Awkward Things Happen Without Faith
Why do we need faith? Why not human reason alone? Several people recently have asked those questions and I found the explanation given by St. Thomas Aquinas in Contra Gentiles straightforward and useful.* Searching for truth is a desire in everyone of us, and searching for God is not an unreasonable search for a bearded bossy man in the sky to relieve us of ever having to think for ourselves. Truth is beautiful. Truth will set you free. Truth is how to know yourself. St. Thomas considered what awkward things would happen if human reason alone were all we needed to search for truth.
“If the only way open to us for the knowledge of God were solely that of the reason, the human race would remain in the blackest shadows of ignorance.”
Awkward things that would happen if all truth were left only to human reason:
1. Few would possess the knowledge of God.
a. Some do not have the physical disposition for such work.
b. Some devote themselves to taking care of temporal matters.
c. Some are cut off by indolence, habitual laziness or sloth.
2. Those who would come to discover God would barely reach it after a great deal of time.
a. Profundity: it takes time to train the human intellect to grasp profound natural inquiry.
b. Fiduciary: there are many things that must be presupposed in furthering knowledge.
c. Maturity: the young soul is swayed by the various movements of the passions.
3. The investigation of the human reason for the most part has falsity present within it.
a. There is a weakness of our intellect in judgment.
b. There is an admixture of images for those ignorant of the power of demonstration.
In other words, if everyone in the world really believed that all truth were available to human reason alone, without faith in something beyond us, then few people would actually search for truth at all, and those who did would not get very far in a lifetime 1) because it’s difficult and 2) because un-unified individuals would chase false paths subject to wild and undisciplined imaginations.
“For there are some who have such a presumptuous opinion of their own ability that they deem themselves able to measure the nature of everything…in their estimation, everything is true that seems to them so, and everything is false that does not. So that the human mind, therefore, might be freed from this presumption and come to a humble inquiry after truth, it was necessary that some things should be proposed to man by God that would completely surpass his intellect.” -St. Thomas Aquinas, Contra GentilesIs the coarsening of society, how good is now called evil and evil parades as good, a result of too many lazy intellects unlifted by faith? Maybe too many people just stopped really searching for truth.
Key word there is “humble.”
Imagine if it actually were possible to find all truth through human reason alone. What would stop anyone from reasoning hastily and falsely, and then using those false conclusions to manipulate others? What would be the arguments against tyranny? Humility is necessary to understand truth. Revelation, divine messages from God about how we are to live, reminds us to be humble and to be careful about searching for truth, to appreciate what knowledge has been acquired before our lifetimes and to mature in the practice of virtue towards the ultimate virtue of charity. You’ve got to ask yourself which person you would trust more, the one who humbly searches for truth guided by the light of reason and faith, or the one who has decided he needs no such thing because — well, why? It is awkward.
*Book One, Chapter 4
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Sites That Link to this Post
- The Awkwardness of Free-Thinking : The Integrated Catholic Life | March 20, 2012
- Lip-Smacking Monkey Talk and Catholic Doctrine : Stacy Trasancos | April 10, 2013
- Robots Will Absorb Humans by 2100 : Stacy Trasancos | May 8, 2013
Stacy,
You strike as a person who was never exposed to the word “reason” until just recently because your blog only serves to misrepresent the definition of reason and what people who employ reason might come to do and understand.
For example, we lack knowledge of God with reason or with faith. Faith is not really knowledge. It is guessing. You, as a Catholic, know no more about God than I, as an atheist, do. Faith cannot produce knowledge. Reason can, but that is not to say that reason is unlimited.
It does take many people a long time to “grasp profound natural inquiry,” although it might be assuming a lot to say that this applies universally. Natural inquiry is again the only way to achieve knowledge. Surely you were told as a child that you must ask questions to learn. Faith/guessing does not get us anywhere, unless you are a good guesser.
All people, young or old, are swayed by various movements of the passions. This is not the same thing as reason. The two are characteristically separate things. Reason is considered with making sense, and movements of the passions are not.
Yes, there is weakness in human intellect, and do you know why? It's because people do not always use reason. In fact, it's often because of faith that the human intellect. Yes, human have natural limitations, but they are not because of any flaw in reason. The flaws are in our beings.
Then you go and misuse the word “humble” by tangling it up with faith. There is nothing humble in faith. Faith is a product of arrogance. People of faith will not admit to being wrong or at least unproven, acting as though their views are perfect and not subject to questioning. What is humble about that? Nothing.
