“…when reason can say no more.” But maybe not everyone wants to pursue more. — Michael Ossipoff

Of course, and that's representative of the distinction I made between sensible types and fantasists. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of fantasy - Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, and so on - but I'm sensible enough to recognise fantasies as such, proportioning my belief to the evidence instead of leaping blindly beyond it. The problem with theists is that they blur the lines and yet think that they can cling on to credibility. Well, I'm sorry, but that's just not how it works. A man who feels he needs a God of the gaps is like a man who can walk perfectly well yet feels he needs crutches. A sorry sight to see.

Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of fantasy - Lord of The Rings, Star Wars, and so on - but I'm sensible enough to recognise them as such and instead proportion my belief to the evidence. — S

Presumably unlike J R R Tolkien himself, who went to mass every day.

:victory: :blush:

Which must include J R R Tolkien himself, who went to mass every day. — Wayfarer

No, for the very reason that he was a devout Roman Catholic, he obviously could not have proportioned his belief to the evidence, and must therefore be excluded from that statement of mine which you've quoted, because, for one thing, there is no evidence strong enough to warrant belief in transubstantiation. Clearly that's where faith comes in.

there is no evidence strong enough to warrant belief in transubstantiation. — S

No Catholic ought ever to try and prove transubstantiation to be literally true. As I understand it, part of the articles of faith is that it is a miraculous process, which by definition requires no naturalistic warrant.

You might like the quote I posted into another thread just now:

'“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves 'believers' because they accept metaphors as facts, and others who classify themselves as 'atheists' because they think religious metaphors are lies.” ~ Joseph Campbell

No Catholic ought ever to try and prove transubstantiation to be literally true. — Wayfarer

Yes, because they'll inevitably fail. It would be a wild goose chase.

As I understand it, part of the articles of faith is that it is a miraculous process, which by definition requires no naturalistic warrant. — Wayfarer

And "faith" is the key word there. My initial comment which drew your reply mentioned proportioning belief to the evidence. In your reply, you said that J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, must be included. But you're mistaken, it's quite the contrary, because having faith in the occurrence of miracles is pretty much the opposite of proportioning belief to the evidence.

Yes, because they'll inevitably fail. It would be a wild goose chase — S

I know this will fall on deaf ears, but the notion that such things require empirical evidence is a misunderstanding of the dynamics of faith. I mean, a lot of atheists say that it is absurd that believers should believe in a God for which there can't be 'physical evidence'. But the whole objection is based on a misunderstanding of what belief stands for in the first place. But, again, I have learned that it is as pointless to discuss such things with internet atheists, as it is to discuss evolutionary biology with young-earth creationists. :-)

So many of these chats come down to what is fact, reason or faith. As an example.

You are standing at your front door about to open it.

You can not say at that moment in time it is a fact your spouse is not waiting on the other side
with a gun about to kill you.

You can by reason believe it to be true, that it is safe to open the door. You haven't done anything to warrant being killed by your spouse, you haven't had an argument - however spouses with similar reasoned arguments have been shot before.

So when you turn that knob - it is an act of faith.

I know this will fall on deaf ears, but the notion that such things require empirical evidence is a misunderstanding of the dynamics of faith. — Wayfarer

Fall on deaf ears? No, on the contrary, you're preaching to the choir. I accept that such things do not require evidence, generally speaking, and certainly not if they're to be taken as a matter of faith. But that's where the distinction I've mentioned kicks in. It only becomes a problem if someone tries to have their cake and eat it, if someone demands special treatment. And in my experience, theists all to often act that way, even if they aren't so explicit about it. You can put your faith in miracles, and you're entitled to do so, but then you lose credibility in the context of reasoned discussion, which is what philosophy is all about, is it not? Philosophy is for thinkers, religious faith is for wishful thinkers.

In all other matters, it may well be true that J. R. R. Tolkien proportioned his belief to the evidence, but his Roman Catholicism, as we should both agree, is not an example of that, but an example of religious faith. And if faith in miracles can be permitted, then you open the floodgates to all kinds of wild imaginings, so I make sure to keep that kind of faith away from my serious thinking.

So many of these chats come down to what is fact, reason or faith. As an example.

You are standing at your front door about to open it.

You can not say at that moment in time it is a fact your spouse is not waiting on the other side
with a gun about to kill you.

You can by reason believe it to be true, that it is safe to open the door. You haven't done anything to warrant being killed by your spouse, you haven't had an argument - however spouses with similar reasoned arguments have been shot before.

So when you turn that knob - it is an act of faith. — Rank Amateur

Nice try at muddying the waters, but I can see through what you're doing. Is poker a game of luck? In a similar vein to your rhetoric, one could make the argument that it is, but that would of course be misleading, as anyone who knows a thing or two about poker will attest. Is luck involved? Yes. But it's way more than that, and there's a gulf between flipping a coin and a game of poker.

You’ve been repeatedly saying that faith conflicts with reason. Alright, then share some of your reason with us. Tell us how reason contradicts all religion, all religious faith, all of whatever various meanings people mean when referring to God, or faith in God. — Michael Ossipoff

I'm not required to defend a claim I haven't made, and I haven't made the claim that reason contradicts all religion or all of whatever various meanings people mean when referring to God or faith in God.

I've already shared some of my reason with you, so why don't you address that, instead of expecting me to repeat myself?

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

But anyway, I'll give you some undeserved generosity by explaining it again.

