Rationalism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/atheism/types/rationalism.shtml
Rationalism is an approach to life based on reason and evidence.
Rationalism encourages ethical and philosophical ideas that can be tested by
experience and rejects authority that cannot be proved by experience.
Because rationalism encourages people to think for themselves, rationalists
have many different and diverse ideas and continue in a tradition from the
nineteenth century known as freethought.
However, most rationalists would agree that:
* There is no evidence for any arbitrary supernatural authority e.g. God or
Gods.
* The best explanation so far for why the natural world looks the way it
does is the theory of evolution first put forward by Charles Darwin.
* All human beings should have fundamental rights. Some rationalists and
humanists go further and argue that animals should also have rights as they are
living, sensate beings.
* Society is should be an "open society", where each individual is able to
live "freely and equally practise their chosen life stance, and in which human
potential is realised to the benefit of the individual and the community at
large." (Levi Fragell, President of International Humanist and Ethical Union,
2001)
Rationalism and philosophy
Almost all rationalists are atheists or agnostics. There has been a long link
between rationalism and scientific method.
There is also a long tradition of philosophers who have approached
philosophical and ethical questions from a rationalist perspective.
Bertrand Russell's "The Faith of a Rationalist" is an example of a rationalist
approach to religious belief.
Rationalism, art, and literature
As well as approaching life through reason, rationalists enjoy those things in
life where emotion and imagination are to the fore.
There has been a long tradition of artists and writers who have been associated
with rationalism and its sister movement, humanism, or have pre-empted
rationalist ideas in their writings. George Eliot, E.M. Forster and Emile Zola
are all examples of such writers.
The Thinker
Rationalism encourages people to think for themselves, to look at the evidence
before them and to come to their own conclusions. For this reason, the logo of
the Rationalist Press Association is based on Rodin's "The Thinker".
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