Reason Revelation & Faith

Answer : Reason is, collectively, those faculties of the mind which engage in such activities as forming judgments, making decisions, solving problems, explaining, generating general principles, and giving particular examples. Aristotle called reason the ability to fill in the middle term in a syllogism. Reason is often contrasted with emotion, tradition and faith and is thought by rationalists to be more reliable than these in discovering what is true or what is best. The meaning of the word “reason” overlaps to a large extent with “rationality” and the adjective of “reason” in philosophical contexts is normally “rational”, rather than “reasoned” or “reasonable”.

The precise way in which reason differs from emotion, faith, and tradition is controversial. Reasoning may be conscious or unconscious; it may be done mentally or with the steps written out. The concept ‘reason’ is closely related to the concepts of language and logic, as reflected in the multiple meanings of the Greek word “logos”, the root of logic, which translated into Latin became “ratio” and then in French “raison”, from which the English word “reason” was derived. Revelation is the act of revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with the divine.

Revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel. One who has experienced such contact with or communication from the divine is often known as a prophet. Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. Revelation or information from a supernatural source is of much lesser importance in some other religious traditions. It is not of great importance in the Asian religions of Taoism and Confucianism, but similarities have been noted between the Abrahamic view of revelation and the Buddhist principle of Enlightenment.

Faith is a belief, characteristically without proof. It is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Formal usage of the word “faith” is usually reserved for concepts of religion, as in theology, where it refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality or Supreme Being. Informal usage of the word “faith” can be quite broad, and may be used standard in place of “trust”, “belief”, or “hope”. It can also refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. As with “trust”, faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes. There exists a wide spectrum of opinion with respect to the epistemological validity of faith. On one extreme is logical positivism, which denies the validity of any beliefs held by faith; on the other extreme is fideism, which holds that true belief can only arise from faith, because reason and evidence cannot lead to truth. Some foundationalists, such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Alvin Plantinga, hold that all of our beliefs rest ultimately on beliefs accepted by faith. Others, such as C. S. Lewis, hold that faith is merely the virtue by which we hold to our reasoned ideas, despite moods to the contrary.

Is there such thing as religion? It is impossible to define religion adequately. From a logical standpoint, one has to determine the methodology of their task in defining religion at all – are they philosophers, theologians, secular humanists? Religion for each man will mean different things. For instance, no psychological description of experiences, emotions, or particular state of the affective consciousness can adequately or subjectively define religion universally. There is nothing distinctively religious about emotions at all.Emotions are housed in the context of religion. Thus, the psychological method fails to discover, at any length, to explain religion or justify its claims to scientific impartiality in the process.One might ask if “God” (or the concept of God) is essential to religion.

There are some, like Thomas Aquinas, that believed that true religion is preceded by or in some way founded on the activity of natural reason. This, Aquinas would say, is the proper procedure for proving the existence of God.Some, like Gordon Clark, give more of a caricature of this process when he says, “The Thomistic view distinguishes between the process of arriving at truth by man’s unaided natural reason and the voluntary acceptance of truth on the authority of divine revelation. The former is demonstrable philosophy; the latter, accepted without demonstration, is the sphere of faith.” To believe something based upon demonstration, he says, is to not believe something on divine authority alone and leaves no room for faith. Men then know God exists because they have proved it, not because, based on faith, they have believed it. Rather, the doctrines of revelation complete what philosophy left unfinished and the two sets of truths become complementary. Faith for Aquinas meant that truth is received by the supernatural impartation of information.

Reason is logic alone. If God exists, then it is reasoned by some that He gave men revelation to follow.It would also be important to note that it does not follow that man, in an unaided fashion, could come to knowledge of that truth. He would need the help of the Holy Spirit. It is not possible to begin with sensory experience and proceeds by the formal laws of logic to God’s existence as a conclusion on the matter. Aquinas tried to define God around concepts such as potentiality and actuality, but never seemed to define these terms adequately.Thomas argued that God was the unmoved mover who moved other things because the entire universe is based on the property of motion. But, Aquinas cannot come to an identity of the Unmoved Mover unless he has divine revelation. Men have also fallen into another quandary described as Reason without Faith. Descartes said that men cannot begin with sensation (or reason so properly defined) because one cannot trust sensation. For example, how could one know what is absurd and not absurd unless they first knew what “absurd” meant.

The proof of cogito depends on logic alone. So the consistent application of the laws of logic alone is sufficient. “I think” is a proposition that if it is denied, it is proved true. But, when reason can be deduced from reason alone it follows that revelation is at best unnecessary. So the question is not, “Is the Bible true?” but, “Is all knowledge deducible by reason and logic alone?” Rationalism, on this front, seems to be a failure. Another more common position in the 21st century in terms of “faith” is “faith without reason.” This is more specifically defined as mysticism. These are people who rely on experience (a deranged form of existentialism) without knowledge. For someone to truly have a mystical experience without knowledge (as the Gnostics taught) one would not be able to say anything about that encounter because to add knowledge into the mix, one would deny at the same time the experience happened.

