Is religious unreason a convenient get-out excuse providing wriggle-space to escape from rational discourse?

It makes discussion quite pointless and any quest for answers useless, no wonder then that people ask some silly questions here, sensible rational ones will be met with no-brain answers.
So what's your excuse for religious unreason? Why do you think you have powers of rational thought (the one thing that sets us above the other animals)if you refuse to apply them rigorously and rationally to your beliefs.

WayKnowT, your abuse is becoming all the more poetic as it becomes more demonic, I actually quite enjoyed this latest piece of creative writing of yours.

You are so full of yourself and you are about to burst. Your mind is crawling with worms of deception. They eat what common sense you have and the worms get bigger. Your foul thoughts will destroy you. You have been warned or admonished, take heed for the end of the age is at the door.

People without the capacity for rational discourse always fall back on "I'm right, you're wrong." Jesus freaks use the same idea, but they've got a god backing them up to lend weight to their arguments.

Isn't it nice how God agrees with all of his followers opinions?

I don't believe in "unreason". I find God and spirituality quite reasonable and wouldn't believe if that weren't so. God just makes more sense to me than the meaningless existence of day-to-day life waiting for death and permanent finality. That's prison - doing time on planet earth- that will be exchanged for permanent exile into nothingness. How does that make sense?

did any one understand this question.

Could be some people try to lighten things up or, most of the time, maybe they don't know the answer but try anyway. And, also, it can be an excuse to get out of rational discussion - maybe this is from fear.

Paul,

you are asking a philosophical question on a site dominated by 14 year olds that are too lazy to even attempt to use the built in spell checker.

and the answers to your question is yes. the bible thumpers will always hide behind a quote when they are comforted by a question they have not been programed to answer.

I agree, too often people fall back on religious teachings as a reason for holding an opinion, instead of truly examining the facts and subtleties of an issue. People are natrually lazy, and its easier than thinking.

For example, the whole gay marriage issue. Many people are content to just say "the bible says its wrong, so it must be wrong", and use that as an excuse to justify fear or hatred of homosexuals. They would rather have an easy answer that fits their pre-concieved stereotypes than actually take the time to look at the facts and really think about it.

Interesting question, yet no solid reasoning for it. It appears that you just wish to give religious thought a general disapproval, while encouraging reason. Your seeming thesis is that the two cannot coexist, or worse, that religious thought is yet a distraction, or escape from reason. I would highly recommend the writings of Francis Schaeffer, he analyzes this topic in much greater depth.

If a religion is irrational then it ought not to be followed. I believe that Christianity is rational though. My rationale is this:

1. There is an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator being who rules all of existence.

2. Because of His attributes and authority, He gets to make the rules.

3. Break His rules and He will hold you accountable. Obey His rules and you do well.

That鈥檚 the most basic logical reasoning for why to follow God and why to accept his rules. The only part that people can argue as irrational is believing this to be true without material evidence. However that can be refuted with more rational logic:

1. If the Bible really is the unerring word of God then it is foolish to disobey.

2. If the Bible is not the unerring word of God then you still do not lose anything by following it.

Ultimately it is the most reasonable choice to follow God and the Bible, and one should be able to give sound reasoning on the specific points as well (i.e. Homosexuality is wrong because God says so. Since He is in charge then He gets to decide, whether I wish it to be so or not. I can choose to disobey, but that would be foolish. If it were to turn out that this is all false then I still did well by avoiding homosexualty and staying monogamous with my wife.)

Religious thought and dogma that does not follow reasoning should be avoided.

unfortantly you could use the same argument on the unreligious world. there are rational thoughts on the proof of God.such as the domonio theroy , the id movement , historic evedence, and just the idea of what faith is. and some of your questions are point less but a put down on of people of faith.

people used to think there were four elements, earth air wind and fire

now we see the periodic table of the elements

some reject it and say thats satan trying to break you apart from god

some of us say this is an explanation of nature

our fight is against allowing people to say in science class that there are four elements, earth wind air fire

Actually, most of the best "rational discourse" I've had with people in my life has involved religion.

I get what you're saying. And I can feel your frustration through my computer! If it's because of the Christians hijaking the Yahoo Q&A thing, just take a deep breath and go to another category. You still have plenty of people logged on that are in their right mind and can offer valid provocative debate. I don't find it a problem since I normally walk away from religious confrontations (simply not interested). No use getting worked up! You and I both know they are never going to change or go away.

I especially love the "Read the bible" answers.

Religion -- a daughter of hope and fear, explaining to the ignorant the nature of the unknowable.

--Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary

"Religious unreason" is faith, and faith is belief without proof.

Rational discourse is a contract between two rhetoriticians in which they seek the truth through dispute. When you argue, you have the requirement to concede to the other side if its presentation is true and yours is not. In fact, you have the requirement to concede if the truth is unknown but the other side is more likely to be truth than what you have advocated.

None of these protocols of rational discourse apply when discussing a RELIGION, being a matter of faith in which there are beliefs which avowedly lack proof.

So a discussion about religious matters is quite pointless. I support that hypothesis.

The "excuse" for "religious unreason," which is to say the motive for adopting a faith, tends to come down to two things: the FEAR of dying and the HOPE that your offspring will turn out to be respectable citizens.

If your faith significantly reduces your fear of death, you're going to cling to it without ever abandoning it. If you hope your children grow up respectably and are unsure about that, and your faith and dragging them into the belief system you have comforts you and gives you HOPE, you're going to cling to that belief system.

Now, once you are in that emotional coccoon of hope and fear, you will stay in there even though you develop a tendency to "escape from rational discourse" by using the "wriggle-space" that faith provides. But the desire to wriggle and escape is post propter hoc, it is a side-benefit of a previous, separate decision: accepting faith to reduce fear and incrase hope.

All of the "silly questions" asked here come from people who have fears and hopes comforted by faith. They also provide the no-brain answers (such as the very answer to this question that states with ****-sure certainty that God agrees with the post being written, even though that God struck Moses dead for feeling that way and promised us that "Not one of you is worthy -- not one."

Many faithful people can be humble about their relationship with the authority they worship, and they can turn their brains over to logical argument when dealing with many questions, those that occur outside the realm of faith.

There is a (radical) sort of faith that respects science and its achievements, that embraces the advancement of knowledge. You can observe this in Paramahansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi," and in David L. Edwards' "What Anglicans Believe in the Twenty-First Century" (which, to oversimplify, is that God is the quality of enthalpy). You can see this also in the Dalia Lama, who was asked permission to have his monks' heads examined --by MRI!-- to see if their brains worked the same as normal people. The MRI scans were taken and the images were distinctly different than normal brains.

The faithful people who lack this sort of open-minded wisdom are, fortunately, easy to discern.