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.

Profile: Blaise Pascal

I've recently discovered a new philosopher who intrigues me. Besides the fact that his first name is Blaise, which is immensely cool, Pascal did a lot of really neat stuff.

Pascal wrote an academic thesis on acoustics by the age of 11. He worked on vacuumes to discover that there was space with nothing in it, which was a huge development. He invented the first mechanical calculator, but ended up leaving that endeavor behind due to the fact that he couldn't break even on them. He was most noted for his genius in mathematics, where he discovered Pascal's triangle and also laid the groundwork for Leibniz, who would invent calculus. I'd call him a renaissance man, but he unfortunately contained not a single athletic bone in his body and was actually quite frail. The main point I want to get across: He was a genius and a child prodigy.

Beside his intellectual prowess, Pascal was an great theologian. He and Descartes would go back and forth on their ideas of God and how to know him. While Descartes was all about rationality and using your head, Pascal would have none of it. He said that God can only be reached by taking a step of faith and using your heart. Your head alone will get you nowhere in spirituality. It is for this reason that I most like Pascal.

He could never quite make a formula for how we're to come to God. Before he died, he had post-its all over his house with little snippets of what he was trying to put together about a relationship with the divine. Those were compiled into a book known as The Pensees. They're just a bunch of spiritual axioms and observations. I'm excited to read it. Aside from Pascal's Wager, which I don't much care for, Pascal was a really ingenious man with a heart for seeking spiritual truth.

After a mystical vision he had, Pascal became a Christian, to which he was deeply devoted. Even still, he was a very healthy cynic. The Pensees weren't printed until years after Pascal's death because people were afraid it would cause people to doubt too much. I think that a healthy dose of skepticism in anything is incredibly useful.

Mainly I like Pascal because he was a skeptic Christian who had a deep sense of spirituality. He was incredibly intelligent, yet maintained a stiff sense of piety. I enjoy the notion that spirituality and Christianity aren't just for the stupid and the uneducated. Some very intelligent, well thought people have a deep sense of devotion to Christ, or religion in general. Lots of people here at Drury make it seem like religion is for stupid people, and I just disagree with that. Pascal, Descartes, Leibniz, and al-Ghazzali help me realize this and keep moving forward with my head up.