These disciples were to observe what was happening, use their reason to answer their own question, and come to the realization that Jesus was the Messiah. In this example, the Savior encouraged observation and reason to activate faith.
To evaluate metaphorical fruit, one needs to observe and discern whether it is good or not. Again, the Savior asks us to discern truth by observation and reasoning.
His parables were simple stories comparing ordinary objects or events to illustrate a spiritual truth. He then asks us to reason our way to discern the underlying meaning.
Enola Holmes: I have kept every clipping of every case of yours I could ever find. Sherlock Holmes: That's flattering. Enola Holmes: And yet it took our mother's disappearance to bring you home. She meant to go. She's not coming back. Sherlock Holmes: No. But the truth is, Mother always had a reason for everything. Her own way of doing things. And those kind of mysteries are always the most satifying to unpick. Enola Holmes: I don't want a mystery, Sherlock. I want my mother back here and my life as it was. Sherlock Holmes: You're being emotional. It's understandable, but unnecessary. Look for what's there, not what you want to be there. You'll see the truth soon enough.
Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett): Without welfare Mr. Tolson, people would be starving. Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington): Who is starving Ms. Booke? Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett): The unemployed are starving. Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington): Mr. Burgess here. He's unemployed. Obviously he's not starving. I drew you in Ms. Booke. You gave a faulty premise so your syllogism fell apart. Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett): Syllogism? Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington): Your logic fell apart. Major premise: the unemployed are starving, minor premise Mr. Burgess is unemployed. Conclusion...Mr. Burgess is starving. Your major premise was based on a faulty assumption. Classic fallacy.
You know people, they're looking for an explanation. And people say, well as an artist you don't have to give an explanation. But as a leader you do.
Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.
Before I can teach you how to reason, I must first teach you how to rid yourself of unreason.
Reasoning requires you to understand the difference between true and false. And reasoning requires coherence and logic. Most of you have been taught to embrace incoherence and illogic. You have learned to associate truth with your subjective feelings, which are neither true nor false but only yours, and which are constantly changeful.
...You should not bother to tell us how you feel about a topic. Tell us what you think about it. If you can’t think yet, that’s O.K.. Tell us what Aristotle thinks, or Hammurabi thinks, or H.L.A. Hart thinks. Borrow opinions from those whose opinions are worth considering.
If it is a disgrace when a man cannot defend himself in a bodily way, it would seem odd not to think him disgraced when he cannot defend himself with reason...
When men abandon reason, they find not only that their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror.
In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade the effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival.
They that will not be counseled cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason, she will rap you on the knuckles.
We are prompted by our native intelligence to perform most of the ordinary actions of life. But for the accomplishment of extraordinary duties, for the achievement of high purposes, the soul, conscious of its own limitations, reaches out for help, deep calls unto deep, the infinite in man seeks union with the infinite in God, and when necessary for the achievement of God's purposes, we believe that the Lord deigns to communicate his will to man. He will help men at need, but I think it improper to assign every word and every act of a man to an inspiration from the Lord. Were that the case, we would have to acknowledge ourselves as being wholly taken possession of by the Lord, being neither permitted to go to the right nor the left only as he guided us. There could then be no error made, nor blunder in judgment; free agency would be taken away, and the development of human intelligence prevented. Hence, I think it a reasonable conclusion to say that constant, never-varying inspiration is not a factor in the administration of the affairs of the Church; not even good men, no, not even though they be prophets or other high officials of the Church, are at all times and in all things inspired of God. It is only occasionally, and at need, that God comes to their aid.
I have been puzzled that some scriptures command us not to judge and others instruct us that we should judge and even tell us how to do it. I am convinced that these seemingly contradictory directions are consistent when we view them with the perspective of eternity. The key is to understand that there are two kinds of judging: final judgments, which we are forbidden to make; and intermediate judgments, which we are directed to make, but upon righteous principles.
The Savior also commanded individuals to be judges, both of circumstances and of other people.
We must, of course, make judgments every day in the exercise of our moral agency, but we must be careful that our judgments of people are intermediate and not final.
Our Heavenly Father gave us powers of reason, and we are expected to use them to the fullest. But he also gave us the Comforter, who he said would lead us into truth and by whose power we may know the truth of all things.
We should study things out in our minds, using the reasoning powers our Creator has placed within us. Then we should pray for guidance and act upon it if we receive it. If we do not receive guidance, we should act upon our best judgment.
A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.
The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.
For when all is done, this is the highest and most important faculty of our minds, deserves the greatest care and attention in cultivating it: the right improvement, and exercise of our reason being the highest perfection that a man can attain to in his life.
I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.
I am sure, zeal or love for truth can never permit falsehood to be used in the defence of it.
