Faith is Sanity E-Book

Harri Kuisti

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Faith and reason are not in conflict with each other. Even in science, one must make assumptions that cannot be proven correct. This can be compared to believing, although atheists do not like to use that word. If one arrives at conclusions from materialistic premises that are claimed to prove the premises correct, it is circular reasoning. Natural science cannot say anything about supernatural things because it does not even study them. It is often claimed that the increase in scientific knowledge has made faith unnecessary. This is not true, as every new scientific discovery generates new and increasingly difficult questions. If there were a so-called 'god of the gaps,' science would have continuously created more space for him as it developed, but the True God does not agree to live in the niches reserved for him by humans. Humans have the freedom to move away from God, but at the same time, they step further away from reality and truth. Reality is in God. He created it. Faith is sanity.

Leseprobe

Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

Jesus

God is not far from any of us: in him we live, move, and have our being.

Paul

Sisällysluettelo

Forword

Conciousness

Free will

Is atheism based on science?

Dishonest question

Salvation plan

Miracles

Rubik’s cube and the creation of life

Israel

Angels

The Bible

Are all religions equal?

Climate change

End times

Heaven

Hell

Near death experiences

Suffering

Is my faith a private matter?

Why should I pray?

Is it acceptable to be rich?

Should we get involved in politics?

Amazing Grace

Forword

I admit to being what is known as an Excel Christian, a term coined by a pastor to describe believers who are grounded and wary of fanaticism. I find it difficult to prevent my brain from participating in this venture called faith, and I don't even try.

I am aware that the world does not revolve around me, does not require my ability to understand, and certainly does not wait for my approval as it rushes forward from one incomprehensibility to another.

Even less has the Creator of the Universe built anything on the premise that I, with my fragile brain, would make a philosophical breakthrough behind my desk or even for one fleeting moment grasp something of what is in the mind of the Almighty now, always, and forever.

So, I know my place as a human and the limitations that come with it, but I still believe that God created me in His own image. This means, in my understanding, that I have the right and even the duty to use the thinking ability that I have.

I certainly do not mean that my understanding exceeds even the average human level, let alone that I am particularly intelligent. However, I am wary of the attitude that sometimes appears in all groups of people (not just believers) that requires the acceptance of various viewpoints, perceptions, and beliefs as they are, without critical consideration.

In this book, I have tried to examine various questions, beliefs, and thought patterns that I have encountered as openly as possible, without intending to offend or pressure those who believe in a different way.

I have published most of these short writings earlier in Finnish in a book named “Usko ja järki” (Faith and Intellect). I decided to produce an English translation for two reasons.

First, I have eagerly tried to write comments on some YouTube videos and found it frustrating. One obviously cannot develop the arguments fully in such a short format and what is more, my comments have often been misunderstood or even erased. In this book my thoughts are at least theoretically available to a large audience.

Another reason for the English translation was to try how well the artificial intelligence manages to do the job. In this case I used Copilot. I had previously been impressed by it’s performance when translating a text from Finnish to English, and from that further to Swedish, then to German, and so forth through a long chain of European languages I do not understand, and finally back to Finnish.

The final Finnish translation was obviously not the same as the initial text, but the meaning had not changed at all. The language was actually even better and more fluent in the final Finnish version!

I decided to give the AI a chance in translating the book of mine into English. It did a decent job to my Finnish eyes. You are welcome to form your own opinion. I had to do many corrections relying on my own command of English more than on that of an AI tool. I hope I did not change the text to worse formulations.

I write this first chapter on my own because I want to blame the Copilot for some things I have noticed when using it. And I do not wish to have it to read and to translate texts that it may find offensive.

Copilot is definitely “woke” as they say in English. The Finnish language is gender neutral in nature. It is said to be explained by the cold climate: The clothes were the same for both sexes and there were thick layers of them due to the cold climate, so it was not safe to guess if the person was he or she. That is why we have just on word “hän” for both.

The “woke” Copilote had translated the word “hän” to “they” throughout the text, which my English teacher had never accepted.

Just for fun I once tested the political correctness of Co-pilote by feeding it sentences like “A rich white man gives a Christmas to a poor black child”, and invariably it told me: “I am not able to continue this discussion. I wish You can understand that.”

