Faith and Reason Can’t Even POSSIBLY Conflict!

[philtheo]

Greg Welty's book on Alvin Plantinga is a great introduction to Plantinga for someone who knows nothing or little about Plantinga. At the same time, Welty himself is a wonderful philosopher in his own right. He wrote a great popular level book on the problem of evil that is by turns intelligent as well as insightful and I'd say ultimately successful (even though I'd demur at several points) in its attempt to build a Christian theodicy. His work on divine conceptualism or theistic conceptual realism is extremely intriguing. And that's not to mention his writings contra Molinism, etc. I wish he was a better known philosopher, and I also hope someday he writes a systematic philosophical theology (perhaps with James Anderson of RTS) in the Reformed tradition. (Similar to how William Lane Craig is working on his multi-volume systematic philosophical theology.)

[mattcaruso]

As God called me back i started my knowledge journey of discernment of which faith to align to. Reason kept on affirming what I was learning in the Catholic Church. I couldn’t argue with the reasoning when aligned to the facts and history of how it all played out. I agree with how faith and reason align and work in unison

[baconboyxy]

If I say enough big words… then it must be true!

[forall]

Faith could be reason and reason could be faith.

Just as claims could be evidence and evidence could be claims.

You just have to work on their definition, interpretation and boom! you'll get exactly what you want.

[brianh]

Someone wrote it in a book, it must be true!

[jackcrow]

GREG WELTY IS GREAT! If you can ever get him on, you should
His work on theistic conceptual realism is brilliant

[Daedalus]

I was genuinely curious and hoping to get a reaponse that wasnt your typical word salad...

So basically you said that some guy, talking about some other guy making the claim that faith and reason are similar when we know its not.

Reason is belief formulated on the premise of knowledge and evidence.

Faith is belief DESPITE knowledge and evidence.

I would sincerely love for you to reconcile this apparent contradiction rather than just making the assertion that it can be done.

If i go see a magician and he goes on stage and tells the audience that he can saw a living person in half and put them back together but never attempts to do so im going to be upset, right?!?

[FuddlyDud]

Dang, these comments didn’t give this much thought. :/

I would say the quote actually is fascinating since faith and reason are so intertwined, making such a conclusion interesting!

EX: For a spousal relationship, you do have “faith” in their fidelity. Said faith is justified through reason. However, to not have faith (confidence) at all would be unreasonable and unhealthy for your relationship. In this sense, both are just as necessary to a good relationship. :)

[creativepseudonym]

Greg Welty sure does love his word salad.

[cindyrobertson]

I'd love to poke around in this fellas books . I saw an interview with pints with Aquinas. He took a hot seat and never flinched

[HannesFoulds]

Plantinga's proper function theory elegantly demonstrates the structural similarities between faith and reason as knowledge-generating systems. However, it overlooks a crucial demarcation: the falsifiability criterion. While both systems may generate warranted true beliefs, reason-based claims typically submit to falsification through empirical testing or logical demonstration, whereas faith-based claims often resist such verification methods. This distinction, though not negating Plantinga's unified epistemological framework, suggests that the equivalence between faith and reason may be more theoretical than practical in terms of knowledge validation.

[badatpseudoscience]

The difference is that reason is a mechanism to find truth no mater what you want that truth to be. Faith is a mechanism to believe whatever to want to be true. For instance, he wants this book to be true so faith lets him believe it.

[davidlovesyeshua]

Hey does anyone have any recommendations for actually decent/good theist channels? Like Majesty of Reason, Cosmic Skeptic, or Emerson Greene, but theist instead of agnostic/atheist? I'm trying to make sure I don't info bubble myself, but I can stand Cameron less and less as time goes on, similar to William Lane Craig.

[tysonbriggs]

I can have faith about anything even if its not true. So faith is unreliable

[mdm]

So with what you're saying.. it's completely reasonable for someone to have faith in a different god beside Jesus.. so let's say one of your children, or your wife.. or any other close family member came to you and said that Allah was god and Muhammad (who married a small child btw) was better then jesus you would find that reasonable? As a Christian you cannot say that and you know it. Faith is not a reasonable or reliable pathway to truth.

[Steblu]

Plainly true on its face. When something is based on incontrovertible fact we can put our faith in it. We trust Christ because every available physical and/or spiritual metric shows it to be true..

[alwayslearningtech]

If reason was just as faith-like as faith, it would be faith, not reason... + Vice versa.

[AnselmInstitute]

Plantinga classifies knowledge as a species of belief which sets up this move. He asks in his trilogy on warrant: what must be added to true belief to make it knowledge? Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas nor the Church's Tradition in general held that knowledge is a species of belief. Faith or belief is rooted in testimony originating in the knowledge of a witness. Knowledge pertains to the three movements of the intellect and originates in abstraction. It originates in sight (and then the intellectual vision of understanding) whereas faith comes from what is heard and not seen firsthand. So faith and reason are distinct by genus and one is not a species of the other. This is the backdrop of the Catholic account of the interplay of faith and reason as "two wings upon which the mind ascends to God" (Pope JPII in fides et ratio). I hope to do a video on this in the near future. Welty's own work on conceptual realism is important and has been drawn on by Feser in his Five Proofs (the Augustinian Argument).

[lme]

Faith is never a reasonable pathway to truth.
Faith is what you have when you don’t know something.

[dalex]

Reason, “reality” does conflict with faith. Faith forces you to believe human dogma and doctrine that cannot be factually proven. If your searching for truth, religion can’t provide any since it’s faith based, not fact based.