If you want an argument against tyranny, here's one: no one likes it except for the tyrant. I just REASONed that one.
Nothing awkward about saying I don't know. In fact, I would think your side has to deal with a lot more in the awkward department, making claims and being unable to defend them, as is the case with this blog.
“Natural inquiry is again the only way to achieve knowledge”
Are you sure about that? I gained knowledge about the center of the Sun in my Astronomy class yet I had neither been at the center of the sun or taken helioseismology measurements. The knowledge was revealed to me (just as the bible was revealed to us by God). I used faith to accept that information as fact, faith that the measurements were done properly and the person teaching was competent. For your statement to be true we would have the continuously measure everything to have knowledge about anything. Thanks for the comment an please keep coming back to this blog. It is all part of your journey home and we will welcome you joyfully when you do arrive home!
“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“If you want an argument against tyranny, here's one: no one likes it except for the tyrant.”
How many people must like something for it to be good or correct? If there is only one slave in a country then is slavery OK since most people “like” it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Stacy,
Thank you so much for this article. I have been thinking a lot about the need for faith in a person's relationship with the Lord and with the Church. I heard someone say today “In faith I believe…” Much of what I believe about Jesus and the Church is through faith. Just because I know something to be true through faith does not mean it is any less true then something that I know to be true through reason. Thanks again for this important post. It really reassured me on some things.
Stacy,
In other words, if everyone in the world really believed that all truth were available to human reason alone, without faith in something beyond us, then few people would actually search for truth at all, and those who did would not get very far in a lifetime
No one believes that, my friend. Most people think that not all truth is available to us, period. I actually think both atheists and theists believe this. People are not omniscient, and that’s OK.
Imagine if it actually were possible to find all truth through human reason alone.
That is a wild fantasy indeed.
What would be the arguments against tyranny? Humility is necessary to understand truth. Revelation, divine messages from God about how we are to live
Whose God? Different people hear different God’s, different voices in their heads. The theist is left with the same problem as the atheist. In both cases, people disagree about what the truth is.
reminds us to be humble and to be careful about searching for truth,
Thinking the voices in your head have the right answer and the voices in the heads of others have it all wrong is not humble.
You've got to ask yourself which person you would trust more, the one who humbly searches for truth guided by the light of reason and faith
I do not have to present that false dichotomy to myself. First of all, you can have both faith and reason, but they cannot co-decide anything. You cannot be guided by both. One drives, the other remarks on the scenery.
Reason is no more awkward than faith. In both cases everyone thinks the voices they hear are more melodious than the voices of their brothers. Two bickering Christians, two bickering atheists, a Christian bickering with an atheist: there is no distinguishable difference in this regard.
@Rome,
If you want an argument against tyranny, here's one: no one likes it except for the tyrant.
Very well said. Because of that comment, I viewed your profile so I could go to your blog, which alas, was not available.
I am an atheist and I love satirizing the Christian God's , et. al.
Ultimately, however, what we have is a world full of people who all disagree with each other. Each one is certain that his opinion is more credible than the opinions of others (else he would not have it). It doesn't really matter if he uses faith or reason to derive it. All knowledge is a combination of both. The secular thinker calls his faith axioms, and the religious thinker uses the minimum amount of reason needed to support his faith.
We are all wrong. There is so much disagreement because there is not enough data to answer the questions, and no real method of knowing anything; and even the answers we provide through logic and empirical evidence, never explain everything, such as the real contradiction of the miracle of life in a world where miracles don't happen. Remember, I am an atheist and I don't believe in miracles. However, to not believe in miracles requires a measure of faith.
We all think we know better than the next guy, and we all have our faiths and reasons. But our brand of knowledge is not necessarily any better than the next guys, which one notable exception:
I am right about this.
Reasoning does not depend on faith.
My biggest wish is that the religious would stop using the term Truth when referring to their beliefs. The belief in god and other supernatural stuff is faith, not truth. You have no objective evidence for supporting such beliefs. Your “truth” can't be observed in any shape, other than perhaps some firing neurons in the brain (and I've yet to see a study where they've given an FMRI to a participant mid-religious experience).
So your Truth with an upper-case T is nothing but your beliefs being asserted at top volume, similar to an online poster TYPING IN CAPS. It does nothing to support your argument.
