Proponent of Rational Faith

[Axe Elf]

Hello, just signed up, did a quick overview of the site, made a couple of quick comments, and decided to settle in for a while and see what I can learn--and possibly even help others to understand.

I cannot remember a time when I was not a Xian, as I was raised in the faith. But when I got to college and actually read the entire Bible, I was pretty surprised at a) how much "religion" I had been taught that wasn't actually in the Bible, and b) how much cool stuff there is in the Bible that I had never been taught.

So I basically decided to scrap all of my beliefs about Xianity and then to rebuild them from the ground up, accepting only those theorems I could rationally construct. Thirty-some years later, I have come to call the progressively accumulating results of my exercise "Rational Faith."

So if there is anything regarding spirituality and religion in general, or the Xian faith specifically, that anyone is having a hard time understanding in rational terms, I would be glad to help.

And I have a pretty good sense of humor...

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Hello, just signed up, did a quick overview of the site, made a couple of quick comments, and decided to settle in for a while and see what I can learn--and possibly even help others to understand.

I cannot remember a time when I was not a Xian, as I was raised in the faith. But when I got to college and actually read the entire Bible, I was pretty surprised at a) how much "religion" I had been taught that wasn't actually in the Bible, and b) how much cool stuff there is in the Bible that I had never been taught.

So I basically decided to scrap all of my beliefs about Xianity and then to rebuild them from the ground up, accepting only those theorems I could rationally construct. Thirty-some years later, I have come to call the progressively accumulating results of my exercise "Rational Faith."

So if there is anything regarding spirituality and religion in general, or the Xian faith specifically, that anyone is having a hard time understanding in rational terms, I would be glad to help.

And I have a pretty good sense of humor...

Yes, my question would be, how do you rationalize faith?

 

[Deeje]

I basically decided to scrap all of my beliefs about Xianity and then to rebuild them from the ground up

Well hello and welcome to RF.

I did what you did many years ago but I did not rely on myself to come to my own conclusions.
I believe what it says in John 6:44....no one arrives at the truth on their own. The world is full of "I think" believers, but unless you have the company of a brotherhood who all believe the same things.....its pretty pointless IMV. God does not reveal different truths to different people. That is just not logical or rational.

Hope to have some fruitful conversations with you.

 

[Aldrnari]

Welcome!

If you had to compare your path to a denomination, what would be the closest denomination that would compare with your beliefs?

 

[Windwalker]

So if there is anything regarding spirituality and religion in general, or the Xian faith specifically, that anyone is having a hard time understanding in rational terms, I would be glad to help.

I'm having a hard time reducing spirituality to rational terms. Is that possible? Is it desirable? Is it the right direction to find Truth? How did you arrive at this, if you believe the rational mind is the key to the Knowledge of God?

I look forward to your response.

 

[sayak83]

Hello, just signed up, did a quick overview of the site, made a couple of quick comments, and decided to settle in for a while and see what I can learn--and possibly even help others to understand.

I cannot remember a time when I was not a Xian, as I was raised in the faith. But when I got to college and actually read the entire Bible, I was pretty surprised at a) how much "religion" I had been taught that wasn't actually in the Bible, and b) how much cool stuff there is in the Bible that I had never been taught.

So I basically decided to scrap all of my beliefs about Xianity and then to rebuild them from the ground up, accepting only those theorems I could rationally construct. Thirty-some years later, I have come to call the progressively accumulating results of my exercise "Rational Faith."

So if there is anything regarding spirituality and religion in general, or the Xian faith specifically, that anyone is having a hard time understanding in rational terms, I would be glad to help.

And I have a pretty good sense of humor...

Welcome on behalf of a Hindu Indian.

I would like to know a few basic facts about your beliefs as they are now.
a) What denomination broadly would you classify yourself as being (Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Jehovah Witness, Mormon).
b) What position do you hold regarding fate of people who are non Christians regarding salvation/damnation. Do you hold to eternal damnation?
c) What's your take on evolution, Big Bang, gay marriage etc.?

I myself am a Hindu monist, a panentheist. I believe that Hindu Upanishads and Buddhist Suttas provide an excellent guide to life and reality, superior to the Bible... and the basic thrust of what they are saying corresponds to what little insight I myself have gained through meditation and yoga. I am a scientist by profession, recently employed as a faculty in an Indian university. Spent about ten years in US for higher education and have just recently returned to my country.

Hope to have a good discussion regarding rationality of Christianity in comparison to other world views.

 

[Revoltingest]

Greetings!
Good sense of humor, eh?
Then join us all in the RF cafeteria for some....

It's not what you think.

Spoiler: It's worse

It's haggis....& plenty for all!

 

[Axe Elf]

WOW! I've been here half an hour, and already have half a dozen questions. I will do my best to get to all of them, I promise--even if sometimes it might take me a little while.

Yes, my question would be, how do you rationalize faith?

A belief system is "rational" if its theorems derive logically from its axioms (and from previously-derived theorems).

Axioms are the "faith-statements" of rational thought, and as such, all facts are based in faith. So technically, ALL formal systems of thought, like mathematics, geometry, and even logic itself, are systems of "rational faith." I suppose my belief system could be more discriminately titled "Rational Spirituality," but that doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.

 

[Axe Elf]

I did what you did many years ago but I did not rely on myself to come to my own conclusions.
I believe what it says in John 6:44....no one arrives at the truth on their own. The world is full of "I think" believers, but unless you have the company of a brotherhood who all believe the same things.....its pretty pointless IMV. God does not reveal different truths to different people. That is just not logical or rational.

Well, that's not EXACTLY what John 6:44 says; both that passage and the parallel John 6:65, both indicate that Jesus said that nobody comes to HIM unless God grants them the desire to do so. It's more about the conversion of unbelievers than it is about the determination of truth.

As far as the truth that God reveals to us, I do think that different people see different aspects of the truth. I do believe that there is such a thing as Objective Truth, but I also believe that none of us are qualified to know Objective Truth directly. There's just too much to know about the universe (let alone a potential creator of the universe) for any human to comprehend it in its entirety, and the fact that anything we "know" has to be filtered through our perceptual and processing systems indicates that any "truth" we gain is also going to be necessarily filtered down by those systems from its original Objective Truth state.

That's why we have so many different religions, because we are all like the blind men experiencing an elephant for the first time when it comes to experiencing God. One blind man feels the elephant's tail, and concludes that an elephant is like a rope. Another blind man feels the elephant's leg, and concludes that an elephant is like a tree trunk. Still another blind man feels the elephant's ear, and concludes that an elephant is like a fan. There was no intent on the part of the elephant to reveal different truths to different blind men; the elephant simply "is" and it was the experiences of the blind men that differed. And over time, those legitimate experiences of an elephant get passed down and embellished and become more real than the reality, such that the Ropers think that the Trunkers are heretics, and both the Ropers and the Trunkers feel like the Fanners are raving lunatics--obviously an elephant is SOMETHING cylindrical, all that is in doubt is the diameter of the cylinder. How could anyone possibly believe than an elephant was flat and wide?? Obviously, all these various accounts of an "elephant" contradict each other, and therefore, they cannot all possibly be real experiences of an elephant, right?

And so it is that we humans have our necessarily limited experiences of God, and those legitimate experiences come to be ritualized into religions to the point that only a few even recognize that they are based on differing experiences of the same thing. This is why I have come to identify myself as a "zen Xian" when I am forced to take a label. Zen is a philosophy concerning the Objective Truth behind our perceptions of reality; my spirituality is based on seeking closer and closer approximations to the unknowable Objective Truth about God, even though my belief system is couched in Xianity because that is the one I am most (and fairly intimately) familiar with.

 

[Axe Elf]

If you had to compare your path to a denomination, what would be the closest denomination that would compare with your beliefs?

My hometown was so small that the church I was brought up in was a combination of both the Baptist and Congregational churches that had previously existed separately in the town. So I suppose you could say I am most familiar with those two denominations. But as I explained in the final paragraph of my previous response to Deeje, I prefer the label "zen Xian" when I am forced to take one. For people who can't understand the concept of "zen" as anything other than the Devil's work, though, I'm ok with "non-denominational."

 

[columbus]

Greetings Axe Elf!
Welcome to RF. Glad you joined us.
Tom

 

[Shadow Link]

Welcome!

 

[Axe Elf]

I'm having a hard time reducing spirituality to rational terms. Is that possible? Is it desirable? Is it the right direction to find Truth? How did you arrive at this, if you believe the rational mind is the key to the Knowledge of God?

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I'm going to try to address it anyway. If I'm off the mark of what you were really asking, I apologize in advance, and invite you to clarify anything it appears I'm missing.

It's certainly POSSIBLE to create a rational system of spiritual belief--I've done it myself. I suppose the desirability of such a system would depend on the person, and how important it is to them that their spiritual beliefs be possible, as opposed to logically inconsistent. I needed a rational system of belief because I am a skeptic and a scientist at heart, and I could not stomach holding beliefs that were irrational. Others may not feel those same qualms and therefore not put the same restrictions on their beliefs.

