Faith and Reason...and Other Mindless Trivia: Part III

Thrizzong in tha hizzong!

So like last time and the time before that, we umm...What the frak we done did? I think there was like this book and stuff. Some weird pictures that had nothing to do with nothing. More crap about faith and reason for like the umpteenth time. And this skeezy guy who thinks he's all smart and sexy and junk, but really he's just pudgy and pathetic and like sycophantic to the max. What a total Charlie Foxtrot. Anywho, let's see what else this boring old faineant geezer has to say about things so we can like laugh at him and make him cry. You should so annihilate him in the commenty place below. Word to ur meemaw.

The Authors: Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli

The Book: Handbook of Christian Apologetics

The Chapter: 2 - Faith and Reason

Unfortunately, there has been a literal deluge of problems with this chapter so far. But before we move on dot org, let's chapterbate a bit more to the sensual titillation of this voluptuous theoloporn.

Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli (KT from here on) are under the mistaken impression that faith and reason can never contradict each other. They pose two basic questions about the relation between faith and reason:

1. How much of the faith can reason prove? As we saw in the last post, KT contend that the best answer to this quandary is some. As we further saw in that same post, this is beyond redonkuloid.

2. Can faith and reason ever contradict each other? To answer this question, KT note Aquinas' answer, that only falsehood can contradict truth. They quote him (with a couple of their own bracketed additions) as saying thuslywise: "The truth that the human reason is naturally endowed to know cannot be opposed to the truth of the Christian faith. For that with which the human reason is naturally endowed is clearly most true; so much so, that it is impossible for us to think of such truths as false. [If we only understand the meaning of the terms in such self-evident propositions as 'The whole is greater than the part' or 'What has color must have size,' we cannot think them false.] Nor is it permissible to believe as false that which we hold by faith, since this is confirmed in a way that is so clearly divine. [It is not our faith but its object, God, that justifies our certainty.] Since, therefore, only the false is opposed to the true, as is clearly evident from an examination of their definitions, it is impossible that truth of faith should be opposed to those principles that the human reason knows naturally" (38).

KT go on, saying, "Thus, either Christianity is false, or reason is false, or--if both are true--there can never be any real contradiction at all between them, since truth cannot contradict truth" (38-39).

This is such a jaw-droppingly, breath-takingly bad line of reasoning, it is difficult to know how to respond. Okay, fine, truth can't contradict truth. Great. Whatevs. But why automatically assume that what is accepted on faith is true? What does it mean to say that what is held by faith can't be false, because it is "confirmed in a way that is so clearly divine"? How can God justify our certainty (our faith that God exists) if the very question under investigation and discussion is whether or not God even exists in the first place? Of course, if you begin with "Faith = Truth" and "Reason = Truth" there neither will nor can be any contradiction. But we're gonna need a justification for the "Faith = Truth" bit first. And if it turns out that reason can demonstrate the truth of some belief, why even invoke faith at all?

It seems that so far, KT are quite content to beg the question of God's existence and engage in circular reasoning at nearly every turn. They've done this so much already that I feel like a broken record demolished mp3 player pointing it out every time. (It happens again in the very next section of the book, but I feel I've overstayed my welcome on this point and will now move on to something else. I will, however, quickly note the irony that KT criticize using reason to justify reason on the grounds of begging the question, which I dealt with in the last post.)

KT close the chapter by anticipating a few objections one might have for the arguments offered in this chapter. (Interestingly, none of my objections are found here. The cowards. Oh, right. They wrote this before my blog became an international sensation. The lucky cowards.)

Most of the objections are made of fluffy hay and belly-button lint, these straw-man straw-woman straw-person arguments. They appear to be soft-ball questions that fellow Christians might ask, either because they really haven't thought about these issues or because they want to make KT look even sexier than they already are. (Examples: God's ways and mind and nature are infinitely above ours; how can we possibly hope to understand them? Isn't it humble to demean the powers of human reason? What about smart atheists? And, doesn't reason take away the merit of faith? Lo, the intellectual perils of being a Christian.)

But there is one objection they consider which I might be able to get behind. Sort of.

Objection: "But aren't Christians' reasons really rationalizations? Aquinas didn't really arrive at the existence of God by means of reasoning in his five proofs; he learned it from his mother. Then, as an adult, he looked for some reasons to confirm the faith he had already adopted for nonlogical reasons. That's not reasoning but rationalizing" (42).

KT offer three responses.

First, they accuse the objection to be guilty of the genetic fallacy: "confusing the psychological origin of an idea with its logical validity." Second, they defend the faith and Aquinas by saying, "Looking for good reasons for your faith can be perfectly honest if you are also open to reasons against it, as Aquinas certainly was. The objections against the many doctrines he defends in the Summa are manifold, fairly stated and objectively answered." And third, KT point out that "although Aquinas first learned about God by faith, Aristotle didn't" (42).

The heart of this objection is that we should all be wary of confirmation bias. There is an extensive body of research on this topic. Confirmation bias (along with many other psychological biases) can be incredibly powerful in swaying a person to believe or reject a particular proposition. Our brains are extremely complex, and the ways in which we go about forming our beliefs is just as complex, counter-intuitive, and (try as we might to be rational) irrational. Many researchers have found that we tend to have an emotional, gut-reaction to a claim and immediately begin working out reasons to support that intuitive response. So, it may be the case that KT have given short shrift to an objection we should all take quite seriously.

As for Aquinas and Aristotle...Having read the above quote from Aquinas, it is difficult to believe he was genuinely open to the possibility that he was wrong. And Aristotle may have believed in some sort of God, but it was orders of magnitude different from the God of Christianity. Besides, the reasons offered by both for their beliefs in their respective Gods have been found wanting by contemporary science and philosophy. Having said that, it would be interesting to see what Aquinas and Aristotle (with their admittedly magnificent intellects) would believe about such supernatural claims if they lived in the 21st Century, informed by modern science, especially evolution, as both relied heavily on versions of the argument from design.

Finally, since it's been a while since I've made noises in agreement with KT, I'll close with one. Sorta. Kinda.

Near the end of the chapter, they lay out three ways to be foolish. "(A) To misapprehend or misunderstand or fail to grasp; (B) to be ignorant, to fail to know or discover, and (C) to be illogical and fail to prove, to commit a fallacy" (40). (Unfortunately, this is immediately followed by credulous references to "The Fall" which apparently made us less reasonable. Le sigh.) At any rate, I find these to be fairly decent guidelines in judging the level of foolishness of an argument and will try to use them accordingly, not only with regard to the rest of this book, but with the other books I'll be examining throughout the remainder of this process. In all actuality, I will probably forget about them before the next post.

M'kay, so I'm like abs and totes not at all completes convinced that faithage and reasonation are married. I heard on Facebook they're not even seeing each other or nothing. Reason unfriended faith and is in a sexified new relationship with atheism. And they're gonna get gay married. But yall didn't hear that from me, cause I don't gossip.

Stay pudgy, boys and girls. The good Rev. loves ya.