As men, we have God for our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel. And though every Christian, both as a deist and a Christian, be obliged to study both the law of nature and the revealed law, that in them he may know the will of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent; yet, in neither of these laws, is there to be found a select set of fundamentals, distinct from the rest, which are to make him a deist, or a Christian.
What I am suggesting is that as you and I sort out our opinions, there are things we and others do that cloud and confuse the moral calculation. If you want to stay connected to your conscience, the best course is to learn to spot these manipulations—both self imposed and external— and reframe the choice in an honest way.
We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments.
A man cannot do much with his faculty of vision until his eyes are in focus. Otherwise, his eyesight gives him only a blur or haze…A similar concept applies to the mind. In regard to thought, as to vision, the same alternative exists: clear awareness or a state of blur, haze, fog in which relatively little can be discriminated.
Intellectual clarity is not given to man automatically.
If an individual accepts a philosophy of reason, and if he characteristically chooses to be in focus, he will gradually gain knowledge, confidence, and a sense of intellectual control.
Evasion, by contrast, is an active process aimed at a specific content. The evader does expend effort; he purposely directs his attention away from a given fact. He works not to see it; if he cannot banish it fully, he works not to let it become completely real to him.
The drifter does not integrate his mental contents; the evader disintegrates them, by struggling to disconnect a given item from everything that would give clarity or significance in his own mind. In the one case, the individual is immersed in a fog by default; he chooses not to raise his level of awareness. In the other case, he expends energy to create a fog; he lowers his level of awareness.
To an evader, a feeling of some kind is more important than truth. A man finds a certain fact or policy to be unpleasant, frightening, or guilt-provoking. Reality to the contrary notwithstanding, he does not want the fact to be real or the policy to be necessary; so he decides to blank out the offending datum. Or a certain idea or policy gives a man pleasure, reassurance, or relief, and he wants to believe in or practice it, even though he knows reality is against him in the issue; in Ayn Rand's words, place an "I wish" above an "It is".
Unlike the basic choice to be in or out of focus, the choice to evade a specific content is motivated, the motive being the particular feeling that the evader elevates above reality.
No matter what his emotions, a sane man retains the power to face facts. If an emotion is overwhelming, he retains the power to recognize this and to defer cognition until he can establish a calmer mood.
The process of evasion, as we will see, is profoundly destructive. Epistemologically, it invalidates a mental process. Morally, it is the essence of evil. According to Objectivism, evasion is the vice that underlies all other vices. In the present era, it is leading to the collapse of the world.
So long as men remain ignorant of their basic mental process, they have no answer to the charge leveled by mysticism and skepticism alike, that their mental content is some form of revelation or invention detached from reality.
If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.
Reason, according to Objectivism, is not merely a distinguishing attribute of man; it is his fundamental attribute - his basic means of survival.
When you want so hard to believe something, you end up listening to your heart and not your head.
I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.
...never let a book replace my own thinking.
The brain can prove to be a wonderful tool, can be a willing slave, as has been evidenced by some men, but of course it works poorly when it has not the habit of usage.
The mind is a tool, it is either clogged, bound, rusty, or it is a clear way to and from the soul.
He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.
We drive by night. Nevertheless our reason penetrates the darkness enough to show us a little of the road ahead. It is by the light of reason that we interpret the signposts and make out the landmarks along our way.
Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life.
If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. (Sherlock Holmes)
Judgment, not passion, should prevail.
It is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. Human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.
Sapere Aude means dare to know and have courage to use your own reason. Rise above self-incurred tutelage with resolution. We are scared to walk alone on the path of knowledge because of initial failures can bring you down and hence like to pay for the ready-made knowledge.
And age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding ones into such a condition that it cannot extend its knowledge, purify itself of errors and progress in general enlightenment.
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
--Political and religious authority must subject to a critique of reason if it were to commend itself to the respect of humanity. --Humanity is not innately corrupt, nor is the good life found only in a beatific state of otherworldly salvation. Pleasure and happiness are worthy goals to achieve and realizable in this world. --He as the I, the irreducible thinking being, exists at the core of reality. Individual mind imperially ordered chaotic sensory experience,constructing, therefore, its own meaning of the world.We are the creators. --Individual is ever ambitious and striving and seeks to better his own condition. Life is a race for wealth, honors and preferment. --Equality of opportunity is not really a theory of equality but one of justified and morally acceptable inequality. --Human is governed either be reason backed up by vast knowledge or guided be emotion, tradition, customs and reverence of old ideas culmination as prejudices and old institutions.
These disciples were to observe what was happening, use their reason to answer their own question, and come to the realization that Jesus was the Messiah. In this example, the Savior encouraged observation and reason to activate faith.
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