Is faith itself intellectual or objective?

[Black_Rose]

I attempted to post this on another thread, but that thread was deleted and it did not go through. I saved the post nonetheless and it might be worth a new thread.

I do not know if there could be any empirical evidence that would convince one of God’s existence. From my own subjective point of view, I did not “convert” from an apathetic agnostic to now considering RCIA because of any empirical evidence or logical argument, but because I ultimately realized the futility and nihilism of my own position although such feelings were eclipsed by the intellectual pride I had.

To illustrate this point, let’s just say for the sake of the argument that I have irrefutable evidence against a naturalistic origin of life or that a deity intervened to create this universe. If we assume that premise, what does this tell us about the nature of such a deity? Would such a deity be willing to humbly live with his creation and empathize with their suffering or live detached from them unconcerned with their spiritual or physical welfare? Would such a God contravene any natural laws he set up for the sake of showing mercy to his creation as he did with the Virgin Birth or interact with the world? Does such a God love us or do anything that would be worth our veneration? Remember, that during the Enlightenment that deism was quite popular among intellectuals who prided themselves relying on their senses and intellect to guide their lives, not the stale tradition of the ecclesia and clergy that would trammel on their “freedom”.

Even if we do grant the existence of a deity, it does not lead to belief in a personal god as illustrated with the example of deism nor does such a God satisfy human desires such as being loved or communion with a numinous creator. This is why teleological or cosmological arguments have little value in apologetics as they do not even attempt to empathize and understand the desires of those that they seek to convert, but such arguments are often risky as its wielder might embarrass himself because of their inaccurate presentation of technical details. However, I do like some presentations of the teleological argument such as the anthropic principle (first pointed out by Brandon Carter and then elaborated by John Barrow and Frank Tipler) for its technical details and interesting factoids (e.g. a very large cosmological constant would render galaxy impossible, a smaller strong force renders atoms and chemistry impossible; these would render life itself impossible never mind discussing its subsequent development) not as apologetic arguments. (It should not surprise us that we live in a fine-tuned universe as it is not an improbable contingency such as winning the lottery, but a necessity since tautologically we can only live in a universe amiable for the formation of life). In order for an to embrace a personal God, one must be humble and willing to pray and commune with God via the sacraments (although I can’t do this yet and I might be envious of those who can). It seems that on matters of faith, it is best for one not to think and employ the tools of human rationalization, but for one to genuflect in obeisance to God and rely on the institution he set up (his Church) for salvation from the physical and spiritual despair of this world. I do not need to think but just feel knowing that God loves me something that I was not capable of doing without him. (Yes, my intention was not to make the latter part abstract or intellectual, but subjective and somewhat emotional.)

 

[Catchy_Username]

Hi Black Rose,

Your rant (I don’t mean it in a bad way) reminded me of a video I saw the other day about the difficulty of reconciling deism with particular gods (and with deism in general).

youtube.com/watch?v=5wV_REEdvxo&feature=player_embedded

I tend to agree with your concerns, though I have long since had the longing to find a personal God. All of my hours in the inner-chamber never, as I initially anticipated, lead me to believe I was in communion with a personal, all-loving creator-father.

I think faith is exactly what it sounds like: the substance of things hoped for. I can’t say I know about the second part of that scripture in relation to evidence though.

 

[Black_Rose]

Hi Black Rose,

Your rant (I don’t mean it in a bad way) reminded me of a video I saw the other day about the difficulty of reconciling deism with particular gods (and with deism in general).

youtube.com/watch?v=5wV_REEdvxo&feature=player_embedded

I tend to agree with your concerns, though I have long since had the longing to find a personal God. All of my hours in the inner-chamber never, as I initially anticipated, lead me to believe I was in communion with a personal, all-loving creator-father.

I think faith is exactly what it sounds like: the substance of things hoped for. I can’t say I know about the second part of that scripture in relation to evidence though.

To borrow from a term from chemistry, I do not think deism is the “transition state” in the “reaction” from “materialism” to a form of religious faith such as Roman Catholicism because many religious converts do not experience a state of deism prior to their conversion. Pragmatically, because of this, I fail to see the value of arguments that supposedly provide evidence for divine intervention sometime in the past such as the origin of life and the creation of the universe because they seem to be irrelevant in the process of religious conversion. It would that a God not willing to interact with the universe is practically irrelevant and perhaps impotent and would not be worth our veneration.

