"Tis a dying thread and I've been delayed, but Rusty, vulgarity of course isn't a sin; Joe Gargary was vulgar and so was Cicero, yet one was illiterate and the other sophisticated. Vulgarity, like veracity, changes its spots and goes in and out of fashion.
What I object to about rationalism's ascendency is it's superciliousness, its political indifference and its credulousness---precisely the points I object to about religious fundamentalists. What on Earth makes the empiricists so sure that they're getting to the reality of anything, rather than translating their perceptions into exotic equations or formulations of language which tell us nothing about phenomena and everything about ourselves. Science only measures our "perception" of phenomena.
Which is not to abuse reason, which is vital to perception; it just can't transcend it?
I do think we underestimate the thinkers of the past, who after all had just as much conviction as any of us and were benighted.
The important question for me is; if reason is our new, unchallengable God, what are it's plans for us?

But it's all a bit stale now I should think.

Squeers, reason isn't the same thing as science - although it's an essential ingredient of it. Reason is also an essential aspect of religion, which is why religion is not necessarily irrational. I suppose that's why they can coexist in the minds of contemporary individuals, and thus persist.

It's also why rational people can invest so much energy in denying the evidence before them that negates their rational conclusions. I think that AGW is the most obvious contemporary example of that process in action. Lots of intelligent and reasonable people will expend enormous amounts of intellectual energy in rationalising their deeply felt convictions, in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.

Of course, there are political dimensions to this conundrum - which is why some people can apparently get away with making outrageous assertions under the cover of what is essentially a philosophical debate, and then just run away when challenged.

Like stevenlmeyer, for example.

C J Morgan,
I couldn't agree more old chap.
The current ascendency of the anti-AGW lobby reminds me of the legendary unsinkable Titanic. The good ship Minimifidian is also in dangerous waters but---it's full steam ahead!

CJ Morgan, you're not wrong about irrationality, except it is your side in the AGW debate that is ignoring the empirical evidence and resorting to faith-based arguments which appeal to authority. The fact that CO2 appears, on all the evidence over the entire history of the earth, to be a bit player in climate change is denied.

I do agree about rationality and religion. Someone made the assumption earlier on that I was Roman Catholic. I'm not. It's just easy to tie down the Catholic church's position on things because they have a legalistic approach to doctrine which frequently means there is a document that says what the faithful are to believe. Protestantism doesn't work in the same way, so can be a lot more slippery to tie down.

As a protestant I find the Catholic church relatively speaking superstitious and irrational, compared to protestantism generally (although not to fundamentalist Protestants). Thomas Aquinas said that God wrote two great books - the Bible and the book of nature. Within the constraints of its history and structures I think the Catholic Church has done a pretty good job with the latter, and its position on evolution is evidence of that.

However, perhaps to move this thread on, I find the requirement that saints perform miracles to be medieval and irrational. It's also curiously clerical in that once you get your paperwork correct down here, and the church puts its imprimatur on it, then God somehow assents, but not before. Protestants have saints, but only in a generalised sense, and they don't perform the heavenly courtier role that Catholic saints do.

So you can imagine my views on Mary McKillop's canonisation, and the fact that an Australian PM involved himself in lobbying for it!

Dear Dan,

You asked me to give one example of evolution being basic to the life sciences. There are many examples. You can easily find them on the net.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html contains the following:

Evolutionary theory has been put to practical use in several areas (Futuyma 1995; Bull and Wichman 2001). For example:
Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions.
Diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture (Bull and Wichman 2001).
Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields (Conover and Munch 2002).
Artificial selection has been used since prehistory, but it has become much more efficient with the addition of quantitative trait locus mapping.
Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003).
Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female offspring, which retrieved it from the brink of extinction (Sutherland 2002).

Evolutionary theory is being applied to and has potential applications in may other areas, from evaluating the threats of genetically modified crops to human psychology. Additional applications are sure to come. 

Phylogenetic analysis, which uses the evolutionary principle of common descent, has proven its usefulness:
Tracing genes of known function and comparing how they are related to unknown genes helps one to predict unknown gene function, which is foundational for drug discovery (Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).

Evolution is basic to our knowledge of life.

Dear Graham

I know that science isn't your forte, having witnessed your lack of comprehension of biodiversity on many other threads. However when you make dismissive comments like:

<<<< CJ Morgan, you're not wrong about irrationality, except it is your side in the AGW debate that is ignoring the empirical evidence and resorting to faith-based arguments which appeal to authority. The fact that CO2 appears, on all the evidence over the entire history of the earth, to be a bit player in climate change is denied. >>>>

What evidence do you have for your claims about CO2's part in the effect of greenhouse gases?

Not one of the substantial science organisations from NASA through to the Oxford university have dismissed the part that CO2 plays.

Please read and reflect upon the following link to the very basics of climate science and change:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/global_warming_update3.php

I would also ask why you and many other religious people (Abbott, Fielding, Joyce for example) place greater credence upon the likes of Lord Monckton than you do over established scientists who have spent their lives studying earth's atmosphere both past and present?