Faith versus reason?

Question

Both are ways of thinking and yet the debate is whether or not we can use both at the same time, one without the other, or only one. Let me see your comments but only after you read the folowing
For example, there is a story that helps illustrate this.
There was a blind woman who was born blind. However at the age of 20 she had a special surgery in which she regained her sight. However, she had gone home on a certain path her entire life. She could not find her way by seeing so she blindfolded herself and went home that way because the darkness was all she knew.
The analogy is that her sight was reason, while the darkness was her faith. Both brought to her truth, and yet both showed her different views of the world. Neither was wrong.

What are your thoughts? Can faith be used along with reason? Are they opposites?
Are there some truths that we faith can show us and some that only reason can show?
Would it be optimal to use them in the same time or are there instances where one would be more useful than the other.
Basically, what are your thoughts, agreements, and disagreements on the subject

Answer 1

The trouble with your example is that the woman wasn't using faith to get home, but knowledge. She knew the way, but because of the entirely novel stimulus of sight she was distracted from what she already knew. It takes time to understand new stimuli, and until one does experience will provide the road map.

The false dichotomy of faith and reason is really only a sop to provide one side or the other with a nice self-righteous feeling of superiority. However there are mulitiple types of knowledge, several versions of logic, and all of the above can be misused quite easily.

For an example of a combination of faith and reason, consider the city of Segovia in Spain. I've never been there, but I accept on faith that it exists. Why? Because reason tells me that I should accept it on faith. The photographs could be faked, as could the books. Until I go there myself I don't really KNOW. And even then, it could be a conspiracy by the Spanish government. Maybe Segovia was blown up in an accidental nuclear test by NATO and everybody's conspiring to make us think that the little town of Pueblo Utopiano is Segovia.

However after applying reason to all of that, I think it's wiser to accept on faith that Segovia is Segovia, that it's always been Segovia, and that the photographs, maps, etc, are all accurate. I don't feel a need to go out and learn for myself every fact. I accept innumerable facts on faith, as do you and everybody else in the world. Those who say they don't believe in anything they can't see and touch are simply lying. They believe unnumbered things that they can't see or touch, from the existence of Egyptian Dynasties to the Big Bang.

Faith improves and magnifies reason, and reason can't exist without faith, so I see no reason to pretend otherwise.

Answer 2

Faith and reason definitely are not opposites. They are not the same thing, but they certainly can work hand-in-hand.

In the Middle Ages, the Scholastics (beginning with St. Anselm and culminating with the great St. Thomas Aquinas) put much effort into demonstrating the compatibility of faith and reason. Thomas Aquinas was so successful that, to this day, he holds pre-eminence among all theologians, before his time or since. His famous "Five Ways" of proving the existence of God are all based on what we can know through reason - yet there's no question that he was a man of great faith.

Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical about the importance of both faith and reason.

Both should lead you to the truth, even though they may do so in different ways. Don't settle for one without the other. You need both.

Answer 3

Like the analogy- yet you forget that both faith and reason cannot exist alone without knowledge. At least in my opinion, anyway.

I like to look at them as spices in life- and they should be used appropriately. Sometimes they can be used in conjunction, sometimes they can't. It really depends on the situation; they are both ideas/factors that cannot be used for everything.

Chaos ensues with debating this! It is a very good question, but I think they are different angles on life, each unique and neither right or wrong.

Answer 4

Neither. The question is why did all and sundry come to settle for the considered any gods at first. The reasoning technique is unlearning myths and fables of formative years. Given the age that a newborn learns the religion of their way of existence, they have been indoctrinated and function been conditioned and punished, so as that they think some thing first without ever finding out whether that's actual or not. faith is performing on a theory obtained at age 3, 4 or 5. i've got grown notably on account that that ingredient. faith is preserving a theory --whether fake or maybe even with info to the choice. it extremely is considered the middle of being irrational and illogical. If I provide help to be attentive to god is pink will you suspect it without info. If not, why did you suspect the story of a god once you first heard it....

Answer 5

I think that the fact that the woman's sight simply represented reason and that darkness also just represented faith, you cannot judge faith and reason based on that alone. Just like how people think a flower represents beauty, yet beauty is certainly not just about a flower. It is simply represented by it. If I am to answer this question, I would completely disregard that part.

I myself choose to follow reason when it comes to certain things, and faith when it comes to others (like putting my faith in someone, for example). There are too many different situations in life for someone to simply follow one or the other.

Answer 6

I don;'t really liek that analogy too much, the fact is that the eyes were giving her data she didn't know how to interpret. Being blind for her didn't require "faith" that she could get home, she was blind her whole life!!
Faith is dropping into friend's arms or a seeing person doing something blinfolded. A blind person using the senses they have used their whole life is not faith.

Other than that, I say faith is bascially the equivalent of delusion. Belief in the absence of evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence is not a system to me, it's a problem.

Answer 7

Well faith isn't necessarily against reason, the two just don't go hand in hand, for me at least, some people choose to live by reason and some by faith, whose to say ones right and ones wrong, we end up the same in the end. This is how I think. It's not wrong, its just not the same as how others think.

Answer 8

Faith is not at all contradictory to reason. Belief means to "hold as true". If we want to discover a new medicine, for example, we have to "hold as true"/believe that it exists. Faith is just actions on the basis of the belief so in our example, we search for the new medicine having faith that we can find it. What in the world is unreasonable about that scenario?

Answer 9

That's a neat story, I will remember it....Thanks

As I get older faith and reason seem more and more alike.
In a short while they will be the same.

Even in the "hard" sciences there seem to be NO totally complete agreement on what is what. Just little pockets of agreement here and there.

Answer 10

Sorry, the example provided does not illustrate faith. The question is interesting, I hope you find another example.