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
"Why does the creator of the entire universe get the value of pi wrong (2 Chron 4: 2)?"
God didn't get Pi wrong. Rather, He rounded to the nearest cubit. "Also he made the cast metal sea, ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits and its circumference thirty cubits." -2 Chronicles 4:2 If we were to write down the whole value of Pi, or in this case, Pi times 10, we would never finish writing. Therefore, whenever anyone, Creator of the universe or not, writes down the value of Pi for us to read, it is always rounded.
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"If God doesn't change over time, can He know tensed facts? If not, how is He omniscient?"
A tensed fact is a fact that is true in relation to present experience, but has no universal or permanent truth value. "Yesterday was July 26th", "today is Wednesday", or "I got a new job last month" are all tensed facts. Some people believe that God must know tensed facts to be omniscient. William Lane Craig formulates a hypothetical argument that God is not timeless as follows: 1. A temporal world exists. 2. God is omniscient. 3.
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"You say past time can't be infinite or we would never get to the present. Isn't that just Zeno's Paradox?"
No. Zeno's Paradox takes several forms. I'll just examine one of them -- the one that appears to me to be most pertinent to the question asked. According to Aristotle, "That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal". Imagine your house is sixty miles from your office. Before you can go sixty miles, you must first go thirty. But before you can go thirty, you must first go fifteen.
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