Knowledge again traces one back to ask how one would actually know, then, how they had the experience in the first place. This was developed more intricately by Soren Kierkegaard where he says that God is truth, but truth only exists for a believer who inwardly experiences the tension between himself and God. God, then, only exists in subjectivity. This completely removes objective truth, and again, one is reduced to solipsism. (Such conclusions are also akin to Nietzsche, Brunner, William James and others who reduce philosophy to a self-contradictory and self-destructive nature.)

Answer : Revelation is supernatural communication from God to man, either oral or written, though usually restricted to its written aspect, that is, to the whole contents of Holy Scripture. It is the discovery by God to man of himself; God showing or unveiling himself: that is, his Being, his moral will and his redemption in God. This is over and above of what he has made known by the light of nature and reason. Revelation is not only possible, for God can and does always reach his ends, but also necessary if we are to attain the true knowledge of God and salvation. Man is left inexcusable by the light of nature (Romans 1), but he is like a short-sighted and bleary-eyed man who cannot see clearly. He needs spectacles. The dense ignorance, low morality and abject helplessness of man in his natural state demands the revelation embedded and contained in the whole of Scripture. All Scripture is revelation.

Only divine revelation can remedy man’s natural alienation from God. Man needs a final authority for creed and conduct, for faith and practice: he has it in Scripture. Divine revelation is made certain for us by the attestation of miracles and prophecy. Miracles are the natural accompaniments and attestations of new communications from God. They generally certify to the truth of doctrine and the commissioning of the prophet Prophecy also attests to revelation, for no human being can foretell future events with precision, as the scriptures are confirmed to have done for many hundreds of times.

So revelation is the fact of God speaking. But how did he speak. He spoke by the prophets, ultimately in his Son; and when it came for his message to be in inscription, he inspired the message. Inspiration may be defined as that operation of the divine Spirit which renders a speaker of writer infallible in the communication of truth whether or not previously known. Diverse means of revelation have been employed by God: through nature; through providential dealings; through miracles; through direct communication; through messengers, through scriptures. Natural revelation can never lead a soul to knowledge of salvation and the true God; yet it is not valueless. All true elements in pagan religions are extracted from this natural revelation. Because of this natural revelation, the heathen feel that they are the offspring of God. You still have an instinct after God, though warped and corrupted by sin. Man sees in nature, the created order, a natural exhibition, continues and powerful, of the Deity. Man is thus rendered inexcusable by this communication from God, for though it is wordless, it testifies eloquently of God: something made must have a Maker - this is the unmistakable and inevitable conclusion one must come to when he considers “the work of his fingers.”

But Thomas Paine maintained that revelation can only be considered valid for the original recipient and when subsequently communicated by the recipient to a second person it ceases to be a revelation but rather becomes a hearsay second hand account, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it. Moreover the nature of revelations is contradictory as the believers of different faith claim different connotations of the truth. Hence it becomes really difficult to decide as to which one is the truth in the real sense of the term. Moreover the morality or code of conducts attached to the different sects also difference to a great extent. It makes the efficacy of the revelation doubtful.

Therefore revelation alone does not seem to stand the in the need of confirmation if not supported by reason. That reason is necessarily connected to revelation is evidenced by the fact that we are called upon to decide true revelation from false revelation. How can we do such discerning apart from reason, even if it is reasoning from the Scriptures? It must be remembered that there is a difference between reasoning to see whether something is revelation, or to determine what in the scripture. The former is a noble endeavor, while the latter is not. Belief is blind and unworthy unless it tests whether something is revelation or not. It is foolish to believe everything without applying reason to test its believability or truthfulness, but likewise it is arrogant to assume that everything must be accepted by our reason before it can be accepted as God’s Word, or truth. Part of the tension can be resolved by viewing the issue from two different perspectives: epistemologically (what we know) and ontologically (how we know). There is a difference between the way we know reality and what we know about reality. If God is the source of all truth, then truth must come from the “top down,” and thus be known by revelation; however, epistemologically we start from the “bottom up” to determine whether or not God exists. In the epistemological sense, then, reason is prior to revelation, since reason must be used to evaluate whether or not the Veda is indeed revelation.

Answer : Faith is a belief, professedly without proof (i.e. above an acceptable standard of evidence). It is the confident belief in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Formal usage of the word "faith" is usually reserved for concepts of religion, as in theology, where it refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality or Supreme Being. Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used standard in place of "trust", "belief", or "hope". It can also refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. The point is that whatever world view is chosen becomes the person's faith and religion. This affects every aspect of life. A person makes life choices and puts all trust in the foundational questions of life: who are we, where did we come from, why are we here, and where are we going?

Religious faith has many pleasant effects. It creates happiness and delight, promotes better social relations and reduces and relieves worries which are an essential feature of this world. Now let us explain the effect of religious faith from all these three angles: Optimism is the first effect of religious faith from the viewpoint of the creation of happiness and delight. A faithful man is optimistic about the world, the life and the creation. Religious belief gives a particular shape to man's attitude towards the world. As religion maintains that creation has a goal and that its goal is nothing but betterment and evolution, naturally religious belief affects the outlook of man and makes him optimistic about the system of the universe and the laws governing it.

