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From your link: > All the truths you list above, which are beyond the capabilities of human reason alone to discover, can only be known through faith. See, for

by ajuc 8y ago

From your link: > All the truths you list above, which are beyond the capabilities of human reason alone to discover, can only be known through faith. See, for example: "Whether the trinity of the divine persons can be known by natural reason?" (Summa Theologica I q. 32 a. 1). > Just because there are truths beyond our human natural reason, that doesn't mean faith is not an intellectual virtue grounded in reason. This debate seems to be orthogonal to our debate. They are arguing whether faith is a feeling or a thing you can reason about. But they all agree faith is required to believe in catholic dogmas. And I fail to imagine how you could think otherwise, religions make lots of assumptions about god, and the proofs of existence of god I've seen were all flawed, and even if they weren't - they would only prove the existence of something, not the existence of a personal god with any particular properties. I especially liked the proof that went: "all things are perfect to some degree, therefore there must be a thing that is the most perfect, and that's by definition god" :) I was a devout catholic when I heard it the first time, and still it seemed so fishy to me :)

foldr 8y ago
It's not in any way an orthogonal debate. The Catholic Church clearly condemns blind faith in the main tenets of Christianity. That is, it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone. >Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God. >... >Revelation, indeed, is the supreme motive of faith in supernatural truths, yet, the existence of this motive and its validity has to be established by reason. Whether or not certain arguments for God are valid or not is beside the point. The point is that rational grounds for believing in God's existence are regarded as a necessary foundation for faith. Catholicism also condemns Rationalism, so faith is considered essential too, but it's not the blind faith you were referring to in your earlier post. You believe in the trinity through faith but your faith is grounded in a knowledge of the reliability of the relevant revalation(s).
- mirimir 8y ago
  If the validity of any religion were testable, it's arguable that we'd all know by now which one it was. But I'm not aware of any such experimental data. So it's all just speculation.
  - foldr 8y ago
    I don't see how that's relevant to this thread.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      It seems relevant to the faith vs rationality discussion. For me, rationality strongly implies testability. Unless we're talking about mathematics, and not physical reality.
      - foldr 8y ago
        First of all, if there's a special get out clause for mathematics, why shouldn't there be a special get out clause for God? God isn't part of physical reality either. But anyway, the question was whether religious belief was necessarily based on "blind faith", not whether it meets some kind of positivist criterion of ideal rationality. People who believe in God wholly or partly on the basis of arguments aren't believing on the basis of blind faith. You might think the arguments are bad, but you could have a rational discussion with them about that.
- ajuc 8y ago
  You are stretching the words to mean what they doesn't mean. > it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone. And who decides what is unreasonable :)? Because as a catholic you are required to believe in lots of self-contradictory statements with no proof. Stuff like holy trinity, virginal birth; omnipotence of god; humanity and divinity of messiah; omnipotent, omniscient and loving god creating an universe with evil in it; free will, salvation by good acts, and god's omniscience; impossibility of salvation without sacrifice of Jesus; bread that is a human body as well (in essence not in substance, but the idea of essenece itself is unreasonable and has no basis in reality). All of that with no proof other than scripture and tradition. I was a catholic for 22 years. I was taught by parents, and in school by priests. I took it seriously and fought with these statements for several years before abandoning them altogether. Catholics are required to believe in whatever the pope says is true in the matters of religion. You have to believe Mary was a virgin her whole life and never died, but went straight to heaven. You can have doubts, but the correct reaction is to ignore the doubts and pry for god to give you faith. And it haven't changed in last 150 years - some dogmas were added, but the idea that you have to believe in these things is at least 1600 years old, and probably older.

by ajuc 8y ago

foldr 8y ago

It's not in any way an orthogonal debate. The Catholic Church clearly condemns blind faith in the main tenets of Christianity. That is, it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone. >Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God. >... >Revelation, indeed, is the supreme motive of faith in supernatural truths, yet, the existence of this motive and its validity has to be established by reason. Whether or not certain arguments for God are valid or not is beside the point. The point is that rational grounds for believing in God's existence are regarded as a necessary foundation for faith. Catholicism also condemns Rationalism, so faith is considered essential too, but it's not the blind faith you were referring to in your earlier post. You believe in the trinity through faith but your faith is grounded in a knowledge of the reliability of the relevant revalation(s).

mirimir 8y ago
If the validity of any religion were testable, it's arguable that we'd all know by now which one it was. But I'm not aware of any such experimental data. So it's all just speculation.
- foldr 8y ago
  I don't see how that's relevant to this thread.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    It seems relevant to the faith vs rationality discussion. For me, rationality strongly implies testability. Unless we're talking about mathematics, and not physical reality.
    - foldr 8y ago
      First of all, if there's a special get out clause for mathematics, why shouldn't there be a special get out clause for God? God isn't part of physical reality either. But anyway, the question was whether religious belief was necessarily based on "blind faith", not whether it meets some kind of positivist criterion of ideal rationality. People who believe in God wholly or partly on the basis of arguments aren't believing on the basis of blind faith. You might think the arguments are bad, but you could have a rational discussion with them about that.
ajuc 8y ago
You are stretching the words to mean what they doesn't mean. > it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone. And who decides what is unreasonable :)? Because as a catholic you are required to believe in lots of self-contradictory statements with no proof. Stuff like holy trinity, virginal birth; omnipotence of god; humanity and divinity of messiah; omnipotent, omniscient and loving god creating an universe with evil in it; free will, salvation by good acts, and god's omniscience; impossibility of salvation without sacrifice of Jesus; bread that is a human body as well (in essence not in substance, but the idea of essenece itself is unreasonable and has no basis in reality). All of that with no proof other than scripture and tradition. I was a catholic for 22 years. I was taught by parents, and in school by priests. I took it seriously and fought with these statements for several years before abandoning them altogether. Catholics are required to believe in whatever the pope says is true in the matters of religion. You have to believe Mary was a virgin her whole life and never died, but went straight to heaven. You can have doubts, but the correct reaction is to ignore the doubts and pry for god to give you faith. And it haven't changed in last 150 years - some dogmas were added, but the idea that you have to believe in these things is at least 1600 years old, and probably older.