Reasoning with Faith, Religion, and Atheism…Introduction to Reasoning (Part 1)

Introduction to Reasoning

TABLE of CONTENTS for Reasoning with Faith, Religion, and Atheism Part 1.- Introduction to Reasoning and Fallacious Reasoning Part 2.- Circular Reasoning Part 3.- Analogical Reasoning Part 4.- Reductive Reasoning Part 5.- Abductive Reasoning Part 6.- Inductive Reasoning Part 7.- Deductive Reasoning Part 8.- Difference Between Inductive and Deductive Reasoning? Part 9.- The Final Thought of Reason

Introduction to Reasoning:

So I started this post topic on what does it mean to say something is perfect.  Which then lead me into logic and logical fallacies.  Which then lead me into thoughts of reasoning.  Which then led me into this series of Reasoning with Faith, Religion, and Atheism.

—I really wanted to stay away from topics of morality and philosophy, but the more reading and research I do -the harder it is to be so narrow in my blog.

So of course when the post topic is Reasoning with Faith, Religion, and Atheism, the next question is obvioulsy what is Reasoning?  What is Reasonable Thought?

Reason is the capacity for a man/woman to make sense of things to establish & verify facts, and to change or justify data, information, facts, or beliefs.  Reason is the use of your brain power to digest information by which we use intuition & thinking. To put it plain and simple; it is the ability to THINK.

rea·son·ing

[ree-zuh-ning, reez-ning]

1.  the act or process of a person who reasons.

2.  the process of forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.

3.  the reasons,  arguments, proofs, etc., resulting from this process.

So I decided to call it Reasoning with Faith, Religion, and Atheism cause as I go into each of the thoughts of reasoning I will see how each affect the aspect Faith, Religion and Atheism.  (*I still never got into the post topic of reasoning with the idea of calling something perfect, so we will save that for another day.)

Now one of the main reasons I decided to do such an extensive series post on the Fundamentals of Reasoning; is that I have come to the conclusion that people can’t think.  Or just don’t know how to think.  My sister put it like this –“…thinking is like a super-power.”  Cause people simply don’t do it. And people just don’t know how to.  Some people are just fallacious in their thinking and rationality.

 

 

 

“There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons that sound good.”-(Burton Hillis) One of the key components in preventing fallacious reasoning is getting all the information necessary to make a reasonable conclusion from a premise, this is called using intuition.  Recognizing fallacies in everyday arguments may be difficult since arguments are often embedded in rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical connections between statements. 

 

 

*Just because everyone has a brain, doesn’t mean everyone can think.

 

FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS

A fallacious argument is one that meets two conditions:

1) It lacks at least one of the two logical virtues. Thus fallacious arguments are often divided into two kinds: those that are mistaken because they don’t meet the truth-of-reasons requirement (or, virtue), and those that are mistaken because they don’t meet the properly-related-to-conclusion requirement (or, virtue).

2) It is of a fairly commonplace type. Some persuasive but bad arguments involve mistakes in reasoning that are somewhat unusual. Such arguments are not often categorized as fallacious. Fallacies involve mistakes in reasoning that are more or less everyday occurrences, because they have a definite tendency to fool people.

“Fallacious arguments usually have the deceptive appearance of being good arguments.” -(T. Edward Damer from his book Attacking Faulty Reasoning)