>I wrote a while back a couple of posts on the issue of “faith”. These stemmed from the desire to express some thoughts from a Christian perspective to counter the growing debate in regards to the often atheistic approach that faith is “irrational”. It has been some time since these short articles were written and recently I have been drawn again to the debate of “Faith vs. Reason”, primarily fuelled by my studies on the History of Christianity and specifically the period referred to as “The Enlightenment” (17th-18th century), along with coming across a post on the topic of evidence, and a recent comment on my post “What is Faith?” by I presume, an atheist, who said;
“Faith is and always will be the irrational claim to truth without evidence to support it. Period. Playing word games will not change that. Faith definitely exists. As does reason. However, the two are mutually exclusive and to even state the two are even close to having the same definition is ludicrous and intellectually dishonest.”

I disagree that my faith is irrational. I believe I am a rational being. If i were not I wonder if we would be having this discussion! It also made me think about what we (Christian, atheist, religious, non-religious) consider to be appropriate evidence for the claims to which we hold?  To many people some of what I consider historical evidence they  will dismiss – for example the Bible.
Faith and reason, in my opinion are not mutually exclusive, they are compatible… I have faith and I use my reason and logic to process such.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment began primarily as an intellectual movement within the elite of society in Britain. Christianity was in a weakend state (both Protestant and Catholic), and was suffering from internal difficulties, religious conflicts, declining impact within society, and anti-Christian sentiments due to the repressive mentality of the church. 
The great characteristic of the Enlightenment was its idea of humanity as a rational creature, and the rejection of the idea of revelation (the mysterious, miraculous). It assumes 3 key aspects:
1. All questions can be answered
2. All answers are knowable (by someone) and accessible
3. All answers are compatible with each other
You may agree with these presuppositions, but what the Enlightenment suggested was that all these answers can only be obtained through REASON, not revelation of tradition. Reason is the final authority. Though the Enlightenment thinkers did not necessarily reject a God (of some kind), they did question HOW GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF?

They suggested the following:


1. God has revealed himself through his works – The great book of nature, being the new form of revelation. This revelation through nature can only be understood by human reason, using science



2. God has NOT revealed himself in his word – God revealing himself in this way is simply a fraud committed by the church, or at the most an illusion (created through ignorance), in order to control.

3. Denial of original sin – The human problem is not sin but ignorance, and the solution is to be found in education, and especially that which leads to morality.



4. A focus on the here and now (no interest in the world to come)

5. Emphasised freedom and tolerance – personally, socially, economically and religiously

6. Criticism of the Bible

7. Replace Christianity with natural religion

The problem with the propagation of such “philosophy” is that it results so often, in despair and nihilism. This “age of reason”, in fact became one of the first major shifts in Western thought away from Christian thinking.

What interests me in this process of learning about the Enlightenment is its basis on the idea of reason as the final authority and its rejection of the Bible as key evidence for the revelation of God.
It makes me wonder how atheists and Christians are ever going to find common ground in the debate on faith vs reason, if key aspects of the Christian faith are rejected – such as the Bible.

For myself personally, I find that my life is made up not only of the mind, but also the physical and the spiritual. Unless these aspects of a human being are also brought into the argument, I fear we are leaning to far into one biased aspect of life – that of the mind. I believe most of us will agree that there is more to life than what you think??

Related posts:

1. What is evidence? A Christian viewpoint
2. The Evidence for Faith
3. What is faith? (Cont'd)