aarodad:
dear javelin
“faith and reason virtually cannot exist in contradiction to one another?” then the handwriting never appeared on the wall in dan.5, and ellijah did not ascend to heaven. when naaman was told to dip himself in the jordan 7 times to be healed of his leprosy that did not make sense; it was not reasonable, but he believed, and did it anyway and was healed. faith involves believing God even when it does not make sense. limiting the literal interpretation of scripture to those parts which seem reasonable to humans is exactly what the protestnts did last century and it has led to theological liberalism and a denial of much of the word of God.
thanks,
michael
Perhaps I should not have made such a blanket statement without explaning further.
I think that your examples above actually support my point more than they counter it. Take the leprosy example. Yes, it was not reasonable that the leper would be healed, but
the unmistakable evidence was that he was healed. His reason could not deny that the leprosy was gone. This is what ultimately moves him to faith. Yes, it took a “leap of faith” for him to dip himself in the first place, but isolated miracles like this offer immediate support for, or denial of, justification for the faith. How would he have reacted if he had NOT been healed? Would he believe, on faith alone, that he
was healed just because it was promised him? If he did believe that, how long would his belief continue as the disease progressed, pain increased, and his body failed more?
Would people have believed on faith that Elijah had ascended into heaven if they saw his dead body? Would people have believed that there was handwriting on the wall if no one saw it? I could go on and on.
Each of those cases are examples where
reason trumped expectation, and all were verifiable to some extent by the people there. None of them literally contradicted reasoned observance; what they contradicted was reasonable expectation, and it was the evidence of their senses that proved to them their expectation was wrong and forced them to re-think (re-reason) their expectations and view of the world.
God made us rational beings (most of us at least!), so we
must be able to reconcile our beliefs with our senses. They need to co-exist, or we will be burdened with cognitive dissonance that can be very damaging psychologically.
In the case of evolution, if you try to tell someone that the genesis story is literally true, as is the rest of the Bible, you will run into major roadblocks because (so far at least), all the scientific evidence points to an evolutionary process for the origins of our physical world. Does it answer everything yet? No. Is there any major evidence that denies evolution while clearly supporting a “young Earth” or a 6, 24-hour day creation of all life? No.
Further, a person listening to your assertions on faith that Genesis is literally true will then be skeptical of the entire Bible, since it is all associated with Genesis.
For this case, the evidence and the Genesis story directly contradict each other
unless you understand the Genesis story as just that–a story. As soon as you remove the literal interpretation, reason says that the
story can be believable, and we can attempt to reconcile our faith in the ultimate Truth of the message with what our reason understands of the development of life.
People who already have faith may be able to steadfastly deny evolution and choose to believe in a literal reading of Genesis, but for those who do not yet have faith this would be a major obstacle to their coming to faith. For many with a young faith, this dissonance causes them to lose faith and doubt God. This is why it is so dangerous to adamantly demand a literal Genesis reading, when it ultimately has no bearing on our faith in God.
I hope this makes it more clear.
Peace,
javelin
God Bless
