From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Mon Jan 24 2000 - 14:07:37 MST
> > >[1] What is a "rational belief"? An example?
> >
> > A "rational belief" is an oxymoron.
>
> Certainly, but it occurs to me, J.R., that there is something very
> peculiar about the human behavior of "believing in something", at
> least among so-called "civilized occidentals". Excuse the personal
> reference, but as nearly as I can tell I've never been able to
> "believe" in anything, one way or the other. In fact, I doubt that
> I even understand (can identify with, empathize with) the human
> subjective state referenced by the sentence "I believe".
I suspect that you believe the sun will rise tomorrow, that you
will not spontaneously catch fire in your bed, that your car will
carry you safely across the bridge to work, that the walls of your
office will do an adequate job of holding up the roof, that the
food you eat will sustain your activities for the day, and that
your house will be there when you get home.
None of these things are provable of course, but who cares? To
live an effective, purposeful life, one must be willing to commit
to a course of action based upon reasonable beliefs of what is true.
The only alternative is an impotent pathological skepticism only
espoused by the kind of people who insist on calling themsleves
"non-theists" :)
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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