Monday, August 06, 2012

Against Faith in Faith

Thomas Cothran's article on First Things On the Square website:
It has become a strange and unfortunate commonplace that one must have faith in faith—faith, that is, in the ability to commit oneself to truths that transcend rational justification—not only out of respect for faith’s intrinsic (if futile) beauty, but also as a means to the truth. 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, at least, is the picture of faith one finds in the writings of Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, and it has an embarrassing currency among Christian believers. (For example, a Christian woman once told me earnestly that even if biologists were able to demonstrate common descent to a certainty, she would still reject it for a simplistic interpretation of the Genesis creation account as a matter of faith) ...
Read the rest here.
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2 comments:

  1. Andrew Walker3:48 PM

    Another Cothran, eh?

    Must be just another gay-hater.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ZPenn2:01 PM

    That seems a little unnecessary, Andrew Walker. I know this one guy named Walker who beats up little kids. You must be one of them. Attack the man's argument, not the man, especially since his article is on the Christian definition of faith and why it isn't blind, no references to gays at all. It still seems to be based upon assumptions which I think are ridiculous, but it is certainly fascinating to see the thought process behind it.

    ReplyDelete

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