New pagetem

10/6

Range of positions on faith and reason

1. Faith is no less rational and susceptible to demonstration than science.

2. Faith and Science have distinct forms of rationality, language games, validity criteria, etc. (persons/bodies)

3. Faith involves commitments of individuals to communities on the basis of shared experience and belief. Faith doesn't just involve a distinct kind of rationality, but it focuses on distinct objects of knowledge, such as our relationship to totality. Scientific investigation asks fundamentally different questions in fundamentally different ways.

4. Faith is experiential; reason is theoretical. Reason comes late to faith. (evidence from sociology of religion on conversion, history of christianity).

Quotes from Fides et Ratio

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth"

establishes the authority of reason through philosophy but indicates that a reason for talking about faith and reason is that modernity has abandoned the search for transcent truth, focusing instead on human subjectivity.

"For the inspired writer, as we see, the desire for knowledge is characteristic of all people. Intelligence enables everyone, believer and non-believer, to reach "the deep waters" of knowledge (cf. Prov 20:5). It is true that ancient Israel did not come to knowledge of the worid and its phenomena by way of abstraction, as did the Greek philosopher or the Egyptian sage. Still less did the good Israelite understand knowledge in the way of the modem world which tends more to distinguish different kinds of knowing. Nonetheless, the biblical world has made its own distinctive contribution to the theory of knowledge. "

pars 37-39 -- good discussion of Catholic adoption of philosophy and wariness about it.

43: "More radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy's proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it."

46: "5t. It is not too much to claim that the development of a good part of modem philosophy has seen it move further and further away from Christian Revelation, to the point of setting itself quite explicitly in opposition. This process reached its apogee in the last century."

48: "48. This rapid survey of the history of philosophy, then, reveals a growing separation between faith and philosophical reason.

Calls for a recovery of the unity of faith and reason. Claims Modern Philosophy has made "wrong turns".

54 "Later, in his Encyclical Letter Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII warned against mistaken interpretations linked to evolutionism, existentialism and historicism. He made it clear that these theories had not been proposed and developed by theologians, but had their origins outside the sheepfold of Christ".^ He added, however, that errors of this kind should not simply be rejected but should be examined critically: "Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural tmth and instill it in human hearts. cannot afford to ignore these more or less erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these theories well, not only because diseases are properly treated only if rightly diagnosed and because even in these false theories some tmth is found at times, but because in the end these theories provoke a more discriminating discussion and evaluation of philosophical and theological tmths".^ "

74ff "75. As appears from this brief sketch of the history of the relationship between faith and philosophy, one can distinguish different stances of philosophy with regard to Christian faith. first, there is a philosophy completely independent of the Gospel's Revelation: t\ ...76. A second stance adopted by philosophy is often designated as Christian philosophy. The term seeks rather to indicate a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith."

82: "A radically phenomenalist or relativist philosophy would be ill-adapted to help in the deeper exploration of the riches found in the word of God."

seems to expect philosophy to be metaphysical. "If I insist so strongly on the metaphysical element, it is because I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct certain mistaken modes of behaviour now widespread in our society. " [Arguably, using this commitment to a prior conclusion about philosophy could involve some circularity in the argument.]

dangers: eclecticism (87), scientism (88) -- not a great characterization, pragmatism (89), postmodernism (91)

Michael Tkacz on Gould and the Catholic Tradition

Gold's NOMA hypothesis [1] recognizes that moral and religious values might be established by different kinds of authority and argument than strictly scientific questions.

Tkacz tries to equate Gould with Fideism. In one sense this is a reasonable comparison. If rationality is one thing and fideist believe in a sharp separation of faith and reason, then it makes sense that fideists would regard faith as non-rational (or irrational). But that is not Gould's position. I think he would deny that NOMA implies the nonrationality or subjectivity of non-scientific questions. In any case, one could argue that faith and reason operate differently within a normal rational individual without committing yourself to the existence of the object of faith beliefs. That's a variant of NOMA, but it should show you some of the theoretical room you have here.

Thesis: "At the same time, the order of learning shows that theology is as much a science as are the sciences of physical being; that is, the religious beliefs which theology investigates and articulates as knowledge are no less rational and objective than are the beliefs about the physical world investigated and established in the natural sciences. This is because the same intellectual capacity which allows for human knowledge of the objects of the natural sciences is also that by which human beings know the object of theology."

Barrett, Cognitive Science of Religion

1:"Rather than specify what religion is and try to explain it in whole, scholars in this field have generally chosen to approach 'religion' in an incremental, piecemeal fashion, identifying human thought or behavioral patterns that might count as 'religious' and then trying to explain why those patterns are cross-culturally recurrent."

2:CSR "seeks to detail the basic cognitive structure of thought and action that might be deemed religious and invites historians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and other religion scholars to fiU in the hows and whys of particular religious phenomena."

":...through the course of development in any cultural context, human mind/brains exhibit a number of functional regularities regarding how they process information. These functional regularities are also known as domain-specific inference systems or 'mental tools'.^ Foi For instance, one mental tool concerns language. Humans (especially pre-pubescent humans) readily acquire and use natural languages but are not facile with non-natural symbolic communication systems such as binary code."

TC - Theological Correctness -- studies involving online/offline tasks

MCI - Minimally Counterintuitive Ideas -- 4 " Compare the idea of a barking dog that is brown on the other side of the fence to a barking dog that is able to pass through solid objects on the other side of the fence. The first dog is wholly intuitive and excites litde interest. The second dog is slightly or minimally counterintuitive and is, consequently, more attention demanding but without overloading on-line conceptual systems. The idea of a dog that passes through soUd objects is made of metal parts, gives birth to chickens, experiences time backwards, can read minds, and vanishes whenever you look at it would amount to a massively counterintuitive concept - if it is a coherent concept at all."

-transmission advantages for MCI's?

Older research -- Guthrie "Faces in the Clouds" - evolution would favor false positives in "agency detection". This may explain hyperactive agency detection. HADD

6: "Additional motivation to talk about and believe in gods may come firom their ability to account for striking events that otherwise have no intuitive explanation."

Born Believers:

promiscuous believers -- studies on children.

Theory of Mind

Whitehouse's "modes of religiosity" theory

Costly Signal Theory --

Alfino 23:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)