Faith and Reason Part 2

What is the role of reason in the acquisition of wisdom?
What is reason?
What are the limitations of reason?
Is reason the sole means by which we seek to discover truth, or is it part of a bundle?
What role does reason play in our reading of holy writ?
What role does reason play in apprehending faith?

What is the role of faith in the acquisition of knowledge?
What is provisional assent? How does faith differ from provisional assent?
What roll does faith play in giving credence to reason?
What role does faith play in taking us beyond reason?
What distinguishes good faith from bad faith? (Is all Faith equal?)
Is it possible to reason righty, or fully without Faith?
Faith occupies a realm which does not intersect with reason -- or NOMA


Most scientists, believers and nonbelievers alike, probably agree with the Non Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) view articulated by recently deceased Stephen J. Gould. In this view, science and religion should confine themselves to different domains. Science should deal with material world, while religion should deal with morality.

Richard Dawkins has pointed out that



• A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.

He also notes that

There is something dishonestly self-serving in the tactic of claiming that all religious beliefs are outside the domain of science. On the one hand, miracle stories and the promise of life after death are used to impress simple people, win converts, and swell congregations. It is precisely their scientific power that gives these stories their popular appeal. But at the same time it is considered below the belt to subject the same stories to the ordinary rigors of scientific criticism: these are religious matters and therefore outside the domain of science. But you cannot have it both ways. At least, religious theorists and apologists should not be allowed to get away with having it both ways. Unfortunately all too many of us, including nonreligious people, are unaccountably ready to let them.

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Incompatibility.html

Faith is not reasonable (nor desirable)

Faith is not reasonable (but is desirable)

Faith is something to be held in opposition to Reason

Case Study: Soren Kierkegaard.

Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/

“One should expect, if one is a believer, that with God all things are possible, even things which are physically and logically impossible (Anderson 48).”

But while having faith is tremendously difficult, Kierkegaard stands in awe of it: “to be able to lose one’s reason, and therefore the whole of finiteness of which reason is the broker, and then by the virtue of the absurd to gain precisely the same finiteness – that appalls my soul, but I do not for this cause say that it is something lowly, since on the contrary it is the only prodigy (Anderson 60).” (Philosophic 271).

It is difficult to find flaws with Kierkegaard’s argument and description of religion, since he is not speaking in rational terms, and not trying to convince his audience through the methods of logic. He does seem to be taking faith as a prima-facie good, and since the whole of his argument basically stems from the idea that faith is inherently worthwhile and beneficial, it’s a bit of shaky ground to be on. But that’s not really the point: faith, like Abraham’s situation, cannot be mediated, simply because it is by definition irrational and inexplicable. If I had not had direct experience with the kind of faith that Kierkegaard is talking about, I doubt that I would be able to understand him at all. But I know what it is to gain something by giving it up, and I know how you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself. It’s all subjective and it’s all irrational, and it’s something you’ll just have to take my word for. My word and Kierkegaard’s at least.