Homologue and analogue realities, just like positive and negative numbers...

Hows about this: science is a model based on observation. Homologous. Faith is a analogue of reality.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Corinthians - 2.9)

^^Thats stage one: 2 types of supposed reality...


God is said to have "...created things in pairs" (koran 36.36).

This is like yin and yang, the opposites that pervade creation.

Philosophical convergence points to the reality of duality..

We have the seen and the unseen, the faith based and the observational, the religious and the scientific, the phenomenal and the noumenal aspects of the world etc.


Stage 2 of the argument. There are different mathematical number lines:


Its like (comparavble to) positive and negative numbers. In maths. Or the real numbers and the imaginary

But negative numbers and imaginary numbers have a function in mathematics, and even in physics. Eg, Einsteins equations use imaginary numbers.

Conclusion. The unseen (faith world) is like a number line in maths. It is not "obviously redundant" or "obviously unreal"....


So, I am arguing from analogy - there are different typse of reality, beyond conventional science, just like there are different number lines etc.


People may actually do important calculations with "faith-based modelling", just like imaginary numbers are used in Einsteins equaitions.

But pragmatism, in that faith has a use, does not actually imply realism, that religious realities exist. But it does not rule it out either.


And so there is an inductive basis for saying there *could be* a transcendent world the religions talk about... heaven and hell etc...just as there are other number lines in maths.

Now, the question is, can one bellieve this to be logically strong (ie inductively strong) without making a leap of faith?

If inductive strength is based on observation eg weather men are trustworthy 36% of the time etc. Then we can evaluate a claims strength. The sun rose yesterday, therefre it will rise today etc.

On the other hand, are inductive inferences about the unseen necessarily void of strength, even even though they may be cogent (ie present a meainingful case to be considered).


Faiith is that bridge that transforms reality for the believer. Religion becomes "true" - the heart reaches out to the future state before it actually sees it...

Just like the hand reaches for the door handle...

The "kingdom of heaven" is "already-not yet". The analogue reality is accessed spiritually so to speak, in a seperate form of cognition (with spiritual eyes, a different brain function) to the everyday world based cognition.

Or is faith the presumption of knowing where observation just fails every time, stumped?

It depends who does the defining...

Sometimes anthropologists, in attempts to be apologetic (I suppose) rather than rationalistically critical of faiths, have presented them as metaphorical, as tropes, as a figure of speech. Thus the tribal priest becomes a "symbolist poet" etc.

But for me I believe faith to be analogous to reality, and I am a believer I in God and the afterlife.

After all the objects of faith cannot be known directly, and any models must be based either on direct personal revelation, or otherwise empirically on the world around us. For example the parables of the Gospels, the firm ground, the seed etc. Or the concept of Kingdom and Lamb of God etc. They are (intented to be taken as) structured "insights" into another dimension via worldy concepts. A person with no worldy experience, could not grasp what a King or a Lamb is meant to be.

Also in serious academic theology there are the analogies of proportion and analogies of kind in looking at and discussing divine attributes. So proportion is like this: we are good, but God is more so etc We are wise, but God has infinite wisdom etc.

Or analogy of kind, just as the weather is "healthy" in that it produces health, and so God is good according to his analogous effects on creation.

Even in the bibie:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

If the "what we hope for" is integeral to faith , and the "what we hope for" is conceptualised in terms of worldly analogies, then analogies are integeral to faith. Thats why I quoted this text in the OP, beacuse analogies point at their objects in an incomplete fashion:


"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Corinthians - 2.9)

For me faith is a template (for example "what is a template?" is discussed here) which sucks the person through a time line (you go to the mosque, or church, or temple etc) in this world and helps form drives, emotions, sense of identity etc. As is science, but science is meant to be homologous to reality, corresponding in a direct fashion (homologous means "having the same relation, relative position, or structure" - google definition.)