stahrwe wrote:The premise that faith and reason are mutually exclusive is a canard which is frequently deployed on BT, but it is wrong. In countering said premise I recommend the following books.

Thanks for the recommendations. I find the relationship a rich and fascinating topic, as maybe you can tell by the pages of discussion preceding.

I wonder if the claim about faith and reason being mutually exclusive might be due to a certain kind of faith which one might call "blind faith," in which the believer considers it a virtue to believe something despite lack of evidence. If the less the evidence, the more the virtue, then the person will tend to get a little extreme about shaping their beliefs in bizarre ways.

More often we have an attachment to tradition, which is part of the conservative nature of religion - part of its function is to conserve social ways which are valuable, despite the difficulty of explaining the reasons for these ways to the satisfaction of everyone in the society. Obviously if a critical mass of "wise grey heads" in the society no longer believe these are good ways, then modifications will happen. The problem with attachment to tradition for the sake of its authority is that this flexibility is actively resisted and a serious brittleness can set in. Such brittleness will also lead outsiders to argue that faith and reason are at odds.

My impression is that the claim about faith and reason being mutually exclusive comes from a delusion about what reason is.

I recommend both books to you.

Stacy Trasancos has a Ph.D. in chemistry which she earned while working as an exotic dancer (stripper) at night. She came to faith later in life and her book is a frank discussion of her perceptions of faith and reason and how they work together. She is not a creationist and discusses how her knowledge of science supports her faith.

Ben Butera's book is a discussion of how reason and faith are not mutually exclusive but work together.

stahrwe wrote:My impression is that the claim about faith and reason being mutually exclusive comes from a delusion about what reason is.

I agree with Stahrwe that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. But I doubt that many atheists actually make this claim.

This is probably a non sequitur, but I've recently discovered C.S. Lewis' book, Till We Have Faces. I haven't read it yet, but I was trying to figure out what C.S. Lewis meant by the title (which is also the title of a rock album by Steve Hackett). C.S. Lewis' late novel is a retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister.

from Wikipedia:

Lewis chose "Till We Have Faces", which refers to a line from the book where Orual says, "How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?" . . . He defended his choice in a letter to his long-time correspondent, Dorothea Conybeare, explaining the idea that a human "must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask.

I love this idea of speaking with your own voice. It's very Buddha-esque, isn't it? It also reminds me of the Greek aphorism: Know thyself. Until we know our own mind, how can we, to borrow a term from psychology, become self actualized? How can we get past our own errors and biases. C.S. Lewis probably saw his relationship with God as a result of his own soul-searching and finding his own voice. But I can appreciate this concept from an atheist perspective. Remember, too, that Lewis' novel is retelling of a Greek myth. I have always enjoyed C.S. Lewis' fictional work, even if I don't relate to his theology.

I know this is all off topic and I merely throw it out there as an aside. Also, I know that Stahrwe likes C.S. Lewis, so there's something we have in common!

Geo,

I have not read that Lewis book either but perhaps it is a reference to

I Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 13:12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. classic.net.bible.org/bible.php?book=1C ... chapter=13

Such 'irrational' methods of support are needed because of the 'uneven development' (Marx, Lenin) of different parts of science. Copernicanism and other essential ingredients of modern science survived only because reason was frequently overruled in their past. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, Fourth Edition, Verso/New Left Books, 20 Jay Street, Ste 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201, 2010, ISBN 13: 978-1-84467-442-8 Page 105

Reason is not always the good 'guy.'

geo wrote:"How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?" . . .

He defended his choice in a letter to his long-time correspondent, Dorothea Conybeare, explaining the idea that a human "must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask.

I love this idea of speaking with your own voice. It's very Buddha-esque, isn't it? It also reminds me of the Greek aphorism: Know thyself. Until we know our own mind, how can we, to borrow a term from psychology, become self actualized?

Buddha and everything else-esque. I have run across strong themes expressing this idea in several different sources lately, which I am looking at for several disparate reasons. The repetition has a feeling of synchronicity about it.

"Speaking with your own voice" is an "expressionist" way of putting it, but no less valid for that particular perspective. My admiration for C.S. Lewis has always been based on his combination of insight with honesty. He may have been the first "popular" Christian writer to expound the idea that honesty is the point, i.e. good behavior is not. (Whether he was influenced by D.H. Lawrence, Wilfred Owen and the rest of that generation of writers is for others to sort out.) His "Screwtape Letters" is a masterpiece of unmasking - of recognizing the myriad ways we delude ourselves in an effort to deceive others.

geo wrote:How can we get past our own errors and biases. C.S. Lewis probably saw his relationship with God as a result of his own soul-searching and finding his own voice. But I can appreciate this concept from an atheist perspective.

