Posted by rpcman on June 03, 1998 at 13:10:14:
In Reply to: who's 'reasonable'? posted by Tammy on June 03, 1998 at 12:25:42:
What evidence do you have to know that blue does not use reason?
Blue previously admitted to Chris on the old BB that his conclusions aren't always reasonable. Chris responded that if he had known that to begin with he would have never got into a discussion with him. I've only read a couple of blue's posts since then too.
Anyone who admits to adhearing to a fixed doctrine, philosophy, religion, etc. (Calvinism in the case of blue if I remember correctly) w/o being willing to change that position based on evidence or new information falls into the category of 'unreasonable'. They will ignore facts or distort the evidence to fit their preconceived beliefs regardless.
I didn't read blue's post on freethinkers so I don't know what he said about us, but the *major* difference between freethinkers and everyone else is freethinkers are more than willing to change a previous opinion based on additional facts or new light being shed on old evidence. We go with the facts. We ideally don't try to force the facts into our presuppositions. Sometimes this is difficult when there are 100 strikes against a given item and 1 item comes out in favor of it that may override the 100 strikes. This is when "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". This is reason. Faith overriding the cumulative facts is not. It gets back to Occam's Razor again.