Certainty and doubt: Descartes Revision Notes

I produced a number of revision documents for my degree course, and maybe someone will find them useful. This is for A222 Exploring Philosophy, Book 4, Knowledge by Cristina Chimisso.

I printed these revision notes on card as an aide-memoire to the issues I needed to touch on in an exam question on the subject; most exam questions require an exposition of the ground to be covered before any actual philosophy can be done (ie, the question answered!). Having these, almost bullet, points burned into my memory allowed me to write this background stuff whilst planning my answer.

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Walk in the Dark with a Mystery, or Walk in the Daylight Alone?

Friendly Atheist has this video up in a post by Paul Fidalgo. As Paul says, it's quite heartbreaking, especially given the recent news. In it Kay Warren, wife of Rick, says:

I would rather be in relationship with a god who in many ways remains a mystery. And walk in the darkness with a god who in some ways remains a mystery, than to try to walk in complete daylight without him.

That seems to me to be such a sad thing to say, although maybe many people identify with it; who wants to be alone in the universe? But wanting something does not make it so, although we are excellent at conjuring beings out of thin air.

I remember as a kid growing up on an estate with dark, rather forbidding woods behind the houses. I used to gather the kids together and we would go down into the wooded valley where the foundations of an old hut remained, and play in the mud and the streams and the trees. The foundations of the hut had the look of a footstep. A large one, obviously, so I used to regularly scare the other kids by telling them how it was a giant's footstep, and that I had seen the giant once. In fact, I would say, looking nervously about, I think I can hear him coming now. With not much more than that, I would put the heebie-jeebies up the gang and a rushing, stumbling, all out retreat from the woods would ensue.

And here's the odd thing; I would get caught up in the panicky evacuation too, just as frightened as the others! I was excellent at invoking beings with completely bogus emotional manipulation, and I don't doubt that everyone else is too. There we were running in the dark with a mystery (and quite thrilling it was too), and we have at least one believer who would rather remain in those woods than escape to the daylight.

But what we prefer does not determine what is true. We would prefer the universe to be one of innate justice and goodness, but as Kay Warren appears to have noticed, sadly, that does not appear to be the one we live in.

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The Advantages of History but None of its Risks

This appears to be the only picture of Van Harvey available. He's the one in the hat, I think.

The title of this piece is, I think, a pretty fair description of what faith, in the religious sense, gives a believer (I've paraphrased it from a better writer than me).

I've long been intrigued by faith, having failed to maintain it myself, and puzzled over the Catholic definition of 'certain' faith. There is always, it seems to me, a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of anyone's faith: it is based on historical events but it refuses to countenance their non-occurrence.

Weird Catholic leaning blog First Things recently posted a piece by Thomas Cothran (an attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, so there) called Against Faith in Faith. He rails against a naive depiction of faith:

Confronted with inadequate evidence for the deeper truths of life, one must conjure up a commitment to ideas for which the subjective act of faith can be the only ground, and one must believe not only in the content of faith but in the faith-act itself. 

This is the faith described by Dennett, Dawkins and Harris, he says, and also professed, embarrassingly, by Christians too (well done for admitting that). Indeed, as I have discussed, William James defends a pragmatic faith against Clifford. Incidentally, for (another!) good discussion of James and Clifford, see this and this from Massimo Pigliucci.

But Cothran wants to draw a different picture of faith:

Far from posing a threat to one’s faith, knowledge reinforces it: the more reason one has to believe in God’s providence, the more readily the believer entrusts himself to God. 

But if one has more reason to believe, that is not faith, but reason. He then attempts to objectify his faith:

The knowledge of faith, rather than relying on the outmoded theories of knowledge where the mind merely represents external objects, is participatory; the act of contemplating the things of God partakes in God’s own Trinitarian activity. The knowledge of faith is not therefore “subjective” in the sense that it happens primarily in the believer, but is “objective” because the believer participates in the eternal activity of the object of faith; the believer’s subjective faith is therefore secondary and derivative.

I have no idea what phrases like "the act of contemplating the things of God partakes in God’s own Trinitarian activity" and "the believer participates in the eternal activity of the object of faith" mean, but Cothran appears to be trying to remove subjectivity from faith. Well, that would be nice, but baffling sentences do not by themselves give faith objectivity. Sadly, Cothran has more in the bank:

The tacit participatory metaphysics in which Christian faith becomes intelligible emphasizes that Christianity is not an abstract system or an existential human possibility, but the ontological union of God and man in time and history through the recapitulative activity of the incarnate Word of God.

