A few years ago, I stumbled onto a blog criticizing faith. It inspired a response, which inspired no further response. I had saved it and ran across it looking for something else on my computer and thought I'd post it here. The link, while still posted, is no longer valid as they have removed the post, most probably for space.
Faith Without Reason?
By David Mitchell
Guest Columnist
Published: Wednesday,
November 11, 2009
Updated: Wednesday,
November 11, 2009
The
question in our current debate on homosexuality is purely one of which premises
you choose to accept. Once your premises are chosen, your opinions flow from
them. Mr. Spangler chooses to accept the premise that the Christian Bible is the
infallible word of God. It is precisely this premise that I wish to
investigate. My goal is in not to argue whether his premise is correct or
incorrect, but merely to highlight the ultimate uncertainty in this
determination, and this uncertainty’s implications for morality claims.
Mr. Spangler makes a wide range of claims based on his premise that the Bible
is the infallible Word of God. What he fails to establish is why this premise
is true. There have been many attempts to rationally establish the validity of
the Bible with proof. Books I have personally read include “The Case for
Christ” and “More Than a Carpenter”. Both of these pieces present coherent,
logic-based arguments for belief in the Bible. However, there are also very
robust arguments to counter these. In my experience with Christians (and I
believe this to generally be the case with Christianity), emphasis is
ultimately put on faith. It is difficult to nail down a definition of faith,
but in the face of opposition, Christians typically indicate to me that faith
involves believing something without proof, and often without the necessity of
applying rational argument. There are a number of inconsistencies with this
concept.
First, I ask the question, how is it that someone comes to know their faith?
Surely it requires some level of rationality and acceptance of the validity of
sensory experience merely to be able to physically read the Bible and have
conversations with those who held individuals come to know their faith. It
requires a basic acceptance of logic to perform the act of contemplating the
possibility of faith, to understand sentences in the Bible, and to make
inferences based on these sentences. To reject the role of rationality
altogether in faith is simply nonsense. As such, I propose that rationality is
necessarily the basis for acquiring any faith. Faith cannot be divorced from
reason. It is precisely reason that endows us as intelligent beings capable of
understanding any faith, and consequently choosing to accept or reject it.
Secondly, I ask, what is one's basis for accepting the Bible as the ultimate
truth? To argue that the Bible offers infallible truth because it says it does
so in the Bible is clearly not a valid position. The circularity of logic here
could apply to any text or speaker who declares that he/she/it contains the
real truth of existence and morality. More often, Christians answer this
question by saying that they know it to be the ultimate truth by faith alone,
without proof. This is sometimes described as a gut feeling or intuition (“I
just know it in my heart”), or more specifically as the result of some personal
revelation. The problem with this answer is that fervent believers of other
religions have equal claims. If someone were to try and convince me that the
Bible is the ultimate source of all truth because they know it on faith, then I
ask, how is their faith is any different than that of a devout Muslim who
proclaims the truth of the Koran, or the faith of a devout Hindu proclaiming
the truth of the Vedas or Upanishads? In other words, if it really is all about
faith alone, then what is the tie-breaker? How would I know who to believe?
There can be no answer based on faith alone. Without reason, there is no
argument for the primacy of one religion over another. Without reason, there
can be no persuasion one way or another. Without a rational foundation for faith,
a belief in the Christian God is no more valid than my devout belief in Richard
Dawkins’ “Flying Spaghetti Monster”.
Third, I’d like to probe further into the question of a person's basis for
accepting the Bible as the ultimate source of truth. Generally-speaking, the
Christian tradition affirms belief in the existence of both God (good) and
Satan (evil). Satan is described as deceitful and tempting, always trying to
craftily draw followers away from God and toward himself. The question I ask,
is how do Christians come to know God is good? In other words, how did they
determine in the first place that it was appropriate to follow this God? With
no prior basis for determining what should and should not be done, we could not
determine with any certainty that subscribing to God’s brand of rules for
morality (as opposed to Satan’s) was the correct decision. If someone has no
pre-existing notion of what is good and what is bad, then choosing God over
Satan would be merely an arbitrary decision. There would be no way of knowing
that it was not God doing the deceiving and Satan offering the truth.