A faithful man will hold himself responsible for his backwardness and will not blame his country and its administration for that. He believes that if there is anything wrong, that is because he and others like him have failed to discharge their duty properly. This feeling will naturally arouse his sense of self-respect and impel him to move forward hopefully. From the viewpoint of the creation of happiness and delight the second effect of religious faith is the illumination of heart. As man sees the world illuminated by the light of truth, his heart and soul are also illuminated. Faith is a lamp, which illuminates his inmost. In contrast, a disbeliever finds the world dark, dingy and meaningless, and as a result his own heart remains dark in his supposedly dark world. The third effect of religious faith from the angle of happiness and delight is the expectation that good efforts produce good results. From purely material point of view, the world is indifferent as to who goes along the right and just path and who goes along the wrong and unjust path.

The result of a deed depends only on one thing, namely the amount of the effort put in it. But according to the viewpoint of a faithful man the world is not indifferent and neutral in regard to the effort of those who do what is right and those who do wrong. The world's reaction to the effort of these two groups is not the same. The system of the creation supports those who make efforts for the cause of truth, justice and integrity.

Answer : Reason precedes faith as a method of knowing the existence of God. One cannot believe in a God in whom they have no knowledge of, and cannot truly know something without reasoning about that which is to be known. A certain amount of knowledge (and thus reason) must be known of God if one is to have saving or experiential faith. One may have knowledge without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Reason and revelation work together. God bestows faith simultaneously with our understanding. We do not have to crucify our intellect in order to believe. Faith may sometimes go beyond our ability to know something or understand it to the fullest extent, but faith is not illogical. Healings may seem illogical to some, but we know from God's Word (revelation) that He heals, and therefore can believe (reason) that He will heal. All other views besides 'revelation and reason' produce logical complications concerning salvation. The idea that one can move only from faith to understanding and never from understanding to faith is lacking for reasonable support.

For the above reasons we conclude that both revelation and reason are gifts of God to men for the purpose of knowing and understanding truth, and subsequently knowing and understanding the God of all truth. By rejecting either revelation or reason, or under-emphasizing either aspect, we are discarding part of the equipment that God has endowed us with to know Him. As a result our understanding of God and the spiritual grow He intends for us be stunted. To dismiss one aspect or the other is like cutting with a pair of scissors having only one blade. To minimize one aspect over the other is like cutting with a pair of dull scissors.

Only by emphasizing both revelation and reason can we cut the truth straight! The writings of Thomas are of great importance for philosophy as well as for theology, for by nature and education he is the spirit of scholasticism incarnate. The principles on which his system rested were these. He held that there were two sources of knowledge - the revelation and the truths of human reason. The distinction between these two was made emphatic by Aquinas, who is at pains, especially in his treatise Contra Gentiles, to make it plain that each is a distinct fountain of knowledge, but that revelation is the more important of the two.

Revelation is a source of knowledge, rather than the manifestation in the world of a divine life, and its chief characteristic is that it presents men with mysteries, which are to be believed even when they cannot be understood. Revelation is not Scripture alone, for Scripture taken by itself, does not correspond exactly with his description; nor is it church tradition alone, for church tradition must so far rest on Scripture. Revelation is a divine source of knowledge, of which Scripture and church tradition are the channels; and he who would rightly understand theology must familiarize himself with Scripture, the teachings of the fathers, and the decisions of councils, in such a way as to be able to make part of himself, as it were, those channels along which this divine knowledge flowed. Aquinas's conception of reason is in some way parallel with his conception of revelation.

Reason is in his idea not the individual reason, but the fountain of natural truth, whose chief channels are the various systems of heathen philosophy, and more especially the thoughts of Plato and the methods of Aristotle. Reason and revelation are separate sources of knowledge; and man can put himself in possession of each, because he can bring himself into relation to the church on the one hand, and the system of philosophy, or more strictly Aristotle, on the other. The conception will be made clearer when it is remembered that Aquinas, taught by the mysterious author of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius, who so marvelously influenced medieval writers, sometimes spoke of a natural revelation, or of reason as a source of truths in themselves mysterious, and was always accustomed to say that reason as well as revelation contained two kinds of knowledge. The first kind lay quite beyond the power of man to receive it, the second was within man's reach. In reason, as in revelation, man can only attain to the lower kind of knowledge; there is a higher kind which we may not hope to reach.

But while reason and revelation are two distinct sources of truths, the truths are not contradictory; for in the last resort they rest on one absolute truth - they come from the one source of knowledge, God, the Absolute One, hence arises the compatibility of philosophy and theology which was the fundamental axiom of scholasticism, and the possibility of a Summa Theologiae, which is a Summa Philosophiae as well. All the many writings of Thomas are preparatory to his great work the Summa Theologiae, and show us the progress of his mind training for this his life work. In the Summa Catholicae Fidei contra Gentiles he shows how a Christian theology is the sum and crown of all science. This work is in its design apologetic, and is meant to bring within the range of Christian thought all that is of value in Mohommedan science. He carefully establishes the necessity of revelation as a source of knowledge, not merely because it aids us in comprehending in a somewhat better way the truths already furnished by reason, as some of the Arabian philosophers and Maimonides had acknowledged, but because it is the absolute source of our knowledge of the mysteries of the Christian faith; and then he lays down the relations to be observed between reason and revelation, between philosophy and theology.

Answer : A miracle is a sensibly perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can only be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle-worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different cultures have substantially different definitions of the word "miracle". Even within a specific religion there is often more than one of the term. Sometimes the term "miracle" may refer to the action of a supernatural being that is not a god.

Thus, the term "divine intervention", by contrast, would refer specifically to the direct involvement of a deity. In casual usage, "miracle" may also refer to any statistically unlikely but beneficial event, (such as the survival of a natural disaster) or even which regarded as "wonderful" regardless of its likelihood, such as birth. Other miracles might be: survival of a fatal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. In religious miracle it is presumed that there is some divine power who commands our action and he can do everything be it against the rule of nature. This claim is given by most of atheist but they do not show or give an objective proof of that divine power.

Now the problem is that since there is way the existence of this divine power can be demonstrated, it is logically not possible to believe in the magical phenomena claimed but the theists or believers in God. In the field of science there are ways by which many of the magical phenomena are proved but the reason given is totally based on scientific rules. Hence scientists categorically reject any such magic based on the premise of God. Moreover on philosophical grounds also it is really difficult to prove that anything like magic really occurs.

Answer : Reason and revelation, these the two terms seem contradictory. The word "reason" is seen to oppose faith and the miraculous. Some welcome reason and treat it as a gift from God to be used to its fullest extent. The fact of the matter is that people have several viewpoints concerning the relationship between revelation and reason. Some completely eliminate one or the other from their belief-system; others tend to lean more heavily toward one over the other, while others treat both with equal emphasis. "Reason" is the natural ability of the human mind to discover and process truth. "Revelation" is the supernatural disclosure of truth, by God, which could not otherwise be discovered by the unaided powers of human reason. Soren Kierkegard argued that since man is fallen and in a state of rebellion and isolation from God, he cannot understand God's truth without revelation. God is transcendent. As such His ways are higher than our ways and His thought are higher than our thoughts.

The ways of God are past finding out. God is wholly other than man, so attempting to understand the truth of God with man's reasoning ability is futile. God is not irrational, but suprarational and beyond the scrutiny or testability of human reason. He further argued that reason can only reject the absurd or irrational, but it cannot be of any positive benefit in discovering divine truth.

We need to take a "leap of faith" beyond rationality to believe divine revelation. This is why any attempt to offer proofs for God's existence is an insult to God. No one needs proof who believes, and those who do not believe will not be convinced. This view is true insofar as all truth flows from God, and must be revealed to men by some means. It seems inadequate, however, in that it fails to allow men to use their God-given minds to discover and contemplate God's truth. It turns humanity into nothing more than a computer who can only process the data that is input into it. We are made in God's image, which includes the ability to reason. To deny this essential aspect of our humanity is to deny the image of God in us. God gave us minds for a purpose. Although our minds should not be used to contradict God's revelation, our minds must be used to understand it.

Answer : religion is very much linked to both philosophy of religion and theology. Philosophy of religion' is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion, including arguments over the nature and existence of God, religious language, miracles, prayer, the problem of evil, and the relationship between religion and other value-systems such as science and ethics, among others. It is sometimes distinguished from "religious philosophy", the philosophical thinking that is inspired and directed by religion, such as Christian philosophy and Islamic philosophy. Instead, philosophy of religion is the philosophical thinking about religion, which can be carried out dispassionately by a believer and non-believer alike.

A religion on the other hand is a set of stories, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to an ultimate power or reality. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos, and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively.

Theology is the study of the existence or attributes of a god or gods, or more generally the study of religion or spirituality. It is sometimes contrasted with religious studies: theology is understood as the study of religion from an internal perspective (e.g., a perspective of commitment to that religion), and religious studies as the study of religion from an external (e.g., a secular) perspective. Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (philosophical, ethnographic, historical, and others) to help understand, explain, test, critique, defend or promote any of myriad religious topics. It might be undertaken to help the theologian:

• Understand more truly his or her religious tradition
• Understand more truly another religious tradition
• Make comparisons between religious traditions
• Defend or justify a religious tradition
• Facilitate reform of a particular tradition,
• Assist in the propagation of a religious tradition, or
• Draw on the resources of a tradition to address some present situation or need

Answer : A crisis developed has over the nature of religious knowledge among philosophers and theologians. This problem has much to do with the relationship between religious knowledge and religious language. More the crisis can be resolved to a greater extent with the explanation of the epistemic content of the religious knowledge. Most of the theologians consider their knowledge concerning God to be cognitive. They claim that there are cognitive contents are there in their religious knowledge which has been vehemently contradicted by the philosophers of 20 Th century. Actually the proper examination of the epistemic content of the religious knowledge depends on the criteria through which the knowledge can be falsified. Basically knowledge can be categorized in two types called analytic and synthetic.

