International Day of Reason

Today we celebrate the International Day of Reason. I really don't expect this to be a very popular celebration.

Reason requires logic, not necessarily formal mathematical logic, but at least logic in the classical sense of putting your thoughts in order.

Formal mathematical logic has never been rigorously proven valid. Several of the most famous attempts at proving the validity of logic involved the mathematical technique of recursive invocation. Bertrand Russell showed that the use of recursive invocation requires the definition of such a thing as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves which raises the question of whether this set is a member of itself or not. If it is, that proves it isn't. If it isn't, that proves it is. Thus recursive invocation in logic is actually a convoluted form of circularity.

Several more attempts at proving the validity of formal logic were based on attempts to determine the attributes of a premise set that is both complete and consistent, in the mathematical sense. Kurt Godel then proved that the validity of logic itself would render such a premise set impossible.

So we don't really know whether logic is actually valid, that is, necessarily workable in all possible realms of reality, or only a created feature of our universe.

We can all think of a realm in which logic doesn't work: Your dreams, in which you might be able to make a whole pot of coffee with only one teaspoon of water, you might be able to build a multi-lane bridge across the Chesapeake Bay using nothing but recycled Post-it notes, you might be able to feed five thousand hungry people with five biscuits and a couple of sardines, or whatever.

But is dreamland a realm of reality? Well, define it any way you please. If you regard your dreams as real, then obviously logic is not valid by that definition.

But even without the use of formal mathematical logic at least you can put your thoughts in an understandable order. Some folks can't even do that. Almost every presentation I've ever been to, during the Q & A session there's always at least one question-asker who can't see fit to ask the question as briefly as possible and then listen for the answer, but has a personal need to ramble incoherently, yakking over the presenter and leaving no chance for an answer.

In my personal life I stand astraddle of the Episcopal Church and Secular Humanist communities. The Episcopal Church is currently attempting to promote a set of presentations called Living The Questions, which attempts to reconcile Christian doctrine with rational thought, which is impossible. I've been sitting through these sessions and thinking, you know, we'd achieve rational thought much more quickly if we'd follow the Secular Humanist lead and totally abandon the primitive stone-age superstition that the entire universe is being secretly masterminded by an invisible sky-fairy named God who suffers from a chronic three-way identity crisis caled a Holy Trinity.

It looks to me as though the entire notion of a Day of Reason is likely to be forgotten in the wake of a string of conflicting court decisions as to the constitutionality of a National Day of Prayer. It's unlikely that reason will play a part in any of these court decisions.