No, what I propose is that we each have an innate sense of what is good
(right), although the specifics of this are certainly not equivalent among
people. It is this sense that directs some toward belief in the Christian God
and rejection of Satan, some toward belief in Allah, some toward Yahweh, some
toward other deities or spiritualities, and some toward nothing at all.
What I am trying to do here is not to discredit the Bible or Christianity. I
find Christianity to be primarily a beautiful religion that teaches people
first and foremost to treat one another with respect, compassion, and love. It
would be difficult to find fault with this aim. My point is only that the
validity of any particular religious tradition cannot be proven. Even the most
fervent Christians I have ever known have expressed periods of doubt in their
faith at times in their lives. Given this uncertainty, it is simply
inappropriate to impose the particular moral obligations of a religious text
that cannot, itself, be validated, when these moral obligations are not
compatible with our basic notion of decency and equality. Christians
generally no longer stand by the Bible’s support of human slavery, because it
offends their notions of what is good and decent (a guiding force in choosing
the faith initially). In like manner, passages that allegedly condemn
homosexuality (although it is disputed that they actually do so) should be
subjected to the same test of goodness, decency, and reason before becoming
measurements of morality. Let us err on the side of respect, love, and
compassion for all.
Mr. Mitchell,
You say you are not trying to discredit the Bible by your
dissertation. Conversely, I am not
trying to purport the Bible with my answer.
One can do no better than to follow after that which one has established
as truth.
It is my belief that the basis for the determination as to
the right or wrong of anything is not man’s right to decide. If one is not in alignment with the teachings
of the Bible, then most certainly, he is free to live as he decides. As long as one is willing to accept the consequences
of one’s actions, then that one is truly free, as suppression is a condition of the
mind and heart.
Conversely, once a person establishes the Bible as a basis
for their life, or professes himself as a believer, he must define good and
evil according to the pre-established doctrines, as the Bible defines good and
evil for that man and the true believer aligns himself with that criterion. If he professes another directive, opposed to
biblical teachings, unless or until he realigns himself with the directives
previously established, he should not lay claim to the Bible as defining his
religion. The Bible clearly delineates
what is right and what is wrong to those who profess to hold to its
teachings. This is important to
understand in the establishment of faith as faith is inextricably linked into
obedience of a particular way, for Christ is the author of eternal salvation to
all those who obey Him.
Mr. Mitchell, you mentioned that the definition for faith is
not clear to you. Let me assist you with
that. The Bible clearly defines
faith. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, it is the under girding of your hope, the structure under it, like
the structure that holds a bridge in place and establishes the hope that it is
safe to cross.
It is the evidence of that which is not seen. We have several evidences of that which we do
not see. Gravity and air are not
ethereal. We have evidence of air or
gravity. Prior to the establishment of proof,
we still knew they existed. We had the
evidence of their existence by the proofs of their existence. Faith is not ethereal. It is not a wishing on a star and believing
that positive thoughts overriding negative feelings will make it come
true. It is a belief based on the
reliability of past experiences.
When you sit in a chair, you believe, based on past
experience that the chair will support your weight. You accept, on faith, without getting down on
your hands and knees to verify, that it is safe to sit in the chair. Clearly, at some point in your life, you have
seen a chair not hold a person sitting in it, but based on probabilities of dependability,
your faith in that chair is confident.
The under girding of that belief is based on the fact that you sit in
chairs all the time and rarely, or perhaps never, are you tossed out on your
backside. The evidence not seen is that despite
the fact that you have not examined the chairs reliability, you feel there is
enough evidence by chairs of the past to verify it will hold you. You have FAITH in that chair. You’re not sitting in thin air, hoping that a
chair materializes; you’re sitting on a chair that you assume will support your
weight.
