Relationship between reason and faith?

Question

Relationship between reason and faith?

Answer 1

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Reason does not obtain. If you have sufficient reason, then faith fades away and is replaced by simple knowledge of the facts.

Now, people of faith use reason, despite the popular opinion of this board. Many great scientists have been faithful people, but they use reason to figure out that which can be seen and studied, and leave faith to the religion.

Answer 2

They are opposites of each other.  Faith is believing something against reason.

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Answer 3

They are completely opposite to one another!

Answer 4

Faith says, "I believe God is real, even though I can't see Him,"

Logic says, "After analyzing all the data (the internal structureof the living cell, including the mitochondria, proteins and protein synthesis, DNA and RNA; how the brain works, et cetera), and realizing scientifically that evolution violates the laws of entropy and the laws of thermodynamics, I must therefore conclude that God exists."

The difference is that one jumps directly to God, the other has to go through some serious thinking and scientific analysis along the way.

Faith, or belief, is often misunderstood. Faith has been defined as "believing in spite of there being nothing to believe" or "believing in spite of the evidence to the contrary." It is often viewed as identical with wishful thinking ... If we believe hard enough, we can make something come true. However a better definition of faith is belief based on sufficient evidence.

Answer 5

Despite what many answerer's here seem to think, faith and reason are not opposites but rather one is an extension of the other.

Reason is coming to a conclusion based on all of the physical evidence that you have (science, archeology, etc).

Then there are two kinds of faith: blind faith and true faith.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have a blind faith. These are the people who have probably been raised in their belief system and have never questioned it. This can apply to Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, even atheists. Blind faith is simply the accepting of what you have been told without looking into the options.

True faith, however, is the extension of reason. True faith goes further than reason can, but is still based on that reason.

I like to think of it in this way. Imagine you have a river. We are all on one side of the river, the side of ignorance or at least very limited knowledge. The other side of the river is truth. There are many raised rocks going through the river, creating multiple paths, each going a certain way to the other side but none of them going all the way. People with bling faith will either try to jump from their side of the river, or from whatever path they have been led down. Those who only follow reason will find a path and follow it, trying to get as close to the other end as possible, but once they reach the end they will go no further. True faith goes further. They, like those with only reason, follow a path to try and get as close to the other side as possible. They follow reason as far as it can take them. But when they reach the point where they cannot go any further, this is where faith comes in, They then take a leap of faith to get to the other side.

True faith is a belief that, although not fully reasoned, has been reasoned as far as the person thinks it can go before taking that final leap to the conclusion. Scientists do it all the time on a smaller scale, coming to a conclusion before they try and prove it. The only difference is that the questions all these beliefs answer by this leap of faith CANNOT be answered by physical means, therefore in order to find the truth a leap of faith HAS to be made, or else we are stuck sitting on the edge of that path with the truth just out of reach.

I hope that this has helped your understanding of what, at least I believe, is the relationship between reason and faith. Try to keep your mind open and not just jump to the same conclusion as most of these answerer's, who just take them as opposites, as I can guess that most, if not all, of these people actually have no dramatic faith of their own. I do have faith, I am a Christian, and this is the process I have gone through to come to this faith. Of course, I still have much more to learn, there is a lot that I don't know, but there is also a lot that I do know because I have taken the time to search, and I believe that my faith is solidly planted in reason, which only makes it stronger.

Thankyou for the question.

Answer 6

...There isn't one? It's sorta like an oxymoron.

Answer 7

It is a million times better to have a

personal relationship with you and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Flying Spaghetti Monster is the only way

He is the First and the Last

The Noodle of Noodles

Answer 8

It is a million times better to have a

personal relationship with you and Jesus

Jesus is the only way

He is the First and the Last

The King of Kings

Answer 9

This answer is not as simple as people would like.  It should be, but complications arise from the different uses of the word faith.

I will generally divide the use of faith into 2 different categories

faith (common usage): a degree of trust or certainty arrived at based on past experience and known data.

Faith (religious usage): absolute trust or certainty regardless of past experience and known data.

These are short definitions, but capture the essential differences.  For the first, faith is an application of reason.  For the second, it is the diametric opposite.

Answer 10

You don't have faith. You receive faith only for the right reason.