Proclaiming that religious belief is
irrational is useless without a simple demarcation as to what constitutes
rational and what constitutes irrational - and you'll always find this part
lacking. Even the most ardent religious sceptic can't fail to concede that
religious faith, while not as accessible as science, amounts to a personal
narrative that assimilates much of the same kind of material available to the
atheist into his explanatory endeavours. It's no use simply to say that
rationality means assenting to empirical evidence, because the relationship between
empiricism, theory and narrative involves further explanatory strategies, which
themselves tap into issues of metaphysics and ontology, as well as emotional
assessments of reality that amount to a whole worldview.
Patterns that one believes to be
God-inspired are always going to be sparse compared with the wide fabric of empiricism
available to us - but the human propensity for narration and investment of
meaning in those patterns ensures that, as long as one doesn't over-cook one's
theorisations, one needn't be constricted only by views and beliefs that can
withstand scientific scrutiny. The experiences of Christians that make them Christians are not often experiences that are going to be demonstrable or evidential to non-Christians. I've a long history of examples where atheists have been infuriated by this - but infuriation or not, it happens to be true, which means there will always be an exploratory hiatus for those that can't appreciate this.
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