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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.
Beliefs derived from the experience of others. That’s how empiricism normally works. Even with science. It’s not like every scientist repeats every experiment to avoid having to trust anyone. Those of us who aren’t scientists normally take all our science on faith, not having done any experiments since high school.
Skip Tillich. Go to Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being. G-d most assuredly exists, but our concept of “being” doesn’t come close to capturing a G-d who radically transcends all categories of human reason.
I think it is very likely that God does not exist. It is possible, however, that God exists but is indifferent to human beings.
This would explain why God did not intervene when Stalin was killing people in the Soviet Union, when Pol Pot was killing people in Cambodia, when the Protestants and Catholics were killing each other in Europe and when Hitler was building his death camps.
I am well aware of your confidence levels.
Now are you interested in talking about the evidence?
Go for it.
Great video. Plantinga was at ND when I was there. I may have actually met him. It was a long time ago.
Ok, I guess we’ll try this. Probably just one step at a time.
Do you agree that we have knowledge that Socrates died in prison after drinking hemlock?
Well, thanks. But it was Alan Silvestri, Alvin Plantinga, Karl Popper, and Bertrand Russell that made it great.
I am not familiar with the quality of the evidence regarding Socrates dying in prison after drinking hemlock. Also, I do not know what trained historian think of the story. So, my current position is that it sounds plausible to me. But I could understand if historians were less confident in the Socrates story than, say, a story about Trump.
Pointing out that logical positivism and verificationism are not philosophically sound viewpoints is one thing, but this doesn’t mean that religious claims are true, or even provide us with a basis for assessing whether they are true.
If you’re that skeptical you may be able to get some points for consistency, but we won’t get very far in talking about evidence if you don’t recognize the existence of any.
Do you think there is anything that happened before 1,000 AD that we have knowledge of?
Of course. It just rules out one ridiculous yet very common objection.
The basis is the facts. Some of them we might be able to know philosophically or scientifically, but the big ones will be known from history.
Yes. But I would say that historians probably would tell us that if we go far back into the past, it can be difficult to have a high degree of confidence about what happened compared to say, Biden giving a speech that was covered by multiple media outlets.
When it comes to ancient history, we are dealing with fragmented evidence and historians have to piece evidence together and try to figure out what happened. So, there are likely different degrees of confidence in these events.
So I know Socrates died in prison after drinking hemlock, and I know he was a Greek philosopher, and I know that Cicero was a Roman philosopher, and I know that Caesar became emperor of Rome somewhere around 50 BC.
Do you have knowledge of any of these things?
Some of the most recent historical study gives us more and more data toward factual evidence. At least we need to read these scholars and their books including Craig Keener https://www.amazon.com/Christobiography-Memories-History-Reliability-Gospels/dp/0802876757/ and Gary Habermas https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1683595491/
Habermas is unique in his apologetic approach. He will only take evidence categories that skeptics allow.
I wanted to make sure to at least offer these two scholars to the discussion since I don’t continuously follow these threads.
I don’t have a high degree of familiarity with how confident ancient historians are regarding those events. So, my tentative answer to your question would be, “Yes,” but I wouldn’t bet my house on those events, given my unfamiliarity with how confident ancient historians are about those events and why they are more or less confident.
Ok, so you agree that knowledge of historical events in the ancient world is possible.
How do you think we get that knowledge?
It’s knowledge with a low level of confidence compared to, say, whether the stock market went up or down yesterday.
As to how we get that knowledge, we might find coins that have an emperor’s face on it. We might find writings about a person from the distant past. Those writings might be entirely mythical, partly mythical or an entirely historical.
Mt. Vesuvius buried the town of Pompeii in AD 79. Give or take.
Do you really think it’s that simple? If we’re lucky we find writings, and maybe they’re right, and sometimes we find a coin, and that’s about it?
I am willing to accept the preponderance of accounts, as nothing which demands special explanation, or which is otherwise well-refuted, is required for such acceptance.
Hey, listen. I am not anything close to a PhD in ancient history. I am making wild guesses here. But there’s also archeology. There are surveys of literature. There are writings about battles and emperors and Kings. There is the study of ancient languages and how these languages change over time. So, Hebrew at one point in time is different than Hebrew at another point in time.
Already with the tendentious reductionism. We all know where you’re going, and you’re just going to wind up relying on extraordinary claims without extraordinary support, no matter how long you drag the preliminaries out. On the other hand, dragging out the prelimiaries would give a less honest person than yourself the opportunity to catch meaningless mistakes and declare them crippling.
Ok, I’ll answer and then, unless something changes, we’re probably done with this conversation.
No, it’s not that simple.
You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in history. And you don’t have to make wild guesses. You just have to know that there are characteristics of reliable testimony that we can look at, and ways of piecing together information from multiple testimonies and from archaeology.
But you don’t seem interested in looking at any of the details, so I guess we’re done.
Straw man fallacy. I’m doing nothing of the sort.
No–extraordinary support for extraordinary claims. Dramatically better than anything Socrates or Cicero can muster, for example.
Those tools are entirely valid for unremarkable claims. None of them will document the fact of a miracle — only of contemporary (and later) claims.
Based on some famous sources and scholarship, I accept that a man named Jesus lived in the area at the time, and got a heck of a reputation as a rabble-rouser. You could say I’m Jewish on Jesus.
If you mean that extraordinary claims require better evidence than ordinary claims, I agree. I’ve been saying that around here since 2015.
If you mean that historical evidence cannot support any miraculous claim, you are simply mistaken. If a miracle happened in history, historical evidence can support it.
Hey, now that’s an interesting assertion. I might have to think about that. First, we might want to define what a miracle is and under what circumstances we would think that someone claiming to have seen a miracle was either mistaken, delusional, dishonest or accurately reporting what happened.
It’s past 9 PM here in Indiana. I’ll check in again in about 8 or 9 hours.
Wrong. A fallacious proof cannot establish that 1 = 0; it is the proof which errs.
No perpetual motion machine or “overunity” device can be built. Any claim to have invented such a thing is suspect evidence, weak tea, and the truth will out. Nonetheless, these claims abound. Those claims are faith, and their proponents typically claim to have transcended something. But it’s just words and ignorance.
I am less certain about the non-existence of specific supernatural phenomenon than I am about the non-possibility of perpetual motion. Perhaps UFOs actually are piloted by extraterrestrials, etc. But extraordinary evidence is not forthcoming for these extraordinary claims.
It’s not a mortal’s job to pitifully proclaim that God does not exist, Harrumph! — not in a logical sense. But given how many modern people believe absolutely preposterous things, it is hardly uncharitable to politely discount even mass witness of extraordinary events thousands of years ago as misinterpretation — at best.
Anyway. I dispute your talked-around but not supported claim that “Faith Transcends Reason” except as a tautology — those who have already privileged faith above reason will “find” that faith “transcends” reason in their experience — and reasonable arguments will not shake them. And shaking faith ain’t my concern anyway. In general, faith is a good thing. But it isn’t science of any sort, just like astrology or homeopathy.