Rationalism
Definition
Rationalism describes any philosophy that claims that beliefs and opinions should always be logical, deductive conclusions rather than being based on experience, observations, religious teachings, or divine revelation.
Keywords: Rationalism, Philosophy, Logical, Reasoning, Deductive, Experience, Observations, Religious, Revelation, Contradictory.
Veracity
Rationalistic claims are false .
Proof
All self-refuting or contradictory claims are deductively false.
Premise 1: Only deductive conclusions should be believed.
Premise 2: Premise 1, being the foundation or starting point of the philosophy, is not itself a deductive conclusion.
Conclusion: Therefore, premise 1, also known as "rationalism", should not be believed.
Rationalistic claims, when adhered to, require the rejection of rationalistic claims. To accept them is to reject them, making rationalism inherently contradictory and deductively false.
Gilbert Guttlebocker, Defender of Dragons
Riveting, yet absurd; romantic, yet innocent; Gilbert Guttlebocker, Defender of Dragons is a little Roald Dahl, a little Harry Potter, and a little Chronicles of Narnia, all rolled into one. Timothy McCabe collaborates with the great Benedict Ballyhoot to bring you the novel of the century!
In Printed Form
Along with numerous other authors including Don Landis, Bodie Hodge and Roger Patterson, Timothy McCabe contributes analyses of various world religions and cults in this volume from Master Books.
Other Writings
"Honest answer: is your world view determined by knowledge or by belief?"
The short answer is that all of our worldviews, yours and mine and everyone's, are determined by God (Romans 9:18; Ephesians 1:11). But I suppose this answer then leads to the question, "what method did God use to cause you to have the worldview you have... did He do it by giving you knowledge or by causing you to believe apart from knowledge?" The Bible teaches that we all have a knowledge of some basic theological truths. Namely, we all know that there is a God.
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"Do you think that education is the solution? In other words, would people agree with your view if they just had more knowledge? Is the problem basically one of ignorance?"
No. Education is not the solution because ignorance is not the problem. Sin is the problem; pride, selfishness, self-centeredness, self-glorification, and the like are what lead people to reject the God who made them. Rejection of God's commands leads to a world of pain, famine, disease, war, and ultimately death. Learning more facts will never solve the problem of "I want", or the problem of "Me, me, me".
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"Would you please provide step-by-step logic, or point me to where I might find it, for your statements about atheism and polytheism?"
Sure. Here is how I see it. First, we demonstrate that infinite regress is incoherent. 1. Infinite Regress is logically incoherent. Infinite regress would mean that we have completely iterated, one-by-one, through every single item of an infinite series. If we were to go backwards through each previous item, and there were an infinite number of past items, there would necessarily be some item in the set of previous items that we would never, ever get to.
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