Faith and Rationality

I posted this on Scot McKnight's blog the other day.
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... I do sympathize with Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) at least to the extent that so much religious thinking does seem to involve dysfunctional thinking. This is a way of thinking that, if we used the same logic in real life, would lead us constantly to misunderstand conversation, to berate others for no reason, to argue vehemently that the sidewalk is actually the road--or someone else's driveway.

To a great extent, such mis-thinking is harmless, indeed beneficial because it fosters meaningful existence. Where it gets us into trouble is when it leads us to hurt others or stops peace processes or flies planes into tall buildings.

To keep my own faith (I can't stomach a disconnect between my religion and the thinking I do in the rest of my life, sorry Kierkegaard), I have had to adopt a particular hermeneutic that disagrees with Dawkins when he says that faith is not convinced by evidence. In order for me to truly affirm God as a God of Truth who actually exists ontologically, then my faith in him cannot be more irrational than rational. That doesn't mean I have to be able to prove he exists--frankly, I don't think I can prove that I exist as a person (I could be a really sophisticated computer program).

So when it comes to science or biblical studies or any field of knowledge, if the overwhelming majority of those competent to judge an issue have reached a particular conclusion, if I cannot identify a clear fatal presupposition leading them to that conclusion, then I have to take that as the most likely conclusion given the evidence we have at the moment. I always have a footnote for the new discovery, for the unexpected paradigm shift. I won't call it fact. But I admit that if I am to affirm something different, I am doing it in the name of "blind faith" on this issue. [note, refusing an overall irrational worldview does not mean that I cannot accommodate points of irrationality within that overall view].