| Faith and reason |
[Sep. 15th, 2006|12:42 am] |
Here's Andrew Sullivan:
I can only commend the Pope's latest homily on the great philosophical question of our day: the relationship between faith and reason, as it has unfolded in human history. ... reasoned faith, in order to exist, must include doubt and skepticism and the earnest search for truth, which, in turn, must necessarily never conflict with God. Doubt is not an obstacle to faith; it is necessary for faith to exist at all.
...The rationality of faith: now there's a concept we need to breathe new life into in a world where religion is too often described as an irrational leap or "submisson" to an illogical God.
I genuinely don't get this. To me, a defining thing about religion is that it's a choice to believe in an unprovable and arbitrary initial set of beliefs -- an attempt to call in an external authority to back up an essentially personal moral intuition. Given an arbitrary set of beliefs, what's the point of applying reason to them? Anything you want to believe you can just incorporate into your initial set; any conclusion you come to you don't like you can address at no cost by tweaking the initial set of beliefs. Any ethical conclusion based on religious premises that can't be derived simply from non-religious bases such as the Golden Rule is inherently suspect and clearly has diminished power to persuade believers in other faiths; for any that can be derived from non-religious bases, it's not clear what the value is added by starting from a religious premise. [1]
I know I should (a) read the Pope's homily properly (b) read Andrew Sullivan less (but his writing is so creamily smooth!). But still the question is: how can any thinking person be a Catholic? Where does the choice to submit to that specific laundry list of ethical requirements come from? How is it possible to see God's intervention as in any way the most likely explanation for anything that happened any time in history? Given that, from false premises anything can be proved (and there's no way to ensure the correctness of religious premises), what does "the rationality of faith" actually mean?
PS: This post is intended entirely so Ray and I can agree with each other. If you are NOT Ray, you are NOT THE INTENDED AUDIENCE.
UPDATE! I was drunk! So I left out the other obvious question, which is: why does this bother me so much?
[1] -- I know this is perilously close to the (apocryphal) Library of Alexandria argument. But I'm not suggesting burning anything... |
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| Comments: |
From: (Anonymous)
2006-09-15 08:36 am (UTC)
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I agree completely. - not Ray
No, I am Not Ray-tacus.
And I endorse this message.
I am not Ray - feel free to ignore me.
Is this the one where evolution is condemned as being unreasonable? Several things I do not get. I do not get the inane desire that many religious Christians have to find 'natural' explanations for Biblical events and miracles. To quote Ellis Peters "If it were reasonable, it wouldn't be miraculous."The need to have the physical world validate your faith all the time is surely a sign of a lack of faith. The 'rationality of faith' seems to me to be a closely related phenomenon.
Of all the Christian branches Catholicism gives me the most problems. The idea of having to submit your judgement to the judgment, whims and fashionable freaks of another human being who is palpably just as fallible as yourself (I am talking priests here, leaving aside issues of Papal infallibility and the like) as a condition of your faith is a vastly alien concept to me. I think Pope Ratzinger is an idiot and a paranoid and am not about to let him make any decisions for me. The fact that his opinions (as a German living in Italy) seem to carry more weight with my elected representatives that mine do really gives me the pip.
I probably would have agreed at one time, but now that strikes me as straining at a gnat. If you believe that priests can turn bread into the body of God, if you believe that God is watching everything that we do, then why not believe that a council of senior church members can be guided by God? And if you can believe that, why can't the man chosen by such a council also be guided by God?
No, it doesn't make any sense, but (apart from some of the moral teachings) which bits of Christianity do?
You are certainly right from the rationalist POV. However, if you are willing to believe in the divine and the miraculous (which I can sort of get because believing in fairies is FUN!) then there is little in the way of direct proof that you are not right. Proving a negative is hard! However, many, many priests over the centuries have provided physical and palpable proof that they are venial nitwits with the human compassion of the aforementioned gnat but their flock is still supposed to bow and scrape and eat whatever brand of crap they feel like serving up on a particular day.
I guess much of my resentment comes from the fact that large chunks of my country's social policy are foisted on us by said venial nitwits and I have to live with the consequences, whereas their bread-ruining God seems willing to leave me alone.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/62699914/3091196) | From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) artw
2006-09-17 07:14 pm (UTC)
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I know, I'm not the intended audience.
If it makes you feel any better, people who go to church largely ignore most of what most of their leaders say. It's not like going to a lecture. They aren't there to listen to the person at the front.
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