What is reason?

To take a look at the question what is reason? I'll comment on a book review (by Michael Ruse) of 'Breaking the Spell' by Daniel Dennett

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Ruse expressed both philosophical and historical problems with the book. Dennett treats religion as a “delusion” that is all “smoke and mirrors” and therefore “a rationally justified belief system” it is not.'

- Rationally justified? If man has no mind where does this mythical entity called reason come from? And what is it? Materialists use the word reason endlessly, but never define it. (Or do so rarely you'd never know it.) If man is a mindless, meat machine the idea of reason is a joke.

- The fact Dennett thinks reason exists (and that he's able to think rationally) should be all the evidence he needs that he's not the matter-accident he claims human beings are. If he were he would not be able reason at all. Materialism cannot give a believable account of rationality. (This is one of the nasty little secrets materialists work so hard to keep quiet.)

- it's comical to have people who claim man has no mind (does Dennett think he's a rare exception :=) then go on to tell us x is a delusion, and y is not. How would they know? Did their chemicals tell them this?

2. Maybe we can make some progress by looking at a definition of reason.

Reason; American Heritage dictionary
d. The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence.

- if reason is just logic we should say so. i.e. Instead of saying we need to abandon 'religion' and base all our decisions on reason, we should say, 'we should decide all things on the basis of logic.' Okay. But what kind of logic? and why should we do this?'

4. Logic of course needs premises to work on; this is the fly in the soup for materialists. When they say we need to rely on logic, they're ignoring the fact logic needs premises... and logic can't tell us what premises to use. Before we can engage in logic we need basic premises (presuppositions, assumptions) to work with. So all people like Dennett are really saying is 'we need to rely on presuppositions.' Is this helpful? Isn't it instead just a joke. Men can reason, but there is no such thing as reason. To speak of reason as a noun is to commit the fallacy of personification. Reason can't decide anything for us.
- Logic can't operate in a void, and so there is no escape from the need to adopt basic presuppositions. And these by their very nature can't be proved. Christianity is the adoption of a certain collection of evidences for a Creator and a Savior, and atheism (or materialism) is a leap of faith based on a rejection of that evidence.

5. So what is reason? the answer is that no one in the secular community seems to know. Because this is more than a little embarrassing, it's something kept from people. (i.e. all the world apparently depends on a mysterious x that no one can even define, let alone defend.) From the Christian view reason is a God given ability to think logically and coherently. We can reason only because we were created in the image of God.

6. Reason is defined many times as being rational, which is defined as using reason. And so we can say; to look for truth in the dictionary is to trudge endlessly inside a wheel of words.

Notes;
1. Reason is an old fashioned word; it makes no sense in terms of evolutionary materialism. As usual we see the sad practice of materialists using theistic language. (They have no language of their own.)
2. Reason - 'The intellectual ability to apprehend the truth cognitively, either immediately in intuition, or by means of a process of inference. - FOLDOP
3. I'm actually commenting on the following;
Ruse Gives Dennett Poor Grade on “Evolution of Religion” Book 02/02/2006
'It was interesting to see what Michael Ruse would say, therefore, in a review of Daniel Dennett’s new book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking/Allen Lane, 2006), which appeared in Nature this week. (Creation/Evolution Headlines)
4. 'Dennett’s assumption is that religion has evolved by natural selection just like everything else and therefore has no validity when it talks about God, truth, or the natural world.'
- well if that's the case it's also true of evolutionary theory. If 'religion' (and we don't defend religion around here) is invalid because it 'evolved' then the same is true of materialism and its ugly sister evolutionism.