But I do not wish to hurt anyone with my texts. So if you find some parts of it offensive (I truly wish you do not) the fault is mine and mine alone. I wish you a good time in reading.

Conciousness

Neuroscientists say that human consciousness and its nature are not yet fully understood. Even those who consider it primarily a phenomenon related to the brain, which cannot exist independently of it, do not try to deny its existence per se. And it would be impossible to deny an obvious fact, even though some people's materialistic worldview drives them to try to explain it purely as a physical, chemical, and biological phenomenon.

The fact that scientists admit that consciousness cannot be fully explained is a very significant point. It strongly challenges the materialistic worldview, as consciousness seems to be something that transcends the boundaries of known sciences. Despite this, materialistically inclined scientists are seem to believe that science will eventually succeed in explaining consciousness in natural scientific terms.

Materialists may also downplay the mystery of consciousness and try to make it appear as just a set of relatively small questions that have not yet been answered: Once science solves those smaller problems, the mystery of consciousness is also hoped to find its scientific explanation.

One attempt to deny the uniqueness of consciousness alongside all the physical events around us is also to refer to everyday sensory experiences, such as smelling the scents of a summer garden, hearing the birds sing, and feeling the boards of a sun-warmed terrace under bare feet.

All those sensations can indeed be explained in scientific terms, but that does not provide any answer to why the person experiencing these things has a strong feeling of a thinking and feeling self, which is aware of its own consciousness, is separate and in some sense independent of the surrounding physical reality, and is able to observe it as if from an outsider's perspective.

A materialist must try to explain these feelings. In the absence of a better theory, it is popular to talk about the illusion of consciousness or self, but upon closer inspection, this is not any kind of explanation of the phenomenon itself. It merely gives known and indisputable observations a new name and attempts to make them sound less relevant.

An illusion is generally understood as a feeling or perception that is not anchored in reality. A materialist scientist believes that only measurement results and the numbers describing them are reality. Since consciousness cannot be measured, it must be classified as an illusion.

This setup also shows how even scientists can resort to circular reasoning in defending their own atheistic and materialistic ideology. It starts from the premise that nothing separate from or outside the physical world exists because there is no convincing evidence for it. And when phenomena are encountered in research that cannot be explained in scientific terms, they are called illusions and claimed not to exist in reality.

It is quite easy for a Christian to explain consciousness as part of the reality created by God. When God is a conscious and feeling person, a human being created in His image is also such. This is anything but a scientific explanation. But how is the idea that everything should be explained scientifically justified? Such a requirement is not self-evident in relation to everything unknown in life, even though it fits well as a starting point for scientific research.

Science has produced a lot of useful knowledge, but that does not mean that there is no reality outside its field of study. Anyone who demands answers to all questions based on scientific experiments and measurements makes science their religion. No one should have to make such a choice, as science and faith do not make each other unnecessary. Both have their own roles.

I think this setup is illustrated by an analogy from the field of music: The harmonica is a fine instrument, and it has its place in music. Still, no one says after a symphony orchestra concert: "It sounded beautiful, but it wasn't based on the use of the harmonica."

When the concept of human consciousness as separate and external to physical reality is accepted, only then is there reason to trust human observations and the conclusions drawn from them. If human consciousness is solely related to brain activity, and that is entirely determined by the laws of physics, the human brain produces thoughts dictated by physical processes, and nothing guarantees that the observations and conclusions made are objectively true.

If it is true that the sensations of consciousness and self are illusions, there is no sure way to know what other delusions our brains might produce. This uncertainty is even greater if it is assumed that human brains have evolved through a long and somewhat random evolutionary process.

Those who oppose the idea that all living things were created through intelligent design, either alongside or instead of evolution, often point out that there are many features in organisms that no one would have intentionally chosen. If all parts of organisms always functioned perfectly, there would be no reason to say so, as a perfect designer could certainly have designed a perfect solution.

It must therefore be concluded that biologists believe there are features in living organisms that are not perfect. If this is true, how do we know that one feature of the brain, the ability to make reliable observations and interpretations, has evolved to perfection over time? There is no reason to trust such a conclusion, especially when the conclusion must be made with the same brains whose functionality the conclusion concerns.

It is true that science relies on extensive collaboration among researchers, and many members of the scientific community check experiments and their interpretations. This is believed to reveal the worst errors in research, but this is not necessarily true if all human brains have the same genetic flaw that prevents reliable thinking. And such a danger is evident because all humans have the same origin.

A worldview that starts from the assumption that human consciousness and the ability to think are gifts from the Creator is more logical and does not contain logical contradictions. Only from this basis can one expect research to produce reliable information. This worldview cannot be proven to be correct, but if it is not true, it is impossible to prove anything. A materialistic worldview would leave us at the mercy of our illusions.

Free will

People often feel that they have at least some control over small decisions in their lives. Based on their own experiences, they can freely decide whether to raise their right or left hand or perhaps put both hands in their pockets.

However, common sense suggests that people often cannot freely choose their profession, for example. Many study places usually have more applicants than can be accepted. After graduating, they also cannot freely decide which company or other organization to work for, as many people and chance play a role in how well the job seeker's wishes come true.

Most people feel that all life's decision-making situations roughly fall into these two categories. Additionally, there are many things that a person cannot choose at all. For example, the country and family into which each person is born are naturally beyond human decision-making power.

This is all self-evident to many based on their own experiences, but especially philosophers and scientists have long been interested in the extent to which humans are truly free to make choices. In this context, it is essential to define what is meant by free will. Some understand free will ideally as unlimited and reject the whole concept because no individual's freedom to choose can ever be complete. It is clear that an individual's decisions often affect other people, and one person's unlimited decision-making power could not exist without restricting the freedom of others.

Some deniers of the existence of free will believe that human choices are purely determined by the laws of nature, as the starting point is to see humans only as complex biological machines. According to proponents of this view, humans have no self, soul, or consciousness independent of the body.

The materialistic view of humanity described above can also be said to be the basis for interpretations made from research results on the subject. For example, activities in the human brain related to decisions have been observed even before a person becomes aware of their own choice. Some have seen this as evidence that the decision begins as a physical activity in the brain guided by the laws of nature and is beyond the reach of consciously made human choices.

When such far-reaching conclusions are drawn about the time difference between the physical activity of the brain and the experience of conscious choice, it is reasonable to ask how someone can be sure of the correctness of their chosen starting point.

Only if human thinking is considered purely physical brain activity can something be concluded about the relationship between the physical activity of the brain and conscious choice. However, this starting point has not been proven and is unlikely to be proven correct.

If, on the other hand, conscious and unconscious human thinking and decisions are seen as at least partially independent of the physical activity of the brain, it cannot be ruled out that the unconscious decision of a person may have been the trigger for the entire sequence of events: In this way of thinking, the unconscious decision of the human mind may have preceded the physically observable brain activity and the subsequent phase in which the person becomes aware of the decision they have made.

Possibly, the order could be always the same in all human consciousness: First, an unconscious impulse independent of physical brain activity arises, which then triggers physically observable activity in the brain before the thought is consciously recognized.

This is naturally pure speculation, intended only to provide an example of a non-materialistic interpretation. An opponent of the concept of free will cannot dismiss the existence of such a remote possibility except by arguing that in their worldview, physical reality is always dominant, and therefore humans cannot have free will.

Thus, if it is claimed that the concept of free will is in conflict with experimental results, this is based on failure to think logically. It is only in conflict with one possible interpretation of the results, which is based on the assumption of the dominance of physical reality. Starting from this one and the same premise, one arrives at an interpretation of the experimental results that considers the experiment to prove the premise correct. This is circular reasoning.

The claim that human free will does not exist is self-defeating. Since the strong experience of free will in humans cannot be denied, it has been labeled an illusion. This may seem like a plausible explanation at first, but upon closer inspection, it undermines all objective thinking.

If humans are considered susceptible to such a fundamental illusion as that of free will, then what is the basis for believing that humans can think and understand anything else correctly?

All attempts to prove the reliable functioning of the brain require careful thought and take the reliability of the brain as a starting point. This again leads to circular reasoning.