You’ve seen the pictures of church signs on the internet. Many are boring, some are funny, and some are idiotic (OK, maybe most are idiotic). Recently I’ve seen a presentation where the presenter showed a slide of church signs that read “Reason is the greatest enemy faith has”. I thought that would make a good bumper sticker. But also I though, that’s right!
C.S. Lewis in his “Mere Christianity” talked about how you really can’t reason Christianity and the best way to be a Christian, according to Lewis, is to just convince yourself that Christianity is true despite the fact that it doesn’t make any reasonable sense. His method was simply to think every day, “this is true” over and over and over. So at the end you give in from exhaustion.
It’s no wonder to me that the statement that reason is the greatest enemy of faith says it all. If you have ever tried to reason with a Christian, you know you can present all kinds of very reasoned arguments that are rock solid only to have the person say “that may be true but I still believe”. It’s the old saw “The bible says it, I believe it, and that’s it”.
So it’s a waste of time to try to reason with a ardent Christian. Our only hope is with those that already have some sort of doubt about their faith and let them find the facts themselves. Reason to hope?