Yikes. It's hard to believe someone wanting to make themselves understood put these words together like this. He ends by trying to set aside a faith that is different, I presume, from the faith attacked by Dennett, Dawkins and Harris:

One must attack (or defend) Christian faith where it may actually be found, not in the mind as an idea but as a form of life realized in the historical community established by Jesus Christ.

It's a No true Scotsman defence of faith. But, as he himself pointed out, the problem is that many profess the version of faith he dismisses, so any attack on that version is perfectly justifiable, and there is no 'must' about what is attacked or defended. In any case, his version of faith appears to be incomprehensibly post modern.

I'm currently reading Van Harvey's The Historian & the Believer, which, while exploring the tension between history and belief, includes a chapter on dialectical theology's attempts to set aside faith (in a similar fashion to Cothran) from the attack of the 'rational robots' of the enlightenment. In fact, I find Cothran's blurb reminiscent of Bultmann's, Barth's and Tillich's. Consider this analysis of Barth's view of faith, by Van Harvey:

Faith is...the realisation of the abysmal gulf separating man from God. It is the recognition of the "qualitative distinction between time and eternity." Consequently, faith is closely allied to, if it is not identical with, a recognition of the ambiguity and questionableness of life. (p.132)

I don't begin to understand this, but that, of course, may be my failing. Barth appears to accept the ambiguity that I find troubling, but it's not clear how that helps the situation. In discussing the tension between the historical reality of the resurrection and belief in it, Van Harvey quotes Bultmann as arguing that the Christian faith proclaims to man:

...that in what happened then, however it might have been, God has acted, and through this act of God the Word of divine judgement and forgiveness which now confronts him is authenticated. The meaning of that act of God is nothing other than the actual establishment of this Word - the proclamation of this Word itself. No historical science can control or confirm or reject this affirmation. For that this Word and this proclamation are God's acts stands on the other side of historical observation. (p.143)

Orrly? How convenient that one's beliefs lie "the other side of historical observation". Talking about Tillich's notion of absolute faith, Harvey says:

What seems remarkable about the description of absolute faith is its apparent formlessness, although Tillich, like Bultmann and the early Barth, understands it to be the way of talking about the cruciform structure of faith, the self-surrender and negation of everything finite which brings one into confrontation with the Absolute. (p.147)

(note that the goal appears to be transcendence from our poor finite existence to some absolute infinite, er, existence, or knowledge, perhaps)

Now, I don't begin to understand dialectical theology (as is surely plain), but in Harvey's analysis of Barth's defence of faith in the face of facts, I think he puts his finger on the issue that drives me mad about much apologetic writing: its special pleading (and I quote extensively from the book because I think it's worth it):

To say that Barth's view is an arbitrary one is to say, first of all, that he makes historical assertions on the basis of faith which he then claims no historian has the right to assess. He claims that the bodily resurrection is a guarantee that it was Jesus who appeared to the disciples and yet insists that no historian can, in the nature of the case, assess this claim. He insists that the resurrection was physical and appeals to the story of Thomas in the Fourth Gospel to prove it but deals with none of the numerous critical questions concerning the historical veracity of that Gospel or the function miracle stories have in it. He appeals to the forty-day tradition and the empty-tomb stories but in no way answers the many questions biblical critics have raised about these stories. Consequently, Barth uses the stories to argue for the historical nature of the events but concedes that the stories cannot, from a historical standpoint, stand any critical scrutiny. this leaves the believer in the position of accepting an argument the warrants of which are historical in type but which are, at the same time, confessed to be contradictory and "imaginative-poetic." It leaves the inquirer in the position of having to accept the claims of alleged eyewitnesses or risk the state of being a faithless man, Insofar as the believer wants to be historian, or the historian a believer, he has to surrender the autonomy of critical judgement. Barth, in effect, claims all the advantages of history but will assume none of its risks. (p.157-158)

Spot on, and I would say that many apologists and believers do the same - they are inconsistent in their application of critical judgement. Of course, we all are inconsistent, at times, but it is surely our duty in such weighty matters to eliminate such inconsistencies, and rule out subjective influence where we can.

To sum up, the faith claims of believers are a non-starter without the assumption of rules that they then go on to deny, because those rules threaten their faith. It's a vicious circle, and I don't think obscure redefinitions of faith break that circle, but simply twist it. Cothran's 'historical community' is confirmed by rules that rule out the events that spawned it.

