From Nothing...

After several abortive attempts at trying to lay the foundations for a rationalist blog that could approach a myriad of social, religious and ideological issues, I've discovered a problem common to nearly all who attempt these types of idea-based pursuits: the impossible question of where to begin.

Any beginning will be based on the principles of the one making the start, by definition. The system by which that beginning is made is subject to judgment on its own merit, but no system worth taking seriously is baseless.

Therefore, the most fundamental question that must be asked (and answered) is the question of what principles we will use, and what kind of beginning they leave us to induce.

This question is one of the primary reasons I find empiricism somewhat unsatisfactory. If we are to take a hard-line empirical view of the beginning, what we discover is humanity, and its own sensory capabilities. There can be nothing where there is no one to know it. The great strength of empiricism is that in the present tense, it is existentially viable. The vast majority of us know what we see and hear and experience, and that collected experience transmitted and archived, provides a database of information by which we can evaluate what we see. Those same strengths are, however, something of an obstacle anytime we attempt to describe solely through empirical means things which no human being has experienced personally. Unfortunately for empiricism, that leaves its adherents without a substantive answer to the question of ultimate origins.

That is not to say that rationalism is bulletproof on this matter either. The only advantage I see in it in distinction to empiricism here is that it does not require a human being to present to observe it to be valid. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not only a rationalist, I am also a Christian theist. As might be expected, I have a somewhat predictable view of the beginnings of everything that can be known.

Nevertheless, it is critically important that we do not miss the forest for the trees. If we are going to be honest, we need to come to grips with the most profound problem we as human beings have. We are attempting to explain our existence and the existence of a universe, and we are doing it with far less information than would be necessary for definitive empirical proof for any solution we might tender. Luckily for us, we have other means at our disposal, and the call of rationalism beckons. I look forward to making another attempt at this. As it stands, I hope to spend some time laying a foundation and then trying to handle contemporary issues.