Traditionally, analytic statements are said to be those which are true by virtue of their meaning. That is, analytic statements are those which are true "by definition." For example, "all unmarried men are bachelors" is a common example of an analytic statement. Synthetic statements, on the other hand, are not necessarily true. They are contingent on facts about the world. For example, "Mohan is a bachelor" may or may not be true, depending on any number of facts about the world. The distinction here seems simple enough, yet has generated a tremendous amount of philosophical debate. The distinction becomes problematic when we try to establish some rule for deciding whether or not a given proposition is analytic or synthetic. It seems that analyticity is established merely because we say it is, without any rules to determine if our judgment is valid or invalid. The philosopher W. V. O. Quine famously called this fact to our attention, and claimed that all knowledge was in fact synthetic to one degree or another.

Many philosophers today agree with Quine, and say that the difference between analytic and synthetic statements is not absolute, but only a matter of degree. However, a good number disagree, following the lead of Rudolf Carnap, who accused Quine of missing the point. According to Carnap, there is an absolute distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions; we just cannot produce any evidence to demonstrate it. Carnap reasoned that evidence can only be gathered to support synthetic statements, not analytic ones, and so the lack of evidence cannot be held against the analytic-synthetic distinction.

We call a proposition analytically true when its truth is determined solely by its relation to other propositions. Thus, "all married men are bachelors" is true, given that our language defines a certain set of propositions as "true" which regulate the use of the terms "married men" and "bachelors." Synthetic propositions, on the other hand, point us away from our language, and towards non-propositional experiences. Thus, synthetic knowledge involves testing propositional knowledge against non-propositional information. All propositions can therefore be both analytic (defined as true with respect to a set of propositions) and synthetic (defined as true with respect to some non-propositional knowledge), because the difference here is not defined by the propositions, but by the way they are tested. We decide if knowledge is synthetic or analytic by testing for how the person (or system) who possesses the knowledge justifies their belief. If a belief is justified solely with respect to propositional knowledge, then we call the knowledge analytic. If it is justified by relationships between propositions and non-propositional abilities, then we call it synthetic. The implication here is that there are neurological and behavioral correlates which can point us in one direction or another, and so there is a fact of the matter when it comes to distinguishing between analytic and synthetic knowledge. In conclusion, we have three types of knowledge. On the one hand, we have the difference between propositional and non-propositional knowledge.

Propositional knowledge can then be sub-categorized in terms of analytic and synthetic knowledge. Non-propositional knowledge is measured in terms of abilities which have nothing to do with language. This is the most basic form of knowledge, and while it requires anticipation, it does not involve abstract thought. Propositional knowledge, on the other hand, is always about predictions. With analytic knowledge, we require the ability to make predictions about the proper use of language without reference to non-linguistic phenomena. With synthetic knowledge, the abilities involve regulating the use of language with respect to non-linguistic phenomena. The three types of knowledge are defined, and thus distinguishable, in terms of abilities.

This question is part of the subject of epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that addresses questions such as: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "How do we know what we know?" In addressing this subject the first issue to note is that the terms "knowledge" and "belief" are often used interchangeably by religious believers, but technically these are very distinct terms. Often, statements of "belief" mean that the speaker holds a religious belief to be true, although firm proof is lacking. Examples would be the belief that God created the universe. Some religious believers hold that they actually have proof that such beliefs are true, but these proofs are not agreed upon by people within any one religion; they are certainly not agreed upon by people outside of their religion, and they are rejected as proof by both philosophers, logicians and scientists. It is precisely the belief in things which cannot be proved that forced philosophers to ask "What is the difference between belief and knowledge?" This had led philosophers to discover that knowledge differs from belief, in that knowledge is a justified, true belief.

So far as revelation is concerned for theists it is a strong reason for them to believe in God. But the reason is necessarily connected to revelation is evidenced by the fact that we are called upon to decide true revelation from false revelation. How can we do such discerning apart from reason, even if it is reasoning from the Scriptures? It must be remembered that there is a difference between reasoning to see whether something is revelation, or to determine what in the scripture. The former is a noble endeavor, while the latter is not. Belief is blind and unworthy unless it tests whether something is revelation or not. It is foolish to believe everything without applying reason to test its believability or truthfulness, but likewise it is arrogant to assume that everything must be accepted by our reason before it can be accepted as God's Word, or truth.

Answer : Prayer is the act of communicating with a deity or spirit in worship. Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions. The words used in prayer may take the form of intercession, a hymn, incantation or a spontaneous utterance in the person's praying words. Praying can be done in public, as a group, or in private. Most major religions in the world involve prayer in one way or another in their rituals. Although in many cases the act of prayer is ritualized and must be followed through a sometimes strict sequence of actions (even going as far as restricting who may pray), other religions, mainly the Abrahamic religions, teach that prayer can be done spontaneously by anyone at any moment. Scientific studies regarding the use of prayer have mostly concentrated on its effect on the healing of sick or injured people. The efficacy of petition in prayer for physical healing to a deity has been evaluated in numerous studies, with contradictory results.

