Confidence in reason

Is it consistent with the nature of reasoning to build arguments on fabricated statistics and numbers?

Absolutly. These numbers must be considered as qualitatively and not quantifiably.

In that case, you're wrong about adults in the U.S. because the number is actually 43.75%.

By golly you are correct!!

Awesome! Man, intellectualizing is fun! And easier than I thought!

Well, one could argue that, based on our behaviors, we all have confidence in reason at some level. It is reason and science (because the two are really the same thing in many ways) that have given us automobiles, medicine, etc. People demonstrate their confidence in reason dozens of time every day by placing their lives in the hands of its products.

i'm confident that reason is no substitute for thinking- except for far too many people that think it is.

I don't have even the slightest idea of what you mean by that. Please elaborate.

Define reason. If reason is similar to rational then (in a very quick summary) then reason must correspond and cohere with what we know to be true in the scientific/natrual world we live in.

Now if you take a definition of faith... Faith can be described as belief in a particular area without evidence.

Would it make sense to believe in something without any evidence, similar to a blind guess.

Take religion and having faith in a religion. In a literal sense, religion has absolutely no confirming evidence. So why would we believe in a religion.

And I'm taking a guess here because I don't feel like looking up the stats. I would imagine that a majority of citizens in my country (United States) and probably the rest of the world, follow a religion. If religion involves faith...then can a religious person really believe in rationalism?

Do religion and rationalism contradict eachother?
Could that account for the 47% agreeing with rationalism?

reasoning is a valuable part of thinking. it isn't the only valuable part of thinking.

do you want vanilla or chocolate ice cream? this isn't a question you can actually solve with reason, unless you know that you never like vanilla, for instance. reason also isn't as good at coming up with new flavors.

reason is not very creative. that's funny really, because it probably took a creative mind to come up with the thought that reason is as valuable as we overrate it today.

when i say we overrate it, i mean by comparison. we demote all other forms of thinking, but we'd be nowhere- and i mean there would be no civilization, no striving for a better world, let alone for a better understanding of it- if reason was all we had.

why contemporary thought fails to grasp this is beyond me, but i don't think it's reason that got them to this point. there's nothing reasonable about limiting thought to one function of the mind, when it's capable of so much more that has brought us good things that these thinkers obsessed with reason obviously take for granted... like the computers they emulate.

"Our two minds .... One is an act of the emotional
mind, the other of the rational mind. In a very
real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and
one that feels" (Daniel Goleman, Emotional
Intelligence, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1996,
page 8). This rational mind is also called the
faculty of logic and reason.

The Upanishads say that these two are opposite in
nature. Modern psychologist also have observed it,
but they are not very sure about it:

"At the same time, reason sometimes clearly seems
to come into conflict with some desires (even
while not being in conflict with others) giving us
the impression that reason is separate from
emotion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

However, logic has a drawback.

In the 1930s, Austrian mathematician Godel proved a
theorem which became the "Godel theorem" in cognition
theory. It states that any formalized 'logical' system
in principle cannot be complete in itself. It means
that a statement can always be found that can be
neither disproved nor proved using the means of that
particular system. To discuss about such a statement,
one must go beyond that very logic system; otherwise
nothing but a vicious circle will result. Psychologist
say that any experience is contingent - it's opposite
is logically possible and hence should not be treated
as contradictory.

http://www.search.com/search?q=godel+incompleteness+theorem

The emotional mind works dominantly in theists and the rational
mind works dominantly in atheists.

yeah, and i think it's the dominance, not the logic (or the emotion) that's the problem.

of course, one has to dominate sometimes. and it would probably be okay that some people are more one than the other. the idea that one should be hallowed while the other is eschewed however, is problematic in my opinion.

I think that logic should dominate. Granted, emotion has its place, but it needs to be tempered by logic. We can't know anything through emotion, we can through logic. Emotion doesn't solve problems. Emotion helps us to experience more of life, nothing more.

feeling should be reserve for the private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable." This means that while we can observe our own private feelings we cannot observe these same feelings in others.

Empirical evidence indicates that we need not be conscious of emotional inducers nor can we control emotions willfully. We can, however, control the entertainment of an emotional inducer even though we cannot control the emotion induced.

I was raised as a Catholic and taught by the nuns that "impure thoughts" were a sin only if we "entertained' bad thoughts after an inducer caused an emotion that we felt, i.e. God would not punish us for the first impure thought but He would punish us for dwelling upon the impure thought. If that is not sufficient verification of the theory derived from Damasio's empirical evidence, what is?

In a typical emotion, parts of the brain sends forth messages to other parts of the body, some of these messages travel via the blood stream and some via the body's nerve system. These neural and chemical messages results in a global change in the organism. The brain itself is just as radically changed. But, before the brain becomes conscious of this matter, before the emotion becomes known"