Faith and Reason...

Okay, so in keeping with my spiritual journey, I think it's time I document and attempt to sort out something I've began to discover about myself in the past year or so. I'm not sure if it's caused by studying philosophy or if I study philosophy because of this condition (which came first: the chicken or the egg?), but I don't really have any separation of faith and reason. I think I have faith in reason, but that's about as far as I can go as far as talking about faith. For me, reason guides my life. I know reason has the tendency to send one spinning off into the clouds like Leibniz or Descartes, so I need to keep myself firmly grounded, but nonetheless reason runs my life.

I know some people can be confronted with a very convincing, sound, powerful argument and simply turn their backs when they don't agree with the conclusion. They'll say, "well, that's a good argument but I don't believe it." I can't do that. When I'm confronted with a powerful argument, it brings about strong emotions within me. I am very compelled to either (1) accept it, or (2) find the problem with it. If I can't, I'm stuck. I can't just turn my back on it. Reason illuminates the dark for me, and even if it often shows me things I don't want to see I cannot deny it. I feel like it's built into the way I function that if something is illogical or doesn't follow a strong argument, I can't "have faith" in it.

Along that line, people tell me that faith is belief in something that can't be proven or can't be seen. I think that's okay in some respects. While analyzing proofs for the (non)existence of God, for example, one quickly discovers that there is no conclusive argument one way or the other. That leaves room for faith. However, when one is confronted with a powerful argument against what one believes and simply rejects it because they don't want to believe it, I don't think that is faith. I think that is arrogance and ignorance.

So am I an entirely rational being, or have other people distorted the word "faith" to the point that it now commonly means being able to believe something not only when it cannot be proven, but when that person can be shown to be wrong every step of the way and still blindly accept what they're told? How do I balance this out? What if my reason leads me to reject the ideals of my past, of my former religion, of my family? I hate it, but sometimes I reason myself into being ostracized.

Reincarnation...

I was working today with one of my best friends, Noah. He's a deep thinking kind of guy that took a few religion classes and is just fun to have discussions with. Not to mention he and I can just be goofy and weird together, which is a great tension breaker when you have twenty frappuccinos to make in a row. Anyway, we were sitting outside on our lunch break discussing some Buddhist stuff and it made me think a bit.

Suppose I kill flies all day because they're pissing me off and buzzing in my face. I've planted some bad karma and might come back as a fly for the next hundred lives or so. I can understand the punishment aspect, the lessons being learned from the lives you will live as a fly, etc. Here's what I can't grasp: What was I in my last life? Because I don't know what I was in my last life, I can't get behind the idea. Here's why.

If I don't know what I was in my last life, how am I supposed to be learning a lesson? I don't know what I did wrong, so it seems unjust that I am being punished for it in this life. I hear Buddhists on a discussion blog that I read every day talking about how unjust the Christian God is for sending people to hell for their lives. How is this any different? I don't think that being turned into a fly is fair if when you're a fly you don't remember why you were turned into a fly.

This leads me to a little more thinking.

Does the fly get bad karma for bugging the hell out of you? What if the fly bugs humans aaaaaaaall day because he hates humans? Will he come back as a human in the next life? Then what is punishment and who defines it? I'm kinda lost and the whole thing doesn't make sense to me.

Some of my Buddhist friends tell me "don't bother why hypotheticals. Just live in the moment and worry about yourself!" Well, you know what? Hypotheticals are my life. They strengthen my faith. If a faith can't stand up to hypotheticals and explain something, it seems to lack credibility. People that say, "Just believe and go with it!" really bother me. Blind faith is a really poor way to live in my personal opinion. Life is still good, I just had to vent out that paragraph.