There has been some criticism of the way the studies were conducted. In the rationalist view, ultimate goal of prayer is to help train a person to focus on divinity through philosophy and intellectual contemplation. Actually prayer is also an important element of religion. It represents the manifestation of a devotee's commitment to the supreme divine. With prayer and rituals the feeling of love and devotion towards God is expressed and the believers get a sense of contentment and also reach a conclusion that this is the way they can have proximity to god. Thus prayer has an important role in the religion without which the true definition of religion cannot be completed. Therefore almost all the religion of the world has some kind of ritualistic phenomena.

Answer : Revelation is the act of revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with the divine. Revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel. One who has experienced such contact with or communication from the divine is often known as a prophet. Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. Revelation or information from a supernatural source is of much lesser importance in some other religious traditions. It is not of great importance in the Asian religions of Taoism and Confucianism, but similarities have been noted between the Abrahamic view of revelation and the Buddhist principle of Enlightenment. There are mainly four types of revolution. These are:

Verbal revelation : Some people hold that God can communicate with man in a way that gives direct, propositional content: This is termed verbal revelation. Orthodox Judaism and traditional Christianity hold that the first five books of Moses were dictated by God in such a fashion.

Aristotelian rationalism : The neo-Aristotelian philosophers of the medieval era held that revelation was the discovery of absolute truths about God, man, and man's place in God's universe, as discovered through logical philosophical inquiry. A prophet's connection to God was held to be the only way that a person could reach such a state of pure reason.

Natural revelation : Some believe that God reveals himself through His Creation, and that at least some truths about God can be learned by studying nature, physics, cosmology, etc. Adherents of this view find support in Biblical verses such as "The heavens declare the glory of God" .

Non-Verbal propositional revelation :One school of thought holds that revelation is non-verbal and non-literal, yet it may have propositional content. People were divinely inspired by God with a message, but not in a verbal-like fashion.

Revelation through a people's historical development of their faith :Some believe that given God's non-anthropomorphic nature, the above listed forms of revelation are, by definition, impossible. Instead, God's will is revealed through the interaction of man and God throughout history.

"Reason" is the natural ability of the human mind to discover and process truth. Reason precedes faith as a method of knowing the existence of God. One cannot believe in a God in whom they have no knowledge of, and cannot truly know something without reasoning about that which is to be known. A certain amount of knowledge (and thus reason) must be known of God if one is to have saving or experiential faith. One may have knowledge without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Seeing that God has the ability to reason, and we are made in His image, it follows that God has intended for us to use our reasoning ability to discover and contemplate truth.

Many truths, however, can only come via revelation. Revelation and reason cannot be separated from the life of a believer. That we cannot divorce reason from our lives in favor of 'revelation only' is evident from the fact that those who hold to a 'revelation only' view must give logical and reasonable arguments for their position. They call upon our reasoning abilities to prove that their view is correct. On the flip-side, any attempt at pure rationalism divorced from revelation is also futile because not everything can be proved. Something is always presupposed or simply believed behind every provable belief. Justification, which comes by reason, must stop somewhere.

That reason is necessarily connected to revelation is evidenced by the fact that we are called upon to decide true revelation from false revelation. How can we do such discerning apart from reason, even if it is reasoning from the Scriptures? It must be remembered that there is a difference between reasoning to see whether something is revelation, or to determine what in the scripture. The former is a noble endeavor, while the latter is not. Belief is blind and unworthy unless it tests whether something is revelation or not. It is foolish to believe everything without applying reason to test its believability or truthfulness, but likewise it is arrogant to assume that everything must be accepted by our reason before it can be accepted as God's Word, or truth. Part of the tension can be resolved by viewing the issue from two different perspectives: epistemologically (what we know) and ontologically (how we know). There is a difference between the way we know reality and what we know about reality. If God is the source of all truth, then truth must come from the "top down," and thus be known by revelation; however, epistemologically we start from the "bottom up" to determine whether or not God exists. In the epistemological sense, then, reason is prior to revelation, since reason must be used to evaluate whether or not the Veda is indeed revelation.

Reason and revelation work together. God bestows faith simultaneously with our understanding. We do not have to crucify our intellect in order to believe. Faith may sometimes go beyond our ability to know something or understand it to the fullest extent, but faith is not illogical. Healings may seem illogical to some, but we know from God's Word (revelation) that He heals, and therefore can believe (reason) that He will heal. All other views besides 'revelation and reason' produce logical complications concerning salvation. The idea that one can move only from faith to understanding and never from understanding to faith is lacking for reasonable support.

