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It's worth noting that, at least in the New Testament Greek, "faith" also translates as "trust". It is an emphasis on knowing and trusting God himself, not subscribing to a particular dogma. Jesus clearly ridiculed people who leveraged dogma for the sake of control, vanity, or out of ignorance.

In other words, Jesus blessed people who trust him though they didn't meet him. He didn't exactly expect people to say "Jesus... nice name. I think I go apologize to my wife now." The expectation was always that Christians would be a people who taught and encouraged each other to understand Jesus and trust him.

In fact "blind faith" itself is a reference to Jesus mocking folks with ignorant dogma.

Fideism has been repeatedly condemned by the Catholic church, FWIW.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06068b.htm

> A philosophical term meaning a system of philosophy or an attitude of mind, which, denying the power of unaided human reason to reach certitude, affirms that the fundamental act of human knowledge consists in an act of faith, and the supreme criterion of certitude is authority.

That's a different position than "religion is a matter of faith". IIUC it's more like "everything is a matter of faith".

And in matters concerning religion - at least the Catholic church still believes in papal infallibility.

I think you may have misread. It's clear that fideism is being discussed in the context of Christian belief in the article I linked:

>... before we believe in a proposition as revealed by God, we must first know with certitude that God exists, that He reveals such and such a proposition, and that His teaching is worthy of assent, all of which questions can and must be ultimately decided only by an act of intellectual assent based on objective evidence. Thus, fideism not only denies intellectual knowledge, but logically ruins faith itself.

See e.g. the following for further discussion.

https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/67580/what-...

From your link:

> All the truths you list above, which are beyond the capabilities of human reason alone to discover, can only be known through faith. See, for example: "Whether the trinity of the divine persons can be known by natural reason?" (Summa Theologica I q. 32 a. 1).

> Just because there are truths beyond our human natural reason, that doesn't mean faith is not an intellectual virtue grounded in reason.

This debate seems to be orthogonal to our debate. They are arguing whether faith is a feeling or a thing you can reason about. But they all agree faith is required to believe in catholic dogmas.

And I fail to imagine how you could think otherwise, religions make lots of assumptions about god, and the proofs of existence of god I've seen were all flawed, and even if they weren't - they would only prove the existence of something, not the existence of a personal god with any particular properties.

I especially liked the proof that went: "all things are perfect to some degree, therefore there must be a thing that is the most perfect, and that's by definition god" :)

I was a devout catholic when I heard it the first time, and still it seemed so fishy to me :)

It's not in any way an orthogonal debate. The Catholic Church clearly condemns blind faith in the main tenets of Christianity. That is, it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone.

>Human reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God; faith, a heavenly gift, is posterior to revelation, and therefore cannot be properly used against the atheist to prove the existence of God.

>...

>Revelation, indeed, is the supreme motive of faith in supernatural truths, yet, the existence of this motive and its validity has to be established by reason.

Whether or not certain arguments for God are valid or not is beside the point. The point is that rational grounds for believing in God's existence are regarded as a necessary foundation for faith.

Catholicism also condemns Rationalism, so faith is considered essential too, but it's not the blind faith you were referring to in your earlier post. You believe in the trinity through faith but your faith is grounded in a knowledge of the reliability of the relevant revalation(s).

You are stretching the words to mean what they doesn't mean.

> it condemns the idea that one should believe unreasonable doctrines through faith alone.

And who decides what is unreasonable :)?

Because as a catholic you are required to believe in lots of self-contradictory statements with no proof. Stuff like holy trinity, virginal birth; omnipotence of god; humanity and divinity of messiah; omnipotent, omniscient and loving god creating an universe with evil in it; free will, salvation by good acts, and god's omniscience; impossibility of salvation without sacrifice of Jesus; bread that is a human body as well (in essence not in substance, but the idea of essenece itself is unreasonable and has no basis in reality).

All of that with no proof other than scripture and tradition.

I was a catholic for 22 years. I was taught by parents, and in school by priests. I took it seriously and fought with these statements for several years before abandoning them altogether.

