What do you think?

I'm doing a paper on faith and reason: Do they conflict? and I need some help. I have a couple of questions that I want anyone that is reading to answer.

I) What do you mean by faith?

II) What do you mean by reason?

III) Why do you think that faith and reason conflicts?

Thank you in advance for participating! God bless you all!

I) faith is described as 1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Faith in my view is the complete acceptance of something based solely on your belief,

II) Reason is described as a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.

Essentially, reason comes from applying critical thinking to something and achieving a logical answer that makes sense, and has something to back it up.

III) That is a tough question, in many ways yes it does. Reason is a search for proof and understanding. Neither of which are required for faith.

They should work hand in hand. Faith as the driver, and reason as the steering wheel.

Faith is the acceptance of something without evidence.
Reason is using evidence to come to a logical conclusion.

So yes, they can conflict, but they don't have to. For example, if I have faith that I can fly, that is going to conflict with reason: gravity dictates I cannot fly.

However, if I have faith in an intangible, invisible God who is my best friend, there is no evidence for it, but there is no evidence against it, either. There is no reason that I should believe, but no reason I should not, either. If I start to behave against social norms (i.e., "God told me to blow up that building") then we have a problem. But as long as my behavior remains within socially acceptable norms, faith and reason, though different, do not have to be in conflict.

Hope that helps. (And what is this a paper for, by the way? What class?)

No.

God's rationality is the rational basis for human faith wich is the rational basis for human reasoning.


See: Presuppositionalism