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The God That Hides Himself

In a piece called The mystery of faith that is baffling but beyond doubt in Saturday's Times (behind a paywall, sadly), the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, Geoffrey Rowell wrote about something that does indeed baffle; what is the justification for belief?

Natural theology looks to establish good reason for belief in a god, and revealed theology looks to persuade toward a particular flavour. Neither is successful in their project, often by their own proponent's admission. William Lane Craig, for example, who runs a website called reasonablefaith.com only believes because a 'radiant' girl told him that god loved him, not because he was persuaded by the arguments.

The believer is on the horns of a dilemma: if you have reason to believe, why should you be rewarded with eternal life - you're just doing what any reasonable person should do. On the other hand, if you don't have reason to believe, well, you shouldn't, and you won't be rewarded with eternal life! Either way, I don't see why belief with or without evidence deserves eternal life.

Rowell grabs this dilemma by both horns, and gets gored by both:

The biblical writers recognised that the God who makes himself known is at the same time a hidden God - as the prophet Isaiah exclaims, "Truly thou art a god who hidest thyself!"

Great; hidden but 'seen', somehow. This is the common refrain of the believer who wants to privilege his perception over non-believers'.

In Elijah's flight, God reveals himself in "a still small voice", or the "sound of thin silence":

It is this silence, almost the absence of God, which is the presence of God which awes Elijah into worship.

When almost absence is equated to presence, then we know we're skating on thin ice, not thin silence.

Centuries later the poet, R.S. Thomas, would speak of God's "absence which is his presence".

Now we seem to be getting into straight apophaticism. He then quotes Gerard Manley Hopkins as writing in a letter:

You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty.

I think we're familiar with the Catholic certainty supposedly delivered by 'divine light'. 

But this is hand-waving; if the certainty is incomprehensible, it is unjustified. If something is absent, it is not present. If it's hidden, it cannot be seen. If something is baffling, it cannot be beyond doubt. Embracing contradictions like these will simply result in absurdities. We are all allowed our own private absurdities, but it's time we grew up as a society and banished them from respectable public fora.

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Blind Leading the Blind

Alister McGrath has written another vacuous piece attacking the new atheists. He seems unhealthily obsessed with them.

It's an extended exercise in equivocation on the meaning of faith. He starts by complaining how the naughty new atheists caricature faith:

One of the core New Atheist assertions, endlessly and uncritically repeated on New Atheist websites, is Richard Dawkins's dogmatic statement that faith is "blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence."

...and:

For Dawkins, this means that faith counts as a "form of mental illness." This nasty intellectual perversion is limited to religious people. "Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion."

Fair enough (except it's obviously not limited to religious people, and I have no idea who would say that - the quote doesn't say that); generally speaking the faithful I've met do make the leap of faith in the face of evidence to the contrary; that is certainly how I became a theist. But it's true also that other theists claim a different basis for their belief, including, apparently, McGrath. Since it's not "blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence", it must be because of evidence, mustn't it?

Faith is based on reason, yet not limited to the somewhat meagre truths that reason can actually prove.

So McGrath agrees with the new atheists that faith goes beyond reason! Welcome aboard. Except in one particular; that the truths that reason 'proves' (to be charitable, let's allow that in the non-scientific sense) are 'meagre'. These 'meagre' truths, of which McGrath is so contemptuous, include:

• Man was not fashioned from dust and woman from his spare rib
• The Earth was not magicked into being before there was any light
• Women are not subservient to men
• Homosexuals are not doing anything wrong
• All religions cannot all be right; they can all be wrong
• There is no need to take what another person says on trust
• Freedom of belief is a good thing, and religions usually only encourage belief in themselves
• Freedom of expression is a good thing, and religions usually discourage questioning of belief

McGrath goes on:

It is not a blind leap into the dark, but a joyful discovery of a bigger picture of things, of which we are part. It is complex and rich idea [sic], which goes far beyond simply asserting or holding that certain things are true.

If it's a joyful discovery of a bigger picture of things, then why can it not be demonstrated? Here's the thing; theists 'discover' bigger pictures all the time. They either relate to reality or are a figment of their imagination. How to decide? Of course, there's only one answer to that, and McGrath won't like it.

