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Faith Transcends Reason
The ball and the cross at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Picture by Colin; click for details.
There is some evidence for the truth of some religious claims.
Some religious claims cannot be perfectly proven.There is some evidence for the truth of some religious claims.
Some religious claims are beyond our complete comprehension.There is some evidence that faith is the right move to make in life.
Faith goes beyond reason.
The word “transcend” is the best I know for this sort. X transcends Y when Y fails to contain X while still being relevant to it in some way. The top floor of the skyscraper transcends the middle floors, but not so much the local zoo. Marriage transcends engagement and courtship, but not a jar of peanuts.
Faith is outside the jurisdiction of reason, but that doesn’t mean they are completely separate.
It’s a real shame I don’t have more Luther, Calvin, and Edwards in my head. What’s worse is that I never learned Hebrew. But I can tell you from my own personal study that these ideas are in Christian thinkers like Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Alvin Plantinga. (And Kierkegaard is probably closer than you think.) Philosophy giants William James and Immanuel Kant–maybe not exactly Christian, but friendly enough–are pretty similar.
Much more importantly, this is also in the New Testament.
Here’s how I put it in my essay in this recent book I edited, which is very cheap on Kindle (hint, hint):
Published in Religion & PhilosophySay a young man (call him Mark if you like) is in love with a young lady (you could call her Shonda). He is seriously thinking about putting a ring on her finger. Suppose he were to sit down with a pen and paper to analyze his situation and were to estimate the probability that this course of action will lead to years of marital bliss (stipulating that he is the kind of nerd who might actually do this). He is not going to end up with a result of 100 percent. There is always the tiny, tiny chance that she is secretly a witch, an alien, or a robot. More likely, perhaps personality differences that have already become evident hint at years of communication problems and marital fights. Optimistically, the young man would be pretty lucky to be able to estimate a probability of around 95 percent.
But what young lady wants 95 percent of a ring?
The fact of the matter is simple: His action ought to be either 100 percent or 0 percent.
Of course, the conclusion of the matter may be a 100-percent matter. Given pretty good odds that they are meant to be together, it is reasonable to say that there is only one right course of action. What right action avoids all possible risk of a bad outcome? And that is another way of making the main point: Even an action which is certainly right may be based on uncertain evidence. In any case, the action must be either done, or not: He must give his lady friend a ring, or not. Similarly, she must agree to be his wife, or not; if she is less than fully convinced about it, she cannot act accordingly by becoming less than fully a wife, for there is no such thing, and if there were he is not asking her for it.
Faith is like that. It involves a commitment, not only of belief but of life. There is no faith without repentance (Acts 17:30–31) or without works (Jas 2:14–26). There is no faith without following Jesus, who says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt 16:24). This commitment is meant to be total; we do not get to keep 10 percent of our idols and 10 percent of our sins, and follow Jesus carrying 90 percent of a cross if a good study of apologetics leads us to assess the probability that Jesus is the Messiah at just 90 percent. The evidence is not binary, but the action is: We do it, or not.
I’ve worked IR&D. Knowledge, power, and responsibility are independent variables. Power especially so.
A thought experiment:
Imagine some adult, some guardian, living in a remote, isolated area and are in charge of 500 children. These children are as young as 10 and as old as 15. These children do no know much about how to survive in this remote, isolated area and there are no other adults around.
This adult, this guardian, decides on a peculiar strategy. He decides to stay out of sight and remains silent. Despite having all the power and knowledge these children need to survive and thrive, this adult decides it will be interesting to see how these children handle things on their own.
Most of these children die unknowingly drinking contaminated water, eating poisonous foods and/or succumbing to common illnesses. This adult, however, knows that the drinking water is contaminated and that many of the foods these children are eating are poisonous and knows how to prevent the illnesses that are afflicting these children.
A few of the children who survive occasionally learn from the deaths of other children. But just as often they repeat the same mistakes the other children made and sometimes they invent foolish and sometimes harmful ways to treat the illnesses they face.
The adult guardian watches in silence. The adult guardian could help these children, could explain to these children how to make sure that the water they drink isn’t contaminated, how to distinguish the plants that are poisonous from the ones that are not. But the adult guardian just watches the children die.
