Let's revisit the OP.

But know this... all of you who do require reason-based thought, have a severe lack of faith in God. — DifferentiatingEgg

And you've affirmed that

... faith is above reason,

Faith is above reason. Those who require reason in order to believe are demonstrating a lack of faith. The OP is expressing the Pauline doctrine along with the official teaching of the Church.

Thanks for the explanation. I asked my question because I don't see how the positions you describe are relevant to the issue at hand - to quote the OP, "...using reason-based thought for God is necessarily a showing of a lack of faith in God." — T Clark

If someone refused to believe until they had a good argument, that would demonstrate a lack of faith, pretty much by definition. Just indulging in argumentation doesn't show a lack of faith. So you're right.

It depends on what you mean by "through reason." Reason in contemporary thought is often restricted to nothing more than demonstration and computation, the means by which man moves from premises to conclusions. However, reason is sometimes still used for the intellect, i.e., the rational part of the soul or nous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One of things in your previous post that gave me pause was this:

Which is not to say "faith is irrational" and "faith does not involve understanding," even from the standpoint of Evangelicals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If by "Evangelicals", you mean Protestants who support missionary work, that's exactly the population you'd look toward to find a real, full-bodied Christian rationalist. This is where the ridiculous "clock-maker" thought experiment comes from. This view is in direct contradiction to the views of Paul, which was that faith is a divine gift. This is the view of the Catholic Church. They see reason as compatible with faith, but it is by no means the source of it.

It depends on what you mean by "through reason." Reason in contemporary thought is often restricted to nothing more than demonstration and computation, the means by which man moves from premises to conclusions. However, reason is sometimes still used for the intellect, i.e., the rational part of the soul or nous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The human intellect is supposed to be a reflection of the second emanation of the One. This supports the Pauline view that faith does not arise from any work exerted by the mind. It's just part of the functioning of the mind.

Progress towards theosis is generally seen as involving ever greater degrees of understanding, certainly not its absence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The understanding involved here would be mystical in character. The One becomes the Two. The Two becomes the Three. The Three becomes the Four, which is the One. In comparison with this, logical arguments only offer half-truths. But we are here a long way from the concerns of Paul, which was my point.

Even St. Augustine, Calvin's main inspiration, dedicated significant efforts to apologetics and philosophy as well. Faith here is not will as uniformed by intellect — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Reason is considered to be compatible with faith, but not its source. It appears you're going to hold fast to the wrong impression about the Pauline doctrine and the official teaching of the Church. I'm disappointed in you, but you're certainly welcome to your view.

Yes, that is not the same thing as what OP is saying at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you're admitting that the Pauline doctrine, along with the official Catholic view is that faith is not through reason, but by the grace of God?

My brief look into what Pauline doctrine is doesn’t indicate it is primarily related to reason versus faith. — T Clark

The main issue Paul dealt with in his religious work was the salvation of the Gentiles. He believed Jesus offered the way for Gentiles to become beneficiaries of the Covenant. He basically established Christianity outside the Jewish community. His thoughts about faith and works were related to that.

Btw, this is my favorite Pauline scripture. When I was young, this was all of Christianity to me:

"If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal.

"If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all.

"If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:2

And how do you know that the US isn't defended through NATO? — Christoffer

Could you explain how it is? The US has a giant nuclear arsenal with the ability to deploy them with ICBMs, medium range missiles, submarines, and Air Force bombers. Why does the US need NATO? I'm asking.

One of the striking features to me of Trumpian politics is that it is mostly vindictive. — Benkei

I agree.

This has been far from the norm in Church history — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is the official Catholic view:

"Again, it is evident that this "light of faith" is a supernatural gift and is not the necessary outcome of assent to the motives of credibility. No amount of study will win it, no intellectual conviction as to the credibility of revealed religion nor even of the claims of the Church to be our infallible guide in matters of faith, will produce this light in a man's mind. It is the free gift of God. Hence the Vatican Council (III, iii;) teaches that "faith is a supernatural virtue by which we with the inspiration and assistance of God's grace, believe those things to be true which He has revealed" Catholic Encyclopedia

"Faith is a gift of grace. God not only speaks to us, he also gives us the grace to respond. To believe in Revelation we need the gift of faith." Archdiocese of Minneapolis

"Faith is a gift of God which enables us to know and love him". (ibid)

The above is also Pauline doctrine.

Faith in God requires belief without reason-based thought.
— DifferentiatingEgg

Rubbish. — Leontiskos

No, this is the Pauline doctrine. You're saved through faith by the grace of God. You Catholics need to read the Bible. :razz:

It is traditionally held that Paul believed that faith is a gift from God. This scripture is interpreted as saying that:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." -- Ephesians 2:8-9

I could lay out more sources to show this. Do you need that? It's pervasive in the Pauline texts. His own faith was by the grace of God. He believed that was true of everyone.

The only presupposition I’ve made is that you don’t know enough about religious doctrine to make a meaningful statement about it. — T Clark

What he expressed was Pauline doctrine.

I see what you're saying, but the US put trillions into NATO because it was defending itself by containing communism. The US isn't defending itself through NATO now. It's just exercising global influence. I think most Americans would question the wisdom of continuing to take that role. What's in it for us?

My question is do you agree with Harris’ point regarding topics that have no strictly objective or easily proven right or wrong? — Captain Homicide

It's true that defining has to stop somewhere. It ends with assumptions, axioms, faith, etc. This is pervasively true. It's not just true of morality and health. It's true of science as well. What am I supposed to be concluding from that?

Btw, I judge art by giving a rating for the size of the aspiration (the grandeur of the artist's intentions) and the success of the execution. The product of the two is a sort of aesthetics rating. For instance War and Peace has big numbers for both, whereas Young Frankenstein has a minor aspiration rating, but almost perfect execution.

