[MD] Faith/Skepticism

[Michael Poloukhine]

Bo, Joe, all...

Having read through my "missing week" of MoQ discussion, I'd add this here:

My knowledge of history and especially of the history of world faiths is 
insufficient to make a statement of why (if?) skepticism is predominantly a 
Western phenomenon. But IMO, Bo, the apparent predominance of skepticism 
in Western thought is precisely a result of the notion that reason and faith are 
separable, or more so that separating reason and faith is somehow productive.

I would suggest that the extraction of reason from faith has led to the reduction 
of the strength that is greater than the difference of the parts. We end up with 
faith less reason, reason less faith, and the sum of the two apart is less than the 
total of the two combined as one. 

In a sense, one can say that the difference between the two sums is Quality. ;-)

IMO its no accident (or surprise) that the Eastern faiths are not all that amazed 
at an MoQ understanding; they did not make the faith/reason split that the West 
did, and MoQ is nothing more than a return to a more unified metaphysical 
understanding that unites faith and reason.

Anselm (or was it Augustine?) posited: 'I do not desire to understand in order to 
believe, I believe in order to understand.'

Reason without faith is blind, faith without reason is dangerous.

However, faith precedes reason. Skepticism IMO is the failure of reason to 
accept that preconditional aspect of faith. 

MP
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"Don't believe everything you think."