# Where are the lines drawn on what is rational and what isn't? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 21, 2012, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164 "2012-08-21T14:35:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/101 "2012-08-23T19:49:03Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Whoa whoa whoa whoa. They would?!? (Well okay, I expect Ayn Rand would, but I don’t rank either her understanding of science or her level of self-awareness all that high.) Do you really think that all or even most of the thinkers you named there really claimed that their worldviews were derived **only** from rational thought uncontaminated (or unenriched) by **any** other inputs? Got cites? > > The only philosopher that I can think of who made anything like such a radical claim was Rene Descartes in his _Discourse on Method_, and I don’t think even he suggested that he had actually **attained** 100% pure uncorrupted rationality in his **entire** worldview, although of course he held that his “Method” could in theory get the user to that point. When I say “worldview” I’m thinking about where these people stand on the big questions of human existence. “Worldview” as I understand it doesn’t necessarily encompass every little thing. It’s probably true that most atheists don’t think that pure reason can be used to decide whether Chopi’s music was better than Schubert’s, as Ayn Rand seemed to think. But that misses the point. I can take two books, such as B. F. Skinner’s _Walden Two_ and Philip Wylie’s _Generation of Vipers_. Both authors make explicit claims that they are presenting solid facts based on sound science, yet they clash in the facts that they present. One is sure that human behavior is shaped entirely by instinct while the other denies the existence of instinct. One says that private property is the key to prosperity and happiness, while the other insists it destroys prosperity and happiness. Likewise they clash on morals, philosophy, and more. Further, I could easily dig up a dozen or more books from the same period, all claiming to be based on science, and all clashing with each other. The same would still be true today. So when I hear someone assert, as someone did earlier in the thread, “Put two scientists in the room together and they’re going to find fundamental ground they agree on. …So all scientists are deriving their knowledge from the same source - reality - and they’re going to come up with common beliefs because of this”, I can’t believe that because it contradicts what I see. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/102 "2012-08-23T21:03:18Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Hmmm. Such as? As a historian of science, I quite agree with you that the process of accumulating scientific knowledge has historically been very far from empirically flawless, and that even nowadays new results are surrounded by a lot of uncertainty. > > But it does seem to me that the iteration of experiment/model revision/experiment/revision etc. does over time tend to produce more coherent theories and more replicable results (although of course not every result can be replicated by the average hobbyist in a basement lab). Can you specify some important counterexamples illustrating the “great deal of what is advanced as science” for which you claim this isn’t true? My personal observations come mostly from the fields of math and theoretical physics, since those are the fields I was in. The most famous example is string theory, a paradigm that’s taken hold in physics without experimental evidence. However, understanding the problems with string theory is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. In conversations that I’ve had with physicists, if they’re personal and ‘off the record’, they’ve expressed large doubts about big chunks of quantum theory. Similarly in mathematics, I’ve spoken with a number of mathematicians willing to criticize whole fields of their own profession as nonsensical. It’s worth remember that professional mathematicians and scientists are a self-selecting group. Those who enter the field but then find themselves disappointed with the lack of rigor are likely to leave. Somewhere around half of all grad students who enter the technical fields don’t make it to the Ph.D., though obviously not all drop-outs leave for that reason. Those who remain through grad school, post doc, and the tenure process are the ones who can accept what they find. This isn’t just something that I happened to observe. For instance, T. H. Kuhn studied scientists at work and produced _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_–[there’s a good synopsis of it here](http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/kuhnsyn.html)–arguing that all scientists work within a paradigm, and that the nature of the paradigm causes believers to shape their research results to fit it. [This New Yorker article](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer) has a good summary of some recent high-profile cases in which well-established results could not be reproduced. ---
**Author:** ![lycopersiyum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9fc29f/32.png) [@lycopersiyum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lycopersiyum)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/103 "2012-08-23T21:42:00Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > That, I think, is the issue. The vast, vast majority of believers that I have encountered are absolutely NOT willing to consider for even a second that their religion is bogus. And they get vehement about it if I dare to question them in any way. You can apply that stern judgment to every single human being on the planet, including yourself. That’s the real joke. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/104 "2012-08-23T22:39:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Seems to me that it can be a better choice than the two you presented, and thus conspicuous in its absence. I don’t think we understood each other then. You can technically not have an “official” belief about something you don’t have enough data for, but you still need some sort of working belief or test model. If you are driving and don’t have a map, you may think the next exit is likely to get you where you want to go, but you can’t be sure. It’s not an official belief, but it is a working one. Any decision you make is based on a belief you have, and not every belief has the luxury of sufficient data, but you still have to make decisions and take actions. Even inaction is a belief that there is little risk to that choice. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/105 "2012-08-23T22:47:03Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > When I say “worldview” I’m thinking about where these people stand on the big questions of human existence. […] > > I can take two books, such as B. F. Skinner’s _Walden Two_ and Philip Wylie’s _Generation of Vipers_. Both authors make explicit claims that they are presenting solid facts based on sound science, yet they clash in the facts that they present. […] Further, I could easily dig up a dozen or more books from the same period, all claiming to be based on science, and all clashing with each other. The same would still be true today. So when I hear someone assert, as someone did earlier in the thread, “Put two scientists in the room together and they’re going to find fundamental ground they agree on. …So all scientists are deriving their knowledge from the same source - reality - and they’re going to come up with common beliefs because of this”, I can’t believe that because it contradicts what I see. I think you’re overinterpreting the concepts of “common beliefs” and “based on”. I don’t think anyone would attempt to argue that, say, Voltaire and Freud and Bertrand Russell agreed about **everything**. But I think it’s fair to claim that they had **some** common beliefs based on a shared rationalist-materialist epistemology. For example, they all believed that the earth orbited the sun and the moon orbited the earth, and believed that the models of Newtonian physics at least to a large extent explained those phenomena. Such common beliefs are fully “based on” rationalist-materialist “scientific” epistemology in the sense that it’s the **only** thing they’re based on. Nobody with a scientific perspective uses any epistemological tool other than empirical science to explain the relative motions of the sun, moon and earth. And in using that tool on a well-understood problem like basic orbital revolution, nobody comes up with a substantially different answer. That’s the sense in which all scientifically-minded people really do have common ground about the nature of reality. But that doesn’t mean that **everything** that scientifically-minded people believe is based **exclusively** on well-established scientific theories. Especially not when it comes to “the big questions of human existence” on issues like morals and philosophy. Just because writers may claim that their philosophical positions are based on science doesn’t mean that they’re derived **only** from scientific facts exclusively via scientific methods. So naturally we wouldn’t expect to find unanimity in their conclusions. > [@ITR champion](#): > > My personal observations come mostly from the fields of math and theoretical physics, since those are the fields I was in. The most famous example is string theory, a paradigm that’s taken hold in physics without experimental evidence. However, understanding the problems with string theory is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. In conversations that I’ve had with physicists, if they’re personal and ‘off the record’, they’ve expressed large doubts about big chunks of quantum theory. Similarly in mathematics, I’ve spoken with a number of mathematicians willing to criticize whole fields of their own profession as nonsensical. None of this really validates your claim that “a great deal of what is advanced as science” lacks support from empirical experimental evidence. Certainly, a lot of relatively new areas in science, such as string theory, are still highly unsettled and insufficiently verified, and they may well be eventually abandoned in favor of more successful theories. (And the period of transition in changing from one dominant theoretical paradigm to another, as Kuhn described, is not always unanimous or flawlessly rational.) But the acknowledged uncertainty around the margin of existing bodies of scientific knowledge does not justify us in doubting the whole concept of scientific certainty in general. Just because string theory and parts of quantum theory are still controversial doesn’t call into question the validity of the equation _F=ma_, for example. As for mathematics, that’s mostly irrelevant because pure mathematics is explicitly not about modeling reality, but rather about proving what consequences logically follow from accepting certain conditions on various precisely defined abstractions. For example, the fact that the generalized Poincare conjecture is true on differentiable manifolds in dimension 3 and false in dimension 7 holds good whether or not there actually exists a seventh dimension in physical space. I teach in a mathematics department myself, and IME while it’s true that mathematicians often disagree about the merits of different philosophies of mathematics such as intuitionism or finitism, they usually have a pretty good consensus when it comes to the truth or falsehood of specific propositions. I would definitely be interested in knowing more about the criticisms by mathematicians of entire fields of mathematics as “nonsensical” that you claim to have encountered, because I don’t find that very plausible. