[QUOTE]Originally posted by Garyj
[B]

You make your statement about faith and reason being incompatible like it's a known conclusion.

 

I think I've exceeded my week's allotment of postings! (Have you noticed that Philosophy is one of my favorite subjects???)

I'm out to look at fireworks!

JonasM

 

JonasM -

Aren't the fireworks on this thread enough?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JonasM
[B]At the simplest level of refutation: If there is Reason for a belief (i.e. demonstrated knowledge), then there is no need for faith. If there is faith, then it can only exist because there is no justification for it by Reason. And if there is no justification by use of Reason, the only way to get that belief codified into law (as many religious people want) is by force. I don't believe in using force in relationships or in government (except in defense, of course).

 

Evidently you missed--or misunderstood--my reference to Godel. Few would argue that there is any human pursuit based more on reason than mathematics. Yet Godel proved that every formal (mathematical) system sufficiently powerful (to develop number theory) must be incomplete in the sense that there must be true statements which are unprovable. Truth is a higher ideal than provability; put another way, reason is never sufficient to realize all truth. In essence, Godel proved that faith is necessary--reason will always fall short.

Note, too, that this result utterly rocked the foundations of mathematics. One of Hilbert's celebrated problems was to formulate a method to prove every true statement in number theory, and Russell and Whitehead filled volumes with results in an attempt to to just that; it wasn't until they'd reached the end of volume II that they had enough background to be able to introduce and prove the following theorem: 1 + 1 = 2. Then along came Godel, proving that Russell's and Whitehead's efforts were all for nought, and that Hilbert's problem was, in fact, impossible to solve.

Rarely are the fundamental tenets of mathematicians found to be faulty. Cantor did it with his study of infinity. Russell did it with his famous paradox. And Godel did it with his theorem.

Think about it: mathematics has proven (not, in the manner of legal proceedings, beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt) that reason is insufficient and that faith is necessary. That's a bit more profound than the quadratic formula!

So, to say that reason and faith are incompatible is mistaken. Faith takes over when reason falls short. And reason, always, will eventually fall short.

 

On a less serious note - does anybody remember a while back in Australia were there was a grass-roots campaign to have people write "Jedi" as their religion on the national census?

If we could just have "One nation, under Yoda," I'd be quite pleased.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by magician
[B]Faith takes over when reason falls short.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BDMonk
[B]

But does that faith have to be placed in a giant omnipotent invisible man?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Garyj
[B]

Our Windows and Mac operating systems, and the computers themselves, existed only in the faith of...etc, etc,

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Garyj
[B]I was talking about faith in general - all applications.