🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov11.175750.6605@spss.com| markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
|In article <74353@hydra.gatech.EDU| cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
|(a very thoughtful article, with which I have only a few quibbles:)
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
       Thank you!

|There's nothing hard to understand, and nothing particularly religious,
|about faith.  Most of you probably believe that your Significant Other 
|isn't cheating on you.  Why?  Have you engaged private detectives?  Have
|you designed double-blind experiments to test your hypothesis?  No; you
|just trust them, and recognize that this kind of personal trust, rather than 
|scientific skepticism, is what's called for in a relationship.
|
|Religion simply asks for this kind of trust in one's god.  

But these are 2 very different kinds of "faith".  You *know* that your
S.O. exists, and the question as to whether or not he/she is cheating on
you is testable.

||On the other hand, honest theologians admit that God cannot be found through
||the use of reason.  A "leap of faith" is required to believe in God.  The
||act of taking this leap is mystical by definition, and cannot be rationally
||justified.
|
|Not all would agree.  In Catholic theology, for instance, it is asserted 
|that the existence of God can be proved by reason alone.  But "belief" in
|God is generally taken to require not just an acceptance of his existence,
|but trust and allegiance, and this is what cannot be based on reason alone.

I was not aware of this aspect of Catholicism.  Is this an official position
of the Church, or just something that appears in the writings of one or
more Catholic theologians?  In any case, it is not enough to assert that
the existence of God can be proved by reason.  One must *do* it, and so far
no one has.  Indeed it is not possible to do so.  If a rational proof of
God's existence were possible, just this possibility would be enough to
de-mystify God and render Him subject to physical law.

Tim
-- 
Tim Dodd, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech:  cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu