Tag: belief in god

What Is the Point of Faith?

God certainly has made Himself known in spectacular ways at times, but not very often. There must be a reason. The reason, I believe, lies in the importance of faith.

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I believe that faith has a point, though I have often wondered exactly what it is. I believe there is a reason that faith is necessary, though I have often wondered why. I think these questions are worth exploring.

“Seeing is believing” is a truism that characterizes the world that we live in. Some people are generally skeptical and not willing to believe anything (to give themselves to an idea) unless they are overwhelmingly convinced. Other people are quick to believe the things they want to believe, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. People are quirky that way.

I believe both extremes are rooted in the same soil. We naturally want to control our own destinies. Skepticism is one way we hang on to that control. Believing in something we want to believe is just another way of clinging to the control of our own destiny (gullibility and naiveté aside).

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Does Truth Matter?

Truth exists whether we see it, know it or acknowledge it

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“Truth ain’t something you can just out run.” (A line from the song, Truth, by Steven Moakler) I was mulling over the title to this piece when the song, Truth, came on Spotify as I was listening to a playlist. Sometimes “life” happens like that, so I am running with it.

It certainly seems trite to speak of truth, especially when we speak of Truth with a capital “T”. How often do we think of Truth? Does Truth matter?

Truth (small “t”) is certainly something that we want to depend on in our everyday lives. Courts of law are designed to get at it. We seem to have a hard time finding it. “He said, she said” is the story we often hear, and it is hard to know what the truth really is, even in our everyday lives. Continue reading “Does Truth Matter?” →

Are Reason & Faith in God Contradictory Terms?

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I began taking notes on a series of hard questions posed to Tim Keller by some heavy hitting interviewers that is posted to the Veritas Forum. I thought I would take my notes and create a series of quick answers to these hard questions, but I got sidetracked by the first question: Aren’t faith and reason contradictory terms?

The question took me back to college when I first began to wrestle with this question.

Implied in that question is an assumption that the only rational conclusion of reason is disbelief in God. Reason is defined by Merriam Webster as “the power of the mind to think and understand in a logical way.” Faith is defined as the “strong belief or trust in someone or something.”

Note that faith is not defined in relation to evidence or reason, and this common definition of faith is not antithetical to evidence of reason either.

Reason (logic) depends on a premise, and premises are often tautological. Many premises are susceptible of proof, but many are not. The premise that the natural world is the totality of all reality is a premise many believe to be true, but it is not susceptible of proof (at least not scientific proof, unless one believes that science, which is limited to the study of the natural world is capable of proving that nothing other than the natural world exists though it is limited to the study of the natural world).

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