The god of classical theism is an incoherent concept

I’ll just ignore the insincerity of the first portion of this comment.

Reasoning morally does not resemble "faith".

That’s not my claim at all. I’m choosing to believe this comment isn’t just further insincerity, but rather some level or another of miscommunication or misunderstanding.

What has to be remarked on here is that I frankly have no idea what sort of definition of “faith” you’re employing here. It can range between any number of things. It could potentially be nothing more than a superficial layman use of the word that amounts to very little more than “blind trust in claim [x]” (in terms of Christian thought, this would be something like the sola scriptura theology that leads people to thinking in literal terms about something like Noah’s Ark).

In that case, of course philosophical reasoning isn’t comparable to faith. If you’d care to explain what you mean by the word “faith”, I can try to navigate the discussion based on your present intentions.


To attempt directly responding before waiting for further elucidation on what you mean with your phrasing, I can perhaps mention that the epistemic foundation of “faith” as found in religious philosophy from Aquinas, to Augustine, to Chesterton, to Damascene, and onward; contains no differentiation in foundational or functional terms than the anchoring basis employed even by the Aristotles, or the Camus, or the Nietzsches, of the philosophy world. There necessarily is both an expedient and necessary element of instinctual, or even something like “gnostic”, understanding which grounds the presumption of validity for metaphysical claims. Very, very few in philosophy (whether religious or secular) presume that reason or empirical investigation alone is justification enough for definitive claims of any sort. There is a necessary element of presumptive faith that the baseline inquiries are able to be navigated through reason at all, and furthermore, this necessary element of presumptive faith is itself justified through a litany of reasoned argumentation.

If you don’t see this at this point, then there’s very little potential for moving forward with the discussion. I wouldn’t know what to do other than suggest that you read and seriously engage with academic philosophy in a way that I feel you haven’t even begun to yet.

/r/DebateReligion Thread Parent