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New Book on Faith and Reason
There are several things which defenders of faith (and particularly of Christianity) say about faith and reason:
- It’s consistent with everything (or everything else) we know;
- it has good evidence in its favor;
- it’s something we can know independently of the evidence;
- and it transcends reason.
And dang if those four things don’t all fit together! I talk about some of this in my new book. The backstory of this book is in nine published articles dealing with faith and reason. This book improves those articles and adds one more as well as a philosophical dialogue.
Some of the backstory is on Ricochet, mostly around here:
- Knowledge and Faith Can Be the Same Thing
- Correcting Your Miseducation, Part 4: Faith Is Trust, and Reason and Faith Are Friends
- Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen and Yet Have Believed
- Some Varieties of Empiricism
- Empiricism and Miracles
- What My Students Said About Religion and Science
- Can Religious Knowledge Be Verified?
- Can Religion Be Empirical?
- More Ricochet Posts Make It Big
- Dialogue on Faith and Reason
- Knowledge By Faith
- It’s Not True that Empiricism and Religion Are Never the Same Thing
- Faith Transcends Reason
Faith, Reason, and Beyond Reason: Essays on Epistemology and Theology is $37 at the moment from the publisher’s website. That’s US dollars. I’m sorry to say–not Zimbabwe or Hong Kong. There should be a Kindle edition soon, which will probably be cheaper.
Update: Amazon still isn’t listing everything on my author page, but I do find a Kindle edition of the book available for $10.
Published in Religion and Philosophy
Way, way too many steps to order. Made me create an account.
That stinks.
Your publisher made me have to do a lot of steps. In 2024, I should just be able to buy something with one or two clicks.
You might give that feedback to your publisher.
I have ordered your book but it took me longer than it needed to and longer than it would be if it was an Amazon book.
I know that seems like nitpicking but the reality is in 2024 website. A republisher should make it a simple as possible to order something. This was not simple. This was not easy. It rejected my first password and I had to come up with something that Google gave me even though it didn’t tell me that was what I needed.
You should give your publisher that feedback. I came very close to not spending the money to buy your book simply because I was frustrated with the ability to try to log in to order your book.
That is unacceptable in 2024.
They should look into it. Used to look into it.
I look forward to reading your book.
Oh dear.
Will make a note of it, and probably do so. (No promises though.)
Amazon is taking its time, but it should be up there in a matter of days.
Thanks! I’m honored. You’re probably the first one to buy a copy!
Update: Amazon still isn’t listing everything on my author page, but I do find a Kindle edition of the book available for $10. I’m not sure if you can cancel the order from the publisher page.
Nope. Need material book.
Yeah, you got another sale.
My Kindle died years ago. I hope this Kindle for Web doesn’t have me climbing the walls …
Thanks!
Me too.
I’ve made it all the way up to Chapter 1. I have questions and one highlighted passage.
This is going to take a while.
Thank you, kind Sir!
Got the Kindle. You’ve got my college Comparative Religion juices flowing. And if your publisher will consider it, I’d love to audition to produce the audiobook.
Thanks!
Awesome!
I don’t even know how that works. Would you like me to try looking into it?
I’ll send you a PM rather than clutter up your thread with production stuff.
Enjoying the book so far. You’re a much better writer than many of the academics I have worked with.
What is confounding is that Islam is 0 for 4 on your bullet points yet here we are.
Well, . . . I do like Allama Iqbal! He’s had an impact on the book.
Kurt Gödel proved that reason is limited and inherently flawed. His interpretation of his own work was that it demonstrated that we can affirm the truth of what we cannot formally prove, eg, that humans are transcendent beings. That our reach exceeds our grasp. I’ll take faith over reason. Reason is what has gotten us into our postmodern mess. Reason without faith is lethal. The two are not “friends.” Once you have Faith, reason inevitably follows. Once you abandon faith and attempt to proceed with reason alone, you are doomed. Hence, Modernity.
So they are friends, but they only get along when one yields to the other?
When one (Reason) is grounded in the other (Faith). Reason (second order logic) has been mathematically proven to be inherently flawed. See Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems.
Is the flaw rather in people who think reason can be complete?
The more I get into the book, the more I’m enjoying it. I’m revisiting some dusty old shelves in my head. There’s an undercurrent of excitement to it, as I’m reminded of wonderful deep dives into Christianity I have experienced. Even though my own faith is pretty much the wading pool: love God, love thy neighbor, all else is details.
It’s worth it.
I had to look up particularism. There was more than one. So I had to look up the particular particularism. Fortunately, this didn’t lead to an infinite regression.
We used to have to keep track of various isms and schools and so forth for exams. We decided that there were two major tasks of being a philosopher: coming up with an interesting concept, and finding a memorable name for it that some other hotshot thinkmeister hadn’t used first. Preferably relevant to what you’re talking about, but not in all cases. In the days of card catalogs, that was a chore. Google makes it faster if not easier.
Both
The deeper you go, the more you find the shallows already had it covered.
(Augustine thinks so anyway. I more or less agree!)
Wonderful!
Hmm. I’m not following. Is a lack of total independence a flaw?
The internet isn’t telling me much about it. Feel like giving me any pointers?
(Disclosure: Not very likely to buy or read it; too much to do already! But I might at least have a little curiosity satisfied about it, and maybe manage to categorize some of its main points and cite them in my next book on faith and reason.)
Update: Good old Archive.org! I can borrow it for an hour at a time!
By the way, would you kind souls feel like leaving any starts or brief reviews on Amazon, GoodReads, or other online places where that sort of thing can be done?
There are several things which defenders of faith (and particularly of Christianity) say about faith and reason:
Ok, I know I’m being overly fussy here, but as your sentence is structured the object of your bullet points is “faith and reason” – two items. But your bullet points are singular – “It’s,”it.”
No. The object of the bullet points is “faith (and particularly . . . Christianity.”
But it was bad writing on my part to have “faith and reason” nearer to those pronouns. I probably should have said something like this:
Yes, that’s better. (I do disagree with you about the structure as-is: yes, I know you meant to have the bullet points about faith, but that’s not how it’s structured.)