I think their goal is to overthrow the liberal democratic world order we have had the past 75 years. This is not about some policy change left or right, but about a total system change based on core values that are not the same.

If this is indeed their goal, then what they are doing kindof makes sense. — ChatteringMonkey

Exactly.

How was it out of date? It has worked well. — ssu

I thought NATO had to do with opposing communism. Communism is gone.

You don’t get the authentically Asian or Pacific Islander without exclusivity. — Fire Ologist

I don't think it matters how we treat them. They're still Filipino. That's not something we're creating with our hiring practices.

The idea is that some people opposed DEI because they think it forces stupid people to the top, where they contaminate the elite with their stupid genes. Chattering Monkey and I were adding in some futurism.

Remember, when you go to make sense of history, you inevitably narrate it according to some presuppositions or biases. Same thing with trying to understand the present moment.

This inspires me to look at all the significant viewpoints on the scene and place them as if on a chessboard where I can move them around and let them interact. Do I escape bias this way? Probably not entirely, but it's maybe a little more sophisticated than the rooting-for-my-team approach, which is just blind bs.

They aren't related — AmadeusD

What two things aren't related?

But if you can't be bothered reading, then I can't be bothered explaining. — Wayfarer

I don't blame you. You can't be bothered.

The general arc historically has been towards more integration. But I don't think this is necessarily the direction we should expect the future to go. — ChatteringMonkey

I wish I could come back in 10,000 years and see what happened. :grin:

Maybe we will get seperation and evolutionary bottlenecks. — ChatteringMonkey

Maybe from climate change?

You don't really want to summarize. I get it.

I should add that I can't claim to have reached any plateau of serene detachment, although I do see the point. — Wayfarer

What's the point?

This is maybe overly generous, but I think there's way to read this as being about culture and ethnicity rather than race ultimately. — ChatteringMonkey

And if we add in the part about eugenics, it's about genetic fragmentation of Homo Sapiens into different subspecies, and maybe eventually different species.

Imagine we're at a crossroads where we could remain fairly closely related, or we could start splitting apart as in HG Wells' Time Machine. The philosophy of staying together is liberalism and egalitarianism. The philosophy of splitting is what Land is talking about.

You're knowledge of this is pretty in depth. I didn't realize they were thinking along eugenics lines when they condemned DEI. I thought it was just racism. Plus eugenics had it's day. Wasn't the science behind it debunked?

The law of identity is derived from, or based in, the observed temporal continuity of things, the tendency for things to remain as they are through a duration of time — Metaphysician Undercover

That might work for some things, but not for things like Descartes' wax. What exactly are we observing that tells us it's the same wax as it melts and then solidifies as a puddle? This looks like more of a read-only memory feature. In other words, we're built to think in terms of identities with changing properties with change always appearing in association with something relatively changeless.

But whether you bring in time or not, the object still moves by the force. — Corvus

Force and energy are both physical constructs. Time is part of the construction.

I’m actually really nice. If people were equally nice, there’d be no problems. — Mikie

:up:

I think you'd really like the climate change subreddit. Their posting structure makes it practically impossible to troll. Trolls just disappear down the branches. Plus with enough down votes, a post will disappear. But just as you can't troll, you can't bully either. They'll bomb you for that.

Then maybe the first question should be, do we really want to take the time to have this conversation? Cause it’s a slog. — Fire Ologist

We need a diagram.

The whole conversation about race, to me, should be “why are you afraid of your brother?” — Fire Ologist

Because he stood on my neck in the middle of the street until I was dead? It's a complicated issue.

This is the 'leftist corpse' Land complains about. All posturing, no anchor to reality.

@Wayfarer

How Musk's actions fit into plans for an autocratic takeover of the US government.

Typical right-wing tactic of blaming the Left for creating their own ideology — Maw

So it's more surprising that Land was influenced by Marx and Deleuze in his academic youth. Now he's a libertarian going on about how democracy doesn't work.

Everything about the right-wing resurgence seems to me some way or another of shouting, "if you're going to do it, so shall we!" And in this sense they're right. If power is all that matters, how can you complain when the people you trample use it to trample you? Left wingers trample right wing beliefs, values, and ideas daily – like it or not. Right wingers trample in the reverse direction. — kudos

"Trample" is the key word there, each side viewing the other as a stampeding herd. No nuance allowed, no variation.

The Left does contain braindead zombies, and if you lean left, you're going to be lumped together with them. Land complains that the same is happening to the right. No conversation is possible about the nature of systemic racism. If you ask, you're racist.

But if it's power that you want, isn't it also the impotence that you desire? — kudos

Land's claim is that Libertarians are not sitting still. They're "exiting" regular politics, although I'm still working on understanding what that implies.

Question is really, are you serious that these discussions are only tossing and turnings over powe — kudos

In the background, authoritarianism looms, so not just more status quo.

I think Holocaust denial is an oblique attack on Jews. It's meant to show disrespect. Climate change skepticism isn't an attack on anyone, though the deployer may be aware that it's a good way to get someone's goat.

If it's a danger to the public, it should be squashed.

If we relieve a person of full responsibility, why not do the same for the ideology they followed? The poor ideology was shaped by this it that circumstance. Blame the circumstances. This opens up into blaming everything for everything.

Ultimately, there's an opposition between understanding and judging. The more you understand, the harder it becomes to judge. The more you judge, the harder it becomes to understand. We forever swing between these poles, the extremes of which are meaningless.

Would you like to say that to me again in the parking lot? — Leontiskos

Yes. I want to show you my bumper sticker collection.

I don't think your characterization is accurate tho.

Did you watch this video?