James da Dude

I once heard somebody say that the only "rational" approaches to religion are atheism and deism.

Do you agree or disagree?

John Page

Rational?

How about pragmatism? That way you can escape the Inquisition. But is Pragmatism rational?

Cheers, John

Ensign Steve

The most rational approach to anything is reason and logic (a.k.a. rational thinking).

I think a lot of people come to atheism or deism as a result of rational thinking, if they have true premises and a valid argument.

I don't think atheism is a good aproach to anything. Possibly skepticism is a good approach, but if atheism was your approach, you would be assuming your conclusion, and that is not rational. That seems to be the problem with a lot of religious apologetics, because they assume their conclusions, and then do a lot of maybe-ing and what-if-ing until they get the conclusion they were looking for. But if you approach it without assuming any conclusion, a lot of time the evidence automatically leads to atheism.

John Page

It is not a rational approach to have both reason and logic as the most rational approach. Anyway, why should any mind be the judge of others? Doesn't it just come down to opinion?

Cheers, John

Ensign Steve

I don't understand what you mean. Why not?

Yeah, and truth is relative.

John Page

Reason and logic can provide you very different results. What process of reasoning are you proposing, what system of logic?

Cheers, John

auto-da-fe

Actually, I would think that agnostic is the most logical, since you can neither prove, nor disprove the existence of any "God".

John Page

What if I can prove that the claim for existence of the god in question has the same epistemic status as a claim for the existence of santa?

Ensign Steve

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood you. I'm not trying to argue systems of logic, but just for grins and giggles I'll say any system of logic that has shown itself to consistently lead to true conclusions.

My point (my only point) is that, no, atheism isn't a good approach to religion, as it assumes a conclusion about religion. That was the question in the OP. Anything else you've gotten out of my post is a matter of semtantics, as I am an ameteur when it comes to logic, and my logic vocabulary may not be up to stuff.

John Page

But I think the only rational approach to religion is atheism. Anyway, atheism assumes a conclusion about god, not religion. IMO religion is the key evidence for god being nothing more than an imaginary ideal.

Agnosticism says "Well, I don't really know" so is not helpful. Any other approach is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Cheers, John