Lots of words.....sorry
Wrong from the get-go. My theory that my gym-socks rule the White House is internaly consistent, just not consistent with reality. It therefore fails as a theory.
If you actually had a theory that your gym socks rule the White House (which you don't), I suspect it wouldn't be internally consistent. However, there is nothing to say it couldn't be internally consistent.
I grant you that an individual who held a belief that was at variance with observed reality would have an irrational belief, unless their belief system had a consistent explanation for the variance.
I'm not saying anything about whether your gym socks work as theory. I just think we shouldn't redefine words needlessly. Rational and irrational have specific meanings, let's stick with them.
You must be using a different definition of "reasonable" than the rest of the world does.
Well, I don't want to drag dictionaries into this, but basically, "reason" in this context is offering justification from a rational basis. In other words, supporting what you say from an internally consistent set of axioms.
In other words, you can be reasonable and wrong if your axioms are mistaken. That's why I give the example of Aristotle. Many consider him one of the fathers of reason...but his conclusions were waaaaay off and set back science by a 1000 years because his axioms were little more than idle conjecture.
I can only assume they are ignorant in general, and of science in particular.
That seems a strange assumption to make, that they are generally ignorant and particularly ignorant of science. It is fairly trivial to find examples of people who are highly educated and accomplished scientists who have some religious beliefs. Do you really assume them not to exist?
Or does your definition of ignorant mean something besides a lack of knowledge and/or education? I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but I find it hard to believe you actually think these PhDs lack education and these scientists lack scientific knowledge. (I'll leave it to your Google Fu to find examples)
Did you mean to make a narrower statement, perhaps?
If science can't provide the answer, that is because there is no answer.
The seems illogical on its face. For instance, there either is life after death or there is not. Just because there is no scientific way to find the answer doesn't mean there is no answer.
Philosophy works at base on the idea of logic and non-contrariness to current knowledge. I have yet to see any religion do likewise.
Rational = non-contrariness
Reason = uses the principles of logic (see above for discussion)
Philosophy attempts to know the unknowable just as religion does. I find it curious you give it a free pass here. There is no scientific method in philosophy...I had expected you to be rather down on it.
As I pointed out in my original post, it is easy to point to a specific religion and demonstrate elements that are irrational and unreasonable. But it doesn't follow that people who are members of a religion accept everything a religion tells them. People tend to build a personal belief system that is both rational and reasonable.
The reason I have my beliefs is that they provide a reasonable and rational explanation of the world I see around me.
When you get right down to it, isn't that the only reason anyone believes anything?
Uh...no. Evidence? Repeatable evidence? Peer review?
Come on, you believe things that you didn't read about in Journals, don't you? Culture and other sociological influences did nothing to shape your beliefs?
Once again, I'm brought back to the question of philosophy: what repeatable experiment gave rise to your understanding of ethics, meta-physics and epistemology? You clearly have beliefs in these areas, I'd like to read the peer reviewed articles where you got them.
I mean, isn't this whole thread about epistemology?
