Quote:
Originally Posted by Xrayz0r
Because there is no answer, the answer was always god. "I have been placed where I am, you have been placed where you are by god", and people would accept this natural law until reason made them realize that is a bunch of shit.
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The example you have just given demonstrates cognitive faculties and the ability to reason. So, I would argue, that such a justification for their status in society is not "a bunch of shit" because they have reasoned their way to that conclusion. Yes, I'm sticking to definition, and, yes, I'm assuming your idea of "people with reason" and "people without reason" is exclusive and correlates to a certain method of reasoning rather than reasoning itself.
I believe the question here should be: "What justifies that reasoning?" Some people are unable to accept the idea of "that dude in the sky" telling them how things should be, and thus we have the difference in opinion here. It is not so much that one set of people are incapable of thinking; they simply have no reason to doubt otherwise what the truth is. And there are plenty of poor people that have conservative tendencies, even when it comes to religion and justification of existance.
Perhaps this might be interesting to think about
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Science and experience requires just as much reasoning as religion. They simply base their proof on different things.
If we equate atheism to a certain amount of faith in the natural world (which, I suppose, would not necessarily be an outrageous claim because I could argue that most atheists would find things such as science or empiricism to be the few dependable things to base conclusions on), then we would find ourselves still asking the question of "what lies further behind that?"
Why does an atom do what it does? Why does it function as it functions? Why do we humans possess the ability to create neural pathways and thus acquire information? Why are we capable of processing sensory input into an electrical form to send to our brain? What is an unconscious?
These questions are fully compatible with religion in my opinion. Science answers the how, but it fails to answer the why for many things. Our instruments of measurement can be flawed, and our ability to perceive can be just as flawed. Religion provides that answer in many situations, but there are also those who cannot accept that answer. But it can be flawed as well.
So we have a question of right or wrong, justified and unjustified. But this does not mean that those who are religious are not "people of reason." Even the ones we associate as conservatively and traditionally ignorant.