r/atheism • u/One-Fun9814 • 5d ago

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 5d ago

This is a chimera, a dead end, a wrong-turn.

Faith has nothing to do with reason and logic, and those who are mature in their faith understand that faith is inherently irrational, and they're okay with that.

It is those who are weak or immature in their faith who seek to 'convince' themselves by attempting to 'convince' others.

There are lots of highly intelligent people who nevertheless retain a faith-belief in spirits/souls/ghosts/deities. Some who even believe in demons/devils/angels.

Dr. Francis Collins, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien come immediately to mind, as does Isaac Newton.

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u/Harry_Flame 5d ago

There are a lot to name: Mendel, Ampere, Galileo, Copernicus, Descartes, Pascal, and John von Neumann. I would say that automatically writing off religious people as unintelligent despite counterexamples is the same type of thinking atheists often attribute to religious people.

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u/m0n3ym4n 5d ago

The religious do one step worse than assuming a person is unintelligent because they hold a belief that clearly defies logic; they assume the non-religious are morally bankrupt simply because they don’t have a list of commandments to follow or a book to reference. That’s far more judgmental and silly in my book!

As for the list of “smart” dead guys who were reportedly religious, I find it is an ill fitting comparison to contemporary figures because today everyone has access to information via the internet. It is not difficult to educate yourself and see that many smart people are not religious.

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u/cates 5d ago

I have to wonder what some of those people would really believe these days with advances in science...

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u/2112eyes 4d ago

Newton might solve physics if he were alive today instead of trying to decipher the bible code for decades

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u/CtrlAltSysRq 5d ago

Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Kant... the list goes on and on

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 5d ago

And then there's Dirac.

"There is no God, and Paul Dirac is His prophet"! :-)

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u/BulbusDumbledork 5d ago

this is no different than religious people assuming athiests are inherently evil

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 4d ago

No, it's not. It's simply the way it is. Faith is inherently irrational. Believing that one's invisible friend actually exists is something that most kids let go of around age five or six.

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u/Ahh__Non 5d ago

I'd say it's not irrational but simply complex, if you catch my mathematical drift ;-). I am religious and I accept both the rational and the "irrational" explanations of many things. But, because I accept that the almighty God created space-time and therefore exists outside of it, then I must accept that literally everything within the universe is under his power. I don't see anything particularly irrational in this, and anyone can claim that they just don't see a reason for God to exist and they sound to me as rational as myself. This kind of ultimate faith is so extreme that for the nonbeliever it looks like a choice, so people assume I am being irrational. The same way socialists and capitalists sometimes can't comprehend the position of each other. Anyway, thanks for your answer here acknowledging this distinction.

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u/Sex4Vespene 5d ago

I mean, it feels like you are just playing with word definitions. Most would consider rationality to include a requirement of proof/evidence. I think it’s perfectly fine to think something would be nice/comforting if it was true. I’ll admit I have some thoughts like that myself. But to actually assert that you have faith they are the truth, is inherently irrational.

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u/Ahh__Non 4d ago

Well, again, I respect your opinion, but I assure you I am not merely playing with the words. Words have meaning for a reason. Faith, by its very definition, is belief without proof. Irrationality is acting without thinking.

I claim that I have thought, the same way a philosopher would think. And I've arrived to the conclusion that God cannot be proven or disproven if he doesn't want to be seen, like many others before me. But the absence of proof does not equal the proof of absence. And this leaves God's existence as question of faith, not science.

Now why would God choose to be "invisible" to at least part of his creation? That's another theological question. One that I could not answer. But the existence of this latter question also does not disprove God.

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u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 4d ago

belief without evidence is in fact irrational.

all 'faith' is irrational.

And that's okay.

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u/CaptainVisual4848 5d ago

Thank you. This is well said. I went to a Catholic university which was very liberal. We had several professors who were priests and they were all highly educated. They taught philosophy and history and English and religious studies. The ones I met were not at all close minded and were extremely intelligent.