Those two questions I think I understand. But now it gets a little messier--the right "direction" to find truth? Truth is all around us; go in any direction and you can discover it--but as I said before in this thread, any truth you discover is going to be nothing more than your perception of the truth--one should maintain the sense of knowing that they are always wrong to some extent. Reason and logic are the most appealing ways for ME to gain what I believe to be closer and closer approximations to Objective Truth, even understanding that I will never apprehend Objective Truth completely or directly in this lifetime.

And how I arrived at it was what I explained in my intro; I started with some basic axioms and then limited my beliefs to things that I could establish from them, the same way that other formal rational systems like geometry are arrived at. I guess part of my not knowing if I'm actually answering the question you have asked is that I'm not really comfortable with the idea of ANYTHING being "the key to the Knowledge of God." But I would say that I have a strong personal need to understand God in rational terms.

I hope this helps.

 

[Axe Elf]

I would like to know a few basic facts about your beliefs as they are now.
a) What denomination broadly would you classify yourself as being (Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Jehovah Witness, Mormon).
b) What position do you hold regarding fate of people who are non Christians regarding salvation/damnation. Do you hold to eternal damnation?
c) What's your take on evolution, Big Bang, gay marriage etc.?

a) As a broad category, I would say Protestant, but see also my more complete explanations above in my replies to Deeje and Aldrnari.

b) First the salvation. As I have outlined above (again, in my response to Deeje), I believe that all of the major religions of the world are based on legitimate experiences of God. I believe that anyone who honestly seeks God will find Him, by whatever name they call Him. The mechanism of salvation may have been Jesus' sacrifice, which bridged the gap between man and God, but I don't know if it is required for everyone to understand the mechanics of their salvation in every detail--I think the important thing is honestly seeking God, honestly trying to overcome our human nature of selfishness to take on the divine nature of love. If people are doing that, then the sacrifice of Jesus may redeem them, even if they're unaware of it.

Now the eternal damnation. Well, I believe it's eternal, in that it's final, but according to the Bible, the only ones who are going to be tortured for ever and ever in the Lake of Fire are the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. Everyone else who was not designated for salvation at the dawn of time is destroyed in the "second death." (Revelation 20:10-15). The first death destroys the body (that which we are housed in for this life on Earth), the second death destroys the soul (that which makes us "us"), and the spirit (the impersonal force by which inanimate matter is made alive) returns to its source--God.

c) A full answer here would probably require more space than is prudent, especially if I honored the "etc." at the end of the question. What's "etc."? Abortion? Eating meat on Friday? Working on Sunday? Wearing clothing woven from two different fabrics? But I'll see if I can say something about the three issues you've suggested.

I think that evolution is described pretty accurately in the first few verses of Genesis 1. First there were swimmy things, then crawly and flying things, then animals, and then man. That seems like a pretty good guess for someone living 6,000 years ago. Of course then you get to Genesis 2, where man is created BEFORE the animals, but I tend to see Genesis 2 as a more sociological account than the more chronological account of Genesis 1.

I think that the Big Bang is as useful of a hypothesis as we have now for the first few moments of the universe's existence. I do find it funny though that atheists don't seem to see the "magic" in the Big Bang that they decry in outright Creationism. "God just created the universe out of nothing? What are you, some kind of idiot? Something can't come from nothing, you fool!" "Ok then, what did the universe come from?" "The universe came from a tiny pinpoint of a dot, so infinitesimally small that it might as well be nothing--but it WASN'T NOTHING, it was a 'singularity'--it was just a little dot that contained the substance of every planet and every sun in every galaxy everywhere, and then in an instant, it just decided, by itself, to expand into a universe." "Uh, ok, yeah, that makes a lot more sense."

Being gay isn't something I've had to struggle with myself, but I tend to believe that we should not try to legislate morality in such a way that consenting adults cannot pursue their own paths.

I myself am a Hindu monist, a panentheist. I believe that Hindu Upanishads and Buddhist Suttas provide an excellent guide to life and reality, superior to the Bible... and the basic thrust of what they are saying corresponds to what little insight I myself have gained through meditation and yoga. I am a scientist by profession, recently employed as a faculty in an Indian university. Spent about ten years in US for higher education and have just recently returned to my country.

I don't do meditation or yoga, and of course I'm more familiar with my own holy books than I am with yours, but our scientific groundings should offer us some common ground for further discussion.

 

[Enoch07]

Hello, just signed up, did a quick overview of the site, made a couple of quick comments, and decided to settle in for a while and see what I can learn--and possibly even help others to understand.