I can see where, for some scholars, religious texts can enlighten and create deeper thought. For the bulk of the religious, though, the church provides an easy out. There's no need to reason, there's no need to challenge the assertions written in a 1700 year old copy of a copy of a copy of a mistranslated collection of stories stolen from other older sources. The bulk of religious folk that I've met lack the basic curiosity to challenge the most basic assertions or inconsistencies in their own divine document.
I respect the scholar who admits their basis for faith is a personal one, not an objective one. If someone can say “these are allegories of how we SHOULD live” and works to do right to other people of all faiths, then those few pragmatic christians are really embodying what Christ would want: to lead by example rather than by threats. Unfortunately, each sect of christianity has been competing in a downward spiral to see how far from pragmatism they can get.
Posts like this blog ring hollow when observed from the non-christian view because they lack authentically valuable thought experiments. Blandly asserting that reason is belief or that we can only know through god has about as much validity as saying the sky is made of green cheese and the moon is blue.
Wonderful Stacy – such an important topic.
@ Anonymous – I'm assuming you're addressing the Chesterton quote is saying “Reason does not depend on faith.” But I think you misunderstand. Chesterton did not mean that reason depends on faith in the Christian God – only that, to be rational and operate as if the world is an intelligible place, you must “believe” before “proving.” The existence of the external world, and the relationship of your mind to that world, are (unfortunately for atheists) metaphysical assumptions we make in order to live – not scientifically verifiable facts. In this sense, we are all “believers” – we believe in the world's reality and our mind's correlation to it. We believe in the existence of other minds, in the existence of moral law (“Hitler was evil”) and beauty (“sunsets are beautiful”) – also hypotheses unverified by science.
The Christians, as you atheists like to say, just “go one step further.”
JPII said faith and reason are like two wings of a dove – you need both to fly. The former without the latter devolves into superstition, the latter without the former devolves into coldhearted calculation that does not bow in humility to the “radicality of being” (i.e., the Weimar Republic).
Anonyomous (8:49 a.m.) thinks the laziness and sloth of believers who use the church as an “easy out” is proof that faith cannot be supported by reason. Now that is lazy thinking for you. It can equally be argued that anti-Christians and aetheists are rarely bothered with facts, never mind truth, about God revealed to us in the Bible. Many that I have met simply do not believe in the Word of God because they don't like Christians. Hardly a well-reasoned position.
If you, Anonymous, want rigorous reasoning and challenging thought experiments, why not take a dip into Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica?
If this God of yours is sovereign would not that by default make any revealed or likewise Truth invalid or at best secondary and idolatrous? If by contrast, the Truth we are seeking is absolute and true by virtue of itself would that not make your God subservient to the Truth? If the two are one in the same, should the Holy Trinity be changed to the Holy Quadruple?
@Lauri
“It can equally be argued that anti-Christians and aetheists are rarely bothered with facts, never mind truth, about God revealed to us in the Bible”
I think one of the basic premises of all debating these points is your first line quoted above. We both can argue without being bothered with facts. Now truth, seems to me that you are again relating truth to god, and that is where we differ. I don't see your god as truth. So for me god is neither truth nor fact. Does that make me wrong and you right?
I am not certain what qualifies as the “word of god” these days. Some say the bible, but catholics seem to say their doctrines are the word of god. Muslims have a differing “word of god”, so who wins? Who is right?
Should I read the bible and follow it all? Or just read it and extract what I think it means like JoAnna (I think it was her in another posting telling us “how” to read the bible) suggested?
See where the confusion comes in?
Then lets add the “fact” I am gay and feel I am deserving of the love of another. God says it is wrong, so I must remain not only chaste, but devoid of one of the most important loves one can ever receive. How can I reconcile your “fact or truths” with my “fact or truths”?
When I was young and learning definition of words I was taught that you cannot define a word by using the word. Thats how I feel about all this. You all seem to keep telling us to read about your facts by reading St. Thomas or other catholic writers, theologians and such, but why not branch out and find others who don't follow what you believe but still show it to be facts. Maybe then some of us will listen.
Oh and one more thing. We really need a clear and concise definition of who and what god and truth are/is so this conversation can move forward from a stalemate position. I really need to get to work now.
John Myste,
I do not follow faith. Nothing of my atheist views is faith-based.
