativism posits that opinions or points of view have no absolute truth; that is, what might be true for you, is not necessarily true for me. Once again, what you hold as true for any particular concept is not going to be true for everybody else. Therefore, even if you have you used impeccable reasoned argument to come to a conclusion, relativism still trumps reason in this instance.

Trumps reason -for what- Love? It certainly doesn't trump reason if the aim is to increase knowledge. I'd concede that it certainly trumps reason for ending conversations. If you wanted to talk about why something was "true to you" you'd probably start in on reason again, wouldn't you?