I believe God can be approached by reason. I reached God by reason here in the blogosphere over the last two years, even though I do not think that more than two people in a thousand have noticed it. Having proved by rational argument to my own satisfaction that for human societies to exist, to survive and prosper, a rational Creator must exist, the next question I put to myself was: "Where is God and how does He look like"?
Soon I would find out that I could not be as pretentious as to think that God would be waiting for me on the next street corner to say: " Pedro, here I am!". God cannot reveal himself to mankind through reason, which is a faculty He endowed all men with. It would make Him known to everybody and He would become too much popular - that is, He would cease to be God. Neither could I expect God to be revealed to me through any other subtle, objective sign: sooner or later that objective sign would be aprehended by the rest of mankind and God's ways would become known to everybody - that is, He would cease to be God.
Thus, if through my own reason and to my satisfaction I had come to the conclusion that God must exist, if I had further concluded through my own reason and to my satisfaction that He cannot reveal Himself to me through my own reason, then the only rational course of action that was left to me would be to accept the existence of God as an act of faith. An that is what I did.
If I am approached today by a third person who asks me if I believe in God, my answer is a resounding Yes. If I am asked why, I feel more than comfortable to provide a full, compreehensive, rational explanation why God must exist, and how human life would be so utterly impossible without Him. If I am further asked to provide a rational proof of the existence of God, I will be more than delighted to explain rationally why God's existence cannot be proved by reason alone. I will then be more than happy to conclude that, having proved both the rational necessity of God and the impossibility of proving Him by reason alone, the only rational way to reach God is faith.
Looking in retrospect, what surprises me is the large role reason played on my way to God and the very little role that faith played on it. Faith was simply the end-limit of reason - actually, a necessity of reason.
Soon I would find out that I could not be as pretentious as to think that God would be waiting for me on the next street corner to say: " Pedro, here I am!". God cannot reveal himself to mankind through reason, which is a faculty He endowed all men with. It would make Him known to everybody and He would become too much popular - that is, He would cease to be God. Neither could I expect God to be revealed to me through any other subtle, objective sign: sooner or later that objective sign would be aprehended by the rest of mankind and God's ways would become known to everybody - that is, He would cease to be God.
Thus, if through my own reason and to my satisfaction I had come to the conclusion that God must exist, if I had further concluded through my own reason and to my satisfaction that He cannot reveal Himself to me through my own reason, then the only rational course of action that was left to me would be to accept the existence of God as an act of faith. An that is what I did.
If I am approached today by a third person who asks me if I believe in God, my answer is a resounding Yes. If I am asked why, I feel more than comfortable to provide a full, compreehensive, rational explanation why God must exist, and how human life would be so utterly impossible without Him. If I am further asked to provide a rational proof of the existence of God, I will be more than delighted to explain rationally why God's existence cannot be proved by reason alone. I will then be more than happy to conclude that, having proved both the rational necessity of God and the impossibility of proving Him by reason alone, the only rational way to reach God is faith.
Looking in retrospect, what surprises me is the large role reason played on my way to God and the very little role that faith played on it. Faith was simply the end-limit of reason - actually, a necessity of reason.
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