Theists present multifarious and contradictory 'bigger pictures' to non-believers, and then moan at them for quibbling about evidence. If we are to accept McGrath's word without evidence, then we may just as well accept a Muslim's, a Jew's, a Scientologist's or Al Queda's. Theists then say, no, you must discover it yourself. No, no, and again, no. Without reason and evidence one cannot be sure one isn't fooling *oneself* any more than the many theists clearly are. To think anything else is to adopt the arrogant mantle of omniscience. Far from being scientistic, new atheists are simply being modest in their claims to knowledge; while theists presume to know more than their fellows. Such hubris.

McGrath promises more of this drivel, so it's going to be a long road to Golgotha.

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The Selfish Ape

The second part of Antony Thomas' film for Channel 4, How Do You Know God Exists? poses the question: is it really possible that the creator of this vast universe could have a direct, personal relationship with you, and with me?

Not terribly well worded, IMO, since anything that is logically possible can be agreed as possible. Is it really likely etc... would have been a more interesting question. Never mind; let's see what the protagonists said:

Yes! In a word.

...said Rowan Williams. A little triumphantly, I thought. He expanded:

Because the difference between us and god is not that, we're very small and he's very big...

...is it that we exist and he doesn't?

Christians have always held, and Jews and Muslims too, that god is absolutely present in every bit of the creation, that his energy, if you like, is at work in every act within the universe. We may be very small, but we, and everything else, are in the palm of god's hand.

No, of course not, it's that he's omnipresent, like Big Brother. Note the final sentence, hoping to portray some humility in this most arrogant of doctrines. This arrogant-humility is a hallmark of theist belief. The universe; it's all about *us*, and we've done wrong. This is attention seeking behaviour, and should be ignored if it wasn't so prevalent, and respected.

This little speech doesn't address why the Archbishop thinks the god that he worships is a personal god. He's not one for answers, though, as we've seen.

Swami Pramtattvadas, for the Hindus, then offers:

God pervades his entire creation; that means he is everywhere... in the rivers... he's all around us.

He goes on a bit with a few examples of where he is, although saying he's everywhere should have communicated the message. Not sure what this has to do with the personal god, though.

He then talks with the Swami and the Archbishop and Vincent Nicholls about doubt, and the testing of their faith. Nicholls says:

I think doubt is an intrinsic part of faith.

I've noted that another Catholic priest has acknowledged the doubt in his faith. This is a little odd when one considers what the Vatican says about it:

Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."

I'd really like to know which it is; are these theists certain, or doubtful? Because this affects how people take the message they are pushing. When they are sermonising they seem to be pretty certain about what it is they believe. Do they add provisos at the end when talking about the bible?

The events depicted in this book may or may not be fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.

Not at any church I've been to. But Nicholls ends by saying:

My own experience of faith is real, and, at times, very encouraging, very fruitful.

Here we go again, with the solipsism. Will they never stop thinking about themselves? Everyone's experience is different, so to extrapolate from one's own experience to a general truth is *unsafe*. Please stop doing it, unless one is prepared to be scientific about it.

Nicholls again:

We come from god, and we return to god.

He believes that life is a *separation* from god. To what end? Does he recall being with god before he was born? Does he know he will be with god after death? No, of course not; it is selfish wishful thinking. Probably! Jonathan Sacks would prefer to dwell on the hear and now, but also says:

We are more than physical beings, and everything about us should tell us so.

I disagree; everything about us should tell us we *are* just physical beings. Letting our desires rule the evidence is simply dishonest. Rowan Williams says:

All I really know about the afterlife is that god has promised to be there. God has promised that death is not the point at which he wipes his hands and says 'I've done with you'.

Could you show me that promisory note? Is that really all you claim to know about the afterlife? Which god will be there?

Swami Pramtattvadas talks about the Hindu belief of the journey of the soul through different incarnations, gradually building to the point of release. He talks of the afterlife as a place of bliss and calmness. Serenity for ever.

Ultimately, this portrayal of a man shaped being who will guarantee us eternal bliss is a form of infantilism; we don't like the idea that when we die, we are gone - forever. But these constructs allow for the fact that people we know and love *will* be excluded from this eternal bliss. To believe that is true, and accept eternal bliss for oneself, is surely the very definition of selfishness. So the personal aspect of god is important only if one is worried about oneself. I certainly am worried about myself, but I also care about the people I know and love, and many I don't. I'm not prepared to respect a doctrine that suggests that some of them, through no fault of their own, deserve some kind of hell, whilst others enjoy an eternity of bliss.

Next up in the program; is religious faith important for community?

