tomspug
Absorbant
While most will say 'yes', likely. I will say 'no'.
My reasoning is that reason, by definition, requires paramaters, limitations. We take what is already known and draw conclusions based on those parameters.
How then... is it possible to determine something unknown through the ignorance of the unknown?
For example, in science, you cannot come to a conclusion without a premise. The "premise" is already known. Even in the excitement of discovering that a premise was true, you already EXPECTED it to be true. If the premise is false, there is only mild disappointment, and another premise is drawn (derived again from what is already known).
This mindset leaves no room for revelation. The greatest of scientists did not use proven, known methods to reach expected conclusions. They considered an unproven, untested premise, not based on what was known, and set out to prove it true. THAT is faith, and faith is what actually creates, not reason.
Reason, I discovered quickly in Philosophy class, is cyclical and practically pointless. I can honestly say that I have not received one valuable addition to my life from my knowledge of philosophy. It is not that I have failed to put philosophy into practice, but that the philosophy itself is completely unneccessary to life.
Reason itself is reflective. It is not forward thinking. It is utterly limited by the past, like someone walking backwards. And while reason may be able to determine where you are going and how you got to where you are, reason cannot tell you what to do next. It can only tell you how to do what has already been done before, and how to continue on that path.
We know that faith is valuable because we use it all the time. We have faith in ourselves, faith in our families, faith in our philosophies (to our detriment, of course). Of course, we are not using "reason" in ANY of these cases. Faith, by definition, is called such because it is an unknown. Love is an unknown. Trust is an unknown. Devotion is an unknown. Fulfillment is an unknown.
And we can only make those unknowns KNOWN by pursuing them, rather than attempting to reason them into knowns through inaction.
My reasoning is that reason, by definition, requires paramaters, limitations. We take what is already known and draw conclusions based on those parameters.
How then... is it possible to determine something unknown through the ignorance of the unknown?
For example, in science, you cannot come to a conclusion without a premise. The "premise" is already known. Even in the excitement of discovering that a premise was true, you already EXPECTED it to be true. If the premise is false, there is only mild disappointment, and another premise is drawn (derived again from what is already known).
This mindset leaves no room for revelation. The greatest of scientists did not use proven, known methods to reach expected conclusions. They considered an unproven, untested premise, not based on what was known, and set out to prove it true. THAT is faith, and faith is what actually creates, not reason.
Reason, I discovered quickly in Philosophy class, is cyclical and practically pointless. I can honestly say that I have not received one valuable addition to my life from my knowledge of philosophy. It is not that I have failed to put philosophy into practice, but that the philosophy itself is completely unneccessary to life.
Reason itself is reflective. It is not forward thinking. It is utterly limited by the past, like someone walking backwards. And while reason may be able to determine where you are going and how you got to where you are, reason cannot tell you what to do next. It can only tell you how to do what has already been done before, and how to continue on that path.
We know that faith is valuable because we use it all the time. We have faith in ourselves, faith in our families, faith in our philosophies (to our detriment, of course). Of course, we are not using "reason" in ANY of these cases. Faith, by definition, is called such because it is an unknown. Love is an unknown. Trust is an unknown. Devotion is an unknown. Fulfillment is an unknown.
And we can only make those unknowns KNOWN by pursuing them, rather than attempting to reason them into knowns through inaction.