Why do you think Jaspers and Kant fail at finding reason? Both were deists, although calling Jaspers a deist is a bit tricky.

Yes, but how does a normal human person acquire this overall nature? From what ‘framework’, or ‘presupposition’ is this possible? From what worldview does this make sense?

Craig Payne:
There’s the more specific view that reason is the ability to gain knowledge by inferring accurately from things already known. Thus “Let’s reason this out.”

And to what/who do we owe this ability?

Craig Payne:
But neither of these seems to be the way “reason” is used by the “New Atheists.” It seems to me that reason to them simply means a general skepticism toward any claims not scientifically testable.

In other words, empiricism, all knowledge can only be acquired by unbiased observation of the evidence around us. Michael Polanyi, rightly recognized there are no ‘unbiased’ observers.

Craig Payne:
Thus one could by this guideline call oneself “rational”–without any specific exercise of reason, or without responding to rational arguments.

If so, then this is quintessentially irrational, is it not? But this is what they are left with, isn’t it, no use of logic or reason in responding, and like Harris, to emotional appeals as an attempt to score more points. The Christian not bereft of the simple powers of logical reasoning should be able to see right through this.

There’s the medieval idea that reason, or rationality, is the general, overall nature of a normal human person; thus humans as “rational animals.”

There’s the more specific view that reason is the ability to gain knowledge by inferring accurately from things already known. Thus “Let’s reason this out.”

But neither of these seems to be the way “reason” is used by the “New Atheists.” It seems to me that reason to them simply means a general skepticism toward any claims not scientifically testable.

Thus one could by this guideline call oneself “rational”–without any specific exercise of reason, or without responding to rational arguments.

Tom rightly points out that in this debate, Harris forfeited the logical argument between ‘Reason’ and ‘Faith’, or the ‘rational’ vs. ‘the irrational’, appealing to ‘emotion’ in his defense against Craig.

What I find fascinating, is that no one has asked the question as to ‘why’, or ‘where’ Reason (capital ‘R’) makes sense in an atheistic, existentialist, Humean, Sartrean, Jasperian, (throw any other secular philosopher in the mix) framework? None of these men can account, can give justified warrant, for Reason in the first place. Sartre fails, Hume fails, Jasper fails, Kant fails, Kierkegaard fails. To say that Hume gives a ‘reasonable’ argument for atheism yet we’re still convinced he’s wrong, is to befuddle the issue, and fails to get at the heart of why he thinks ‘REASON’, as an entity unto itself, should be trusted within his own atheistic/agnostic framework.

I wouldn’t be surprised, although I’m not familiar with a contemporary philosopher who has embraced classical existentialism wholesale. All the greats of the field, like Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Sartre, were mid 19th to early 20th century. Jaspers’ Way to Wisdom is a solid example of existential writing, I’d check it out if I were you.

General Commenters:

I too, agree with the incorrectness of Sartre’s freedom dilemma. I do think, however, like Hume, Sartre is a great example of a non-theistic philosopher. The fact that he takes Dostoyevsky’s classic epigram “If there is no God, everything is permissible,” affirms it, and accepts his consequences, shows him to be a solid and consistent philosopher. Again, I obviously don’t agree with Sartre’s embracing the absurdity of life with a quest for “authenticity,” but nonetheless the fact that he accepts the consequences of a non-theistic belief shows him to be a reasonable atheist.

P.S. A little off-topic, but: In philosophical circles, does any well-known thinker self-identify as an existentialist any more?

Bear in mind at any rate that I disagree with Sartre’s proposition that God by definition has perfect freedom. He has something like it in the sense that he is perfect and he has freedom, but not in Sartre’s sense of having complete freedom to do anything anyone might think about him doing.

God’s freedom as such would conceivably allow any x if (per impossibile) God’s freedom could be separated from the totality of his nature. Since it can’t, and since other of God’s perfections disallow change, it’s a moot, purely academic and quite irrelevant question whether his freedom as such would allow it.