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Yet More on Faith - Fish Fingered

From Stanley Fish's article in the New York Times:

The theological formulation of this insight [reasoning without assumptions is impossible] is well known: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11). Once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence cannot be maintained. Pking gets it right. “To torpedo faith is to destroy the roots of . . . any system of knowledge . . . I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason’s legitimacy without presupposing it . . . Faith is the base, completely unavoidable. Get used to it. It’s the human condition.” (All of us, not just believers, see through a glass darkly.) Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith.

This is classic pomo style defence of religious thought, and whilst the argument is trivially true (in the sense that at bottom we all have to make assumptions a priori) it *isn't* the point of the reason/faith divide. The point is that the religious *do* use reason themselves, so they *do* adopt the same assumptions as the non-theist. But here's the rub; *except* when it comes to their privileged god belief. So the theist takes on board the assumption of reason, not unreasonably, and then discards it for one *particular* belief. This strikes me as inconsistent at best and dishonest at worst. What has Stanley Fish used to formulate his anti-reason attack if not reason itself? Any other tool than *reason* and it would have been a series of wildly unconnected thoughts of no relevance to the point in question (no jokes, please, tempting though it is). To attack *reason*, therefore, is self-defeating. All that non-theists ask is that theists apply the same critical thinking to their religious belief as they would to all their other beliefs.

It's also wrong historically, since most people in the past would have felt, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that everything around them was testament to the truth of the god concept. Homo sapiens had good *reason* to believe there were greater movers at work. It was the way his mind constructed a believable narrative about his situation.

More dangerously, to take a realisation about our epistemology (that we have no reason to assume reason!) and extend it to allow belief without reason is simply a recipe for conflict. Without allowing reason its supremacy, we simply have no conflict resolution mechanism. Well, other than violence, I guess.

And once again we have a theist defending the notion of faith without evidence, contradicting Catholic doctrine, and other theists, like Polkinghorne. Is it any wonder the non-believer has to spread his attacks wide, only to be accused of attacking the wrong target? There are so many different versions of superstitious belief, it is a Sisyphean task.

It really is about time the theists got together and sorted their story out. Do they believe for good reason, or not?

Fish continues:

So to sum up, the epistemological critique of religion — it is an inferior way of knowing — is the flip side of a naïve and untenable positivism. And the critique of religion’s content — it’s cotton-candy fluff — is the product of incredible ignorance.

It is more reasonable to believe that religion is an inferior way of knowing because:  

• It hasn't *demonstrated* any advantage over reason when it comes to taking advantage of reality; quite the opposite.  
  
• The religious way of knowing has led to numerous unsubstantiated and conflicting claims about the world. Logic compels us to say that they cannot *all* be right, so we must exclude at least all but one. Which are we to choose?
  

Why would a god make believing in him such an unreasonable proposal?

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Crucifixion or Freedom?

I’m grateful to Useful Idiot  for pointing out the Roman Catholic definition of faith, of which, despite being baptised RC, I was unaware! I blame my parents.

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c3a1.htm Para 150

And further:

Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."31 "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."

Para 157

It’s a very puzzling concept as stated, and needs a little unpacking. Not all Christians seem to observe this definition; for example, as I’ve discussed, Anglican priest John Polkinghorne bases his faith on what he considers to be good evidence and Monsignor Rodney Strange holds the (perhaps heretical) belief that *doubt* is linked to faith.

Para 150 seems most analogous to Polkinghorne’s position and, as such, is vulnerable to the same argument I used against him. If a god has revealed the whole truth to one then ‘faith’ is simply following the *reasonable* course of action – why that should be rewarded with an eternity in heaven is obscure. To be fair, perhaps it’s a reward for the searching, the openness to the idea of god? But we all know many people who have searched long and hard for the divinely revealed truth. I was a theist and searched for it, but didn’t find it. I know of ex-theists who haven’t found it. Many a theist appear not to have found it! 

‘Free assent to the whole truth’ is required, invoking, I suppose, the theist’s favourite explanans, free will. Why would anyone say ‘no’ to faith if god has revealed the truth to one? Insanity would appear to be the only answer to that, or perhaps a healthy dislike of all the do-gooders one would have to spend eternity with.

Perhaps the divinely revealed truth isn’t quite as straightforward, or argument-ending, as I’m assuming? This brings us to Para 157; it starts off well – ‘Faith is certain.’ Good. That’s settled it. Founded on the very word of god blah blah... fair enough. Understand that. Then a very odd sentence:

To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, 

This seems to be suggesting there *is* something obscure about divinely revealed truth.

but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."