We would rightfully call this adult guardian an awful, negligent guardian.
But this is essentially the way God is depicted by theologians who say that God didn’t inform people so that they could stop the various diseases from killing millions of human beings because it was important for people to have “free will.”
They are essentially admitting that God just sat and watched while for thousands of years human beings died terrible deaths due to diseases they did not understand. It’s almost as though God doesn’t exist at all.
It’s the wrong way to look at it. An infinite amount of power in G-d does not preclude creatures having a finite amount of power.
So the analogue in Christian theology here is G-d not telling us how to cure malaria, prevent polio, etc.? That’s the only analogue, right?
It’s not limited to Christian theology, but would include any theology that posits a God that retains enough power to significantly intervene in the world.
And it’s not just that humans were ignorant of the cure for various diseases. Humans didn’t even know that they were drinking contaminated water.
God presumably had the knowledge. Man did not. And God just stayed silent. No revelation saying, “Hey, it’s the water that is contaminated that is causing those illnesses.”
Sort of points to “The God that isn’t there.“
So . . . the answer to my question is “Yes”? But the question should be expanded slightly to include knowledge of the diseases?
A Good parent or guardian would say, “Hey, don’t drink that water! It’s contaminated. It’ll make you sick! That bad water is what caused your cousin to die last week!”
God, if he actually exists, didn’t intervene.
So . . . the answers to the questions in my last comment are “Yes, and yes”?
Yes.
So do you want to talk about this analogy with respect to Christian theology specifically? I have no interest in talking about it in purely general terms.
It reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes mystery that got solved by noticing the dog that didn’t bark. Sometimes it’s God’s non-intervention that is the biggest clue that God doesn’t exist.
I realize that Christian theologians have various explanations for people of dying of various illnesses before medical science advanced to the point that cures could be discovered. It’s just that these explanations seem more like rationalizations for a God who either doesn’t exist or is indifferent.
So . . . the answer to my question is “Yes”?
Yes.
Thank you.
Now are you aware that there are some differences between this analogy and what Christian theology says?
Yes.
God doesn’t act like an all powerful, all good, all knowing God. Instead, God seems to play a very passive role in our world. Thus, the “free will” explanation is used.
At some point, when one realizes that God plays such a negligible or non-existent role in our world, one starts to consider the possibility that God doesn’t exist.
Luther was no fool.
Godel demonstrated that human cognition is transcendent (transfinite). Ergo, transcendence exists. Ergo, full transcendence exists. A characteristic of God. Shared to a degree by us.
There is already a description of how consciousness is material. See Noesis, the book
Still hoping to read it. 98 research papers and other things keep getting in the way.
But it’s not a traditional materialism, is it?
I’m sure I would agree were I aware of so little of what G-d has done.
Good.
And you are aware that the strength of an analogy like this depends on how strong the similarities are, and on how many and how strong are the differences?
Yes
Or perhaps you have been misled into thinking that God has done the things you have attributed to God.
Ok, shall we look at the differences now? Five come to mind.
Your analogy makes that guy the same kind of being as the kids, whereas in Christian theology G-d is G-d and we are not. G-d has authority and we do not.
Your analogy has the kids innocent of their situation. In Christian theology, we caused our own situation.
Your analogy leaves out that guy doing lots and lots of things to help the kids know how to live rightly and improve their own situation.
Your analogy leaves out that guy becoming a kid and dying with them and returning to life and sharing his own life with them.
Your analogy ends with death. In Christian theology death is the not the end. Not just afterlife either. We’re talking resurrection and ultimate fixing of this world.
No, I’ve looked into it, and the evidence is pretty good.
So one must assume that central tenets of Christian Theology are true to reach the conclusion that God exists despite his passivity in situations I have presented.
But if one begins the inquiry undecided regarding those tenets that you mentioned, one might conclude that God either doesn’t exist or is indifferent to human suffering on an enormous scale.
You are inserting the verdict in favor of Christianity in the evaluation of the evidence.
Or you allowed confirmation bias to lead you toward an erroneous conclusion.
You’ve changed the subject. You’ve abandoned your analogy to what Christian theology says, and now you’re talking about the strength of the evidence for it.
No. Try to pay attention to what I actually said and not to what you assume I mean.