REASON RULES OK! HOW TO MAKE REASON WORK FOR YOU!

Reason is thinking correctly.

To have self-esteem you need to understand the grounds of reason and that reason is unassailable when it is attacked by the arguments of those who claim to believe in nothing. Your self-esteem cannot grow unless you can have confidence in your thinking.

The basic rule of reason is that A is A. The other two basic rules are just saying the same thing for they go: A cannot be non-A and everything is either A or non-A.

Even those who oppose reason use reason to say that reason is no good and what can you put in its place? Nothing. Murder could be right if reason is wrong and those who oppose reason are saying just that and certainly have no right to harangue murderers.

Some say we never know if something is a paradox or contradiction so reason is useless. If you prove a paradox to be true you do not disprove reason for you could still trust reason in everything else and it is reason that has led you to the paradox. Lots of things in physics are not as they seem so those who say that reality is fundamentally irrational should be ignored for what is as strange as reality can be interpreted any way you wish. You must put yourself first and therefore nobody has any business telling you what to think and it is shameful to accept something important just because somebody says so when you can, check it out yourself. Reason is the supreme authority for it looks at truth and asks what truth implies about things. Nothing else can do that.

Sometimes there will be paradoxes which we cannot solve for we are not smart enough. But they do not mean that reason and truth contradicts itself but only that we need more light for we all see contradictions where there are none when we don’t know or understand all the facts. When both ends of a paradox are true we know there cannot be a contradiction for though they appear to contradict one another they cannot for what contradicts itself cannot be real. And if, in a paradox, logic and experience contradict what logic alone says then what logic and experience says should be taken as right and the paradox should be taken as solved. That way we remain rational. Since you can only tell when something is a paradox when the paradox is true it follows that religion which is full of paradoxes that are not proven should be rejected for then you don’t know if they are really paradoxes or just contradictions.

Here are the guidelines on using reason correctly.

A fallacy is an error in logic that looks like sound logic. In the interest of peace and self-confidence everybody needs to know what the most common fallacies are and uproot them from their minds. When you are confident that you can be right your self-esteem grows. People have great regard and trust in the person who thinks carefully before they speak.

Do not use the huge scale of a view’s supporters to try and prove that the view is right for the majority or what is supposed to be the majority are often wrong and people often judge without thinking properly and are often more interested in justifying their prejudiced feelings than in reason. Remember, quoting learned scholars in your support proves nothing for your opponents can do the same. We must remember how far out people – even experts can be. The more intelligent you are the more restricted your thinking is which means that somebody who knows how your mind will reason will set the stage and fool you.

Circular reasoning is a popular fallacy and upon it religion invariably depends. It says that X is true for Y says so and Y is right for X is true. You could prove you don’t exist with that logic! It is lying for it equates a guess with a proof and disguises it as such. It makes a guess and then works out something from the guess and says it is therefore proven when it is not proven for it is based on a guess and you would not be guessing if the guess was a proof. It would make more sense to simply assume something is true than to use circular reasoning to defend it. Some circles can be subtle like the following for instance. To tell somebody that the reason she can see through a window is because it is transparent is not an answer. That is begging the question for she wouldn’t be saying she saw through the window unless it was transparent. That is circular reasoning, she saw through the window because it was transparent.

Religion resides itself on circular reasoning when it says that God exists because he does miracles and miracles show God exists because they are from God but all miracles would prove that some force created them but not what that force is or what it is like morally. Miracles would need to show that God is a desirable belief before we could trust them and they cannot do that. The argument doesn’t rest on anything proven but just hangs midair and its failure shows that miracles can’t be from God when they encourage such bad logic in religious believers though they shouldn’t. When you depend on circular reasoning there is nothing stopping you from believing a contrary circle perhaps, “Miracles show that nature is sometimes unstable and nature sometimes gets its laws mixed up because miracles happen”. Or “The resurrection proves Jesus was the Son of God” which is assuming that Jesus did not have an evil power that made people hallucinate his return from the dead and his disappearance from the tomb. Arguments like that oppose science which has to examine and test everything – science checks if something could be true and then looks for evidence that it is true which is a separate thing - before it will accept it. They evilly oppose caution.

If A precedes B then A does not necessarily cause B.

The parts do not necessarily have to have the same quality as the whole. A good football team can have some bad players and good players and bad players may make a good team.

Every statement made by a habitual liar need not be untrue. You will have to neither believe it or disbelieve. Many think a statement can be disproved by proving that the people making it were bad. That is nonsense for they are the ones that are bad not necessarily the statement.

Do not assume that something you are told is untrue just because those speaking to you fail to prove that it is true.

If you have had bad experiences with policemen then do not say that all policemen are bad for your experience of them is limited and they can’t all be bad. Tarring everybody with the same brush is a major cause of racism which plays upon fear of new people who look different.

Remember too that if all the members of a team are good that does not mean that the team is good. The same if you substitute bad for good. And the team being good does not mean that all the members are good either. The members might be terrible but might work well together.

Do not judge any statement until you are sure there is no ambiguity in it. Taking the wrong interpretation and the thing in the wrong sense will throw you off. For example, Jesus, Son of God is God. I am a son of God therefore I am God. Here we mean son of God in different ways and not noticing that gives us the wrong conclusion.

To think that “if x then z, z therefore x “is wrong as is to think that “if x then z, not x therefore not z”.

The most deadly fallacy of all is letting pity and your feelings tell you what to think. Reason should be the boss. I am not saying you should have no feelings. You will always have feelings but you should think clearly and try to be right as best you can and let your feelings become the representative of reason for you. The intelligent person when hearing something silly will feel that there is something wrong with it even before he has the chance to think because he is in the habit of letting his thinking program his feelings and that is how it should be with regard to emotions. To let emotions rule reason is a disorder and is abnormal and is asking for bother.

Truth is stating what is the case though some eccentric creatures maintain that it is what you wish or think or feel to be true. You can prove that they are stupid right now by wishing, thinking and feeling that you never existed.

Now that we have met some of the fallacies let us remember that one false principle can be the foundation of many more and stifle much of the truth. Learn to reason and take care with it for it is can lead you into the lion’s den when it is mistaken. Error degrades for the mind is meant to be right.