One could make a case that the central tenet of modern literature, and perhaps modern art in general, is the indispensability of authenticity. But there is a trick involved, a mystery which cannot be properly explained because it is only really grasped or communicated by experience.

This trick is the one Robert recently referred to in terms of getting at the self rather than the ego. The self is the authentic me, which embodies the archetype of the self, in Jungian terms. The ego is a kind of false self, constructed for purposes of instrumental transactions.

We can tell our secrets all day long and still be operating instrumentally, trying to manipulate others. Or we can find our voice talking about things that have nothing (direct) to do with our inner life. So what is the "trick"? Is it just that you can't fake authenticity? Not exactly, but that is maybe a door to the room of the mystery. The trick is that there is a particular self we are trying to access (or regain) and that when we have found it, we have found everyone else as well. It feels like our truest self, the one with no pretense at all, and at the same time discloses itself to be unified with the same self in everyone else.

There is undoubtedly a neurological basis to this mystery, and so it is likely that not everyone finds the same thing when they get as close as possible to finding their voice. But it has been witnessed to by so many seekers on so many very different paths that I am convinced my own experience is an instantiation of a truth available to most humans.

If it sounds like I am claiming some kind of authority to discuss it, then that is really funny, because even the authority of experience is completely irrelevant to a principle which cannot be "discussed" in any way that opens it to objective validation.

It is also really funny because I have gotten many of my recent presentations about this phenomenon from the writing community, which I am trying to become a member of, and I find that I don't know even the first thing about how to shed the "false voices" that make my writing stale (like that of so many others.) Being authentic is just not the same thing as being honest about your weaknesses. It is about finding that archetypal self, which paradoxically can only be done by losing all the false selves.

Jung says embrace your shadow, but good luck with that. First you have to find it.

stahrwe wrote:I have not read that Lewis book either but perhaps it is a reference to

I Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 13:12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.

Good insight. Paul was a mystic, but knew his own limitations well enough not to claim he had "found truth." Quite the opposite, he constantly pointed to grace, which he attributed to God. The intimate connection between "knowing fully" and "being fully known" sounds like a glib rhetorical device until you start trying to live in that nexus. I am convinced it is at the heart of grace.

yes but you've got to get up to the castle and free maid Marion, the sherriff works for John the imposter, but Richard is the rightful and true king.

you've got to make your band merry, you must defeat them but not humiliate and alienate them, they are after all aspects of your very self.

so on and so forth or are we still reading mythological allegory as history?

Robin of Loxley and his band of merry men

Jesus and the twelve

c'mon, strain those little grey cells, you can do it

I would like to share an interesting experience from the last few weeks. Our bookclub read "Ghana Must Go", a highly regarded novel by Taiye Selasie. She has an interesting TED talk, by the way, on "Afropolitans" and the process of pigeon-holing people by origin. Anyway, one of the members knows the author's mother, and invited her to our discussion.

We learned a lot about the book and the family's life. For instance, Selasie was mentored by Toni Morrison, and she is an accomplished musician who deliberately wrote the book in three movements, with different pace and mood in each. (Many people get bogged down in the first third, and yes, it is slow.)

There was a little bit of discussion of the role of empathy in finding her "voice." Although she can be sharply critical, Selasie is a very empathetic person and it shows in her writing. Character after character notices some significant detail about the actions of others. These details naturally seem to interpret themselves, not because of any miraculous powers of observation or deduction, but because Selasie is attuned to the way we pick up on the emotions and motivations of others, especially within families.

One might say she is an anti-Sherlock Holmes. Maybe even an anti-Umberto Eco.

It is also really funny because I have gotten many of my recent presentations about this phenomenon from the writing community, which I am trying to become a member of, and I find that I don't know even the first thing about how to shed the "false voices" that make my writing stale (like that of so many others.) Being authentic is just not the same thing as being honest about your weaknesses. It is about finding that archetypal self, which paradoxically can only be done by losing all the false selves.

But you know what the problem is, which puts you ahead in the game. It looks to me that success, as we normally look at it, isn't your goal in writing; rather you have more of a spiritual quest going on. Anyway, I wanted to say, without knowing exactly what the phrase means, that you have a gift for writing. I hope you find satisfaction in the journey.