The Burden Of Rationalism

"You cannot know anything apart from reason and logic."
--Cooper Cooke


Some people dispute this statement.  Arguing against this sentence relies on reason and logic, the very things the counter argument claims are not necessary to know something, but that is an irony and inconsistency to further exploit another time.  You see, I love rationalism, yet I mourn the burden it brings.  All truth claims have a grand burden attached.  The atheist or nihilist must realize that if they are correct there is no purpose, value, meaning, morality, justice, redemption, or afterlife.  Christians will lament how if they are right the lost masses of humanity will not repent of their depravities and turn to God despite the fortunate simplicity of reconciliation to him.  The extreme skeptic must confront their own alleged inability to know much of anything and the immense discomfort that brings.  And a rationalist, like myself, will have to confront several harsh ramifications of the rationalistic worldview.

True knowledge about many ( but NOT ALL) things is unattainable or highly elusive, even when one has great expertise on and familiarity with the subject.  This fact once almost led me to great despair, and even now I have not yet fully escaped the sobering frustration, sorrow, and anger at not being able to know certain basic truths about reality.  As an example, I know for sure that there is a deity of some kind (I will later prove on a separate post why at least a form of deistic theism is logically inescapable and necessary for anything in the material world to exist) but I can't even know for sure if the world my senses perceive is the true objective external world.  I know for sure that I exist, but I cannot even know for sure if the adults who raised me are truly my biological parents.  I know for sure that I am an honest and transparent person, but I can never know for sure if others are honest with me when they claim to love me or care for me.

But the burden of rationalism is not limited to an inability to know some truths; it also involves the sadness of observing other people.  Immense quantities of time are required to prove a concept or proposition to someone who doesn't understand objective logical reasoning, and to my great distress most people are simply not informed, educated, intelligent, dedicated, or consistent enough to currently understand or relate to deep philosophy and theology or the quest for absolute knowledge or epistemology.  This does NOT mean, however, that people have to remain in such a regrettable intellectual place.  Many underestimate their own capacity for learning, memorization, and comprehension, which can become a vicious, relentless self-fulfilling prophecy--but no one has to stay anchored there.  I know this for sure because only several years ago I never thought I could memorize entire consecutive chapters of the Bible or understand abstract philosophy or learn if I can know specific things for sure or not.  I never thought I would challenge every belief I adhered to or that I would become a strict epistemological rationalist, nor did I anticipate many of the worldview changes I made as a result.  However, very few people grow past the common ignorance that engulfs most . . . and this both infuriates and saddens me.

The time one must sacrifice at the altar of self-education and contemplation also can become a rather weighty offering to give up.  I truly do wish we could just know facts about God and ethics and reality without such intense effort, but we can't without great investments and sacrifices of time, devotion, and energy.  We can assume, we can hope, and we can prefer, but we cannot know apart from rationalistic assessment of facts, proofs, and evidences.  Even the Bible doesn't ultimately simplify knowledge of many things up front, for to understand Scripture too requires study and reflection just as cautious as the most precise philosophy.  God may have disclosed a valuable book revealing much precious information about himself, his objective moral nature, the afterlife, and other issues, but much time must be spent to even discover which alleged holy text is correct out of all the ones credited with that status and then more time must be channeled into identifying the right meaning of the text.

Assumptions will sometimes by necessity turn out to be correct.  For instance, some people have assumed without complex thought that the information received by their senses is generally reliable and therefore presumed that the external world they perceive is the real one.  They will likely turn out to be correct.  Many people have assumed due to personal reasons that a God does or doesn't exist, and some of them will be right and the others wrong.  People have deep and strong moral intuitions and moral emotions and often assume that their moral feelings reflect some objective reality, but without deep philosophical and theological study and thought they will never know if such a thing as morality even exists at all.  So people assume and have compelling intuitions about many things, but neither an assumption nor an intuition qualifies as true knowledge and following or living by either one contains great inherent danger [1].

Again, I wish things were different.  I wish everyone could have access to the same degree of knowledge on some issues as someone who has dedicated their entire life to pursuing reason and truth.  I deeply wish absolute knowledge came more easily and that living consistently with the knowledge one has obtained was easier.

But it is not so.  And this contributes to the dramatic burden of rationalism.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html