How Important is Reason?

dumpsterdiver45 said:

How much weight should reason carry in forming our religious beliefs?

What is the relationship between reason and Truth?

I ask this because it seems to me most Christians place little actual importance on the rationality of their beliefs. Curious to see what others believe and why.

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In contrast, to what many skeptics believe, the Bible challenges its readers to test it and come to a reasonable conclusion; therefore, the Bible does not teach blind faith.

In fact, Scripture tells us to test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21). No other "holy" book tells its readers to actually put what it says to the test. The Bible can make such a statement because it passes the tests of truthfulness that no other "holy" book can.

God Himself in His revelation to Isaiah stated, "Come now, and let us reason together..." God, the Creator of human reasoning wants us to use that ability to determine His plan of salvation. How do we determine if the Bible is true? We test it and see if it is reasonable.

Psalm 19 tells us that the universe "declares the glory of God" and that this "voice goes out into all the earth." In fact, the Bible says that the evidence for God's design of the universe is so strong that people are "without excuse" in rejecting God and His plan of salvation.

2ndRateMind said:

No, I think I get were you are coming from! The 'leap of faith' is not a rational thing, and our thinking can often get in the way of our search for God, which needs to come from the heart, not the head.

Cheers, 2RM.

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The stupidest child in the back of the 'slow' class who splits his sandwich with the kid who forgot his lunch has a better grasp of the kingdom of heaven than a whole council of stringent and educated minds who throw their hands up at the problem of pain, or the question of God's justice, and then condemn the questioner for asking 'worldly' questions and 'leaning on their own understanding'. "His ways are not our ways!" they exclaim. And they are right about that, at least...

The 'leap of faith' usually is quite rational. Not because one has all of their theological ducks in a row, but because it's better to jump out the window than to burn down with the building. But the leap of faith is an actual leap, not just an insistence on the 'rightness' of this belief or the other.

If you ask the stupid child why he was willing to give his lunch away despite the continuing rumbles in his own stomach, he would probably shrug and say, "'Cause that kid was hungry." And the angels in heaven rejoice at such wisdom!

True compassion provides the only reason we will ever need to believe Jesus. History, philosophy, archaeology, linguistics, statistics, and any sort of apologetics all pale in comparison to the simple fact that the greatest love lays down his life for a friend.

Abraham was about to sacrifice his son to God. Because he was instructed by God to do so.. What reason did God give him.. None. Later it was creditted to Abraham as righteousness because of his faith.
Yet we know that faith comes from God..
Hard to understand the ways of God.. So much so. That we reqire faith that He provides so that we can follow

dumpsterdiver45 said:

And yet not all those touched by God disdain reason. To the contrary, Paul, all the church fathers, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, etc. were deeply moved by their spiritual experiences to respond in rational ways. Thus was doctrine hammered out over the centuries. Actually, I'm not at all sure ALL the church fathers were inspired by particularly moving spiritual experiences other than Augustine, but read that Aquinas, Luther, Calvin (and obviously Paul in his Damascus Rd. experience) all had testimonies of deep spiritual experiences or times in their lives.

I don't see faith forming apart from reason. They're a matched pair, like right and left feet.

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It's not about disdaining reason. It's about welcoming this new upside-down reason of God in which the greatest among us is the slave of all.

Hi Dumpster

Hmmm... interesting question.

From my experience I would say that religious belief & reason aren't good bedfellows.

I mean, how far does one go? Let's skim the surface:

After creating light, God creates the entire phenomenon of life on Earth in just six days, then has a rest.

After everything being good, He puts Adam into a deep sleep, takes out one of his ribs, then creates a woman from it.

A serpent speaks to Eve, who takes advantage of her innocence, naivety & perfection & tempts her into committing a desirable offence. That desire must surely have been there initially for the serpent to exploit it...?

God then curses her entire offspring (His own creation) forever & ever because of the serpent's evil deed.

Cain kills his brother because his offering, from his arable livelihood no less, wasn't good enough for God.

As a act of mercy, Cain receives a mark on his head, in order to deter anybody who he meets during his exile from killing him. The threat to anybody found killing Cain, is that they'll receive seven times the vengeance of Cain himself. Who else was there on the planet at this time? And given the profound complexities of human beings & their reactions to actions (which is what started the whole affair), isn't this escalating problems?

Oh well, it does indeed escalate, but it doesn't matter anyway, because God kills everything in the world, except for Noah, his family & some chosen animals. Those 'clean' & 'unclean' chosen animals by the way, precede the law of 'cleanliness' by a few hundred years. Anyway, no sooner are they off the boat when Ham gets cursed because Noah got p*ssed & it's all back on the road to the way it was before.

Enoch never dies, he gets 'swept' up to Heaven.

Abraham & Sarah, an elderley couple give birth to a son, who is (like most children) the most precious phenomenon to them both.

God instructs Abraham to then kill that son, but just as Abraham is about to plunge the knife into the heart of his precious son God says, "nah, leave it. I was just testing you". Dunno what Isaac thought about all of this...?

Following witnessing a bush that was raging on fire, but doesn't burn, Moses leads the Hebrews, (his own immigrant community) out of Egypt. This includes rivers turning to blood, three days of complete darkness & every first born Egyptian child dieing on the same night, but the Hebrew kids are protected by painting a bit of Lamb's blood on their doorpost... so that the angel of death will see it & pass over them. King Herod commits a similar thing against the Israelite children, in order to stop one child living. This act (obviously) causes disgust & unexplainable lamentation. Good job God wouldn't commit such an act... oh, wait!

A pillar of fire, a cloud of smoke, manna from Heaven... still no promised land in sight. The thousands of Hebrews are getting fed up. They could start to revolt. Laws are needed to control them, but who will instill these laws?

Eventually they find the promised land, but somebody's already there! God orders an act of ethnic cleansing when the Hebrews, (the wandering immigrants from Egypt) attempt to claim the land & establish their own nation, slaughter ALL life - yes, that's men, women, children, & livestock, that dwells in Canaan.

Enough of the Old Testament already...

A virgin gives birth to a boy.

A huge choir of angels appear in the sky to shepherds.

A dead man of four days is brought back to life... only to die again one day - I would assume.

A man walks on water.

A blind man from birth is given sight.

A dead man of three days is brought back to life, then appears as some kind of substantial apparition, or ghost. He then ascends into Heaven... wherever/whatever that is.

A man is blinded for several days following a light that speaks to him. His sight is then restored when 'fish scales' fall off his eyes.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no theological idiot, neither am I rubbishing the Bible, not at all. I'm well aware that these powerful stories may well contain allegorical & metaphorical content & I see & accept the worth in that. But the word of God is the word of God & men throughout the ages have believed these accounts as complete historical truth.

It's only in the years following the enlightenment & the age of reason, that believers have started to claim metaphors & allegory in order to make sense of it all.

The fact is that the actions documented here are contrary to reason. They are believed by faith, which in itself is not born of reason. Faith & reason DO NOT work together - & furthermore, to be fair, the authors of certain books in the Bible recognise this fact & address it.

Anyway, in summary - I would put forward that reason is not in the least important to faith, it should even be overlooked as a hindrance... which leaves mankind with somewhat of a dilemma.

Faith or Reason?

Hi Dumpster...

"Thanks for your reply, Spaceman. It’s helped me to understand your position more fully."

You're welcome.

"Your arguments are those of the atheist, of course, which explains why both DP and I read materialism into your post on his thread. You know the saying, if it quacks and waddles, it’s probably a duck."

They may be the arguments of an Athiest, but that doesn't mean I am one. I’m open-minded, & I regard Atheism, as I do Theism, ultimately, as a position of faith.

"Your comment, "It's only in the years following the enlightenment & the age of reason that believers have started to claim metaphors & allegory in order to make sense of it all” is for me an interesting case study in faith. Since virtually the entire Bible is full of figurative language—and the historicity of the book is well established—it follows that allegory and metaphor have enjoyed widespread use and acceptance since well before the enlightenment. This is only common sense since metaphoric processing is central to human understanding."

Yeah, fair comment. Of course metaphorical & allegorical language are integral to human development in understanding. Look at the reactions of the Church & their accusation of heresy to those throughout history, like Galileo & Darwin, that would dare to contradict the commonly accepted Biblical view of 'history' however.

The general historicity of the Bible is extremely questionable in my opinion.

"The interesting thing to me is why we argue as we do. The presuppositions of one leads her to see things religious as disingenuous which, having established her faith in the things she embraces, directs her to seek categorizations and definitions along the lines you provide above. For me, the atheist ideology is fatally flawed. It's circular: only matter is real, thus anything extra-material is not to be allowed as valid in discussion. This is the presuppositional basis that eventually gives rise to arguments like those in your post. The theist's acceptance of intuited reality and the prescriptive value inherent to it is mocked and rejected because it's not "real". All "real" really means is not part of the atheist ideology."

Agreed. I have no qualms with the sincerity of Theists, nor of Athiests. I personally don't consider myself in a position to conclude on such thinking. We all learn, all the time, those that believe they know everything, or speak as they do are deluded. Socrates only ever questioned things, he didn't proclaim to have any answers

I’m quite happy, for example to accept that the Tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil is a metaphor for some kind of consciousness in time that was acquired somehow, an awakening, an awareness, maybe even simply the 'coming of age'. The serpent in this case could be a metaphor for desire. This ‘Adam & Eve’ scenario of course could then be applied personally to every individual human being that’s ever lived.

In a deeper sense however, the fact remains that the desire for pleasure must've always existed, & this desire could only've been created by the creator of all things – God. If God did not intend man to die, then why did He put the 'tree' right in the middle of the 'garden' knowing that it would bring this affliction upon mankind. Furthermore, by telling man that he must not partake of the fruit arouses man's curiosity & is akin to temptation itself.


The miracles of Christ present us with a slightly different problem however. Whilst the parables are obvious & valuable similes, the miracles were never submitted as such. They are generally accepted as true events among believers & are a sign to them of the sovereign power of Jesus Christ.

I've heard it said many times for example, that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is null & void.

Jesus also said that when he had ascended to the Father, His proceeding believers would do greater works than Him. I've yet to witness a miracle such as those that Christ achieved.

"The presuppositions of the religious man arise from acceptance of the intuited information of God which (whether he affirms it intellectually or not) which compel him to find a reasonable match between the information intuited and the information of the external world. This leads to belief in the Bible's veracity you find problematic. I find reason natural to faith by the natural correspondence or attraction of degrees of truth in the essence (information) of things with apprehended spiritual or prescriptive information."

Fair enough.

"Why this is interesting to me is that it lends support to my belief that the forces in intellectual operation foundational to forming the fundamental moral nature of individuals (which arguably produces dispositions/conceptions and the beliefs and behaviors natural to it) can be reduced to the natural tensions and resistances between truth and falsity in the essence of things.

Here then is the disease (falsity) which answers the questions "from what is one saved?" and "to what is one saved?" (restoration to a wholly true state). This spiritual infection would logically produce the sorts of challenges to the hope that lies in the Bible you reject as a false ideology. And it is the Bible, by the way, which powerfully, rationally and allegorically provides this information to us. I reject your rejection of the Bible Spaceman and again say I find non-theists objections exciting as they're helping to shift the truth of the Scriptures to the allegorical realm where they've been aimed by God all along. You're only helping to uncover the rotten stuff within Christianity, which we need but are incapable of doing ourselves. God indeed works in mysterious ways."

That sounds perfectly feasible to me, & I too am well aware of the 'working out of salvation with fear & trembling' that's occurring.

Let's be clear here Dumpster, I do not 'reject' the Bible - far be it from me to do such a thing. I question the historicity, methods, morality & ethics of the Biblical stories, because they don't seem to add up to a God that unconditionally loves His creation & desires them all to find Him. If the the scriptures are not factual, then they are ambiguous at best.

Is it not fair to say that having written the Bible & knowing that logical thinking & scientific deliberation would one day infect man's mind, that this would lead to unbelief & accusations of mythology.

Also, in the case of Jonah for example - I fail to see how being swallowed by a whale in order to expose the futility of opposing God's instruction is helpful. The message is clear, but the imagery is pure mythology... surely? It is not surprising that a nation of children brought up on these stories amidst modern knowledge, rejects the truth of the events, since the majority of human beings may lack the time, or intellect, or level of understanding that these ambiguous allegories require... but then the narrow path to life is found by few.

Spaceman 3 said:

Also, in the case of Jonah for example - I fail to see how being swallowed by a whale in order to expose the futility of opposing God's instruction is helpful.

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Just a nitpick: I don't think that he was "swallowed by a whale in order to expose the futility of opposing God's instruction", I think he was swallowed by a whale because who in Ninevah would have given him the time of day if he hadn't gotten puked up on the beach?

God knows how to get a king's attention. I love that book.

Ok, I'm done. Carry on.

dumpsterdiver45 said:

How much weight should reason carry in forming our religious beliefs?

What is the relationship between reason and Truth?

I ask this because it seems to me most Christians place little actual importance on the rationality of their beliefs. Curious to see what others believe and why.

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For some people, reasoning is not important. For some other people, it is very important.

So, You need to know yourself and know the one you talked to in order to know if reasoning is important or not.

dumpsterdiver45 said:

How much weight should reason carry in forming our religious beliefs?

What is the relationship between reason and Truth?

I ask this because it seems to me most Christians place little actual importance on the rationality of their beliefs. Curious to see what others believe and why.

Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, not that that I means I have anything useful to say on it. But my $0.02 is that people make most of their decisions on the basis of emotion and/or intuition, and then later use reason to find rationalizations to support their decision.

