Today's Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don't; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!
Reason and evidence aren't the only ways to understand the world. But since they minimize our biases and tendencies to believe what we already believe, they are the best ways to understand what is and isn't true about the non-subjective world. And religion is a question of what's true about the non-subjective world. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.
I disagree. Reason and evidence ARE the only ways to understand the world. There are other ways to THINK about it, DREAM about it, write POETRY about it, but there are no other ways to UNDERSTAND it.
Posted by: Roy Sablosky | December 18, 2009 at 02:32 PM
'Reason and evidence aren't the only ways to understand the world.'
What are the other ways?
Posted by: Boz | December 19, 2009 at 09:13 PM
Art, music, poetry, literature ... these things are great fun. They can be uplifting. And they can be wonderful ways to communicate. But they are not ways of knowing. Art can help someone communicate general relativity - but it cannot test general relativity experimentally.
Posted by: llewelly | December 20, 2009 at 08:48 PM
Well it all depends on how widely you define "Evidence" and "Reason". If a person's facial expressions, voice, posture, or writing style give you an impression about them, is the impression you get evidence about the world, or an example of understanding from subconscious (and so irrational) processes?
Posted by: Broggly | December 21, 2009 at 07:09 AM