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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.
Faith is orthogonal to reason.
People accepted Millikan’s result for the electric charge on an electron because, well, he was Millikan. But it turns out that even Millikan could make a small mistake in the viscosity of air. People repeated the experiment many times, and when they noticed a difference, they put it down to their own experimental error, not Millikan’s because, again, he was Millikan. You have to pay attention to what your faith is based on.
I agree. I also think that our confidence levels are likely to be raised when we have the option of replicating the scientific trial. So, if a scientist reports something, other scientists might want to try a similar experiment to see if the get similar results.
There is also the issue of interpreting data from experiments. Someone might notice that his serum cholesterol went down on a diet of salami and coconut milk and conclude that salami and coconut milk consumption are an effective means of reducing ones cholesterol.
But another researcher might notice that the person consumed only 900 calories of salami and coconut milk each day and consider the possibility that caloric restriction and the resulting weight loss, not the constituents of the diet, was responsible for the drop in serum cholesterol during the diet trial. So, putting someone on a diet that maintains weight (no weight gain or weight loss) consisting of salami and coconut milk would be a better means of determining if such foods are an effective therapy for high cholesterol.
It’s not surprising given the complexity of the natural world that people can form inaccurate conclusions from their own observations.
If There’s No God, Why Not Murder?
with Emerson Green.
Zackly.This is what I had in mind as soon as I read the title of this piece. But Auggie wants more than that. He wants faith extending along reason, and surpassing it in its dimension. Hence the cutesy skyscraper-and-sewer etc etc.
I considered writing a post with something like your title. But the title would be most of the article :-)
If you are used to thinking in Cartesian terms, the intersection is one point. If.
Can’t quite track this, but I’ll assume that you see it my way. Vectors measured in cartesian space, etc.
One may certainly move in both dimensions at the same time — that’s just a vector with non-zero components in each dimension. And Heaven knows, one may move in only one dimension, a vector parallel to that axis, with a zero component in the other.
It is in this sense that I remarked (to @flicker) to the effect that if the reason component is zero, then by definition all that is left is faith — the faith component is the entire vector. Not the same thing as saying that faith is the absence of reason. Just that the two are orthogonal.
So I disagree with this mere donut-on-the-lawn-of-reason:
I would offer (in completion of Auggie’s metaphor) that the key to transcendence is understanding that it is not simply excess, that is, “exceeding” something. That’s motion in the same dimension. The middle floor is exceeded by the top floor. The middle floor is transcended by the sky.
So show me. Go back and say something about it.
I said it was relevant. I didn’t say it was the same dimension. Don’t read everything I say in terms of one spatial illustration of one third of a concept. (The marriage illustration was also a much better one.)
Not necessarily spatial. “Orthogonal” in statistics can mean that two data sets each have variables that are independent of the other data set.
Cool, cool. And I’m down with saying faith is orthogonal to reason.
The skyscraper illustration was spatial, and it looks to me like his objection was based on reading it in spatial terms alone, and everything else in terms of that particular illustration.
I think faith (confidence) can be good or bad depending on what one has faith (confidence) in.
If someone is confident that if they take a medication as the doctor recommends that it will treat an illness they are suffering from, then that confidence can be helpful.
However, if someone is confident that there is no need to pursue a career or get an education because “Jesus is coming soon,” as many Jehovah’s witnesses were duped into believing, that kind of confidence can be harmful.
Define “good.”
My ideas of “good” are centered around reduced suffering, increased happiness and increased health and life expectancy.
So, take the 16 year old Jehovah’s Witness who is taught that “Jesus is coming back in a few years” and that therefore there is no point in pursuing an education or a career. But Jesus doesn’t come back in a few years and now this person is 25 years old, doesn’t have a viable career and is confused about why the religious leaders he respected misinformed him.
I would argue that in that situation, his faith was misplaced and he was harmed by it.
Yes.
Ooo. Oh, no you di’n’t.