Anonymous,
Knowledge of the center of the sun is based on natural inquiry. There is more to figuring this out than simply going inside of the sun. The composition of the sun can be determined by things like certain rays of light that only certain elements give off. What they teach in your science class is verifiable. The Bible is not. There is a difference.
Alan,
“why not branch out and find others who don't follow what you believe but still show it to be facts”
I speak as a student, but I have learned that the Church considers new philosophies and at times finds some truth in them while rejecting the things that are not true. There are so many writings that address this search – what is true, what is flawed, and why. Catholicism is coherent.
There were encyclicals written even about socialism, noting what about it was truth and what wasn't and why it wouldn't work, for instance. Rerum Novarum comes to mind.
@Rome – There is a disconnect in terminology. You are using the word “faith” and assuming that Faith (capital F) is the same thing.
The difference is that “faith” is something human. Like “I have faith that the Packers will win the Superbowl.” Faith, in the Catholic sense, is a gift of the Holy Spirit. You cannot choose to have Faith, it is a divine gift, and essentially supernatural.
Nicholas, Thank you. I was thinking we need to define terms. Rome, I read all that you wrote, but it seems to be missing the point. Is human reason all we need to find truth? If so, then did you place faith (little “f”) in anything your teachers told you or did you go out and discover all the things in the textbooks for yourself?
Stacy, you speak as a student of what? What are you studying? I think the answer to this question will be quite telling.
My husband is a continual student, and teacher. He looks for truths in medicine, and he can do that without faith in god. Does this mean god does not exist? Nope. Does this mean he wont find truth? I hope not as he works on some pretty powerful stuff.
It is possible that there is truth in some of what we say, and not in all. God is not necessarily truth. God is not necessarily not truth. At the end of it all is the only time we will know who is right and who is wrong. Sadly there are no “facts” that will show us before hand who is.
We all seem to be confused that we all can learn to live together, and in fact should do just that. Not sure why the love we all claim to have cannot allow us all to just live how we see is right for us and not force others to bend to our whims. It just doesn't make sense.
@Rome,
As others here have asked: Is human reason all we need to find truth? If so, then did you place faith (little “f”) in anything your teachers told you or did you go out and discover all the things in the textbooks for yourself?
We all use a combination of faith and reason to arrive at conclusions. I am an atheist also. I have no Faith. However, Faith is a subset of faith.
Those who believe in God do not get to claim ownership of truth, and neither do we.
I wish Stacy had responded to my objections, though, as they were not faith-based.
John,
“No one believes that, my friend.”
I've met a lot of people who are like you, but the basis of scientism is that we do not need faith.
“Most people think that not all truth is available to us, period. I actually think both atheists and theists believe this. People are not omniscient, and that’s OK.”
OK.
“Whose God? Different people hear different God’s, different voices in their heads.”
Catholics believe the Holy Spirit is at work in the world everywhere (well, I'm quoting a priest/instructor). There is truth in the other religions and that's why so much of them overlap. But there are flaws in them too. Aquinas, for example, even discusses that in the next two chapters after the one I reference.
“Thinking the voices in your head have the right answer and the voices in the heads of others have it all wrong is not humble.”
Again, that's not what Catholicism teaches completely. Humility means submitting to authority, not thinking you know everything. A wise scientist must find some humility to be effective. The truths of the Church come from revelation and careful reasoning based on it that is available for even lay people like me to read and decipher.
“First of all, you can have both faith and reason, but they cannot co-decide anything.”
Two wings to fly. I agree bickering is no good, even though I fall into that trap. The thing that confused me about atheism was that there is no grounding to return to when one is trying to figure out what is true and what is not. If anyone can believe anything, then there is no unity. It just seems chaotic.
A friend just sent me this. I am familiar with his work, but this is a must read of all must reads. This is the kind of empirical evidence I mean when I say I know it is all real. The author is a science-fiction writer.
A Question I Never Tire of Answering
I think the problem with this debate is that the original text is written for Catholics, and is not supposed to be a logical treatise that would inspire an Atheist to have a “V-8 moment” and suddenly convert.
But in the broader sense, science and religion are partners, not adversaries. Unfortunately culture often strives to put them at odds, be it well meaning religious people trying to promote religion as science, OR when well meaning secular people treat science as a religion.
Science is a way of thinking and examining the natural world. If is nothing more than that. It isn't an either-or debate.
