[Pangloss62]

One man's rational advice is another person's belief and vice versa.

I disagree. There are major, intrinsic differences between rationality and belief.

Life is never going to break down into the nice tidy pigeonholes that you seem to want it to.

Why do you keep thinking that I'm trying to make "nice tidy pigeonholes?"

When you imply that all of life should be handled "rationally", then you are trying to make life simpler than it really is.

Quite the opposite. It's beliefs and belief systems that try to make life simpler than it really is. "The earth is flat." "The sun revolves around the earth." "God is all-powerful and omnicient." "The Bible is infallible." That's the main purpose of beliefs; to try and explain things you can't explain.

Doing the rational thing is not always the right thing.

I already told you I don't use "right" or "wrong" as absolutes. By using the term as above, you presuppose there is such a thing as "the right thing."

If you use only rationality as a measure, then people would follow the current legal standards and whatever their peers would applaud.

They would? Wasn't (and isn't) the struggle for Civil Rights about NOT following current legal standards and going against your peers? People had to break laws to change them to a more rational view. It was irrational to segregate humans based upon race. Segregation's irrationality is what allowed it to be attacked in the first place. You have it all backwards.


You couldn't be more wrong about rationality being some kind of cop out. Being a rationalist is a very hard and difficult way to be, but it's the most honest. We are few when compared to all the believers in the world. All their beliefs give them comfort in what is, essentially, a meaningless void filled with chunks of matter. They invoke a "God" that they are told "loves" them. They conjure the idea of "heaven" where they will reside after they die. They speak of their "souls" and what's in their "heart," as if that was not the pump that circulates their blood but some metaphysical entity that defines who they are.

No. If I wanted life to be easier, I would certainly have "beliefs." I wouldn't have to tell girlfriends a month or so into the relationship that "No. I don't believe in love," and watch them cringe in disappointment at my honesty. It's hard to find women who are rationalists. All the ones I've known had kids and became soccer moms. When these kinds of women have kids they usually get all soft intellectually. Some hormones must change them from witty, smart, critical thinkers into malleable and maudlin mush.

Rationalists like me are slandered, shunned, and called names. They are told by others that "You want to have it easy." They have to live in a world made up mostly of people that believe in superstitions, are suspicious of you if you actually state that you don't believe in God, and get mad if you point out their irrationality. What's worse, I've run into people at parties who say, after I tell them my view of reality, that they "feel sorry for me." How condescending. I would not mind empathy, but please, don't feel "sorry" for me. I feel sorry for them, but I have the manners to hold my tongue (that's what I like about the Cellar; I can say what I want).

One of the most difficult things about living the rational life relates to making choices and decisions. I think the worst advice anybody could give is telling you to "do what you feel in your heart." How meaningless. When people start making decisions this way, it's usually the wrong one. Women choose to stay with abusive men; men stay with boring, emotionally suffocating women; etc.

Besides, primates are not monogamous, so this whole notion of the permanent, fidelitous relationship goes against all our instincts (at least in our reproductive years). We have these big brains that can help us understand our instinctual controls and determine and guide rational behavior in light of them, but we let our emotions rule. Then when the divorce or breakup comes, we have to find blame in ourselves or others, rather than realize it's completely natural to have many relationships over time. We should make the ones we have as good as we can for as long as they last, not promise to "love" each other till "death do we part." We are caught in the evolutionary trap of being instinctually tribal but culturally reclusive (nuclear family).