@prothero,
prothero;156211 wrote:[IMG]file:///F:/Users/JSADAM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg[/IMG] Basically I think Kierkegaard's position is that belief in god requires a "leap of faith". God can not be objectively proven and certainly can not be objectively experienced. Kierkegaard also writes passionately about subjective truths and objective truths and the relative value of each in human experience. We tend to attach more value to subjective (aesthetic and ethical) experience. I think faith necessarily entails a degree of doubt ( I am not sure agnostic is the correct term, for agnostic implies a certain degree of neutral indifference which people with faith tend not to have) and faith should also entail a great degree of humility.
[IMG]file:///F:/Users/JSADAM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg[/IMG]
I would have thought that faith not only does not imply doubt, but implies belief. Faith is simply a kind of belief, but a belief without evidence, or even contrary to evidence. Kierkegaard's notion of faith is of the latter kind. He analogies faith to love, and argues that like love, it is blind. (We call it "blind faith" after all). So, like all fideists, he holds that faith implies belief contrary to evidence. He calls religion, "the crucifixion of the intellect". He follows Tertullian's famous dictum or paradox, "Credo quia absurdum est". "I believe because it is absurd". Notice, not, "I believe and it is absurd", but, "I believe
because it is absurd". That is, the absurdity of the belief is its justification.