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2012, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/106 "2012-08-23T22:49:27Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > “Put two scientists in the room together and they’re going to find fundamental ground they agree on. …So all scientists are deriving their knowledge from the same source - reality - and they’re going to come up with common beliefs because of this”, I can’t believe that because it contradicts what I see. Oh come on. Science is an ongoing investigation. Human behavior has many components and a very high order of complexity. Of course there are still open questions in that field. But you won’t find many scientists disagreeing on what time the sun will rise on Tuesday, or what will result from the mixture of two chemicals under set conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/107 "2012-08-24T00:02:03Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > Which, correct me if I’m wrong, was what I took it that the OP meant when referring to “fundamentalist atheist”. **DT** is a perfect example of whom _I_ think of when using the term, myself. An absolute, adamant insistence on the _factual_ non-existence of any kind of god, despite the total lack of actual evidence that the god in question doesn’t (or can’t) exist. I’ve hit him up for cites to his overly-broad claims that it’s provable. So have others. We’re all still waiting for those cites. He doesn’t, and can’t, give them. I do, they are simply ignored. I point out the ways that various claims about gods violate physical laws, that’s handwaved away. If I was speaking about _anything_ else those would be considered perfectly valid disproofs; but as always religion is granted a double standard. I also point out the fact that since there are innumerable different mutually contradictory claims about gods, most must be false; that’s outright ignored. > [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > It becomes two entirely different arguments, depending on where you start. “I won’t believe in your god, until you provide evidence” is a _far_ different argument than “Your god _doesn’t exist_, unless you provide evidence that he does”. The first is rational, the second just… isn’t. And **DT** is incapable of distinguishing the two arguments. No, I simply regard it as an irrelevant rhetorical trick. It is, again, a double standard; if someone else came on here and made a claim that violated the laws of physics (like plenty of conspiracy theorist and pseudoscience types do), their claims would be denied as impossible, and demands would be made for evidence that such physics-breaking events had occurred. But when a religious claim is made, suddenly it’s the person who points out that “it breaks the laws of physics and you have no evidence it ever happened” who is being unreasonable and irrational. I get denounced as irrational and unreasonable and intolerant because I apply the same standards to religion that I and most people apply to everything else, instead of putting it in a protected box. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/108 "2012-08-24T00:36:40Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I point out the ways that various claims about gods violate physical laws, that’s handwaved away. Because it’s irrelevant. If gods are supernatural beings, then yeah, of course natural laws don’t apply to them, pretty much by definition. > [@Der Trihs](#): > > If I was speaking about _anything_ else those would be considered perfectly valid disproofs Sure, if you were speaking about anything to which physical laws were claimed to apply. If somebody comes around arguing for a god that’s a natural phenomenon subject to physical laws, I’ll back you up to the hilt in disputing that claim by means of physical arguments. But that’s not what most believers think that God is. > [@Der Trihs](#): > > I also point out the fact that since there are innumerable different mutually contradictory claims about gods, most must be false; that’s outright ignored. And rightly so, because a supernatural being is no more intrinsically constrained by rational logic than by physical law. I entirely agree with you that these conditions make the concept of a supernatural being irrational. What they do **not** make it, however, is demonstrably false. It’s not just you but a whole lot of atheists who automatically conflate the concepts of “rational” and “true”. Mind you, I’m not claiming that there’s any way to demonstrate that the two are not in fact the same: you are certainly free to make the assumption that nothing can be true except what is rational. Indeed, it’s quite a reasonable assumption. But it **is** an assumption, not a provable assertion. You can’t use rationality to prove that rationality is the only valid source of knowledge and consequently that only entities conforming to rational criteria can exist. Because if there **were** any other valid source of knowledge, rationality wouldn’t be able to detect or test it. That fact, as **Voyager** notes, may be logically trivial and not very interesting. But it’s pretty important when it comes to evaluating the validity of “disproofs” of claims about irrational concepts such as gods. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/109 "2012-08-24T01:27:06Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I would definitely be interested in knowing more about the criticisms by mathematicians of entire fields of mathematics as “nonsensical” that you claim to have encountered, because I don’t find that very plausible. Well, imaginary numbers are called that because, back when they were first introduced, the Old Guard dismissed them offhand as silly and “unrealistic”. The word “imaginary” was chosen and used in a derogatory way, because in the eyes of the likes of Descartes these numbers did not “really” exist. Hell, they disapproved of them specifically \*because \*imaginary numbers weren’t about modelling reality but exploring the consequences of set premises in the purely abstract. So that’s one example. Of course, back then mathematics and physics were not quite as clearly dissociated as they are today. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/110 "2012-08-24T01:33:58Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Well, imaginary numbers are called that because, back when they were first introduced, the Old Guard dismissed them offhand as silly and “unrealistic”. The word “imaginary” was chosen and used in a derogatory way, because in the eyes of the likes of Descartes these numbers did not “really” exist. Hell, they disapproved of them specifically \*because \*imaginary numbers weren’t about modelling reality but exploring the consequences of set premises in the purely abstract. > So that’s one example. Of course, back then mathematics and physics were not quite as clearly dissociated as they are today. Good point about the historical development of mathematics involving a lot of philosophical disputes. However, what **ITR champion** was talking about was “a number of mathematicians willing to criticize whole fields of their own profession as nonsensical” whom **he personally had spoken with**. So unless he was calling up Descartes on the ouija board or something, I don’t think this is germane to his point. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/111 "2012-08-24T02:39:51Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Because it’s irrelevant. If gods are supernatural beings, then yeah, of course natural laws don’t apply to them, pretty much by definition. Nonsense. That’s an excuse that was relatively recently created to handwave away the fact that such laws _do_ rule out “supernatural” entities. And it doesn’t change the fact that if the subject wasn’t religion, no one would accept “natural laws don’t apply” as an excuse. > [@Kimstu](#): > > And rightly so, because a supernatural being is no more intrinsically constrained by rational logic than by physical law. Then we can say nothing meaningful whatsoever about it and should ignore the whole issue. Even your own argument is self annihilating; if rationality does not apply, then your argument doesn’t. Of course, this is again just a rhetorical gimmick that almost no one actually believes. Gods & religion are only “incomprehensible” as long as some skeptic is asking “why?” As soon as he’s gone, suddenly it all becomes comprehensible again. ---
**Author:** ![coffeecat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coffeecat/32/3405_2.png) [@coffeecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coffeecat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/112 "2012-08-24T03:28:27Z")
Getting back to the OP, I’d draw the lines charitably, especially with popular or long-standing ideas. If millions of people say similar things, they may all be wrong, but they’re probably not stupidly wrong. Other people have minds too, and they may have caught something I missed. Of course, sometimes the irrationality is so outrageous it hits you in the face with a rubber chicken; but, barring that, I’d rather risk treating a few crazy notions with respect, than prematurely condemn possible good ideas, especially since people are prone to label ideas they disagree with as irrational, when really they just missed the point. On science: I love it, [but sometimes it’s not the right tool.](http://xkcd.com/507/) No one is going to decide who to vote for this November by getting 100 Obamas and 100 Romneys, putting each of them in a model U.S., and taking a chi-squared of the results. That’s true of most decisions we have to make in everyday life: scientifically speaking, there’s insufficient data, but we have to make a decision anyway. And I wouldn’t give a license to someone who drove by solving the cars’ differential equations of motion, because he’d rear-end me while looking at his clipboard and calculator. I’d much rather trust someone who drives by intuition and gut instinct. If intuition and instinct are based on experience, following them is more rational than the scientific approach. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/113 "2012-08-24T04:24:51Z")
> [@coffeecat](#): > > No one is going to decide who to vote for this November by getting 100 Obamas and 100 Romneys, putting each of them in a model U.S., and taking a chi-squared of the results. We could at least try putting them in a particle collider and see what happens. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/114 "2012-08-24T04:49:57Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > When someone is making a claim about logic about such a being then they are because that supposed being is included. I’ve seen the argument about unnessecary evil quite a bit. Never made sense, still doesn’t. Almost all these arguments begin by restricting them to omnibenevolent deities, and they often end by saying they don’t apply to deities who are dicks. No one ever tried to demonstrate that the Greek gods don’t exist because of this argument. They never claimed to be all good. Many people think the Christian god is omnibenevolent, so the argument of natural evil does apply there. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/115 "2012-08-24T04:57:44Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > There has been a lot of recent [research](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions_in_decision_making) into the role that emotion plays in decision-making. > > What scientists have found is that it has a surprisingly large place. In the example of buying cereal that you give, what they have found is that in many cases, people who are simply asked to choose a cereal give a different answer than the one they give if they are asked specifically to weigh cost, weight, nutritional content, etc., and then choose. Even though they think they are making a rational decision in both cases, in the first case they are making an emotional decision which is immediately rationalized. Not only this, but we seem to be evolutionarily wired to make irrational choices. The endowment effect makes something possessed by someone worth more to them than it is to someone who does not possess it - even if the owner only got it minutes before. Studies with chimps found a similar characteristic. Even for cereal it has been shown that you are less likely to buy if the number of choices increase. Since most people don’t have time to compare nutrition information for every cereal on the shelves, I strongly suspect that the subset that is compared will be chosen based on packaging, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/116 "2012-08-24T05:09:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > We could at least try putting them in a particle collider and see what happens. I’ve got a better idea - take the Romney from the Mass days and the anti-Romney of today. Put them in a collider. The power generated from their mutual annihilation would power the US for years. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/117 "2012-08-24T05:13:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > My personal observations come mostly from the fields of math and theoretical physics, since those are the fields I was in. The most famous example is string theory, a paradigm that’s taken hold in physics without experimental evidence. Odd - nearly everything I read by the proponents of string theory goes out of its way to explain the lack of experimental evidence and how provisional the hypothesis is. Opponents seem to claim that string theorists go well beyond the evidence, but the evidence is actually the equations so far. Still, imagine a religious leader using the same caveats as a string theorist does. Instead we get “I believe with a perfect faith.” ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/118 "2012-08-24T11:55:55Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > People believe a study that says X is bad for you, and that becomes common knowledge until another study a few years later says , no X isn’t really bad for you and actually has some benefits. > > Is that rational? You may also be confusing the science with the media reports about the science. The science usually says something like “we thought X might be bad for you, so we followed this methodology to craft the following experiments, based on our examination of the results of those experiments, we observed the following, and our evidence suggests that there may be a connection where increasing X leads to poor outcomes”. Then the media reports “X is bad for you”, then someone else does more research, more experiments, more analysis, and has a similarly nuanced report that again gets mis-characterized/simplified by the media. In many cases, the conclusions as stated by both scientists are indeed consistent with the evidence and observations. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/119 "2012-08-24T19:54:07Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nonsense. That’s an excuse that was relatively recently created to handwave away the fact that such laws _do_ rule out “supernatural” entities. I don’t care how recently it was invented (although in fact I’m skeptical of your timeline there: there are certainly discussions of different _pramanas_ or epistemological categories in Sanskrit philosophy as far back as the early medieval period that suggest a real disjunction between natural and supernatural objects of knowledge). The fact remains that magic != physics, and believers in deities or any other magical entities cannot be disproved when they claim that such entities transcend natural laws. > [@Der Trihs](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > And rightly so, because a supernatural being is no more intrinsically constrained by rational logic than by physical law. > > Then we can say nothing meaningful whatsoever about it and should ignore the whole issue. We can say nothing **rationally** meaningful about it, true. All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t confuse not being able to discuss something in rationally meaningful terms with conclusively proving that it is false or nonexistent. > [@Der Trihs](#): > > Of course, this is again just a rhetorical gimmick that almost no one actually believes. Tough shit. As honest debaters, we don’t get to reject a valid statement just because many people who make that statement secretly prefer to disregard it in favor of something much more illogical. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2012, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164/120 "2012-08-24T23:04:44Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > I’d believe my girl if she told me the reason she didn’t bring back peanut putter from the store is that they were out of peanut butter. She might be bullshitting me, but it’s a credible, sensible line. I’ve experienced that before. > OTOH I wouldn’t believe her if she told me she couldn’t get to the peanut butter shelf because there was an evil flaming unicorn in the way (or rather, I _might_ believe her, but I wouldn’t believe there really was one. My GF can be a little… odd at times :)) You have a girlfriend??!! {I kid} The point I made early on is about the definition of rational being oversimplified by the popular atheist argument of believing something that can’t be falsified. Whether it’s a popular opinion among atheists or not, that’s not the definition of rational. You didn’t really address the point, you just made the same assertion I’m challenging. Reason, what is reasonable, has something to do with context. As I pointed out, all people have a belief system that consists of intellect and emotion. The plain facts, and how they interpret those facts through the lens of their experience and , knowledge base, etc. All people operate on some degree of faith, or trust. We obviously don’t verify every piece of information that comes our way. It’s necessarily irrational to believe information we receive from trusted sources or to believe what the majority of our social group believes. That is especially true if we hold certain unproven beliefs as merely possible , or our current belief, acknowledging that our belief system is a work in progress. Holding things we can’t possibly know with certainty as absolute truths can be considered irrational, as can holding things as true once we’ve been made aware of strong contradictory evidence. > [@](#): > > But the defining point of articles of faith is that you _can’t_ see them, nobody can or has ! Some jokers even go on about how it’s even better and more marvelous _because_ you can’t see or prove it and it transcends the whatchamacallit, supercedes the thingamabob and so forth (and you sound like a loony when you talk about it). I ain’t been impressed. If we are going to judge religious beliefs with the same standards we judge all beliefs {which is the correct thing to do} let’s also judge faith , or trust, and the belief systems of humans by one standard as well. IOW , religious faith is not a separate and different mechanism from the kind of faith and trust agnostics and atheists have. It simply has a different outcome. Speaking of average people, not scientists, we all operate by assuming certain information we receive is true. It’s not an irrational act. My suggestion is that people who accept certain beliefs because they were taught them , and those beliefs are reinforced by their group, are not necessarily being irrational. OTOH, if they NEVER question any of those beliefs , or embrace them in spite of being exposed to serious factual challenges , then irrational can be an accurate term. What is rational depends to some degree on the context of the individual and is not a one size fits all definition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-lines-drawn-on-what-is-rational-and-what-isnt/632164.md?page=7)