Saturday, February 16, 2013

Are Faith And Knowledge Incompatable?

No, they are not.  God gave each of us a heart to believe, and a mind to think.  Our personal and spiritual obligation is to use both--together.  When we do, both faith and knowledge flourish.  When we attempt to tear them apart, or otherwise put them asunder, both of them wither to the point at which they become senseless antagonists.

The history of Islam illustrates this point.  The high point of the spread of Islam coincides with the expansion of learning and scientific knowledge in the Islamic word.  The end of that expansion likewise coincides with the political and economic weakening of Islamic nations, and the retreat of the faith into a fundamentalism that rejects any form of progress and, concomitantly, any but the most restrictive forms of learning.

Thankfully, there are signs that this may be changing.  In the case of the Islamic world, that change can't come fast enough.  But it is no less necessary in societies in which Christianity predominates, including ours.  As fundamentalists in this country are fond of saying, many of our greatest universities were founded on faith-based principles.  Beyond that, they get the story wrong; those institutions chose not to abandon faith, but to adapt it to the expansion of secular knowledge.  The only people "driven out" in the process were the ones who confused faith with narrow-mindedness, which breeds not a closer walk with God, but a close walk with self.

And the narcissism generated in the process leads to egotists like this one, who has lost any sense of servanthood.  To say nothing of any knowledge of math; I'm sure that 10% of her income is far greater than 18% of her Applebee's bill.

No, faith and knowledge are not incompatible.  It is, in fact, essential to join them at the hip.  Perhaps now more than ever.

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