Life and Reason? ...

Thursday, May 31, 2012. How important is reason for our life?

What role is reason playing in life? …

We have kids and every day there are discussions about how to deal with some challenges in school, with teachers and other kids. We try to argue. And kids argue. Usually there are many emotions involved in these discussions. How important is reason?

We observe that emotions, words, the state in the group, acceptance and non-acceptance play a key role in the discussions. But we also realize: there are discussions. Reason plays a role, which is not to be neglected. We discuss things, and reason is strongly linked to these discussions, since we reflect what is going on and the conversations about events influence our behaviour and that of our kids.

Working in a government organisation, there are challenges on various levels. Many administrative things are going on, and day by day I have to fight rules which do not fully fit the tasks of my unit. There are colleagues in other units, who need to deal with things. Their perspective and experiences sometimes does not include our challenges and problems - they just don't know the difficulties, the tasks and the dense workload we have on the scientific and international level. How important is reason here? Partly, speaking about things helps, we can communicate our needs and find open and friendly ears. But sometimes we fail, ignorance is too strong and reason does not succeed.

Reason and Faith? …

What is the role of reason in faith? Do we believe because we find arguments using our reason? Or is reason in contrast to faith, as some people believe? When we look back into the branches of two-thousand years of philosophy, we find fantastic examples of philosophers who see a dense relationship of reason and faith. We also find a lot of discussion about it, with some seeing enlightenment and reason in conflict with the world of faith.

Personally, I have started from a rather general viewpoint, when I began my personal journey of reason and faith. And asking for reasons for faith - without much belief - I ended up as a sincere Christian, as a follower of Jesus. My personal experience is that reason and faith are strongly linked! But I can also understand the historical developments which led to sincere problems in this relationship.

We will need to go into some more detail, when we talk about the role of reason and faith. Reason can support faith, but it cannot be its sole fundament. Faith is more than reason … but containing reason, guiding reason, giving a clear and bright light to reason! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts