Can Faith Be Rational?

[FooYang]

If anything, 2-year olds are a fine example of how blind belief without proper evidence or understanding, are not pathways to truth. You can pretty much make them believe anything.

True, 2 year olds have a lot of very sophisticated, but garbage, beliefs.

 

[crossfire]

How about we don't include infants that don't even have the ability of proper reasoning, to the point that they think that my face physically disappears when I play the piekaboe game with my hands?

A 2-year old is not really the bar against which rational reasoning is measured.


If anything, 2-year olds are a fine example of how blind belief without proper evidence or understanding, are not pathways to truth. You can pretty much make them believe anything.

That was my point about faith that the light will come on when you flip the switch!

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I can tell you for certain Adrian that the day I hear a good, strong argument from an Atheist, is not a day that will ever come.

How observant of you. We need no argument. You need to come up with the strong argument, theist, to convince atheists. Until you do, they will continue to reject your superstitions.

All Atheists have is explaining things away to their proposed dogma and of course "the glass is not half full, it's half empty".

No. We explain nothing to you. We simply reject your ineffective claims. You don't matter. You have obviously been taught by some vile religion to hate atheists. Which was it? Christianity?

Most Atheists I've read on this thread are just fundamentalists and as fundamentalists will never see how their hilarious arguments are not against the topic they think they're refuting.

Dude. You're the one believing in sky fairies. Excuse me while I laugh. OK. I'm better now.

Atheists in general are merely angered, opinionated people without much going for them.

Now you're projecting. You're the one on the angry attack. You are offended that others live happily without the crutch you need. Your religion doesn't seem to be of any value to you. Try secular humanism.

The whole Christian-atheist dialogue is often dominated by fundamentalism on both sides

There is no atheistic fundamentalism.

“If a man were to declare, ‘There is a lamp in the next room which gives no light’, one hearer might be satisfied with his report, but a wiser man goes into the room to judge for himself, and behold, when he finds the light shining brilliantly in the lamp, he knows the truth!”

As does the man who enters the room and sees that the light that others claimed exists doesn't. Your metaphor assumes that a light is shining. The truth is whatever is actually found to be the case.

 

[sojourner]

Can faith be rational? If so, how? If not, why not?

I think honest faith has an aspect of rationality.

 

[sojourner]

There is no atheistic fundamentalism

Of course there is.

 

[sojourner]

The closest example I know is Pascal's Wager. There are criticisms of this, of course, but the basic idea (from the Wikipedia page is):

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell)

That, though depends on one’s cosmology.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: “If a man were to declare, ‘There is a lamp in the next room which gives no light’, one hearer might be satisfied with his report, but a wiser man goes into the room to judge for himself, and behold, when he finds the light shining brilliantly in the lamp, he knows the truth!”

As does the man who enters the room and sees that the light that others claimed exists doesn't. Your metaphor assumes that a light is shining. The truth is whatever is actually found to be the case.

Maybe the quotes say that, but the point of the quote is that you FIRST have to go into the room before you can KNOW that there is no lamp that gives light. If you never go into the room, you will never know.

What you believe to be the case will be whatever you find in the room, although you could be mistaken about the lamp, not seeing the light that it emits.

 

[FooYang]

Dude. You're the one believing in sky fairies. Excuse me while I laugh. OK. I'm better now.

I'm not a "dude".
You must be replying to the wrong person, or you're sorely mistaken

There is no evidence for a giant fairy that flies in the sky 24/7 who saved you from your sins, there is no way we can weigh and measure it Scientifically, these people are delusional.

 

[FooYang]

How observant of you. We need no argument. You need to come up with the strong argument, theist, to convince atheists. Until you do, they will continue to reject your superstitions.



No. We explain nothing to you. We simply reject your ineffective claims. You don't matter. You have obviously been taught by some vile religion to hate atheists. Which was it? Christianity?



Dude. You're the one believing in sky fairies. Excuse me while I laugh. OK. I'm better now.



Now you're projecting. You're the one on the angry attack. You are offended that others live happily without the crutch you need. Your religion doesn't seem to be of any value to you. Try secular humanism.



There is no atheistic fundamentalism.

Your post was very cute though, like a baby trying to say words.

"You are offended that others live happily without the crutch you need.", that one got me all giggly.

Go find a theist to talk to, you're preaching to yourself.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm not a "dude".

That's okay, lots of people here also call me a dude.
I guess we talk like dudes.