#fideism

Since we cannot rationally understand the divine, the fideist argument continues, what's left to us is faith. The person who has understood the limitations of reason, and still seeks relationship with a god, has no option other than turning in faith to the revealed teachings of her religion, accepting the risk and committing heart and soul to something that human beings cannot know but can only trust. In Kierkegaard's formulation, in fact, it's precisely in trusting what cannot be known and embracing its apparent absurdity that the individual achieves the passionate, deeply subjective state of faith that is the highest of all human qualities.”

I find critiques of fideism interesting. They make faith action in circumstances where there is uncertainty, it is true the product of faith is action in uncertainty, but faith in the Christian God cannot be epistemologically connected to reason.  Blaise Pascal and Kierkegaard are the thinkers I follow on this, so I will borrow from their works. 

Pascal points out that Christians do not claim that their faith is reasonable, they demand faith not facts and logic. It is the attacks of skeptics that claim Christians contradict themselves.  He writes:

"Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give reasons for their beliefs, since they profess belief in a religion which they cannot explain? They declare, when they expound it to the world, that it is foolishness, stultitiam; and then you complain because they do not prove it! If they proved it, they would not keep their word; it is through their lack of proofs that they show they are not lacking in sense." 

— Pensées, no. 233

Fideism is the most consistent position to assume in an apologia for God. We know that the cross of Christ is foolishness, and a stumbling block to the wise, and we cannot claim otherwise. 

Blaise Pascal's wager might, at first glance, appear to have direct relevance only to a culture within the Abrahamic tradition, which much of the West, since the late 20th century, no longer is, in practice.

However, his wager runs deeper, into existentialist territory not yet tread in Pascal's more rationalist era. Consider: It remains true that we are unsure of our own senses, the senses of others (e.g. their scientific studies), our own memories, the memories of others (e.g. scientists) and so forth, and even if a system of empirical observations were shown correct a priori (which would be paradoxical), it still would not explain anything about the purpose of human existence.

That is where faith must enter the picture. We are now exposed to many religions, some of which do not believe in Heaven or Hell as such, yet all of them rely, avowedly so, on non-rational trust in something or in someone.

What, then, is the meaning of faith, for the purposes of theology? Faith is finding a purpose that is absolute, transcending human opinion or inclination, for if it depended on these, it would be contradictory at the outset, and accepting this purpose without rational proofs or supporting empirical evidence, because all such evidence can, regardless, be doubted (and that includes science).

Without faith, one is a Pyrrhonist, a complete metaphysical skeptic, yet also not one, because one could not positively assert Pyrrhonism as "true" without contradicting it. A sense of utter purposelessness, which ultimately translates to a lack of a coherent self, might be understood as, in essence, a mental state of Hell.

Thus, faith is an existential necessity, even before one develops clearer views on the afterlife (if there is one). I cannot give you a reason, per se, to believe in any particular religion, because as a fideist, I frankly admit I have no rational or empirical evidence for my faith (though as a sort of skeptic with faith, I question all rational and empirical evidence for any proposition whatsoever), but I can say that it is as necessary for mental health in this world as it could possibly be, conceivably, for salvation in the next.

This is not to say that religion cannot be misused by hypocrites, because any idea can be misused. Eugenicists have always twisted science to their grandiose liking, for instance, and many bad people have abused parental and other family authority, but that does not mean that, practically speaking, we could live with the total abolition of science or of family. Neither can we be mentally healthy in the complete absence of religion.