Now, put that established chair on a place where falling out
of it will result in certain death, and the level of faith is probably going to
be drastically reduced. Whereas you have
sat down on the chair without a second thought on your kitchen floor, if that
chair is balanced on 2 beams stretched out over the Grand Canyon, your faith in
it will waiver or perhaps break down, entirely.
Over a course of time, given the opportunity to establish that the beams
are secure and that the chair will not act any differently on the beams than on
your kitchen floor, you may build the faith to be able to sit in that chair.
That’s what Faith is.
It is a belief based on past performance and a hope of future
performance. It is established in the
reality of God’s word. IF a person is
not willing to test God’s word, by putting himself under the authority of His
Law, and under the conditions of God’s Word, then one may not establish a claim
that there is no proof of the reality of God’s word, anymore than one can say a
chair is not reliable to sit in based on the fact that they are not willing to
sit in it.
Many professed Christians give irrational explanations of
what faith is because they are unwilling to put themselves under the authority
of God’s word or law or risk relying on what they, quite frankly, do not
know.
One establishes that faith by incorporating the word of God
into their lives according to the way established by God. In other words, you begin to obey it. You begin keeping the laws of God, to try to
follow His words as He has laid them out, even in the face of adversity and you
begin to see that God is taking care of you.
Things begin to work out so that you can obey. The further you test it, the more it
establishes your faith… because you run into impossible situations that work
out in the most incredible ways. And so
you start to incorporate more of God’s word into your life.
You establish the reliability of the Word of the God of the
Bible exactly the same way you establish that a chair is safe to sit in—perhaps
even to the point of being comfortable even if the chair is perched on a
precipice. Even though you see others
around you fall out of other chairs (like drunks or babies who cannot sit up or
children using the chair incorrectly) or you’ve seen it collapse (under too
much weight or abuse or neglect), you learn the rules, or follow the Word and
you see that the chair is reliable, if the sitter is faithful to the conditions
of the chair.
One learns the reliability of the Bible through use, making
clear that there is a difference in “the way that seems right to a man,” over
they way that is righteous. You learn to
walk by faith in the way that God has established over the way of sight because
you come to realize that it is God that establishes reality and what you see
with your eyes is not as reliable as the way God has established, because
reality is established by God. And to the
degree you have confidence in that way, it defines the level of your
faith. Do you have faith in a chair on a
solid floor? You have a little
faith. Do you have faith in a chair
positioned on a sheer drop? You either
have great faith or you lack faith. It
is confidence in previously established behaviors and promises. Abraham had great faith because God gave him
a child when his wife was too old to have one and promised him that child would
grow into a great nation. He had the
child, every day of his life, right there in front of him, as the under girding
of his faith-for the very existence of the child was an impossibility. He had a further promise from God that in
Isaac, He would establish the seed of Abraham, and the faith of the past of
Isaac’s impossible birth, gave way to the establishment that God would not
allow his word to “come back to him void” giving Abraham the confidence to
believe.
This is how faith grows… the past experience, the
establishment that God’s word is wholly reliable, leads you to be able to go
forward in the face of uncertainty or even in the face of certain ruin, knowing
God holds reality in the palm of his hand.
Simply put, faith is knowing.
I cannot tell you how you could establish the Bible as the
ONE book above all other books as I do not know you or what you hold as
valuable, but I can tell you what established it’s preeminence over every other
religion I’ve taken part in or studied.
It answers every question I’ve ever had regarding the meaning and
purpose of life. That was a solid
beginning for me and then the building of faith over the course of a lifetime,
of seeing my own waters pouring from a rock and my own storms stilled with a
word, literally, I am a faithful believer that the God of the Bible is as real
as anything I base reality upon.
It’s not about living a moral life, based on what we
imagine to be honorable. We do not
decide for ourselves good and evil. That
has already been established. One may
ignore it… or disparage it. One may live
contrary to it or force others to conform to another way, but that will not
disestablish its authority over mankind.
There is a way that seems right to mankind, but the end of that way is
death. If one seeks life, then there is
only one way to attain it—no matter what anyone’s opinion might be.
