Rationality & Faith
Combining intellectual resilience with an affinity for the divine
“I” is an odd word. Yet the personal tense is important when considering items of faith. Rationality can be viewed in a broad/ populist context because of its inherent drive for validation.
Both are significant in settling on perspectives of self. Rationality feeds the logical propensity within us all, and faith the desire to ascribe value to a higher eternal ideal.
I deem both to be relevant, and my personal journey up until now has involved a modest balance between both.
Rene Descartes definitely discovered something in Meditations of First Philosophy that I intend to revisit in due time. “Cogito ergo sum” is true indeed.
On Questioning Reality
At what point do we question what energy puts the cosmos in motion, and why it does so. When does the philosophical desire to explore supersede a drive for mere existence?
Oddly, it is a crevice I would not advise most to adventure towards; having been there twice.
Rationality, I have found, is the shield against the general humdrum of reality as it proceeds from banal sources. Most contentions of right and wrong hold no water when tested against the broader reality of authenticity.
Yet still, what is blatant to the Gentile and the Jew is our internal compass for practical honesty in matters of ethical consideration.
When faced with the light at the end of the tunnel, what will be the measure of your faith? Will you have so much trust in ethereal ideals that you will tower on, or faint in the moment of truth and diminish your honesty?
These are the questions that unite rationality and faith, and most minds are tested once.
What will be your “Adam’s answer” to no question at all? Mine was theo-philosophical, but I find now, one that communicates a much broader ideal.
The God of Abraham is the God of Ibrahim, is how I attempted to rationalise the above. On questions of faith, I will proceed from a point of intrinsic honesty and not cower to the differences that impede the rational integrity that holds proper society together.
We are not a product of our location, our place of origin, or our various ethno-configurations. These are merely elements that inform the fluidity that is each person’s unique and independent human reality.