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The Little Girl on the Corner

The Universality of Reason as Evidence for a Rational God

  • 17 July 2015
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 7888
  • 1 Comments
Axiom 1:
Little girls exist, therefore reason exists.  

Axiom 2
Reason exists, and therefore a source of reason exists. 

My neighbors in the corner house, two doors down from ours, are nice people of Lebanese descent.  They’re a young couple in their early thirties with three young children, the eldest of which is a girl named Zainab who’s about 6 years old.  One day I was walking past their house when Zainab and her mother Lena were in the front yard.  Lena was sweeping the porch and Zainab was at the helm of a full-sized baby stroller meandering slowly back and forth and blocking the sidewalk.  When Zainab saw me coming, instead of moving to one side she attempted to get out of my way by accelerating her pace with the stroller ahead of me, which was one of the obvious choices.  But it was not the best one because she did not factor in my speed relative to hers (which was apparent), and in 10 seconds I had overtaken her.  It was pretty cute the way she did that.  So far it had not occurred to me to wonder what if anything was in the stroller, and the hood prevented me from seeing inside it.  But when I caught up and was passing the stroller I glanced over and was surprised to see a baby in it!  Now, if that seems kind of strange to you I admit it.  It was strange for me not to assume there was a baby in the stroller.  That’s actually the point.  When I saw the baby I thought to myself, “Hey, there’s a baby in there”.  Then I said to Zainab what anybody would have said: “Do you know there’s a baby in there?”  What?!  You think that was a stupid question?  Hey watch it!  But I’m curious, why do you think so?  (I am stupid sometimes, but not that stupid.  Actually, I said it to be funny and just to seem stupid.)  Do you think she said yes or no?  It was what she said next that got me thinking for the next 20 minutes at least.

“Yes, I know that.  …Why would I be pushing around this stroller if there was no baby in it?”  
By then I had passed the stroller and I looked back to say, “That’s good logic” with a grin.  Isn’t that humorous?   Well, it was to me.  I guess that’s why I chose to write about it.  It’s also a great example of one of my main ideas in this chapter and in this book.  What’s your best guess so far?  That…

Girls reason differently than boys do?  No.  Contrary to urban legend, they do not.
Young kids reason differently than, say, teens and adults do?  Uh uh.  Not the case.
Members of ethnic minorities use a different logic than the majority uses?  Nope.
It’s this: Muslims use a different set of rational principles than non-Muslims.

Kidding!

None of the above is true.  The fact is that everyone—no matter what demographic they belong to—uses and must use the very same rules of reason, and every one is constrained by the same laws of logic and principles of reason.  Premises always lead to conclusions.  Normally, good reasoning is valued by everyone, everywhere, and we all expect it from one another, as I will endeavor to show.  If it is faulty it’s always due to violations of a standard set of universal laws or principles. The principle of validity is one example.  That is, whether it’s valid or invalid, it is so for everyone, everywhere.

On a side note, this is not to say that children have no special qualities.  They do.  Many of us recognize this even though their rational skills are not fully developed.  That’s why in the better societies special laws are made to protect them and promote their well-being.  Once Jesus told his disciples, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”  (Bible, Gospel of Matthew 19:14)  When Jesus said, “for…” he meant because, or for the following reason; and then he gave it.  He did not explain exactly what he meant by that but it had to be a weighty reason indeed.  Perhaps it’s because their reasoning tends to be less rationalistic and purer.  As important as reason and logic are we generally don’t appreciate people like Spock from Star Trek who do not mix in emotion and virtues like kindness, patience and love.  We are not meant to be computer-like.

Coming from this little girl it was adorable and even a little snarky.  It was if she was saying, “Duh…use some common sense, Mr. Man.”  I guess I had pretty much implied that she was stupid by asking her that, and she threw it right back at me with sound reason.  Of course, once I knew there was a baby in the stroller I also knew that she must have known it.  How did I know?  In actual fact, I didn’t “know” it empirically, but it was highly probable by virtue of a good assumption on my part that anyone would make: It is highly unlikely for a person to be pushing a stroller and not know whether it contains a baby.  We may also call it a presupposition, because the presence of a baby in a stroller usually presupposes one’s knowledge of it.  But all this assuming or presupposing is unconscious.  

Zainab also called upon another assumption in her logic, that I should have the same assumptions she had.  But the most salient one, I think, would be this one: Normal people do not usually push around strollers that contain no baby. Do you think that’s a good assumption?  I do.  And I think we can agree that it’s generally true.  Now, it’s not an absolutely true assumption, as many are not.  That’s why people say, “It’s never safe to assume”.  But sometimes, or often, it is.  That’s why people also say, “It’s safe to assume this or that…”  The truth is the ability to assume is one of the components of human reason that seems to come with our “software bundle”; we must make assumptions because we do not know every fact in every situation.  Indeed, we do not even need to know every fact, because some can be “safely assumed”.  In many cases we have to make decisions based on partial information—some things we do know and some we don’t know.  The important consideration about assumptions is that they can either be true or untrue, reasonable or unreasonable, so the trick is making true assumptions, which usually means only that they are reasonable at best, until later when the evidence is all in.  As with many other human abilities the power to make reasonable assumptions is a skill that can and must be developed.  Zainab’s mother Lena made at least two assumptions about the baby in the stroller, e.g. that no cars would drive up onto the sidewalk and that nobody would grab the stroller and run.  For that matter, Zainab clearly assumed those things as well.  Either of those assumptions could have been wrong but they were, in fact, right and reasonable based on the available information.

The main point of all this is reason.  Again, humans have this “software bundle” we call reason which contains a collection of thinking skills like the ones we have highlighted so far.  And there are many more that we are going to examine throughout our discussion.  So in this book we’re going to reason about reason and ask some very fundamental questions: Why do humans have this “software bundle in the first place?  Why does it work? Where did it come from?  Is it possible to know the answer to these questions scientifically?  If not scientific, what is the most reasonable explanation?  I assert it is this: Reason is a self-evident proof for a rational God.

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Scott CherryScott Cherry

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1 comments on article "The Little Girl on the Corner"

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Steve Schlichter

7/19/2015 5:59 PM

Great article, Scott. Looking forward to part 2

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