Monday, July 24, 2006

overcoming temptation

As you could see from my recent post that I titled 'temptation' I have been tempted to lay reason aside and entertain ways to accommodate irrationality--in this case in the form of astrology. I've finally bit the bullet and decided, several days ago actually, that is would just be plain dishonest for me to act like I think that there is any merit to astrology. The real temptation was to go along with peer pressure and not offend my boyfriend.

I think the limitations of reason really only come from a lack of information available to us. I strongly suspect that reason is really applicable to the whole universe--the only limitation on our part is that not all the facts are at our disposal. Since our brains are really only evolved to comprehend facts that have to do with our immediate survival really anyway (this being the reason, I think, that really advanced math is so hard to grasp), it may not help a whole lot if all the facts were at our disposal. This is a cause for humility for sure--but not a reason to entertain irrationality.

Now how to be honest about my skepticism to believers without making them think that I think they're stupid or something . . .?

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