Monday, February 10, 2014

Can faith be rational?

A decision theorist thinks that the answer is yes.

8 comments:

planks length said...

I for one do not care for this article. Lombrozo argues that Faith can be rational "under some conditions". I maintain that healthy Faith is rational - period.

(Read Lumen Fidei by Popes Benedict and Francis - the best definition of "Faith" I've ever read, and one that insists on reason from start to finish.)

B. Prokop said...

I am here making an exception to my year-long "internet fast" to brag about my beautiful, beautiful daughter's amazing performance earlier this month at Indiana University. You can see it here. If you listen to only one set (if any), be sure to make it the Elgar Sea Pictures.

God in Heaven, can she ever sing!

Papalinton said...

So beautiful, Bob. A wonderful recital.
Your daughter is truly gifted.
I am so happy for you.

Linton

B. Prokop said...

Thanks, Linton. It sounded even better in person.

(I plan on returning to my silence at the end of this day. I did scan through the current DI conversations - pretty good stuff of late. My compliments to Victor for keeping up such a great site.)

Crude said...

Nice to hear from you, Bob. Congratulations to your daughter.

Unknown said...

It's curious to me that philosophers of religion treat faith as though it were its own genus. Faith seems to me as though it were a species of the genus induction. If that's the case, then faith is no more or less inherently rational than other forms of inductive reasoning. Given the pragmatic constraint, Luther's words to the effect that faith is our default mode of being is inarguably true. We take it on an induction (by faith) that the world really exists, that it's populated by people, that these people aren't philosophical zombies ... etc.

My gut feeling is that the argument over the rationality of faith is really a political argument. (I should perhaps say metapolitical to distinguish what I mean from the dreck that passes for politics.) We are seeking to exclude or include others on the basis of a criterion, but in the words of Robert Frost, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offence." Perhaps that's what we should be asking before we engage in bitter, fruitless arguments.

Nicola said...

Congratulations Bob!

I don't know if you're interested Vic, but the argument from reason comes into play in this post...

http://www.saintsandsceptics.org/new-atheisms-moral-meltdown-part-2/

Nicola said...

I should actually say, congratulations to Anna!