The Mind - Owner's Manual

Everyone is logical and rational. You disagree? Read a few more sentences before clicking elsewhere.

What you mean is that people with whom you disagree (about so many things) make you feel slightly, or greatly, frustrated. Why do "they" see things so differently than I do? They're irrational, illogical, nuts. Feel familiar?

Let me, then, begin once more.

The area where we all differ the greatest and that which causes the greatest amount of apoplexy between people is the realm of epistemological presuppositions: the first principles from which we derive the "lenses" through which we see the world and from which we derive inferences. ALL of us are logical; we use logic to reach the conclusions upon which we base our decisions and actions.

All of us examine precisely the same data, but we see them through different a priori "lenses". Presuppositions are by definition faith statements, and cannot be proven. This is what nearly everyone misses (except a few moral theologians and a philosopher or two). It is at the very beginning of our reasoning processes that the differences begin, and by the time we arrive at logical conclusions from these presuppositions, formulate our thoughts, attitudes, summaries, belief sets, and behavior we as far away from one another as, say, spokes that began at the hub but now at the rim of the wheel are far away from one another indeed.

To compare the findings of a creationist and an evolutionist who examine the same data is pointless without first comparing their presuppositions - their (mostly unexamined) faith statements from which they begin their investigations. To compare the political merits of a left-winger and right-winger without looking at their presuppositions results in a useless falderal and perhaps a shouting match. To ask for the most logic, rational, reasonable stance toward belief in Christian faith vs. atheism is pointless without first examining the respective a priori faith statements of each.

We are all logical. We must first look at one anothers' presuppositions - which are ALL, by definition, unprovable. That is where the healing of the western world will begin if it is to happen at all.