Reason and Faith

Friday, April 11th 2014

If reason stems from logic, what is the source of faith? How do you define faith? Can you give an example of how you might apply it in real life? How are faith and reason related? 

Since reason stems from logic then, the source of faith is logic. In the early ages, people were asking themselves various questions. In order to answer these questions, they came up with the idea of a spiritual world. After closely looking at different religions and the applications of faith in other areas, I have come to realize that faith and reason are not polar opposites. In fact, faith can be defined as the conviction, or belief in something without material evidence. Through this definition, we can assume that we have faith in our senses and in our memories since we are relying on them in order to acquire our knowledge without any evidence that they are reliable. As we have already seen in the unit of perception, our memories and senses are actually fallible. Therefore, we must have some faith in them in order to form our perceptual knowledge. We can also use reason in order to prove that God actually exists. For example we can disprove the paradox of suffering which rises the question “Why is there so much suffering in the world if God is all knowing and all loving? We can therefore use reason in order challenge this paradox and prove the existence of God.  First of all, according to Islam, the world we are currently living in is temporary and therefore all the suffering and atrocities will eventually come to an end. Those that are able to follow the right path in this temporary world will discover an eternal world where no suffering exists. In addition, if we acknowledge the fact that God has implemented some physical and morale laws, it would make sense that he allows suffering if a person does not adhere to these laws. If an innocent person suffers, it could be to test his faith and commitment to his religion. Those who are able to face this suffering and continue to believe in God despite their misery would ascertain their faith to God and continue do-good deeds to repent themselves. However, if one does not have faith, it would make sense for him to respond to all the suffering through arguments against God. Therefore both sides could use reason to prove whether God exists or not. 

Another real life situation where we could apply faith would be medicine. When we go to a doctor, or take medicine to cure an illness, we are certain that our disease will be cured. In this case we have faith in science since we trust the previous scientific discoveries without having any evidence that these conclusions are actually valid and that the scientist were competent. For example, how can we know for sure that atoms actually exist as it is since no tool is precise enough to see an atom? As a result, we need to have faith in the scientists that came up with the atomic model. This causes a chain reaction since many other scientific discoveries rely on the atomic model. As a result our faith in the existence of atoms affects our whole belief in science and enables us to acquire more knowledge. Finally, through these examples we can see that faith and reason are not completely opposites as we can use reason to prove faith and since faith can lead to further reasoning.