Welcome

Welcome to Reason on Faith.

This is a site where I will express my thoughts on religion using reason, evidence and the occasional reference to Ockham’s razor as guiding principles. You can find me on Twitter as @ReasonOnFaith.

As religion can be such a loaded topic, I realized that my writings on the topic deserved a home of their own.

With this dedicated platform, I am now at ease discussing the sensitive topics of religion, faith, philosophy and their interplay with science and politics.

The key objective for my own journey, and by extension my writing here, is for us all to believe in as many true things and as few false things as possible.¹

Confirmation Bias

In religious discourse, I’ve often seen strong emotions from people wedded to a foregone conclusion even whilst claiming to be searching for the truth.

A red flag that significant bias is present: when you witness people vehemently defending the faith that they were born into.

Statistically speaking, the odds are against them being in the correct denomination of the correct faith by birth. In my estimation, such positions lack humility. Coming from religious people who do sincerely believe that humility is a virtue, I’m sure you can spot the irony.

Did you get to choose your faith? Could you really say to your parents and family as an eighteen year old, “Thanks, but no thanks” in regards to your inherited religion?

Consider whether your parents created an environment where you could relay to them your decision to leave the faith. Consider the hypothetical letter below of a young adult who has questioned the faith, and who is now coming out to his or her religious parents. This is how it should play out, but how often is this the case?

Perhaps your religious conviction comes from you having had a powerful dream causing you to convert from religion x to religion y. Perhaps that happened because God spoke to your heart, negating the thousands of others that He has directed to convert the other way, from religion y to religion x. God couldn’t possibly have done so using the same method of dreams and an overwhelming sense of contentment to encourage conversions in opposite directions, could he?

Clearly, what’s in your heart trumps what is professed to be in someone else’s heart, and you should use that emotional truth to make an objective statement about the absolute truth of religious claims that eclipses all counter claims made from the same subjective emotional place by others.

I humbly submit to you that you may wish to revisit the above statement, if it’s a belief that you hold about the absolute-truth claims of your religious faith and denomination.

Continuous Refinement

Most bloggers write posts etched with an original posting date. Informal blogging culture seems to dictate that historical posts are rarely edited.

I find however, that this creates an expectation to write the perfect post and as such, creates a deterrent to even getting started.

For this reason, I have decided in advance to refine and augment select past posts as new ideas and arguments arise. In fact, I have already done so with this Welcome post. Consider the posts here as content from a one-person wiki which are most often presented in essay format.

My positions will evolve, but if it’s relevant for you to argue a previous position of mine, you’re encouraged to take a snapshot of any post you want to later challenge me on. If I’ve already refined my position or supporting evidence, I’ll kindly direct you to my latest views on the relevant topic, as my response.

Not all past posts will reflect my current thinking. However, I will endeavor to update and refine topical posts where discussion is active. You may wish to view this as my own reference wiki. Perhaps one day, mature drafts of my posts will take form in a book. Instead of waiting to write the perfectly crafted book however, I’ve chosen to write my thoughts here as a series of continuously evolving posts, so that others might benefit from them now.

Despite my planned efforts to make this site a valuable resource on topics of reason and faith, I am not a professional writer, blogger, speaker or activist — at least not at the time I’m writing this post!

Like many in this space, in both the religious and non-religious spheres, I have a full plate when it comes to professional and familial obligations. I won’t be able to respond to every twitter post, comment, rebuttal, video, etc. Where relevant and where time permits however, I do intend to engage with the criticism of my arguments.

I believe that when we’re willing to be corrected, we allow ourselves to revisit our positions and make more intelligent arguments. Following that path, we may even adopt the thesis of someone who today appears to be an intellectual adversary. Conversely, we might deduce an even better argument or find better evidence to propose for our positions.

Scrutiny of Ideas

Readers coming from the religious tradition that I was born into will at times disagree with my views and at times be surprised when I acknowledge support for common principles. Likewise, those in the non-theist diaspora will also find me advocating strongly for principles we share in common and at times, they too will disagree with my approach or my conclusions.

To be sure, I will call out mis-characterization through omission. Did you quote a verse and conveniently truncate out the second half that opens pandora’s box? Did you completely ignore the elephant in the room?

I will take the gloves off to make strong arguments about the facts as I see them, especially on topics that don’t get covered well because we feel as if we’re walking on eggshells when discussing religion or notions of blasphemy.

People have rights, ideas do not.

Ideas are fair game for our analysis, scrutiny and even ridicule. Religious personas who are claimants to divine revelation are fair game to personally scrutinize.

Why? Because by putting themselves out there in the public as exemplary human beings for us to revere and follow, we owe it to ourselves and our fellow human beings to evaluate their claims. We owe it to our fellow human beings to evaluate their actions and the downstream repercussions. We owe it to our fellow human beings to evaluate the societies that form around their pronouncements and personal example.

Dialogue vs. Debate

I do find that while debates are informative and sometimes entertaining for an audience, they are often and by definition, structured in an adversarial fashion.

There’s little incentive for one party of a debate to concede a point, or thank the other party for providing a new or interesting piece of evidence to be considered. They don’t lend themselves to saying “I stand corrected” or “Here’s a point I could use against you, but I can understand how the mistake happened, and I won’t hold that against your camp.”

Instead, the currency of most debates is to score points; to make the other party look ridiculous.

Certainly, debates do have their place. Interlocutors in such debates generally do not change their positions. The interlocutor’s identity and ego can become too intertwined with their affirmed position.

Where there is an audience, I do believe that formal debates can be beneficial. The audience can reflect on the ideas presented in the privacy of their own thoughts. My own social media activity is perhaps the closest I’ll get to an actual debate.

In more personal settings, I am a proponent of discourse to create breakthroughs in understanding between the interlocutors themselves. I prefer in-person conversations where that’s possible. Dialogue over debate.

Think about it: how many choice words are expressed in YouTube comments that wouldn’t be said face-to-face, chatting over coffee?

Imagine if people coming from different viewpoints heard each other out. Imagine if we bridged divides with sentiments like, “I don’t see it that way, but I’m willing to explore the evidence you cite. Here’s where I’m coming from. Let’s figure out where our assumptions diverge.”

Imagine if we were vulnerable to new ideas — even to revisiting old ones afresh that deserved another look?

Imagine if we stepped outside of all the social pressures encouraging us to be a shiny, valiant representative of our faith organization and truly evaluated the evidence as objectively as we could muster the courage to do?

I know for a fact that we’ll not look at all issues in the same way. At a minimum, we can find ways to agree to disagree and to acknowledge where we have common ground.

Have no doubt however; the goal of this blog is not to be a pointless expression of kumbaya. This blog is meant to be substantive and at times downright provocative in the explosive subjects covered.

At times, I will also use satire, sarcasm and general literary devices under the umbrella of humor to drive home a point.

My overall goal? To move the needle on discussions of faith and reason. I hope to do this with my writings over the months and years to come.

Why? Because like you, I wish to make our shared experience of life on this wonderful planet a gift that all of us can enjoy to the fullest.

I hope to challenge your assumptions and inherited beliefs. In doing so, I hope to open your heart as well as your mind.

Peace and love to you all; whatever religion you may believe or not believe.

1. This is effectively the motto that Matt Dillahunty has popularized.