For a religious person for whom Faith is a big part of their lives, it is certainly something that shapes and guides their view and understanding of the world, just as knowledge, education, and other “tools” they have do.
You need the right tool for the right job, so that for example, you cannot build a big enough telescope to find God… But that doesn't mean he can't be found
Stacy,
Please, stop calling it human reason. It's pointless. Are we going to start saying human automobiles, human government, and human literature, or can we just leave it to what it is: reason.
I wasn't strong in the critical thought department as a child. Like most other children, I accepted whatever the adults told me (although many school lessons did offer legitimate proof). I have since come to know what they taught me as fact by the mere reality that it is proved and available for me and others to test, and our education system goes through a process of trying to get the best information into the school system. Any faith-based information will fail to enter a public school system, which is why, while I might have had faith in my teachers at an elementary school age, this ultimately means little, as none of it was faith based but evidence-based. This is different than the Bible, which makes huge claims while having no reliable evidence.
The link you posted is not reliable because it is not testable, not to mention his anecdote leaves out very specific details behind his medical crisis and his magical recovery. It is inconsistent because he says he would consider the appearance of God before a hallucination, should it have happened, yet he does just the opposite in his account. It leads me to question the honesty of the author, and to call such an account empirical evidence is another misuse of what should be an easily understood term.
So how do we come to know truth? It's through what we can observe. A tingly feeling in your belly is no better a guide to the truth than a nursery rhyme. We have the five senses, through which we gain knowledge about our environment. Only through those sense can knowledge be gained. We do not know of any other way.
@Stacy that is an intriguing link, but I do not expect it will be particularly persuasive to Atheists. It is an extremely unusual anecdotal account.
Ironically, I suspect that many people might even find his account harder to accept than the basic premise that God exists
@Rome I think you are reading too much into this. The original text does not suggest anything like “Without Faith, the human race could never have developed mathematics or chemistry.”
It talks specifically about understanding God. The use of the term “truth” may be somewhat vague.
But I would argue that that there is more to understanding than observation. Even speaking in a strictly neutral stance, context, ethics, and a host of other factors are involved.
is that dude saying god gave him a heart attack so that he could see the miracle of god?
If so does that mean god killed my mom with cancer because she didn't believe strongly enough? I am again confused.
Alan, It's his story. I liked it. I appreciate talking to you, but understand I don't think I can convert you. It's not my job. If you ask me a question, I'll answer it as a Catholic, and as a wife and mother, a redeemed sinner needing grace and forgiveness every single day.
It's not arrogance; it's just who I am, but I accept you for who you are too. I don't think everything has to be a debate. Discussions are good.
Nicholas,
That just reiterates another problem I've been highlighting, the misuse of easily understood terms. Clearly, it's counterproductive to apply the term “truth” to something that may not be true.
Context is just a specific environment of observation. Ethics rely on observation too. Who would make an ethical argument based on something they could neither see nor verify and be taken seriously? Observation does supply a foundation for ethical determination.
@Rome Agreed. I just don't see the original text as something onerous even to Atheists. I'm also willing to bet that knowing what this blog is, you could have deduced that any discussion of “truth” would be done from the faithful Catholic's perspective. This wasn't published in Scientific American :-p
Again, NOT intended as any kind of proof or proseletyzing for Atheists, but from a Catholic perspective, a full understanding of reality requires the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But I would not make that argument in a science class, because it isn't relevant to that venue.
Stacy, I get that it is his story. I was asking if that is really what he was saying. That god gave him a heart attack to make him see god.
I think one could definitely read his story and question some of his assertions. But they are his to believe/deny. One can never really say one has never read or heard something, the brain is pretty amazing in it's ability to store data and bring it about when desired. But it is what he believe so I don't question.
I don't think you arrogant, but also don't think you accept me for who I am. We are at great differences about that. I think you say you do, and may even think you do, but at the end of the day I think we both realize you don't, and that is ok. I think you know where I get opinion this from.
But for fun, what is the difference between debate and discussion?
Alan,
I think his story is a way of saying that God gets your attention in unexpected ways sometimes. His was a near death experience. It doesn't mean that someone who died was any less valuable. We all die.
We have differences, but we can still discuss.
I think the difference in a debate and a discussion is that in the first someone is trying to win and in the latter both people are just trying to understand or learn more.
It seems a debate really needs a third party to judge the winner, otherwise each person even debates that he won the debate and then no one is listening any more at all.
