Atheists only?!?

Question

Do you believe that logic and reason are the only two means of knowing anything for certain?

Answer 1

I believe... that... if you check out the links provided, you'll come out with a better understanding of atheism and atheists.

Have fun.

Answer 2

You use the word "know", know has such a variety of definitions that the answer is clearly no. Logic and reason provide a basis of understanding but anything we feel confident about can be construed as knowledge (whether right or wrong). However, if one were to limit that definition to "to have understanding of" then the answer is clearly yes.

Logic, after all, is the study of the principles of reasoning and reason is an underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence. To have understanding of something, there must have been a conjecture proven or a verifiable observance. Without this, any thought is little more than a hypothesis and hence, not knowledge. Therefore, no matter if your logic or reasoning is flawed, logic and reason become the only mechanism of knowing something for certain.

Answer 3

I am not an Atheist (but I just HAD to open this up anyways because I'm nosy)... I believe there is a God, but I am smart and open-minded enough to realize that nobody actually KNOWS if there is a God or not. Some hardcore believers will tell you that they KNOW for a FACT that there is a God. Too bad nobody has proved this. Belief and knowing are two different things. A lot of people need to get that straight. Anyways to answer your question, No I don't think those are the only two ways. People have given many logical reasons for why there is a God, but it doesn't prove anything. Science and cold hard PROOF is the only way. (Just my opinion)
Oh, and I asked question a while back...It was something along the lines of "If you KNOW there is a God then prove it" And I got such stupid answers that I had to delete it. Some girl answered, "How can you look at a little baby and think theres no God?" I told her to go back to Sex ed.
I hope I answered your question! :)

Answer 4

No. I believe that all humans have a certain "intuition" (completely unrelated to anything religious), that, when combined with even fragments logic and reason (or standing by itself for that matter), can help direct a person to the correct answer or decision.

To think that humans know *everything* about their own minds and bodies at this point in time is no better than Christians that believe some all-knowing power is a million miles above the clouds pulling the puppet strings. I honestly believe that intuition exists.

Answer 5

Well, yes, mostly. There are other ways to know things, i.e. the scientific method, but any method of learning things has to be logically coherent and must be reasonable in order to be valid.

For example, if logic is the only way to know anything, I can know modus ponens - if a, then b; a; therefore b. But I can't really know anything else. Science lets us use logic to learn things about the real world. For example, we can adapt modus ponens to biology: if a thing is a mammal, then it is an animal. A human being is a mammal. Therefore a human being is an animal.

Answer 6

We don't know anything for certain-- it's more like a mathematical limit. We can be approaching certainty, but the nature of scientific understanding means that we can never absolutely prove a hypothesis, only disprove it. Logic and reasoning are the only ways to approach certainty for a completely rational person. There are plenty of people who are absolutely certain about a huge number of things, but this very fact makes them irrational.

Answer 7

"Knowing for certain" is tricky.

All knowledge is tentative to some degree. In most cases, though, that degree is so extremely tiny that it's not reasonable to bother considering the possiblity of being wrong.

For instance, I can't *prove* that the laws of physics aren't going to disappear tomorrow, but I would be unreasonable if I went around worrying about that.

Similarly, I can't *prove* that God does not exist, but I would be unreasonable to believe that a bunch of bronze age nomads happened to be right when they institutionalized their tribal god.

But yeah, logic and reason and observation and experimentation, coupled with a healthy but not overzealous skepticism, are a pretty good way to be certain about things. They have stood scrutiny fairly well.

Answer 8

As opposed to blindly following what an invisible parent figure has to say? Then, yes, logic and reason seems to be the best course of action, at least there will be relevant explanations as to why people get sick, why there is birth defects and the like. Believing that it is the will of a god that children are born with downs syndrome and other birth defects sounds like a healthy idea to me.

Answer 9

No logic and reason can still bring you to different conclusions. Even bare facts can be presented in a biased way. There is only one certainty in life and that is that we will all die one day. What happens after is a matter of personal belief. I think experience gives us our own reasons for what we believe is logical.

Answer 10

Depends who you talk to. Blind faith seems to be quite popular around the traps. No religion is the correct one, and all religions have got it wrong.

There are many major religions in the world, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, and so on. Within each major religion there can also be many minor religions. For example, within Christianity there is Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and so on. Within Islam there is Shiite, Sunni etc.

In summary there are many hundreds of different religions in the world all with their devoted believers and followers. Talk to any devout religious person and they will almost emphatically insist that their religion is the right one, it’s fact, and any non-believer is doomed.

Commonsense and logic would suggest that if there was any truthful or factual basis to religion, then only one of these religions could be correct, not all of them. However, in my view, it’s highly unlikely that any of these man-made religions bear any resemblance to fact or the truth, and are more likely to be the result of simplistic human intelligence looking for an escape from reality.

There is not one single matter discussed in the Bible out of the many thousands of issues raised that has been proven true, yet many matters have been proven false.

You don’t really need to be a rocket scientist to deduce with practically 100% certainty that God and the Bible are fake.

Answer 11

Logic and reasoning backed by studying the problem or question thoroughly, Yes! Blind faith No! Sure the earth is only 6,000 years old and I am suppose to believe this because it was written in the bible by people who thought the world was flat, I don't think so!