Is FAITH compatible with REASON?

[Soph0571]

It is a fact that in the face of over whelming evidence to the contrary, or a complete lack of any evidence at all, people will still stick to their belief systems. It is akin to having a filtering system in your mind. People decide what to believe with their emotions, we are confronted by a fact and we decide emotionally whether we believe it or not, and then seek evidence to justify our emotional responses. Any evidence that is counter to our emotional response is dismissed, distorted or ridiculed to strengthen our own beliefs.

People of faith have an extremely emotional and powerful conviction that God is real. Of course, we don’t know that God is real, until you have been in a room with God and shaken his hand, so it all about how you feel. Your brain, your mind is the source of your feelings. I would hazard a guess that from time to time all of us have had feelings that were not reasonable, that were not to be trusted. We all tell ourselves stories about the world, based on our emotions. After all the brain is a story generating organism rather than a fact generating organism. Of course, logically, we know that if you cannot provide evidence to back up your belief structure it remains just a theory, a maybe. But if you have faith does this matter? Pope John Paul II said ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth’.

How does reason fit into faith? Or can it? Martin Luther stated that reason was the biggest enemy that Christianity faced and that Christians should ‘pluck out the eye’ of reason. Surely the point about reason is that it encourages you to advance hypothesis, to test them rigorously, to reach conclusions and consequently to test those conclusions. Seemingly faith, a person’s belief structure, does the complete reverse of this – it begins with the conclusion and rejects evidence that does not fit with it? Religion starts with a conclusion and reason starts with a premise, so surely that means that religion and reason are diametrically opposed? One could suggest however that if we accept that people start from a position of faith, then people can reason within the scope of that belief structure. Is that reasonable?

Dawkins has said that faith is the great cop out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. St Augustine, arguably the founding father of Christian theology, believed that understanding was the reward of faith - ‘seek not to understand that you many believe, but believe that you may understand’

Is faith compatible with reason? Maybe the question should be does it matter if faith is not compatible with reason? After all taking something on faith is a very human emotion, is it not?

[zipplewrath]

1. Not really

"Honest" faith, takes over where reason leaves off. The vast majority of people don't have an "honest" faith in that if something they believe is falsified, they will alter their faith accordingly. As you suggest, most people will ignore the information and hold on to their faith. But reason and faith are "compatible" if one is ready to accept that ones understanding can be flawed and therefor needs to be testable.

One cannot "prove" the non-existence of a deity. One can prove the false understanding of SOME deities. (We can clearly see there are no turtles upon which the earth is riding, and they don't go "all the way down".) As such, reason is "compatible" with faith as long as they don't try to cover the same ground.

[MarvinGardens]

3. Honest faith.

What you are calling honest faith, I call intuition: I think something is true, but don't have evidence either way. My brain, being a complex biochemical computer, has given me a tentative conclusion without telling me how it got there. I may have an intuition that a lab experiment will turn out a certain way. I can cite this intuition to my boss, to convince her that we should run the experiment. But we still have to run the experiment. I can't publish intuition in a scientific journal. If I haven't run the experiment and want to speak informally to someone about my intuition, I have to qualify it with "but I can't prove it."

So to those who have honest faith about God's existence, you could say "I believe in God, but I can't prove it."

[zipplewrath]

4. Yup

I think you meant to say:

"I believe in God, but I cannot prove its existence."

For some the most accurate statement would be, "...but it is impossible to prove its existence".

[trotsky]

2. It is expressly not, and believers even admit so.

If reason threatens their beliefs, then they simply declare them based solely on faith, and thus impervious to reason.

[zipplewrath]

6. There's not much "reason" in faith

You can't really "threaten" beliefs with reason. Beliefs are generally about the unknowable. Yes, there are those that have goofy "beliefs" that are falsifiable. But the vast majority of belief is about the unknowable. Of course knowledge expands over time so what is unknowable at one time might become knowable at another. That is when a faith can be tested. Most fail the test.

[MineralMan]

5. No. Faith is used as a substitute for reason, when reason

cannot provide verification of something believed. In religion, reason and logic are used in a different way than in science, for example. By positing that an all-powerful, all-knowing deity exists, anything can be called truth, using an imitation of logical reasoning.

The problem is that the initial premise cannot be shown to be true, and without that premise, the rest of the logic breaks down. Faith is the thing that is used to make the initial premise true, so everything can follow from that.

However, faith is not proof of anything, so the initial premise is not known to be true. It is merely believed to be true. All logic that depends on that initial premise, then, is flawed and void.

All theistic religion is based on that faulty logic and such an initial premise, which often goes unstated, but is referenced in the argument.

The answer to your question is no.

[Major Nikon]

7. So long as faith REQUIRES the suspension of reason...

The answer is no.

[guillaumeb]

8. Yes.

If it were not, no person of faith would be able to reason.

An excellent ending.

[MineralMan]

9. I keep looking for a person of faith who

can reason logically. So far, I have not found one. Do you know of someone like that?

[guillaumeb]

10. Your answer reveals nothing other than your own opinion.

[MineralMan]

11. No. It reveals more than that.

You just can't see it.

[guillaumeb]

12. I accept that you truly believe this unprovable assertion.

I also accept that you have faith in your own abilities.

[MineralMan]

13. Oh, please...

Could you be any more patronizing. Feh!

[guillaumeb]

14. No, I do have faith.

And, as I demonstrated, as your assertion demonstrates, you also have faith.

No need to thank me.

Guill

[MineralMan]

15. ..

[uriel1972]

16. Faith means 2+2 equals cabana...

[Lordquinton]

17. Your own opinion

You seem to be giving this a literal interpretation.

[Voltaire2]

18. Theories are not beliefs without evidence

“ Of course, logically, we know that if you cannot provide evidence to back up your belief structure it remains just a theory, a maybe.”

Empirical reasoning uses evidence to construct theories that explain observed phenomena. “Just a theory” is a canard used by anti-intellectual right wing ideologues to dismiss inconvenient truths.

[NeoGreen]

19. I have no text to add to this reply...

...


"Let us agree not to step on each others feet."

[Bretton Garcia]

20. Many say they are "separate magisteria" or realms

[MineralMan]

21. Many say Trump is an excellent President.

Many say many things. Some are true. Some are not. Evidence speaks more clearly. Where is evidence for "separate magisteria?"

Once again, the initial premise has no evidence, and so must be discarded.

[Bretton Garcia]

22. I'd agree that faith is not very compatible with reason

And suggest religious folks should try to be far, far more reasonable, logical, and fact-based. Even in matters of the presently unknown, metaphysics, we should make and rely on reasonable guesses. Not ancient superstitions and surreal emotional dreams.