Reason and Revelation

What I do not understand is the fact that those people who are trying to analyze everything about faith and the bible, honestly believe that God should show himself in order for them to believe. A person would feel that they would still go to heaven so it makes sense to believe in God. The bible contradicts itself several times, both in terms of what is stated in the Bible, as well as different interpretations resulting in conflicting meanings. There are two hypotheses that Sztanyo talks about in his book Faith and Reason. This concept or hypothesis could have only been discovered because of those people reasoning and doubting Christianity. As stated before, then faith would be unnecessary because faith is about believing in something you do not know is true.

Reason is a tremendous barrier in trying to spread the gospel to other people. Real faith is acting as if there really is an object of faith out there somewhere” (Faith and Reason). That is not a hard concept, so since it is something easy that must mean it is not true and with no evidence why should we believe?

The promise of faith is eternal life! There will be no pain and suffering like it is here on earth. Something that we have faith in can slip from us and sometimes we need reassurance in what we believe, but we don’t need the doubt or reasoning to persuade us to change fully. He states that “those holding this position generally maintain that there is no possible way to know whether God exist or not. Sztanyo states from Faith and Reason, that there are at least seven distinct causes of belief: “There may be penalties for not accepting a belief, there may be positive rewards for accepting such a belief and the belief may be accepted because it gratifies us or answers a psychological need” (Faith and Reason).

Going back to the distinction between faith and reason, if you think of revelation you should think of power.

Revelation is simply His promises of his return and his commandments to have faith and obedience until He comes back. Those people are the ones that are doubting the faith so this hypothesis just gives more support in believing that they should have no faith because there probably isn’t anything for them to have faith in anyway.