Do you think
faith and reason are incompatible? Why? Why not?
First of all, I would like to say that I
completely think that faith and reason are compatible. The reason for this is
that I believe that faith stems out of reason. Although many people believe
that religion is based on blind conviction, it is quite the opposite. I
personally think that it cannot be possible that billions of people who follow
religions are not using reason to justify their faith. Faith stemmed from
humans searching for a meaning for their existence. Many humans asked the
essential question: who created the earth, and the universe? Using reason, many of these people
determined that someone, or a supernatural entity must have been the cause for
the creation of the universe. This assumption, which was based purely on
reason, still holds today, as there is no scientific explanation, which can
explain who or what was the cause for “the beginning of time”. The creation of
different gods stems from different cultures, and therefore, different
interpretations. Every religion offers a rational explanation to who created
the universe, or what will happen to us after we die. Many people would say
that there is no proof of god existing, or of what will happen in the
afterlife, and that believing the doctrines of these religions is completely
irrational. But there are many things in life, for which there are very few
explanations for, but we use reason to explain, such as alien life forms, or
demonic possessions. To put this in parallel, faith, which is an abstract concept
that deals with intangible things that leave little proof, is justified through
reason, as there must be an origin to our existence. Therefore, it can be said
that reason and faith are basically identical, when talking about religion,
faith is a type of reasoning used.
On the other hand, it is true that certain aspects
of religion, such as miracles, do not follow reason to one hundred percent.
Many of these miracles, and supernatural happenings that have been recorded in
several religions, require a great deal of faith in order to believe, as it
would be highly unlikely that these events occur again. For example,
scientifically, it would be impossible for someone to be resurrected, although
stories such as this are present in religious texts. Therefore, in certain
aspects of religion, reason is more detached, and faith takes over. It is not
that faith conflicts with reason, but rather, faith is a term to designate when reason is used in situations with little proof, such as religion.
Don't you think it is perfectly understandable that humans would come to the conclusion that the universe is governed by forces we cannot understand - until the day when we do understand them? I think human curiosity is extraordinary and it is exactly this that has brought us so far in just 2.5 million years. However, religions have not exactly encouraged people to be curious once some form of dogma was in place, and this might be because the various religions have been very successful in dissuading people from thinking for themselves, possibly because devout people who lived in the expectation of a better life after death were less likely to complain.. (see Marx "opium of the people" et al). If people don't THINK about or question the beliefs they adopt then inevitably many, many people will follow the majority. Does this make it true? Is what most people have thought correct by virtue of numbers? Also, you may like to think about whether religious beliefs are rational? Adam and Eve and the serpent makes for a wonderful story, and it has a kind of logic, but behind it all is the idea that disobedience and seeking knowledge are the worst possible sins.
ReplyDeleteHadi, you said that reason and faith are basically identical, can you provide more information on how these two are similar ? Personally when I think about faith, I don't relate it to reason. I believe that reason and faith are somewhat opposite of each other. While reason is based on thinking and questioning, faith requires to have a 100% confidence in the information presented to you without questioning it. For example, if we use reason to argue about the existence of God, we might end up believing that God does or does not exist depending on the logic we use. Reason is "the process of thinking about something in a logical way in order to form a conclusion or judgment." In order to answer the question "Does God exist ?", one might state that since there is no evidence for the existence of God, God does not exist. This type of thinking is logical. However, having faith is what makes us believe that God exists in spite of the lack of evidence. Therefore even if I think that your reasoning is good, I still disagree with you on the fact that reason and faith are identical.
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