But this straightaway contradicts this impression. "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives." (quoting St Thomas Aquinas) is plain; once one has been exposed to the divinely revealed truth bathed in divine light one will have no doubt. It’s *better* than natural reason.

So Catholic faith raises a number of questions:

• The evidence is overwhelming that we are prisoners of our own, sometimes flawed, perceptions, yet Catholics ask us to believe that in this one case, our perceptions can be trusted *absolutely*, presumably because god is all-powerful, supernatural etc. This is an *extraordinary* claim, but could be backed up by *extraordinary* evidence. Unfortunately it isn’t. The weight of evidence suggests no divinely revealed truth is being regularly revealed to good, honest folk; contrarily, various incompatible beliefs are being revealed to people around the world, almost as if these ideas came from... inside their heads. Where is the extraordinary evidence for divinely revealed truth?
• If one grants there is divinely revealed truth, why would anyone *not* freely assent to it? I’ve never met anyone who said, ‘Yeah, I saw the divinely revealed truth, bathed in divine light – it was incontrovertibly the whole truth. But I said no, not interested. I’m a contrary bastard.’
• Why the reward for assenting to faith if the truth is certain? This is equivalent to the question in Life of Brian; ‘Crucifixion or freedom?’ It is literally a no-brainer, and hardly something that a god should be rewarding.
  

Compared to the ‘faith overcoming doubt’ definition of Hebrews 11.1, the Catholic definition seems *even more* logic defying. It does, however, explain why many theists are so confident in their faith. Phenomenal experiences can be very powerful and believable (well, what else do we have!), and the fact that phenomena themselves are, in fact, rather ethereal is not apparent to any of us. How could someone distinguish between a brainstorm apparently revealing the divinely revealed truth and the actual divinely revealed truth (if there were such a thing)? Well one couldn’t, so one would be tempted to accept it. A great exercise of will and reason would be needed to disabuse oneself of the notion, in fact.

Not that, to be honest, I’ve actually met anyone who has admitted such a thing; in so many words, anyway :-).

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John 20:29

Another article in The Times, this time by Monsignor Roderick Strange on the interesting subject of faith and doubt. He quotes Jesus's comment to Doubting Thomas; 

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. - John 20:29

And the article points out how faith and doubt *are* linked. He ends the article:

Doubt need not be the enemy of faith, but its ally. Thomas knew faith, wounded by doubt. Faith is deepened when we wrestle with ambiguity. Then indeed they are blessed who without seeing have come to believe.

When I was growing up this was how faith was presented to me; doubt (we have insufficient evidence) overcome by faith. Without doubt there is hardly any need for faith, is there? But one also sees theists arguing that there *is* good reason to believe - see my discussion of John Polkinghorne's article on that subject.

These positions are not compatible, and, oddly, perhaps, I think both positions are untenable! 

'Faith overcoming doubt' is the *expressed* position of Jesus Christ in the Bible. It can scarcely be any clearer from John 20:29, and the Monsignor also argues this point. This exercise of free will seems to be something that many can identify with. There are two problems here for me. First, it is not clear why this is supposed to be a *good* thing. Why is it good to believe when something is doubtful? That is a recipe for believing every charlatan that comes to town. That is a recipe for believing in *any* god created by man. Second, Jesus says that those who haven't seen are blessed who come to believe. Leaving aside that this is a very convenient doctrine for subsequent proselytising, it is also not thought to be a good thing for the disciples and others who *have* been granted a 'visual'. Why are *they* allowed to be persuaded by evidence but not us? How do the disciples and Doubting Thomas have faith - they have no *doubt*, they've got the main man standing in front of them! So the Monsignor's position fails, IMO.

For the 'Faith justified by reason' position, I'll assume for the sake of exploring the validity of this that there is good reason to believe (there isn't!), as such apologists think. The flaw in this position leaps out at one. If the believer genuinely thinks that there *is* good reason for faith it no longer becomes 'faith', but a justifiable scientific position. There is now *insufficient* doubt to allow faith, and there scarcely is any need for free will -reason is *dictating* one's position. I suppose in principle such a person could defy reason and say, 'No, I don't believe it, despite the evidence that shows it's true!'. This would just be the act of an irrational person, as the act of believing with insufficent *evidence* is as well. So the exercise of free will seems to boil down to acting irrationally.

We have here a credo that flies in the face of reason whichever way one looks at it.

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