I do not know where my path would lead me, and perhaps I may end up disillusioned with the Church and revert to my previous agnosticism. I designate myself Catholic now, but one must not take such a designation frivolously since assuming the identity requires a large investment of personal devotion and time. Believing in the transubstantiation and accepting the Eucharist as a means of communion with my loving creator does not seem justifiable within the paradigm of modernist epistemology such as empiricism. If I do accept communion, it would seem best for me not to think but feel by placing myself in a state receptive to any manifestation of God’s love.

To restate my concerns in the initial OP more clearly, I simply fail to see the value of apologetics whether the attempt to convert those who do not believe in God or those that attempt to strengthen the faith of those who already believe.

 

[Catchy_Username]

So do you think the best way to know something is to put aside feeling then (if only briefly while you examine the thing you’re curious about)? Too, I may be assuming that feeling is not a reliable mechanism through which to determine that something is true or not, but you may think differently.

 

[Black_Rose]

So do you think the best way to know something is to put aside feeling then (if only briefly while you examine the thing you’re curious about)? Too, I may be assuming that feeling is not a reliable mechanism through which to determine that something is true or not, but you may think differently.

In certain domains, although I doubt it is applicable to religious faith, it is best for one to put their subjective feelings asides. I admit religious faith does not meet the high standards of other fields such as science or mathematics. At the risk of sounding trite, inane, and bizarre, it may be sort of like Luke Skywalker, instead of relying on his senses or targeting computer to fire photon torpedoes at the exhaust port of the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, uses the intuition of the Force to make the difficult shot. My point being that one cannot rely on “traditional” epistemology in order to “know” the supernatural.

 

[djeter]

A reader of my blog took a quote from one of my favorite essays and asked someone else on a forum “Can this be true?” What does our orthodox faith have to say about this?

The quote in question was: “Wittgenstein taught us that language belongs to groups, not to isolated minds. Language reflects communal practices. Much of the reality that terms mark out is specific to the communities that use the terms. As any learner of a foreign language knows, reading a newspaper in that language requires learning about social and political realities specific to another culture. The abstract question “Does God exist?” is the question of an isolated mind. It tears God out of the context of communities who pray, celebrate, and serve, and it reduces the term to a cipher.”

And the reader’s query (who listed himself as Roman Catholic, oddly enough) was: “What would you make of this article in light of Orthodoxy? Is it totally off the mark?” I confess I was sort of holding my breath because, as many of you know, the things I read and pass on in the form of reading selections and such are nothing more than the vagaries of following my faith.

I’m no expert on the topic of anything Catholic but simply follow my gut. The quote comes from Alan Mittleman’s essay Asking the Wrong Question. Mittleman is of course Jewish and the essay is based on a thought from the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.

So you can imagine I had breath held, imagining some crushing response (“No, this is totally misguided. Take care when reading those well intentioned but clueless Internet bloggers. Catholic in their minds only…”).

What came back was an Orthodox source that said (beautifully) pretty much the same thing as Mittleman had offered.

http://payingattentiontothesky.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/kallistos_ware.jpg?w=168&h=209
Archbishop Kallistos Ware

Here is the response:

"Because faith is not logical certainty but a personal relationship and because this personal relationship is as yet very incomplete in each of us and needs continually to develop further, it is by no means impossible for faith to coexist with doubt. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps there are some who by God’s grace retain throughout their life the faith of a little child, enabling them to accept without question all that they have been taught. For most of those living in the West today, however, such an attitude is simply not possible. We have to make our own the cry, “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief.”(Mark 9:24). For very many of us this will remain our constant prayer right up to the very gates of death.

It may mean the opposite – that our faith is alive and growing. For faith implies not complacency but taking risks, not shutting ourselves off from the unknown but advancing boldly to meet it. Here an Orthodox Christian may readily make his own the words of Bishop J.A.T. Robinson: “The act of faith is a constant dialogue with doubt.” As Thomas Merton rightly says, “Faith is a principle of questioning, a struggle before it becomes a principle of certitude and peace.”

Faith then signifies a personal relationship with God; a relationship as yet incomplete and faltering, et none the less real. It is to know God not as theory or an abstract principle, but as a person. To know a person is essentially to love him or her; there can be no true awareness of another person without mutual love. We do not have any genuine knowledge of those whom we hate.

Here then are the two least misleading ways of speaking about the God who surpasses our understanding: he is personal and he is love. And these are basically two ways of saying the same thing. Our way of entry into the mystery of God is through personal love. As *The Cloud Of Unknowing *says, ‘He may well be loved, but not thought. By love can he be caught and held, but by thinking never.’"

dj

 

[Ender]

I ultimately realized the futility and nihilism of my own position

Ditto.

