Why Reason

So my husband and I are writing a book, a small accessible reference to logic and reasoning.  He want's to include a section on why reason and logic are important.  To be honest, I've never really thought about it, once I started on the path of reason I never looked back.  I think it mostly had to do with the fact that I'm a bibliophile, and I just adore dusty old books. Link that with a childhood fascination with greek culture and your bound to stumble upon aristotle, and things just kind of sprang up from there.   

But how to convince some one that reasonable thought is beneficial if they are already convinced that it is cold, Eurocentric, and simply part of our world view.  Therefore it is only as valid as other world views that embrace intuition and emotion(HUMBUG!).  Mind you there is nothing wrong with intuition and emotion but if you are using intuition and emotion to buy a car, vote on public policy, develop/pick a treatment, or develop/prove a theory then the outcome is bound to be woefully egregious.  Not only that, but it's downright harmful. Some examples:  Zambia's refusal of GM food crops, in fact the whole out cry against GM foods,  the anti-vaccination movement, ban's on stem cell research, abstinence only education, etc (while there are many more examples I'm using those because they are well known and one can easily find information about them on the internet).  The point is that those are instances where sloppy thinking leads to real human suffering.  Mommy instincts may say that vaccines cause autism and that GM foods are bad, but mommy instincts are wrong most of the time. Some times they are dead wrong.  

So We here at the Art of Reason are going to go through some topics like the ones mentioned above and work out the reasoning contained with in whether it be good or bad.  We are going to start out with Pascal's Wager and where it plays into environmentalism, We feel its a nice controversial topic that will piss off every one who stumbles upon this  little blog.  I'll be working on it all week, and will try to get it posted by saturday.  

The Flying Pig

Here's my little store I am putting together