Catholics are required to believe in whatever the pope says is true in the matters of religion. You have to believe Mary was a virgin her whole life and never died, but went straight to heaven. You can have doubts, but the correct reaction is to ignore the doubts and pry for god to give you faith.

And it haven't changed in last 150 years - some dogmas were added, but the idea that you have to believe in these things is at least 1600 years old, and probably older.

You're getting side-tracked on the issue of whether or not there are good arguments for the existence of God and other key components of Christian belief.

The Catholic position isn't that you should believe every part of Christianity on the basis of blind faith. That's clear from the sources that I linked to.

You might think that the arguments are bad. However, believing something on the basis of a bad argument isn't the same thing as believing it on the basis of blind faith.

Take the infallibility of the Pope's ex cathedra pronouncements as an example. Yes, you are supposed to believe these as a Catholic. But the doctrine of infallibility rests on reasoned (though not necessarily sound) arguments. Catholics don't say "believe whatever the pope says because blind faith". They say: here is why we believe the Pope's ex cathedra pronouncements are infallible and hence to be assented to.

AFAICT this has descended into semantics at this point.

The difference between "blind faith" and what the Catholic church would call "reasoned faith" doesn't seem at all relevant if one doesn't accept (logically sound) arguments where there is no demonstrable reason to accept the premises of said argument... is it?

Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

EDIT: To me it's a bit like arguing from a premise of "the Bible is 100% true and infallible". Well that can't be a valid premise because there are contradictory passages... and, anyway, it wasn't written directly by God, so there is already at least 1 layer of interpretation going on. I mean, I can accept that if you believe the premise then you wouldn't want to wear clothes made of mixed fibers, but that's neither here nor there. Likewise, you could argue as long as you like about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but I don't accept the premise that angels (as described in the bible) exist, so...

Well, if you don't believe in the Catholic religion it would be hard to argue that one should assent to its teachings. But Catholics really do believe that their beliefs should be subject to reason. They wouldn't necessarily agree with reasons why their beliefs are wrong, but they would believe that faith must be in accordance with reason.

As to why the specific teachings of the Catholic church? It literally comes down to "God said so and God wouldn't lie."

"We may point out in this connexion the falsity of the prevalent notion that faith is blind. "We believe", says the Vatican Council (III, iii), "that revelation is true, not indeed because the intrinsic truth of the mysteries is clearly seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Who reveals them, for He can neither deceive nor be deceived." Thus, to return to the act of faith which we make in the Holy Trinity, we may formulate it in syllogistic fashion thus: Whatever God reveals is true but God has revealed the mystery of the Holy Trinity therefore this mystery is true." [1]

As to the reasons why Catholics believe that one should place one's trust in God, these have to do with a variety of purely rational, if not always convincing arguments. Catholics believe that the existence of God can be proved with reason.

"'that God, the first cause (principium) and last end of all things, can, from created things, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason' (Denz., 1785-old no. 1634)

and in the corresponding canon (can. i, De revelat.) it anathematizes anyone who would say

'that the one true God our Creator and Lord, cannot, through the things that are made, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason (Denz., 1806-old no. 1653)." [2]

Catholics would not argue that you can logically deduce every tenant of their faith through reason alone, but they do believe that through reason, one can deduce enough to decide to place faith in truth of the religion and then chose to follow the rest of the beliefs.

1. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05752c.htm 2. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm

> As to why the specific teachings of the Catholic church? It literally comes down to "God said so and God wouldn't lie."

How do you know god said so? How do you know there even is a god? How do you know god wouldn't lie?

You assumed it (in one way or another). Blind faith.

BTW, regarding the whole "god doesn't lie" thing:

> O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.

Jeremiah 20:7

> And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.

Ezekiel 14:9

> And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

2 Thessalonians 2:11

But Bible is full of contradictions, it's not like anybody can be persuaded by pointing them out. Faith doesn't care about contradictions :)

> these have to do with a variety of purely rational, if not always convincing arguments.

Arguments using circular reasoning are indeed not very convincing :)

> that God, the first cause (principium) and last end of all things, can, from created things, be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason

There's no way to deduce anything about the first cause. Not the fact that it would also necessarily be the end of all things. Not that it was something conscious with a free will. Much less again that it was a personal god. Much less still that it was the God as Catholics define him.

