main_verify" content="0fbe816ac62d0f3540f77744d40f34f2"/> Reason And Faith Together: March 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

The 3 Foundational Beliefs of Man

The following is a response to a student concerning beliefs.

Great job!!!  Some questions and thoughts concerning your work:

You still are hung up on religion not having right or wrong... but again I ask, what is the point of believing in God or not god if none of it is right or wrong?  It is a logical fallacy to believe one over the other and then say that it does not matter.  The entire purpose of mankind hinges on whether or not there is a God or no god.
If God, then many possibilities, such as divine purpose, absolute rights and wrongs that are not subjective and determined by people and preference.
If not god, then all is subjective and there is no real right or wrong outside of personal opinions and preferences. 

Both cannot be true.

As far as faith goes... we all have a measure of faith and we put it in something.  
Some people put it in not grappling with deep questions, meaning they have decided to believe it is not important to ask whether or not God exists.  And they think that the consequences are manageable both here on earth and in whatever after life.  They believe this by faith because they cannot prove it true.  
Some people, by faith, believe in only a physical realm without a metaphysical realm.  They, by sheer logic cannot believe in absolute good or evil.  And if we take that logic path we have to decide that logically speaking there is no real rights or wrongs.  Unless they decide that that Universe is eternal and created us with a purpose.  Then they have just made physical matter god to man instead of an outside the universe God.  
Some people believe in an outside the universe God and this logically can lead to ultimate purpose as well as ultimate right and wrong, good and evil.  There are many different beliefs concerning this God.  Thus we have to use other tools besides religion and science, such as history and philosophy to help determine which are more or less accurate. 

So we have 3 major types of beliefs.  The first belief is we do not need an answer to the question of God.  The second belief is we only have a physical universe, thus the only major, real and useful tool outside of our minds is science.  And the third belief is in a God, and in this belief we can use all the tools to determine what is most accurate.