Re: Reason - Is it a precondition of our function?
Peace Faris Udeen
Caveman finds fire - first lets assume that cavemen are the predecessors of modern humans and let’s also assume that fire was discovered by them. Let’s assume that they didn’t discover fire from active ignition sources until later, but found fire was around naturally from lava and from bush fires. Let’s also assume that some animals caught fire and cooked in the blaze and their meat was eaten, let’s hence assume again this tasted nice or nicer than raw meat. As far as the caveman is concerned the ‘reason’ for fire is to make food taste better. The reason for discovering a new thing according to atheists is due to our need to survive, according to theists is due to our need to know and hence worship our Creator. So both the fire itself and the discovery of it have reasons. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. And invention is more often than not based on discovery. So we can reason chance discoveries fairly easily.
With Newton, he came to the conclusion that the ‘reason’ why we stay on the ground is linked to the ‘behaviour of falling objects’. The tale goes that it took a falling apple to make him realise this. He then pursued the reason for falling objects and gave it a name - The acceleration due to gravity. The discovery was made for the ‘reasons’ previously stated, and very thing that was discovered was laced in a network of ‘reasons’ that were being looked for.