It seems that on matters of faith, it is best for one not to think and employ the tools of human rationalization, but for one to genuflect in obeisance to God and rely on the institution he set up (his Church) for salvation from the physical and spiritual despair of this world.

It is reason disconnected from faith that is a problem, not reason itself. From Fides et Ratio:*

What is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith*

Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason; and at the summit of its searching reason acknowledges that it cannot do without what faith presents.

*Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fullfilment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason.
*
To believe is nothing other than to think with assent… Believers are also thinkers: in believing, they think and in thinking, they believe… If faith does not think it is nothing.

Having quoted all of this other stuff, let me add the one quote that helped me the most:

“Do not seek to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” (Augustine)

Ender

 

[warpspeedpetey]

but because I ultimately realized the futility and nihilism of my own position although such feelings were eclipsed by the intellectual pride I had. …

…but for one to genuflect in obeisance to God and rely on the institution he set up (his Church) for salvation from the physical and spiritual despair of this world. I do not need to think but just feel knowing that God loves me something that I was not capable of doing without him.

what a beautiful thing. its a very special thing for G-d to open your heart. as they say, all roads lead to Rome. come, walk with us.

 

[Black_Rose]

Having quoted all of this other stuff, let me add the one quote that helped me the most:

“Do not seek to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” (Augustine)

Ender

I do not think Augustine’s approach is productive when learning about scientific topics. Scientific education does not seek to indoctrinate students, but inculcate them to explore and evaluate the world with the tools of empirical reasoning, skepticism, and experimentation. For instance, one is not taught the theory of evolution through indoctrination; one does not learn through the repetition of the concrete assertion that evolution is true. Instead one is presented with a litany of evidence supporting the theory and its predictions such as genetic similarity with recent diverging ancestors and fossil evidence of intermediate forms. Theoretical concepts such as speciation through reproductive isolation and evolution through natural selection are also explored so one could comprehend how these mechanisms can provide plausible mechanisms explaining certain features of our world. Unfortunately, this scientific approach cannot be universally practiced in the case of more complex disciplines such as high energy physics as it has to be “dumbed down” for general consumption because the theoretical concepts require a superior mastery of mathematics beyond the algebra of manipulating numbers and variable around and equal sign and the simple calculus of differentiation and integration. Since my mathematics ability is not advanced enough, my only recourse is to consume material designated as “popular science” trusting in what the physicists say. In science, first I must understand before I believe (although such “belief” is the inevitable conclusion from inductive reasoning and falsification using empirical evidence and experimentation.)

I do not think religious faith has to be free from logical principles although it is well known that patriarchs such as Tertillian readily admit the absurdity of some of the Church’s dogmas such as the Trinity. In that case, I simply have to admit that my own mind is incapable of completely appreciating the Trinity and Transubstantiation just like many other non-theological topics. Certainly one’s religious faith and Church teaching should be as coherent as a possible with few internal inconsistencies. But when I was referring to empiricism and logic, I was referring to extrinsic evidence or arguments supporting religious faith tapping into the corpus of scientific knowledge. At best, the success of these types of arguments leads to deism which was never an intermediate for religious belief. Instead it is merely a rest stop for those seeking to emigrate from revealed religion and sectarian tradition on the road to secularism. The vehicle of naturalism powered by the engine of Darwinian evolution cleared the obstruction of teleology and biological complexity. As Dawkins stated in The Blind Watchmaker Darwin made it possible for one to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Scientific experimentation provided a means of conflict resolution among competing hypotheses that attempt to elucidate some feature of the natural, observable world. In order for a hypothesis to enter the tournament, it first must make falsifiable predictions that distinguish it from other competing hypotheses rendering it vulnerable to elimination. Much like Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”, science advances by supplanting existing imperfect hypotheses and theories with new hypotheses able to withstand the process of falsification. While the scientific method can be depicted as entrepreneurial, adventurous, and novel, religion tends to be traditional and conservative in upholding the validity of entrenched knowledge. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an analogous procedure for establishing religious truth and winnowing out incorrect views although ecumenical councils did suffice for the early church.

But I think the best solution is to compartmentalize my life and thoughts where my spiritual and “empirical” sides have little overlap but nonetheless exist coevally. There may be conflict where my “empirical” side finds gratification in captiously destroying flawed arguments presented by others intending to support the faith (or the existence of a general deity.) But I realize that being pertinacious empiricist renders one incapable of experiencing god and developing sincere faith.