I beg to differ that--whether atheist or Christian or whatever--faith in something is absolutely first before reason. What one must have faith in is the fact that reason itself is good enough to discern anything at all. What if you're a loon? You would never know...and physical diagnosis doesn't matter: you're in you're own little mad world. In order to use reason at all I must first have faith in the idea that my reason can discover any truths about objective reality at all.
You have a few problems here. First, you are attempting to rescue faith by using a different definition from that which is used by religion. Faith in the above context is equivalent to confidence, I am confident in my abilities to use reason due to the continued successful use of my mind during my life. This confidence is therefore a reasonable conciousness. Faith in its religious context is a belief in the supernatural without, or in spite of, proof. It is not a reason-based confidence by which one believes on faith.
Second, you are ignoring the fact that reason, by definition, is a rational ground that supports a given conclusion. Faith is not a prerequisite of reason. I quote american academic Richard Robinson:
"The only alternatives to thinking with reason are thinking unreasonably and not thinking."
Thirdly, you attempt to force a subjective definition of reason on the readers. However, reason is not subjective. It is that which has sufficient proof and rationale to support a given conclusion and is independently verifiable. Of course we should expect you to attempt usage of the antique Subjectivism of Immanuel Kan given your username. And so I quote Immanuel Kant:
"(I) found it necessary to deny knowledge of God... in order to find a place for faith."
I don't think so. Again, just because something is an irrational happenstance does not mean that it is necessarily untrue.
I did not say that all irrational belief is necessarily untrue. However, it is arbitrary and unworthy of belief by a rational human being. Until there is reason to support a conclusion, there is no reason to believe it. So my statement holds, using irrational arguments, combined or uncombined with rational ones, leads to an irrational conclusion regardless of the conclusion's truth. Of course this assumes that the irrational statements are required for the given conclusion because if not, there is no reason to include them at all.
Why can't there still be a god of lightning who is causing the physical processes of lightning to occur?
Please tell me you didn't just say that. You are simply proving my point about faith -- one may introduce any arbitrary, unsupported idea that they want as fact. Simply, a god of lightning is irrational. Any whimsical idea such as this is unfounded and is not to be considered until valid proof is presented. The burden of proof lies entirely on the person who makes such a claim -- you cannot prove a negative. Care to try? Tell my why there can't be an invisible giant pink elephant, lifted into the air by invisible yellow fairies, that in turn lifts Boeing 747's into the air when the airlines transport people.
Call me an old-timer, but the field of "reasoning" includes all areas of knowledge including metaphysics, ethics, and law. There are many areas of reasoning which have nothing to do with natural sciences, but with theoretical science--e.g., theology, astrophysics.
Yes, reason is employed by the truthfull theoretical astrophysicist. Reason is also employed by the atheistic theologian. However, a religious theologian, in the same manner as an astrophysicist claiming the stars are holes in a shell enclosing the Earth just before "heaven", is irrational.
Again, anyone who wholly rejects their reason is not being religious; rather they are choosing to be only half-human...if not, then, animal--less than human. The reason behind most failures to understand religion is just that: they don't "understand" it--if they did, they couldn't deny it. For the True Faith is insurmountably reasonable.
It is quite the opposite, anyone who
does not wholly reject reason is not being religious. A reasonable person cannot accept anything by faith (in the religious sense), as that would be to abandon reason. If you look at history, religion has always been the enemy of reason. From the Catholic Church's treatment of people like Galileo, to Martin Luther's famous statement:
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God." Religion is not, and never has been "the fulfillment of reason."
does it really "matter"? Your example is not an inconsistency; it is simply the problem of stories being handed down by word of mouth. Or, in some instances, certain people might have been closer or further away from Jesus and heard different things and arrived at different conclusions about what "exactly" was said.
For the people infallibility of the bible, yes, this simple example destroys their claim. I agree, this is the problem of stories being handed down by word of mouth. However, what gives you the authority to claim that this is a false section of the bible, but other parts of your decision are not? If you cannot hold the bible as truth in whole, then any partial truths one attempts to glean from the text is another arbitrary selection (unless proven reasonably). Certainly if the three supposed "people" attributed to writing these sections by religious people are wrong about something as simple as what Jesus said on the cross then they could be wrong about talking bushes, revelations in their dreams, and any other countless irrational claims. And regardless of how you like this example, I provided a link to many others that you may read.
Just don't call yourself a "thinker" -- you employ irrational claims that go against thinking and reason.