@Alanl64 – Discussion is a general conversation about a subject, and the exchange of ideas. Debate is a form of structured argument with the intent to promote a particular idea or narrative.
As far as the Wright blog post, it is unclear whether he believes that God “gave” him a heart attack, or simply “took advantage” of it. That doesn't appear to be an important detail in what Wright believes.
I am of the opinion that logic and semantic debates are neither meaningful nor helpful when discussing religion. But then again I am not personally the type who goes out and tries to convince people that they should agree with my religious beliefs.
If for sake of discussion, you accept that God is real, then logic is inadequate to describe him. You only have to go to George Carlin for that – “If God is all powerful, can he make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?” :-p
Regardless of whether one chooses to believe Wright or not, I don't think it is helpful to try and extrapolate from his statements anything about other people dying of car accidents or heart attacks or whathaveyou with the presumption that “God did it” for some illustrative purpose akin to Wright's anecdote.
Nicholas, thanks, so there is no debate here, just discussion.
I certainly don't mean to come across as trying to convince anyone here of my point of view. I just want people to see that we all have differing views, and we all need to find a way to live in harmony with those views. None of us is really wrong, components of what we think might be wrong, but at the end of the day everything discussed is just opinion.
And I agree logic cannot describe religion or god, that is why it is called faith. You have to believe to get it.
@Alanl64 – I am sure there is room for some debate on some issues, but the “big ticket” items like “Is God real?” would be out of place on a Catholic blog, which presupposes it.
Also, sometimes people are like “Hey! I think this is really interesting!” and want to share it, but are not necessarily going to want to fight over it, one can take it or leave in the spirit offered
From a Catholic perspective Faith can get even trickier, since it isn't even something you can just logically “choose” to believe. Since Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit, it is something you receive, not choose
which is a detail I personally find quite intriguing.
And certainly religious people are more than happy to debate amongst themselves, which is why you find more “flavors” of Christianity than you will of ice cream
'Key word there is “humble.”'
Indeed it is. We cannot learn much anything from anybody without first humbling ourselves to be their student, in effect to admit that they have something to say which we do not know, or that they have thought of something in a way which sheds more light on it than our thoughts alone would. For that matter, there is plenty of humility just in trusting that any observer is reporting his observations plainly and honestly: yet that trust in witnesses doing plain witnessing is the bedrock not only of the legal system, but also of science.
Nicholas, I may be bizarre in this blog and my dissenting opinion because I never really questioned the existance of god. I don't know if god exists, I am totally willing to say that god does exist. I am just not sure in what form/religion/book/fables. I know I am taking middle ground, but some stuff just can't be explained, so I would be a fool to totally discount god. Just my humble opinion.
I think this is the calmest, most reasonable discussion I've seen here in three or four weeks. :^)=)
We speak of faith and reason being two wings for the intellect because to operate reason must take certain fundamental principles for granted … principles much like geometry axioms, in that they neither need nor admit of proof. Even the ability of the person to direct his reasoning — free will — is and has to be assumed; take out free will and all reasoning, be it scientific or theological, becomes suspect. But you can't prove any of this without begging the question.
Nicholas, you said you're “of the opinion that logic and semantic debates are neither meaningful nor helpful when discussing religion.” Is it possible you find it so because, in the limited context of a combox, neither you nor the people with whom you're talking can go back far enough to find common ground from which to start? I find too often that arguments really begin in media res, assuming much that hasn't been covered or agreed to even when neither party takes as fact that which is merely urban legend or anti-[your party] bigotry.
@Anthony – Yes. Because in my experience religious debates are usually simple logic traps. Someone says something like “How can God be good if he let's all the terrible things in the world happen” etc. and either simply point out logical inconsistencies or something similar… As if the Faithful person had simply made an erroneous error in judgment when deciding that God existed after a flawed scientific analysis :-p
But even in perhaps a more friendly environment, the limitation of a logical or semantic debate are quite profound. For example, a Catholic and Protestant debating the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and whether “This is my body” was meant to be literal or figurative… It is a semantic point that really can't go anywhere as both sides are going to be relying on their own respective dogma.
I just had a silly debate with someone on YouTube about whether Jesus would be OK with the Death Penalty or War, or whether or not Jesus “hates” Socialism.
While many people are open about their beliefs and wiling to examine them, it is also true that many people operate on rote beliefs instilled in them that they will not question regardless of the argument.