Do we expect too much from human reason?

[Ben Davis]

Hi Thoughtage

I gave you quite a firm rebuttal earlier but it seems that some of what I wrote didn't register. Regarding this post:

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Hi there to you too!

Please pardon this copy and paste, which I rarely do, but here's a post I recently wrote that may stimulate further conversation.

Somebody asked....

Can you list what you see as the tenets of atheism’s
faith?

And I replied....

Somebody makes a god claim. Such claims typically
attempt to describe the source of all reality, the
foundation of everything.

The listener analyzes the god claim with their human
reason. The listener concludes the god claim lacks
sufficient evidence. The listener becomes an atheist.

The foundation of atheism is the assumption that the
rules of human reason are binding upon the area the god
claim is being made about, all of reality, everything.

There is no proof that the rules of human reason are
binding on all of reality, an arena we can not yet
define in even the most basic manner.

Thus, the foundation of atheism is faith.

The assumption that the rules of human reason are
binding on all of reality is a very understandable and
common belief. But it is still faith.

Most atheists take the qualifications of reason for
this particular question as an obvious given. Thus,
they don’t realize they are operating from faith and
making an unproven assertion.

Thus, when atheists commonly say “I am not asserting
anything”, they are usually sincere, but always
mistaken.

It is also not proven that human reason is NOT
qualified for analyzing claims about the fundamental
nature of all reality. It’s pretty easy to make a case
that human reason is probably not so qualified, but
that’s just a speculative argument, and not proof.

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...there are 2 main problems:

1. You're assuming that 'human reason' is the cause of the atheism. As has been pointed out to you, that's not necessarily the case: some of the pagan religions are atheist but not because of 'reason', other atheists are simply 'not wired that way' and belief in god-claims are beyond their capabilities (instinct, not reason). That said, there is a good proportion of atheists who subscribe to the ideas of material naturalism, PEARLism and other methods which would use the type of 'human reason' you illustrate to reach a conclusion that belief in god(s) is not justified. You need to be more rigorous in your definitions and segmentation lest you fall prey to fallacies of crass generalisation, which would invalidate your claims.

2. You conflate the definitions of 'faith' and 'trust': 'faith' addresses 'belief without evidence' whilst 'trust' addresses 'belief with evidence'. Trust has to be earned whereas faith doesn't thus you would be justified in saying that the users of 'human reason' trust in its efficacy due to repeated demonstration of real-world results. Instead you've misdefined the evidence-based approach as 'faith' which is why I called you out for the 'tarring with the same brush' fallacy in my previous post. Of course, for those who's atheism isn't based on reason, faith may be a valid explanation but I doubt it's the only one and certainly can't be used to classify 'reasonable' atheists.