Can religious faith & reason/logic complement each other?
- Thread starter Detroit City
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Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
danny la rouge said:
This is what I was sort of trying to say, on that other thread about 'God'.
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
Aldebaran said:
I find I agree with you on a lot of stuff, Aldebaran.
phildwyer said:
For those who truly believe in God's existance, faith does not exist, trust does. Of course theology stands or falls with the rationality of the approach.
However, as far as I know you are mistaken in your idea on Christianity in relation to "logos".
The problem with "picture thinking" doesn't stemm from the theologian, but from the individual who in his obsession to *make* visible what can't be seen creates his own picturing of it.
The mistake many atheists make is to believe everythig should be visible or at least in theory should be able to, creating their own pictures for it and dismiss and declare non-existant what falls outside that narrowed frame.
salaam.
Dillinger4
Es gibt Zeit
Aldebaran said:I'm a bit worried.... if that is about my last sentence...
salaam.
Nah, But I do agree with a lot of what you say in post #34 there.
especially this
I always had and have difficulties with reasonings that are limited to operate within a pre-defined frame. Imagine the torture of studying logic... Most people I know find that funny games while I was always tempted to come with answers that went directly against what was expected . (Yes I know that on its own is totally illogic... it even sounds better than it is in practice.)
salaam.
(Yes I know that on its own is totally illogic... it even sounds better than it is in practice.)salaam.
merlin wood
mind traveller 3rd class
Come the real world revolution and logic and reason will take over from religion.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
So if I went up to the Pope and said 'Is faith in God at the heart of your religious belief' he'll say 'No'.
You forget, my definition of rational isn't based on revelation; for someone who believes in God that belief is entirely rational - but it's based on upbringing of revelation, not on anything evidentiary.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Coming from a god botherer who's faith requires him to prostrate before his god 5 times a day that's genuine comedy.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Jealous of a passive-agressive theophile like you? Not a chance mate.
8ball
As seen on TikTok
I think you can be very rational and logical, and have religious faith at the same time, but there's usually a disjunct between the two at some point. A lot of religious people just learn not to 'pick at the scab', others use their rationality exclusively in areas where it doesn't bump up against their religious belief.
Theologians would appear to be a special case from the ones I know, but then the ones I know are Christian so however Aldi slices the cake is probably different again.
I'm not sure what 'complimenting each other' means, though. Sounds like mealy-mouthed conflict-avoidance.
Theologians would appear to be a special case from the ones I know, but then the ones I know are Christian so however Aldi slices the cake is probably different again.
I'm not sure what 'complimenting each other' means, though. Sounds like mealy-mouthed conflict-avoidance.
urbanrevolt
New Member
They can only compliment each other if God congratulates scientists on their great work in beginning to doscover the laws of Her world and scientists praise God for having created such a beautiful universe.
Presuming you mean complement (sorry for the pedantic joke) not for me. Sure we can feel an Einsteinian wonder at the universe but God as traditionally conceived is an unnecessary hypothesis falling by Occam's razor. I suppose you can have a kind of religious awe or feeling compatible with the scientific method but this is something quite different or you could just believe anyway but the latter seems kind of unsatisfacotory, a sort of conning yourself, and the former too easily confused.
It's occsionslly struck me that Buddhist forms of spirituality should be compatible with science- though 1) the form of Buddhism I'm thinking of (based on a fairly peremptory reading od some of the translations of his sayings) is not a faith 2) any actual Buddhists I've met seem obsessed with metaphysical view of the world entirely based on faith and mysticism (perhaps I've not met the right ones or perhaps I misread the book I bought when I was 15!)
Presuming you mean complement (sorry for the pedantic joke) not for me. Sure we can feel an Einsteinian wonder at the universe but God as traditionally conceived is an unnecessary hypothesis falling by Occam's razor. I suppose you can have a kind of religious awe or feeling compatible with the scientific method but this is something quite different or you could just believe anyway but the latter seems kind of unsatisfacotory, a sort of conning yourself, and the former too easily confused.
It's occsionslly struck me that Buddhist forms of spirituality should be compatible with science- though 1) the form of Buddhism I'm thinking of (based on a fairly peremptory reading od some of the translations of his sayings) is not a faith 2) any actual Buddhists I've met seem obsessed with metaphysical view of the world entirely based on faith and mysticism (perhaps I've not met the right ones or perhaps I misread the book I bought when I was 15!)
Once you detach human action from reason (through, for example, faith), all bets are off. There is no difference, in any sense that matters, between the statements "Christ was born of a Virgin" and "Suicide bombers go to Paradise".
I can discuss the actions of the suicide bomber from the perspective of Reason. Against the statement that "The Sky God made me do it", there is nothing I can say. ("My Sky God told you not to" is not, for me, a convincing argument).
Religious faith is now incompatible with life in a world in which a bomb the size of a suitcase can render a city uninhabitable for 10,000 years, because it disables reason and animates actions that can end this world.
I can discuss the actions of the suicide bomber from the perspective of Reason. Against the statement that "The Sky God made me do it", there is nothing I can say. ("My Sky God told you not to" is not, for me, a convincing argument).
Religious faith is now incompatible with life in a world in which a bomb the size of a suitcase can render a city uninhabitable for 10,000 years, because it disables reason and animates actions that can end this world.
JHE
.
deeplight said:
It would be a better start for religious folk to realise that if God is omnipotent and omniscient then he must have put all disease and suffering, all pain and misery, all anguish and hopelessness, all injustice and cruelty here for humanity to endure. The child dying from AIDS, the cancer sufferer writhing in pain, the tens of thousands drowned by tidal waves and the millions slowly dying of privation all have God to thank. He's a right bastard!
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Fuchs66 said:
Only if they pay. Islam used to be very tolerant of other faiths within it's own states so long as they paid a tithe to the ruling class; an amusing little vignette that I bring to mind every time someone starts going on about how tolerant Islam was during the European medieval period...
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is true. They were also exempted from the obligation to give alms.kyser_soze said:
JHE said:
Well I think it's the case that actually all these things can be sorted out quite easily just by humanity learning to do collective magic. But as we choose not to do this, and on the whole legislate and organise society on an anti-magical basis, these terrible things keep going on.
The thread follows to some extent a faith v reason account of the justification for religious belief.
What this leaves out is that neither faith nor reason were the origin of any religion, because every religion, or religious account of the world is the result of various peoples' experience of the divine.
What this leaves out is that neither faith nor reason were the origin of any religion, because every religion, or religious account of the world is the result of various peoples' experience of the divine.
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