I cannot remember a time when I was not a Xian, as I was raised in the faith. But when I got to college and actually read the entire Bible, I was pretty surprised at a) how much "religion" I had been taught that wasn't actually in the Bible, and b) how much cool stuff there is in the Bible that I had never been taught.

So I basically decided to scrap all of my beliefs about Xianity and then to rebuild them from the ground up, accepting only those theorems I could rationally construct. Thirty-some years later, I have come to call the progressively accumulating results of my exercise "Rational Faith."

So if there is anything regarding spirituality and religion in general, or the Xian faith specifically, that anyone is having a hard time understanding in rational terms, I would be glad to help.

And I have a pretty good sense of humor...

Hi there and welcome to RF.

Theistic rationalism - Wikipedia has been around for awhile, and it most closely resembles what I am. Though not many of us are around nowadays as most people tend to swing to either one extreme or the other (pure reason/logic or pure belief). It's a difficult path for sure but I quite enjoy it and it has helped bring peace of mind.

Anyways hope to see you around!

 

[sayak83]

a) As a broad category, I would say Protestant, but see also my more complete explanations above in my replies to Deeje and Aldrnari.

b) First the salvation. As I have outlined above (again, in my response to Deeje), I believe that all of the major religions of the world are based on legitimate experiences of God. I believe that anyone who honestly seeks God will find Him, by whatever name they call Him. The mechanism of salvation may have been Jesus' sacrifice, which bridged the gap between man and God, but I don't know if it is required for everyone to understand the mechanics of their salvation in every detail--I think the important thing is honestly seeking God, honestly trying to overcome our human nature of selfishness to take on the divine nature of love. If people are doing that, then the sacrifice of Jesus may redeem them, even if they're unaware of it.

Now the eternal damnation. Well, I believe it's eternal, in that it's final, but according to the Bible, the only ones who are going to be tortured for ever and ever in the Lake of Fire are the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. Everyone else who was not designated for salvation at the dawn of time is destroyed in the "second death." (Revelation 20:10-15). The first death destroys the body (that which we are housed in for this life on Earth), the second death destroys the soul (that which makes us "us"), and the spirit (the impersonal force by which inanimate matter is made alive) returns to its source--God.

c) A full answer here would probably require more space than is prudent, especially if I honored the "etc." at the end of the question. What's "etc."? Abortion? Eating meat on Friday? Working on Sunday? Wearing clothing woven from two different fabrics? But I'll see if I can say something about the three issues you've suggested.

I think that evolution is described pretty accurately in the first few verses of Genesis 1. First there were swimmy things, then crawly and flying things, then animals, and then man. That seems like a pretty good guess for someone living 6,000 years ago. Of course then you get to Genesis 2, where man is created BEFORE the animals, but I tend to see Genesis 2 as a more sociological account than the more chronological account of Genesis 1.

I think that the Big Bang is as useful of a hypothesis as we have now for the first few moments of the universe's existence. I do find it funny though that atheists don't seem to see the "magic" in the Big Bang that they decry in outright Creationism. "God just created the universe out of nothing? What are you, some kind of idiot? Something can't come from nothing, you fool!" "Ok then, what did the universe come from?" "The universe came from a tiny pinpoint of a dot, so infinitesimally small that it might as well be nothing--but it WASN'T NOTHING, it was a 'singularity'--it was just a little dot that contained the substance of every planet and every sun in every galaxy everywhere, and then in an instant, it just decided, by itself, to expand into a universe." "Uh, ok, yeah, that makes a lot more sense."

Being gay isn't something I've had to struggle with myself, but I tend to believe that we should not try to legislate morality in such a way that consenting adults cannot pursue their own paths.



I don't do meditation or yoga, and of course I'm more familiar with my own holy books than I am with yours, but our scientific groundings should offer us some common ground for further discussion.

You are getting into my good Christian book along with @Vouthon

 

[Windwalker]

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I'm going to try to address it anyway. If I'm off the mark of what you were really asking, I apologize in advance, and invite you to clarify anything it appears I'm missing.

It's certainly POSSIBLE to create a rational system of spiritual belief--I've done it myself. I suppose the desirability of such a system would depend on the person, and how important it is to them that their spiritual beliefs be possible, as opposed to logically inconsistent. I needed a rational system of belief because I am a skeptic and a scientist at heart, and I could not stomach holding beliefs that were irrational. Others may not feel those same qualms and therefore not put the same restrictions on their beliefs.

Those two questions I think I understand. But now it gets a little messier--the right "direction" to find truth? Truth is all around us; go in any direction and you can discover it--but as I said before in this thread, any truth you discover is going to be nothing more than your perception of the truth--one should maintain the sense of knowing that they are always wrong to some extent. Reason and logic are the most appealing ways for ME to gain what I believe to be closer and closer approximations to Objective Truth, even understanding that I will never apprehend Objective Truth completely or directly in this lifetime.

And how I arrived at it was what I explained in my intro; I started with some basic axioms and then limited my beliefs to things that I could establish from them, the same way that other formal rational systems like geometry are arrived at. I guess part of my not knowing if I'm actually answering the question you have asked is that I'm not really comfortable with the idea of ANYTHING being "the key to the Knowledge of God." But I would say that I have a strong personal need to understand God in rational terms.

I hope this helps.

That's an incredible response. I look forward to some conversations with you. You should start a thread on this, as to go further here would not quite fit into an introduction thread. Welcome, BTW.

 

[Axe Elf]

Theistic rationalism - Wikipedia has been around for awhile, and it most closely resembles what I am.

I took a look at the Wikipedia article, and it sounds kind of similar, but I'm not sure I could endorse it completely. For instance, if I believe in an omniscient God Who created the universe, then I am logically forced to deny that I have free will. First, if God is omniscient and He knows you are going to New York tomorrow, then you can't change your mind and go to Chicago instead--that would violate the premise that God is omniscient. And the same goes for anything whatsoever that you (or anything else) does--if an omniscient God exists, then what God knows will happen is what will happen, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.

Also, Einstein (among others) has shown us that time and space are merely two different aspects of the same thing, so if I believe that God created all of space, then I have to believe that He also created all of time in that same instant of the Big Bang--every moment of time was intentionally structured by His will, just as every inch of space was. And then of course there are the dozens of corroborating Bible verses that assert that we don't have free will.

Therefore, I cannot agree that the primary role of religion should be to bolster one's morality. That would mean, by extension, that all atheists would necessarily be immoral as well, and that is simply not the case. The primary role of my spirituality is to come ever closer to approximating and understanding the Objective Truth of God.

I would also say that the primary role of prayer is not to get things you want from a magic genie in the sky, but rather to help you align your mind with God's will. Jesus prayed, in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done," not "MY will be done." Of course the waters are muddied by my denial of free will--but if prayer "works" to bring about a desired result, then it's only because the person was already predestined to pray for something that was already predestined to occur anyway.

 

[sayak83]

I took a look at the Wikipedia article, and it sounds kind of similar, but I'm not sure I could endorse it completely. For instance, if I believe in an omniscient God Who created the universe, then I am logically forced to deny that I have free will. First, if God is omniscient and He knows you are going to New York tomorrow, then you can't change your mind and go to Chicago instead--that would violate the premise that God is omniscient. And the same goes for anything whatsoever that you (or anything else) does--if an omniscient God exists, then what God knows will happen is what will happen, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.

Also, Einstein (among others) has shown us that time and space are merely two different aspects of the same thing, so if I believe that God created all of space, then I have to believe that He also created all of time in that same instant of the Big Bang--every moment of time was intentionally structured by His will, just as every inch of space was. And then of course there are the dozens of corroborating Bible verses that assert that we don't have free will.

Therefore, I cannot agree that the primary role of religion should be to bolster one's morality. That would mean, by extension, that all atheists would necessarily be immoral as well, and that is simply not the case. The primary role of my spirituality is to come ever closer to approximating and understanding the Objective Truth of God.

I would also say that the primary role of prayer is not to get things you want from a magic genie in the sky, but rather to help you align your mind with God's will. Jesus prayed, in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy will be done," not "MY will be done." Of course the waters are muddied by my denial of free will--but if prayer "works" to bring about a desired result, then it's only because the person was already predestined to pray for something that was already predestined to occur anyway.

If God is omniscient and He knows everything that will happen, and if we don't have free will, isn't he logically required to create the best of all possible worlds for those who live in them? Do you believe this world is of such kind? And if we don't have free will, then aren't we simply patients and not agents in this video game of a world God has chosen to create. I am now thinking of Anthony Hopkins and the Westworld.

 

[Axe Elf]

That's an incredible response. I look forward to some conversations with you. You should start a thread on this, as to go further here would not quite fit into an introduction thread. Welcome, BTW.

Well thank you for the appreciation!

In which forum do you think I should start a thread about Rational Faith? I've only been here a couple of hours, so I'm not familiar with the environments of all the various sub-forums yet. Maybe "Interfaith Discussion>Religions Q&A"? Or maybe "Religious Debates>Science and Religion"?