Faith and Reason

One of the neat things about studying philosophy and theology formally is that you learn that there is something to the matter that you might not know before you study it.

The strange thing is that in other fields very few people think they know anything about it without having studied it but in theology and philosophy everyone thinks themselves an expert without having studied it.

For instance, I haven't ever decided to render an opinion about the relative quality of Honda and Toyota engines. Why? Because I simply haven't studied it. This seems fine to me, I honestly don't care and don't currently have any moral imperative to care.

But Theology and Philosophy are different. For Philosophy and Theology we do have a moral imperative to care, each of us, for our own souls. Yet you hear people pronouncing the vacuousness of philosophy and theology without any knowledge of the study of the matter over and over again. "Knowing" without knowing.

This "knowing unknowing" is an aspect of cognitive dissonance. We know X is important but don't want to investigate X because we're afraid of what we might find.

This is, for instance, the stance of the right-wing with regard to climate science, known as Willful Ignorance.

And like Climate science, it's easy to lob in objections from a distance "It seems cold to me, global warming is a hoax!" without investigating the matter methodically. "Nobody really knows anything" is the parallel in philosophy (but of course, we all know how to claim that nobody knows anything!).

But upon investigating the matter systematically and thoroughly facts tend to make themselves clear and demonstrable as with every other field of human study. For while Humans are imperfect, we are not so imperfect as to be unable to build a bridge or determine the meaning of the term "wrong" and finally to understand the nature of atoms and reality itself.

But this path to understanding must begin with the acknowledgement of its possibility, which turns out to be demonstrable, but again, only if someone is willing to study the matter systematically. That first step - acknowledging that Knowledge is Possible, is FAITH. I have not been "kind" in many words about the Catholic Church and this is not because I regard it as wholly evil, I do not. But like all man-made things, the Catholic Church is deeply flawed. That said, the Ecumenical and Rational period of John Paul II definitely is a step in the right direction, remembering that Reason and Faith work together to create Knowledge and Wisdom. As John Paul II points out in his essay, Faith without Reason is Superstition, and Reason without Faith is Nihilism.

https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html