And it's perfectly possible that there was no first cause at all (the chain of causes could be infinite for all we know).

> Catholics believe that the existence of God can be proved with reason.

And that's blind faith, because they can't actually prove it, they just declare it's possible. You're arguing my point for me here ;)

Again, you're confusing blind faith with belief on the basis of an argument that you think is bad. We know that you are not convinced by any arguments for the existence of God. But believing that God exists on the basis of a rational argument isn't blind faith.

You cannot turn irrational belief into rational one just by making a flawed argument about it.

Belief: "Earth is flat"

Argument: "If earth was flat it would look flat. Earth looks flat therefore it must be flat."

It's no longer faith, it's reason now. Doesn't matter that you ignore all the counterarguments.

Believing that the Earth is flat on the basis of that argument certainly isn't belief on the basis of faith.

Catholics as a group don't "ignore all the counterarguments". So for example, Ed Feser recently published a book presenting five arguments for the existence of God (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/...). The book responds to the various counterarguments that atheists and agnostics usually make to these arguments. You might not be convinced by the responses, but the counterarguments are not ignored.

Again, I am not trying to argue here that Catholicism can ultimately be rationally justified. I'm not a Catholic, and it's not particularly important to me whether it can or can't be. But it's unfair to caricature Catholics as a group as irrational faith heads (though no doubt some individuals may meet this description).

"Argument: "If earth was flat it would look flat. Earth looks flat therefore it must be flat."

It's no longer faith, it's reason now. Doesn't matter that you ignore all the counterarguments."

Exactly! Otherwise literally everyone on earth could be said to be acting on 'blind faith' because nearly everyone holds at least one or two mistaken beliefs out of some prejudice or unwillingness to examine the counterarguments.

"How do you know god said so? How do you know there even is a god? How do you know god wouldn't lie?"

I don't know any of these things. I don't believe in a God. But you're missing the whole point which is that just because you disagree with the reasoning and beliefs of Catholics doesn't mean that you can impose a doctrine upon them which they do not believe.

"And that's blind faith, because they can't actually prove it, they just declare it's possible."

They believe that they can prove it, and I've met many who will attempt to a do so at the drop of a hat. If you'd read the link I provided you'd actually see some of those attempts. Whether they actually can prove it is beside the issue, however. What matters is whether they believe that their proofs are valid.

> Catholics are required to believe in whatever the pope says is true in the matters of religion.

This is fairly explicitly not true. Most papal statements even on subject matter that could in principal be subject to infallible declaration are not made ex cathedra. There very few even arguably ex cathedra pronouncements (leaving aside the disputed status of canonizations), even though Popes say and write a lot about religion.

If the validity of any religion were testable, it's arguable that we'd all know by now which one it was. But I'm not aware of any such experimental data. So it's all just speculation.

I don't see how that's relevant to this thread.

It seems relevant to the faith vs rationality discussion. For me, rationality strongly implies testability. Unless we're talking about mathematics, and not physical reality.

First of all, if there's a special get out clause for mathematics, why shouldn't there be a special get out clause for God? God isn't part of physical reality either.

But anyway, the question was whether religious belief was necessarily based on "blind faith", not whether it meets some kind of positivist criterion of ideal rationality. People who believe in God wholly or partly on the basis of arguments aren't believing on the basis of blind faith. You might think the arguments are bad, but you could have a rational discussion with them about that.

> And in matters concerning religion - at least the Catholic church still believes in papal infallibility

Papal infallibility is actually a rather new dogma (and, on the age scale of the Catholic Church, even somewhat new as a general belief), and it means a lot less than a lot of people (especially outside the Church) think it means, because it applies only on special circumstances and only on specific subject matter; there's a very small number of pronouncements to which it is generally held to apply (and I believe only two that are absolutely unquestioned), and several more to which it has been argued to apply (as well as one very frequent act to which it has been argued, but is not generally accepted, to apply: canonization of saints.)

"There's lots of such stories in the Bible - the message of "shut up and believe what you're told" is clear. "

You've picked some of the best stories that illustrate if god existed, he'd be a moral thug and sociopath...