The conflict between faith and reason is in how you obtain belief. They're as much in conflict as two people are in conflict if one of them believes that crawling all the way to town is the fastest way of getting there and the other believes that driving all the way to town is the fastest way of getting there. Now, obviously, these two ways of getting to town are incompatible. They're two categorically different ways of getting to town. You can't simultaneously crawl all the way there and drive all the way there. It's either one or the other, and only one can be the fastest way. Now, imagine if there were a whole group of people who were on one side of the divide, let's call them crawlers, and a whole 'nother group of people on the other side, let's call them drivers. Does that remind you of anything? It should do. Just as if you drive all the way, then there is no need of crawling there, if you reason to a conclusion, then there is no need of taking a leap of faith to it. So those putting forward the leap of faith option will clash with those who have reasoned their way there, even if for no other reason than how to get there. But, of course, in reality, it is more than that which these two groups clash over. Typically, it is more prevalent amongst theists to take and endorse leaps of faith, and it is not unusual for faith to be cited as a basis for belief in God. That's not typically the case with atheists or agnostics, methodologically. Not only will they likely clash in terms of how to get there, but where "there" even is or should be.

But I'm probably wasting my time explaining this to you. I predict that you'll stick to your guns regardless, like one of those True Believers you like to rant about.

Philosophy is for thinkers, religious faith is for wishful thinkers. — S

Like say Aquinas?

Like say Aquinas? — Rank Amateur

Not the best example, given that he was a more of a scholastic than a fideist, but even scholasticism is restrained by dogma and tradition, which can be distinguished from open rational enquiry. What underpins this predetermined course? And predetermined it certainly seems. Wishful thinking is one possible candidate. I'm not convinced that Aquinas was lead by his faculty of reason to believe in God. Rather, it seems that he used his faculty of reason to come up with arguments in defence of God. I think that his belief, first and foremost, had a psychological basis.

Yeah it is. Why do you think otherwise? — S

You can't disprove the unobservable.

Leaps of faith aren't reasonable. — S

You think I just believe because? You don't even know me.

They are by nature in conflict with reason. — S

Define leap of faith.

Reason and faith are two categorically opposed ways of arriving at a belief — S

So you're saying you put your faith in reason?

you can't have your cake and eat it. — S

I do it all the time.

You either use your capacity to reason to reach a conclusion or you disregard reason and take a leap of faith. — S

That is, until someone gives you a reason to believe.

In the eyes of an intellectual with in interest in philosophy over religion, then faith should be viewed in a disparaging light. Faith is for the unthinking, for the uncritical, for those who do not care to examine, but want an easy answer to placate themselves. — S

1300 pages of well thought placating can be found in any good volume of systematic theology.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. — S

And Nietzsche went crazy, I wonder why.

No one wants to touch on the subject of why God can't be all of existence. Everyone is too predisposed to the original definition of God. — Lif3r

The Catholics say that God is ever present in all times and places, which to my thinking is a claim that God is all of existence. But then they still seem to want to think of God as a "thing" something separate and distinct from everything else.

In my view, it's helpful to consider not just the competing claims, but to focus instead on the medium which all claims are made of, thought. That is, shift the focus from the content of thought to the nature of thought.

If it is true that thought operates by dividing a single unified reality in to conceptual parts, then there is a built in bias for the Magic Sky Daddy thesis in all it's forms.

As example, consider the noun. We observe the world and our minds instinctively experience what we're observing as being a collection of separate "things". This process of division is so fundamental to the human condition that it's natural that it would also be applied to the very largest of scales, such as gods. God becomes just another thing, a very big thing, but still a thing separate and distinct from other things.

Some religions feel that the only way to escape this perception of division is to step outside of the medium which is creating it, thought.

You can't disprove the unobservable. — MountainDwarf

Please explain how you think it logically follows from your above quoted premise that it is not a matter of fact that God is or God is not.

You think I just believe because? You don't even know me. — MountainDwarf

I didn't say anything about you, in particular. I said that leaps of faith aren't reasonable, and I stand by that claim. It strikes me as self-evident. Reasoning is about using your intellectual faculties to make the connections to get from A to B to C etc. and eventually reach a conclusion. Taking a leap of faith does not require that same level of intellectual rigour. It leaps past those connections, requiring the bare minimum of thought. If you have taken a leap if faith, then by implication, what I said applies to you. If you don't like that, tough.

Define leap of faith. — MountainDwarf

Why? I don't think it's that ambiguous. But anyway, I've described it above.

So you're saying you put your faith in reason? — MountainDwarf

No. So you're putting words in my mouth?

I do it all the time. — MountainDwarf

Then you're unreasonable all the time. That's not a crime, but it will affect how people think of you.

That is, until someone gives you a reason to believe. — MountainDwarf

I was talking about reason, not "a" reason. Your comment, like your others, is disconnected from what I actually said. Your reading comprehension doesn't seem all that great. If someone were to give me a reason to believe, then that could form either part of a valid argument or a leap of faith, the latter of which is like jumping to a conclusion. Your comment doesn't contribute anything towards or against the point that I made.

And Nietzsche went crazy, I wonder why. — MountainDwarf

There is reason to believe that he might have had a sexually transmitted infection, and that that was what caused his brain functionality to deteriorate. But you don't care about that, do you? You were just looking to score a cheap point. Your suggestion is ignorant, lazy, and ideologically motivated.