From: aull@ll.mit.edu (Brian Aull)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Faith vs. reason
Date: 15 Sep 92 12:43:14 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science

On Thu, 27 Aug 1992 06:24:00 GMT Brett G. Lemoine writes:

>It seems clear to me that there is no empirical evidence that requires a
>divine being's existence. Whether the evidence at hand suggests a creator
>is mostly a matter of opinion. It would seem then that logic and reason
>cannot be (certainly have not yet been) used to convince a person to
>believe in God when they do not. I feel safe in saying that many Christians
>would agree with this statement.

>So, leaving logic and reason, many theists appeal to 'faith'. My questions
>are as follows:

>1) What kind of a thing is 'faith' that we should accept as 'true' what faith
>  tells us?

>2) How are we to determine _what_ faith tells us? (for example, why does
>   faith give us the judeo-christian God as opposed to Aphrodite?)

>3) How can we determine whether a person is relying on 'faith' as opposed
>   to "wishful thinking"?

>In order to squelch any effort at side tracking this discussion to the
>issue of what gives logic and reason validity not shared by faith, I'll
>attempt to answer that question up front. The kinds of questions that
>logic and reason legitimately apply to are usually testable. Experience
>has shown that with true premises, and valid arguments, logic will
>provide the same answers as physical experimentation. Reason, I would
>argue is a less strict use of the rules of logic. Since the rules are
>not so precise, reason alone does, on occasion, fail, and should not
>be treated as legitimate as logic. Faith, however, seems to be
>indistinguishable from simple assertion. The kinds of questions usually
>addressed by faith are typically untestable. Therefore it would seem that
>unless someone can provide a distinction between faith and assertion that
>there is no more reason to believe in an argument on faith than there
>would be to believe an unsupported assumption.

>Anyone care to try and dissuade me from my conclusions?

No.   I agree with the concerns that motivate these questions.  But I have some 
comments.  I don't  subscribe to this group, so forgive me if I repeat points 
already made on this thread.

First, I think "faith vs. reason" is an apple-orange comparison.   Reason (or 
logic) is a PROCESS that brings one from premises to conclusions.   Faith, 
broadly speaking, is an inner conviction about a set of conclusions.   Usually 
in speaking about faith, little attention is given to the question of what was 
the process that produced it in the first place.

Second, logic can only operate on premises, not provide them.  Therefore if the 
premises are flawed, even logic will lead to wrong conclusions.   Euclidean 
geometry is based on the premise that parallel lines never intersect.   The 
experiments that verified general relativity showed that this premise does not 
correctly describe the universe we live in.   Thus, whether we have logic or 
not, we are stuck with the problem of how to validate a premise.

Science, where logic and reason have been such successful tools, validates its 
premises by a process of generalization from physical observation, not logical 
deduction.   I have never seen a cat without a tail, for example, so I 
postulate, that is, I guess, that "All cats have tails" is a law of nature.    
The law can never be proven, only disproven by the discovery of a cat with no 
tail.   Thus in science, a leap of faith is being taken!   This is particularly 
true when we spend time, money, energy etc.,  creating technologies.   The 
willingness to expend this effort reflects an inner confidence that the laws 
underlying those technologies will not suddenly change next Wednesday, 
rendering all our devices and inventions useless.  Logic cannot prove that this 
will not happen next Wednesday!

I agree that logic cannot establish the existence or non-existence of God.   
Nor can the existence of God be directly tested through physical observation.   
We can examine an amoeba and find out just about everything we want to know 
about it.   When it comes to God, however, we are on the wrong end of the 
microscope.   If we were capable of understanding God as well as we understand 
the things that we handle with logic, it would be hard to maintain that that we 
were dealing with a Supreme Being.   I think this is an important difference 
between the contexts of religion and science.

One must also realize that science deals with the physical characterization of 
the universe, whereas religion deals with ontological, spiritual and moral 
questions.   So it is unfair to claim that a religious belief system has not 
been "tested" by the believer merely because one does not observe the same type 
of testing that is necessary in the context of science.   Spiritual "premise 
validation" should not be expected to be identical to physical "premise 
validation."

When religion is compared unfavorably to science, unfair assumptions are often 
made that reflect a historical backlash against religion.   First, the 
differences between the questions addressed by the two are often not accounted 
for.   Religion, in many respects, attacks more difficult questions.   Second,  
religion is often denigrated for failing to validate its premises through a 
deductive process, while it is overlooked that science, which is ultimately 
inductive, has the same limitation.   Third,  most people have pre-Newtonian 
ideas about physical motion.   Thus when one speaks of science, one is 
referring to a body of knowledge and discipline possessed by a very small 
minority of the population.   When one speaks of religion, however, one is 
referring to the entire range of beliefs existing throughout the population, 
which, of course, includes a lot of rank superstition and "wishful thinking."   
You never hear of anyone criticizing science for the fact that most people 
don't understand it correctly, but the analogous criticism in the realm of 
spiritual reality is often directed at religion.

Since trying to prove the existence of God through deduction is futile, I might 
take the converse approach.   Assume the existence of a God that has certain 
attributes (or His non-existence)  and then ask what kind of a universe would 
be a plausible outcome of such an assumption.   My own conclusion here is that 
there is a God who created us, and that our purpose is to undertake a spiritual 
journey whose goal is to reflect the attributes of this Creator.   This journey 
is supposed to be difficult, and we are supposed to have the freedom to stumble 
and have set backs.   In other words, it's supposed to be challenging.   This 
description, for me, makes our universe easier to imagine as an outcome than 
other descriptions.

Now to the questions.  Faith is a confidence in a set of premises that is 
established through a process of interpreting experience.   This definition 
applies both in the physical and the spiritual/ethical characterization of the 
universe.   The better the validation procedure, the better and more useful the 
premises in which one ends up having faith.  

Is there a spiritual premise validation process that really produces answers 
that tell us something about the universe we live in?    I would claim that 
there is such a process, and that religious faith, in its best form, is shaped 
by a process of critical inquiry rather than being defended against such a 
process.    An important prerequisite to a good validation process is not to be 
blinded by prejudice or by self-centered ulterior motives - to approach the 
task with openness and humility.    Many do not succeed in doing this, so much 
faith is, in fact, wishful thinking.

I believe that God, through a succession of spiritual luminaries who have 
founded the major religions of history,  has left His "footprints" in human 
history.    Despite the abuses perpetrated in the names of these religions and 
the corruption introduced by priestly interpretation, the religions display a 
remarkable similarity in their basic ethical teachings.   The golden rule, for 
example, is a teaching variously repeated in all the major religions, 
irrespective of their time or place of origin.    It is through examination of 
these "footprints" and asking certain questions that one validates the 
existence of a God and finds out about His attributes and His will.

Many of my thoughts are influence by my own religion, the Baha'i Faith, and by 
the insights of its Prophet-Founder, Baha'u'llah, on the process of 
distinguishing what is valid from what is specious.   For those who are 
interested,  I have just posted a much longer article on soc.religion.bahai on 
the subject of science and religion.  The main point of this essay is that 
there is faith in science and that rational validation is both possible and 
desirable in the realm of religion.   Furthermore, science cannot provide 
values.  This is a primary role of religion. 
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:15797 talk.origins:10958