Answer : Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge-not knowledge in the intellectual sense-but the knowledge of Brahman and Atman and the realization of their unity. Where the devotee of God follows the promptings of the heart, the jnani uses the powers of the mind to discriminate between the real and the unreal, the permanent and the transitory. Jnanis, followers of nondualistic or Advaita Vedanta, can also be called monists for they affirm the sole reality of Brahman. There is no need to look outside ourselves for divinity: we ourselves already are divine. What is it that prevents us from knowing our real nature and the nature of the world around us? Jnana yoga is the process of directly rending that veil, tearing it through a two-pronged approach.

The first part of the approach is negative, the process of neti, neti--not this, not this. Whatever is unreal--that is, impermanent, imperfect, subject to change--is rejected. The second part is positive: whatever is understood to be perfect, eternal, unchanging--is accepted as real in the highest sense. Are we saying that the universe that we apprehend is unreal? Yes and no. Our minds are circumscribed by every possible condition; whatever the mind and intellect apprehend cannot be the infinite fullness of Brahman. Brahman must be beyond what the normal mind can comprehend; as the Upanishads declare, Brahman is "beyond the reach of speech and mind." Yet what we perceive can be no other than Brahman. Brahman is infinite, all-pervading, and eternal. There cannot be two infinites; what we see at all times can only be Brahman; any limitation is only our own misperception. Jnanis forcefully remove this misperception through the negative process of discrimination between the real and the unreal and through the positive approach of Self-affirmation. In Self-affirmation we continually affirm what is real about ourselves: we are not limited to a small physical body; we are not limited by our individual minds. We are Spirit. We were never born; we will never die. We are pure, perfect, eternal and free. That is the greatest truth of our being.

The philosophy behind Self-affirmation is simple: as you think, so you become. We have programmed ourselves for thousands of lifetimes to think of ourselves as limited, puny, weak, and helpless. What a horrible, dreadful lie this is and how incredibly self-destructive! It is the worst poison we can ingest. If we think of ourselves as weak, we shall act accordingly. If we think of ourselves as helpless sinners, we will, without a doubt, act accordingly. If we think of ourselves as Spirit-pure, perfect, free-we will also act accordingly. Jnana yoga uses our considerable mental powers to end the duping process, to know that we are even now-and have always been-free, perfect, infinite, and immortal. Realizing that, we will also recognize in others the same divinity, the same purity and perfection. No longer confined to the painful limitations of "I" and "mine," we will see the one Brahman everywhere and in everything.

Answer : There is no unanimity on the definition of religion. Each and every philosopher has tried to define it in one's way. All the definitions are partially correct but certainly lack some elements necessary to define religion in its true spirit. According to Gandhi 'Truth is God'. Gandhi has given an entirely new dimension to the definition of religion. The basis of his definition is quite rational in view of the fact that religion in its traditional form has various interpretations and therefore people of different communities do not accept the religious ideas of other But truth is the only concept where all ideas, opinions and thought considers. No one can oppose the matter of truth because this concept is same for all time and ages. The problem is that the religion in its typical form is quite different from the definition given by Gandhi. Kant on the other hand has defined religion as a mater of faith. He is of opinion that religion is something that can not be proved objectively.

Further Kant says that God or some divine power is one of the most important elements of religion but the problem is that the existence of God is not a matter to be proved. There should be no logic just to prove God. God is a matter of faith. Therefore religion itself is beyond philosophical debate.

According to WhiteHead and Prise religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. He further says that the great religious conceptions which haunt the imagination of civilized mankind are scenes of solitariness. Promothens chained to his rock, Mohemmad brooding in the desert, the mediations of the Buddha, the solitary man on the cross. But the flow in this definition comes from the fact that this definition does not include a personal super divine power which the definition of religion is incomplete. According o Durkheim the religion is the social and congregational business. But this definition also lacks many elements like faith and emotion which make the religious belief true in its spirit.

In the old Indian sacred books and scriptural there is a Sanskrit term Dharma in place of religion. It refers to one righteous duty or any virtuous path in the common sense of the term. Contextually, it implies one's religion, in Indian language. Through out Indian philosophy, Dharma is present as a cardinal concept that is used in order to explain the higher truth or ultimate reality of the universe. The dharma literally means as that which upholds or supports and is generally translated into English law. But through the history of Indian philosophy, it has governed ideas about the proper conduct of living ideas that are upheld by the laws of the universe.

According o G. Galloway the religion is a man's faith in a power beyond himself whereby he seeks to satisfy emotional needs and gains, stability of life and which he expresses in acts of worship and service. Here the definition given by Galloway fulfills all the criteria of a complete definition for religion but somewhere he also lacks some important elements of religion. In this definition Galloway has nowhere mentioned the element of non rationality. But a religion in its true spirit does have the tinge of non rationalism. Moreover the Supreme Being beyond human being, Galloway has talked about in his definition of religion is an impersonal being which cannot be acceptable for all the believers of God.

As there is no common definition of religion, it depends upon every individual investigator how far he will extend the inclusive limits of religious phenomena, hoping that he may not be too much at variance with universal opinion. If the nature of religion in its essence is presumably found, the next step is to estimate the truth value of religion and the representations formulated by religious persons.

