I think Reason and Faith complement each other, rather than oppose each other. Those who see no complement aspects tend to decide on their enmity not even neutrality. No doubt that wrong application of either faith or reason creates a hostile field for battle, but had there been an appropriate exercise of reason or an appropriate adoption of a “correct” faith, there would have been no issues or battles on the ground.
I tend to develop such a “friendship” view between reason and faith, because I think both are the creation of a single God who would not deliberately contradict between the two. I think reason has it’s limitations, and where it ends the faith starts. Given the inherent weakness of reason to understand many metaphysical issues would suggest that reason itself endorses adopting faith, and the otherwise would be unreasonable.
Another problem arises because of the lack of a reference reason to whom we all can refer. There is no super-reason sitting in the world of Plato’s forms who would dictate answers to difficult questions, rather we have reasons attested to X and Y person. X would apply his reason to support an idea, and Y would apply also her reason to refute the same idea! Who is the winner? Can anybody come as a judge? If a judge (say called Z) comes and says X is winner, then X is winner only relative to the reason of Z. And who would validate the verdict of Z? Then we need a super judge called P, and we would proceed into an endless regress.
I guess this inherent problem of reason caused mankind to cling to faith. But which faith? The source of this faith must be validated. God as being an omniscient being can be a good source of definite knowledge. If I find an authentic source of God’s sayings and ideas, then I can develop faith in them. A healthy reason will never find an area of dispute with an authentic information coming from an omniscient God. The problem arises when people adopt faith on ideas that are not authenticated to be from God, and these ideas clearly contradicts a healthy reason which finds clear empirical experiments contradicting these faith. Similarly it might happen that a faith item truly been authenticated is placed into refutation because of either lack of scientific approach to validate it, or because of the arrogance and prejudice from the scientific community.
Furthermore, I think it is an inherent nature of human being to cling to faith, otherwise our life would be difficult. A child growing must start it’s journey through faith, based on information captured from parents. When students of quantum physics start their journey they start from blind faith in the experiments done by Einstein, who himself might have based his foundations on faith, since no one can use sensory organs to monitor the sub-atomic world.
In conclusion, I have advocated creating a peaceful harmony between a science which is based on application of empirical tools and healthy reason and faith on information which is taken from authenticated knowledge source (like God) which does not violate the healthy reason.
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Do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be superior (in victory) if you are indeed (true) believers. [Quran aal-Imran (3):139]
Philo-Hikmah Vs Philosophy