Posted by Xavier on March 02, 1999 at 17:30:01:
In Reply to: Faith and Intellect posted by Mike B on March 02, 1999 at 13:35:11:
: : : Looking for one of your honest, intellectual posters to explain to
: : : me why your "honest intellectual inquiry" seems to me (a poor, ignorant
: : : thiest) to have to start with the uncritical acceptance of the doctrine of
: : : athiesm. Why must we close our minds first, in the avowed desire to open
: : : them?
: : Your last question is your best one.
: : Atheism is the default position. No 'uncritical acceptance' is required to be an atheist.
: : Perhaps if you'd care to show us using something other than faith why belief in god(s) is a more intellectually honest position, you will obtain some converts.
: Your subject line presupposes that faith and
: intelligence are mutally exclusive. All
: faith is not blind faith.
: Both belief and an unbelief require faith as neither
: position can be
: be proven true in the scientific sense.
: Have you considered that it may require more faith
: to believe Darwin than the author of Genesis?
(Xavier) Yes I have and have come to the conclusion that Genesis requires a tremendously larger amount of faith.
: My personal faith in the Living God has been
: validated in my life in many ways.
(Xavier)Good for you. The scientific method has been aptly validated for me quite frequently.
: I suppose that I object to the idea that the
: belief in God is intellectual suicide.
(Xavier)You make it sound so harsh. To me, faith is the antithesis of logic. I am not saying that I have never experienced or used faith. It is just that I realize that faith will allow me to believe in something when logic dictates otherwise (like when I buy lottery tickets...I know the odds, but I play with the "faith" that someone is bound to win and it could be me. Logic tells me it is a waste of money)
: I will agree that some forms of reputed religious life do
: involve shutting off the intellect, but it must
: not necessarily allways be the case.
(Xavier) Unfortunately, the loudest "believers" tend to reside in the camp of the former rather than the latter.
: Most athiestic literature I have seen on the
: web consists of strawman attacks for the
: 'faithfull' (i.e., believing athiests, for it still
: takes faith to believe in nothing). I recommend the
: the web site www.firstthings.com to you as an example of
: the convergence of piety and scholarship.
(Xavier) Interesting site; heavy on the piety, but a little light on the scholarship. Well written articles do not, by themselves, make for an intellectual treatise. The funniest one was "Eroticism Unbound". It made me wonder if the author ever actually visited Yale, or if his imaginings were from his own puritanical thinking.