However, there are some inseparable elements of religion on which there is almost a consensus. First is representation. Religion is a mater of representation, of thought. Whenever religion has been recognized representation play their part, and generally of a supper human being, in the highly developed forms, of the transcendent spiritual being, God the one. The second element is feeling. Feeling plays a part without which a religion is unthinkable. This occurs first in a sense of dependence, which may be upon any incidental object to which power is ascribed or a useful or harmful part of nature (animal worship, star cult and perhaps animism); or nature with its inflexible laws as a whole, regarded either as animate or as pure mechanism (naturalism, stoicism, Spinoza); or upon spirits, particularly of the deceased (ancestor worship and with it totemism).

The next element is will or desire. Desire claims consideration with reference to the nature of religion. It was to be admitted that religious phenomena in their evolution cannot be understood without the will. Necessity or the desire to escape it implies to a relation with the highest principle by which liberation, salvation from evil, or even the escape from the individual isolation from God is sought. First, the desire seeks earning goods then the higher for this life and the next. Besides and above physical necessity appear mental anxiety, earnest concern for the safety of the soul and the desire for individual immortality. Necessity begets prayer. Sacrifices for the most part represent the effort to avert necessity.

Especially activity appears as the religious phenomena when the moral precepts are taken as the commands of God, and their violation obscures the relation with the divine or threatens with estrangement from God. And last but not the least religion pertains to the entire soul life. It is practical not theoretical. The religious process (prayer, sacraments, yajan, pilgrimage, etc.) opening with a feeling of necessity proceeds to desire of relief and happiness and culminates in the reconciliation of the aim with the transcendent of immanent infinite.

Thus all the definitions of religions should be tested in terms of inclusion of there elements. If a definition falls short of this element, it would not be the complete one.

Answer : All major theistic religions claim that God himself is the cause of religious belief. The believers of these religions put forward different bases for the foundations of religious belief. One major foundation of religious belief is Revelation. A religious man proclaims that God has revealed himself in some way both by showing by showing something of him in events and also by providing some true or important and otherwise unknowable propositions. Even revelation may include both general revelation (God revealing himself in very general events, observable by all, such as the existence of the universe and its contiguity to natural laws) and special revelation in the sense that God manifested his nature and his love for Israel when brought his people out of Egypt and led them to promised land through the agency of Moses.

Theistic religions have generally maintained that God manifests his presence not merely publicly in the natural order or in events within human history, but privately to particular individuals. But such events except when they involve the conveying of information are more naturally called religious experience than instances of revelation. The revelation is accompanied by miracles, events contrary to natural laws. Miracles are thus second kind of relevant evidence. If the miracles produce or forward the teaching of a purportedly revealed book that is reasonably understood as an act as God authenticating that teaching understood as an act of God authenticating that teaching. A religious man claims what he experience.

During revelation can be described because it's a different kind of experience that can be realized but cannot be explained. The orthodox adherents of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity not only agree that religion has an objective basis but also they share the belief that man can know the nature of God because God himself has taken the initiative to make himself known. But the problem is that anyone who holds to the existence of a personal God must allow for the possibility of revelation. The problem remains, however, to how one move from the notion that there is a God to the notion that God is personal and from there to the notion that God has revealed himself.

Besides revelation mysticism also forms the basis for beliefs about God. The chief philosophical interest in mystical experience concerns the possibility that it serves as a source of knowledge or justified belief about God. Those who have such experience typically take themselves to have learned something from them, as well as receive additional confirmation of beliefs already held. Usually they suppose only a limited set of beliefs to be justified in this way. These include the beliefs about what God is doing vis-a-visa the subject at the moment comforting, condemning forgiving, inspiring or communicating a certain message. As applied to certain mystical experience, this prima facie credibility position implies that whenever anyone reports having perceived God as being or during so and so, the report is to be accepted as the unless we have sufficient reasons for refusing to do so. A large number of contemporary philosophers deny that anyone ever genuinely perceives the presence or activity of God.

Most of the reasons for this are based on difference real or alleged between sense experience and mystical experience. Since we are all in practice completely confident of the by and large reliability of sense perception, positive analogies between the two will be taken to support a positive epistemic assessment of mystical perception where as differences between them will be taken to support a negative assessment. The differences certainly render mystical experience much less useful as a source of information but that is quite different from saying that where it exists, it is never or seldom a vertical experience of God or that it provides no information about God. A second common charge is that the mystic is simply reading prior religious belief into a cognitively indifferent experience, rather than being directly aware of supreme reality. A third reason for partiality is the supposition that mystical experience can be adequately explained in purely naturalistic terms and that this fact shows it not to constitute an experience of a supernatural reality. It is a basic principle of perception that we cannot genuinely perceive an entity that does not make a significant central contribution to the experience involved. If a tree on the other side of a high stone wall plays no role in enlisting my present visual experience, then I cannot be seeing that tree, whatever my experience is like. But if the causes of a religious experience are purely worldly, than God plays no role in producing it.