As for the relationship between reason and truth, I think it is tentative at best. I think humans can certainly arrive at true beliefs via the application of reason, but I think they can also arrive at true beliefs by other means as well (emotion, intuition, revelation, etc). Reason has proven itself to be a fairly fickle friend when wielded by the human race, and has surely been used to arrive at as many false beliefs as true ones.

rutty99 said:

... I think humans can certainly arrive at true beliefs via the application of reason, but I think they can also arrive at true beliefs by other means as well (emotion, intuition, revelation, etc). Reason has proven itself to be a fairly fickle friend when wielded by the human race, and has surely been used to arrive at as many false beliefs as true ones.

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I take the point, and it's well made. However, the difference between reason, and emotion, intuition and revelation etc is that reason is accountable, and, therefore, upgradeable.

So, the correct answer to someone arguing from their subjective experience (that you disagree with) may well be 'I understand that is true for you...', whereas the correct answer to someone arguing for objective reality from their reasoning (that you disagree with) may well be 'I understand that you think X for reason Y, but maybe reasoning Z would lead you to a different, improved, result.'

There is a world of difference. My suspicion is that people who are suspicious of reason when applied to religious thinking are generally those that just want to avoid that accountability, that upgradeability.

Best wishes, 2RM.

2ndRateMind said:

I take the point, and it's well made. However, the difference between reason, and emotion, intuition and revelation etc is that reason is accountable, and, therefore, upradeable.

So, the correct answer to someone arguing from their subjective experience (that you disagree with) may well be 'I understand that is true for you...', whereas the correct answer to someone arguing for objective reality from their reasoning (that you disagree with) may well be 'I understand that you think X for reason Y, but maybe reasoning Z would lead you to a different, improved, result.'

There is a world of difference. My suspicion is that people who are suspicious of reason when applied to religious thinking are generally those that just want to avoid that accountability, that upgradeability.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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Hi 2RM,

Or perhaps some of those who are suspicious of reason when applied religious thinking have come to realize its limitations in that sphere. The diversity of belief within a religion such as Christianity is staggering, and everyone claims to have the best reasons to believe x, y or z. But if you listen to folks argue with each other about religious issues it doesn't take long to realize that the application of reason won't help them reach a resolution because their arguments are built to justify their underlying intuitions and experiences, which people are very rarely willing to change on the basis of reason alone.

I think the acknowledgement of the weaknesses of human reason implies humility rather than a lack of accountability.

Thanks
Rutty99

rutty99 said:

Hi 2RM,

Or perhaps some of those who are suspicious of reason when applied religious thinking have come to realize its limitations in that sphere. The diversity of belief within a religion such as Christianity is staggering, and everyone claims to have the best reasons to believe x, y or z. But if you listen to folks argue with each other about religious issues it doesn't take long to realize that the application of reason won't help them reach a resolution because their arguments are built to justify their underlying intuitions and experiences, which people are very rarely willing to change on the basis of reason alone.

I think the acknowledgement of the weaknesses of human reason implies humility rather than a lack of accountability.

Thanks
Rutty99

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I'm all for humility! The acceptance of reason as arbiter, though, is humility enough for me. It's objective, impartial, adamantine and totally just. As for the diversity of belief; it's clearly because people don't reason, when they should! But I agree with you that reason is unfortunately a rare reason for people to alter their religious mindset.

Best wishes, 2RM.

2ndRateMind said:

As for the diversity of belief; it's clearly because people don't reason, when they should!

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I disagree. Diversity of belief arises out of the diversity of intuition and experience, not (just) from the misapplication of reason. Reason (or logic anyway) is just set of rules; in itself it supplies no content. The content comes from intuition and experience, and the diversity of belief comes from the application and misapplication of reason to different content. That's why two reasonable people can apply reason correctly and arrive at very different conclusions. Because they are starting from different content.

Yes, I agree with you about reason and content. Thing is though, in an ideal world, you would start with the same content, apply reason, and end up at the same conclusion. So, we just need to agree what content is admissable as evidence. For example, we might decide that only content that is corroborated, or is repeatable, or is common experience, should be admitted. We might then stand a chance of arriving at reasonably objective conclusions. Of course, we might exclude some way left of field people, and some way left of field experiences of ordinary people, but I am not sure that would be a great loss to the enterprise.

Cheers, 2RM.

Well, I kind of go for this model:

Objective Reality -> (acts on) biology -> (mediates) experience -> (processed by) reason -> (arrives at) subjective truth -> (approximates) Objective Reality, or Truth with a big 'T'.

As can be seen, the entire purpose of the enterprise is to reproduce objective reality conceptually, inside our minds. We need this psychological model to help us take accurate decisions. Whether the ultimate goal (totally comprehensive knowledge) is actually achievable remains to be proven.

Cheers, 2RM.