You must admit this is an ancient and unsolved argument.
Is it inappropriate here to assume that for the purposes of THIS conversation, “Faith” refers to a belief in the Christian pantheon et cetera?
Health and life expectancy break in favor of religious observance. (The Mayo Clinic lobs “spirituality in there, probably to keep the crystal-rubbers off of their backs.) That would also seem to relieve at least a little suffering as well. Happiness? That seems to favor religion too, although this study didn’t find any benefits to their more limited definition of health, but happiness of those studied was higher.
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. As far as calling a date certain for the End Times, they’ve eased off on that since 1914. (He did return then, but in heaven where we couldn’t see him, and it was at that point that I decided to watch a ballgame instead of reading any more.)
So, you’re 0 for 4 and your example has a hole in it. You should have made it the Calvinists. Everybody piles on the Calvinists – it’s predestined to be so.
As for life expectancy, religious observance is higher in the United States than in most nations of Europe, yet life expectancy is lower in the United States compared to most of the nations of Europe.
Also, African-Americans are among the most religious ethnic groups in the United States but have lower life expectancies than most other Americans.
JWs did not ease off their predictions after 1914. They kept it up until very recently.
So, I think it is you that is swinging and missing here. Nice try.
Studies generally try to limit outside factors as much as possible. Throwing in Europeans, or adding a population distinction that it is not clear the study did or didn’t take into account, tends to make rubbish of the study.
This whole “science” thing doesn’t seem to be your bag.
Very recently. Darn. I’m sorry I missed it.
God is Good.
The highly Christian nations in Africa have some of the world’s lowest life expectancies. Places like Japan and Denmark where Christianity was either never very strong or has waned have some of the world’s highest life expectancies.
You want to ignore this data and pretend you are doing “science.”
If God is Good, why did God play such a passive role during the European wars of religion when Protestants and Catholics were slaughtering each other? Wouldn’t a Good God prevent the kind of religious confusion that generated such conflict?
Also, if God is Good, why did God play such a passive role during Stalin’s mass murders and during Hitler’s mass murders.
Why is God so passive in the face of evil. It’s almost as though God doesn’t exist at all.
I just stated the fact. God answers questions from atheists. If you really want an answer, why don’t you ask Him? This has happened before. Atheist usually start with, “God, if you exist, answer me this — ” And God will answer if you honestly want to know. It may be a process of hours, days or a month, but what’s the harm? It’s worth a shot.
I’ll let you give it a shot and I am sure you will let us know what God tells you as to why he decided not to get involved as millions got slaughtered during the European wars of Religion, Stalin’s mass murders and Hitler’s mass murders.
If you did “talk to God”and received an answer, my guess is that “God’s answer” would really be your answer because of God’s apparent non-existence.
More to the point, why did he play so passive a role in the first sin? Why did he give man the freedom to sin from the very beginning? We can see clearly that it didn’t suit his purposes in creating the world. Why can’t he?
If God doesn’t exist or if God is indifferent to human beings, this would explain why God didn’t intervene in the European wars of Religion between the Catholics and the Protestants, Stalin’s mass murders and Hitler’s mass murders.
It is still possible that God had reasons for allowing those wars and murders to occur even if we are unaware of what those reasons are. But we don’t have to wonder about “unknown reasons” if God doesn’t exist at all or if God is indifferent.
Thus, those events I mentioned should be considered strong evidence that God does not exist or God is indifferent to human beings.
I found this interesting Christian YouTube channel titled “Bread of Life” hosted by Rebekah. She invited 2 people I am familiar with: Nathan Ormond from the United Kingdom and James Fodor from Australia. Fodor is an atheist. Ormond is probably best described as an agnostic, but maybe not.
The discussion is about whether God is the best explanation for morality.
Btw, I am not trying to change the subject. I just found this interesting.
I’d think a person who didn’t believe in God would find these questions uninteresting and irrelevant, and certainly wouldn’t get emotionally involved in them.